Podcasts about european jewish

Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photographs. German Jews of considerably diverse backgrounds took and preserved these photographs: professional and amateurs, of different ages, gender, and classes. The book argues that their previously overlooked photographs convey otherwise unuttered views, emotions, and self-perceptions. Based on a database of more than fifteen thousand relevant images, it analyzes photographs within the historical contexts of their production, preservation, and intended viewing, and explores a plethora of Jews' reactions to the changing landscapes of post-1933 Germany. Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Rebekka Grossmann is Assistant Professor of Migration History at Leiden University. In her research, she explores the connections of visual culture, migration and politics with a special focus on Jewish history. Her dissertation, which will be published in 2026, investigates the role of the camera as agent, chronicler and critic of Jewish nation-building. In her new project, she looks at the entangled stories of the legacies of Jewish forced migration, post-war memory culture and peace activism through the lens of different artistic projects. Shira Miron is a PhD candidate at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her research explores aesthetics as a mode of investigation for human experience and social formation and studies the particularities of different artforms alongside their conceptual and practical cross-pollination. She pursues theoretical questions as they relate to history and culture and vice versa. Her dissertation project, Composition and Community: The Extra-Musical Imagination of Polyphony 1800/1900/1950, explores the advent of western polyphony as a modern aesthetic, communicative, and ethical phenomenon that extends beyond the field of music. Shira published on the relationship between music and literature, German-Jewish literature and culture, visual studies, theories of dialogue and communication, and on a wide range of authors including Novalis, Adorno, Kleist, and Gertrud Kolmar. Shira holds B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees in piano performance from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and studied German literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Freie Universität Berlin. Currently, she is a DAAD research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Sarah Wobick-Segev is a research associate at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Hamburg. Her research explores the multiple intersections of European-Jewish cultural and intellectual history with gender studies, everyday life history, and visual and religious studies. Her current project analyzes the religious writings of Jewish women in German-speaking Central Europe from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photographs. German Jews of considerably diverse backgrounds took and preserved these photographs: professional and amateurs, of different ages, gender, and classes. The book argues that their previously overlooked photographs convey otherwise unuttered views, emotions, and self-perceptions. Based on a database of more than fifteen thousand relevant images, it analyzes photographs within the historical contexts of their production, preservation, and intended viewing, and explores a plethora of Jews' reactions to the changing landscapes of post-1933 Germany. Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Rebekka Grossmann is Assistant Professor of Migration History at Leiden University. In her research, she explores the connections of visual culture, migration and politics with a special focus on Jewish history. Her dissertation, which will be published in 2026, investigates the role of the camera as agent, chronicler and critic of Jewish nation-building. In her new project, she looks at the entangled stories of the legacies of Jewish forced migration, post-war memory culture and peace activism through the lens of different artistic projects. Shira Miron is a PhD candidate at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her research explores aesthetics as a mode of investigation for human experience and social formation and studies the particularities of different artforms alongside their conceptual and practical cross-pollination. She pursues theoretical questions as they relate to history and culture and vice versa. Her dissertation project, Composition and Community: The Extra-Musical Imagination of Polyphony 1800/1900/1950, explores the advent of western polyphony as a modern aesthetic, communicative, and ethical phenomenon that extends beyond the field of music. Shira published on the relationship between music and literature, German-Jewish literature and culture, visual studies, theories of dialogue and communication, and on a wide range of authors including Novalis, Adorno, Kleist, and Gertrud Kolmar. Shira holds B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees in piano performance from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and studied German literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Freie Universität Berlin. Currently, she is a DAAD research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Sarah Wobick-Segev is a research associate at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Hamburg. Her research explores the multiple intersections of European-Jewish cultural and intellectual history with gender studies, everyday life history, and visual and religious studies. Her current project analyzes the religious writings of Jewish women in German-speaking Central Europe from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photographs. German Jews of considerably diverse backgrounds took and preserved these photographs: professional and amateurs, of different ages, gender, and classes. The book argues that their previously overlooked photographs convey otherwise unuttered views, emotions, and self-perceptions. Based on a database of more than fifteen thousand relevant images, it analyzes photographs within the historical contexts of their production, preservation, and intended viewing, and explores a plethora of Jews' reactions to the changing landscapes of post-1933 Germany. Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Rebekka Grossmann is Assistant Professor of Migration History at Leiden University. In her research, she explores the connections of visual culture, migration and politics with a special focus on Jewish history. Her dissertation, which will be published in 2026, investigates the role of the camera as agent, chronicler and critic of Jewish nation-building. In her new project, she looks at the entangled stories of the legacies of Jewish forced migration, post-war memory culture and peace activism through the lens of different artistic projects. Shira Miron is a PhD candidate at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her research explores aesthetics as a mode of investigation for human experience and social formation and studies the particularities of different artforms alongside their conceptual and practical cross-pollination. She pursues theoretical questions as they relate to history and culture and vice versa. Her dissertation project, Composition and Community: The Extra-Musical Imagination of Polyphony 1800/1900/1950, explores the advent of western polyphony as a modern aesthetic, communicative, and ethical phenomenon that extends beyond the field of music. Shira published on the relationship between music and literature, German-Jewish literature and culture, visual studies, theories of dialogue and communication, and on a wide range of authors including Novalis, Adorno, Kleist, and Gertrud Kolmar. Shira holds B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees in piano performance from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and studied German literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Freie Universität Berlin. Currently, she is a DAAD research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Sarah Wobick-Segev is a research associate at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Hamburg. Her research explores the multiple intersections of European-Jewish cultural and intellectual history with gender studies, everyday life history, and visual and religious studies. Her current project analyzes the religious writings of Jewish women in German-speaking Central Europe from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photographs. German Jews of considerably diverse backgrounds took and preserved these photographs: professional and amateurs, of different ages, gender, and classes. The book argues that their previously overlooked photographs convey otherwise unuttered views, emotions, and self-perceptions. Based on a database of more than fifteen thousand relevant images, it analyzes photographs within the historical contexts of their production, preservation, and intended viewing, and explores a plethora of Jews' reactions to the changing landscapes of post-1933 Germany. Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Rebekka Grossmann is Assistant Professor of Migration History at Leiden University. In her research, she explores the connections of visual culture, migration and politics with a special focus on Jewish history. Her dissertation, which will be published in 2026, investigates the role of the camera as agent, chronicler and critic of Jewish nation-building. In her new project, she looks at the entangled stories of the legacies of Jewish forced migration, post-war memory culture and peace activism through the lens of different artistic projects. Shira Miron is a PhD candidate at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her research explores aesthetics as a mode of investigation for human experience and social formation and studies the particularities of different artforms alongside their conceptual and practical cross-pollination. She pursues theoretical questions as they relate to history and culture and vice versa. Her dissertation project, Composition and Community: The Extra-Musical Imagination of Polyphony 1800/1900/1950, explores the advent of western polyphony as a modern aesthetic, communicative, and ethical phenomenon that extends beyond the field of music. Shira published on the relationship between music and literature, German-Jewish literature and culture, visual studies, theories of dialogue and communication, and on a wide range of authors including Novalis, Adorno, Kleist, and Gertrud Kolmar. Shira holds B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees in piano performance from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and studied German literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Freie Universität Berlin. Currently, she is a DAAD research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Sarah Wobick-Segev is a research associate at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Hamburg. Her research explores the multiple intersections of European-Jewish cultural and intellectual history with gender studies, everyday life history, and visual and religious studies. Her current project analyzes the religious writings of Jewish women in German-speaking Central Europe from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Guy Miron, professor of modern European Jewish history at the Open University of Israel, and the director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust in Germany at Yad Vashem and a board member of the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, discusses his most recent book, Space and Time Under Persecution: The German-Jewish Experience in the Third Reich.

In this week's episode of then & now, we're joined by Benjamin Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, to talk about his recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024)—which was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 2025 Pushkin House Book Prize. Ben offers an in-depth analysis of the Soviet dissident movement, foregrounding both canonical figures and a diverse array of lesser-known activists who contested the legitimacy of the Soviet state through a strategy of "civil obedience"—that is, by appealing to Soviet law itself. Drawing extensively on primary sources—including personal diaries, private correspondence, and KGB interrogation transcripts—Ben elucidates the intellectual and legal tacks that dissidents employed to expose the contradictions within the Soviet system. Ben situates the Soviet dissident experience within broader historiographical debates on human rights, legal studies, and the politics of memory, offering critical insights into the transnational significance of dissent under authoritarian regimes. Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches and writes about Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, modern European Jewish history, and the history of human rights. His most recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024), was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 2025 Pushkin House Book Prize. He has published articles on Habermas and the public sphere in eighteenth-century France, Russian-Jewish historiography, Soviet dissident memoirs, and many other topics. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.

Welcome to the 31st edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now. Our latest guest is Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, a social anthropologist and author of the book Jewish Odesa, published in 2024 by Indiana University Press. The book explores issues of identity and tradition in the Jewish community in modern Odesa. Marina is currently a visiting fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the LSE.In a review of Jewish Odesa, Lucy Lopata-Varkas writes:‘Marina Sapritsky-Nahum's Jewish Odesa is a compelling exploration of Jewishness in Odesa against the backdrop of Soviet history, Ukrainian nation-making, and ongoing European Jewish revivals. Drawing on an abundance of materials from history, oral testimonies, anthropology, and Jewish studies, Sapritsky-Nahum depicts a vibrant community whose connection to the port city never falters, despite waves of emigration to countries like Israel or the US, the changing political status quo, and fluctuating levels of religious observance.' This podcast was recorded on 15 May 2025My questions:What led you to make a study of Jewish Odesa in the early years of the 21st century?Did your own background influence your choice? Tell us a little about your own roots.How does the approach of a social anthropologist differ from that of a historian in the study of a subject such as this?The book begins with the stories and memories of an older generation of Jewish Odesans, those who grew up in the Soviet era. What did you learn from them? What defines them as Jews in their own eyes? And in the eyes of others?Is oral history a useful tool in this kind of research? In the book, you write: ‘collecting the life stories of elderly Jewish Odesans is one of my most cherished memories'… What did you personally gain from talking to them?After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a widespread resurgence of interest in religion. How did this manifest itself in Odesa after Ukraine declared its own independence in 1991? Was it a genuine Jewish revival?Odesa occupies a special place in Jewish history and in the history of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. How did this come about and what is the essence of Odesa's identity as a Jewish city?In the book you talk about traditions. This makes me think of the song ‘Tradition' from the musical ‘Fiddler on the Roof' based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, a native of Odesa. Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, Leonid Utesov, Mikhail Zhvanetsky and many other Jewish Odesans gave the city its special character. How would you describe this special character?You write about the myth of Odesa – in what sense is it a myth? Can this myth survive the current war with Russia?You completed your research for the book before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Are you still in touch with your interviewees? How has Russian aggression changed relations between different ethnic groups in Odesa? Is there a perceived threat to the Jews, since they were always associated with Russian culture and language?There is a lot of controversy and debate surrounding the issue of monuments in Odesa. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, monuments were erected to famous Jews from Odesa, including the mythical Sashka and Rabinovich of Soviet-era jokes. Are they still standing? What about monuments related to Russian culture, such as the one to Pushkin, or to Catherine the Great (the founder of Odesa) and others? What does it say about modern Odesa?In 2023, UNESCO designated Odesa a world heritage city. What do you think prompted this decision, and how will it benefit the city's residents?What has been the impact on the sense of identity of Odesa's Jews of post-Soviet research into the part played by some Ukrainians during World War II? I'm thinking of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis, involvement in the Holocaust and in particular in the atrocity of Babi Yar?Are you planning to write a sequel to Jewish Odesa? About the impact of the current war on Jewish life in Odesa? Do you have any thoughts on what your findings might reveal that you could share with us?

Five years ago, the COVID-19 Pandemic shut doors and changed lives faster than we could learn its name. And amid uncertainty, people looked for answers, even if their searching brought consequences as serious as the virus itself. On this episode of Revival, we delve into the uncertainty that fueled the formulation of conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequences of misinformation. GUESTS: Amy Simon, an associate professor of Holocaust studies and European Jewish history at Michigan State University Melissa May Borja, associate professor of American culture at the University of Michigan and founder of the Virulent Hate Project Looking for more conversations from Stateside? Right this way. If you like what you hear on the pod, consider supporting our work. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Emanuela Trevisan Semi's Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy's language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Emanuela Trevisan Semi's Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy's language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Emanuela Trevisan Semi's Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy's language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Emanuela Trevisan Semi's Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy's language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Emanuela Trevisan Semi's Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy's language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Emanuela Trevisan Semi's Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy's language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

What lessons can be drawn from the post-October 7 era? Amid growing isolation and antisemitism, where do opportunities for hope and resilience lie for the Jewish people? In a compelling discussion, AJC CEO Ted Deutch and Bernard-Henri Lévy—renowned French philosopher, public intellectual, and author of Israel Alone—explore these critical questions. Guest-hosted by AJC Paris Director Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache, this conversation offers insight into the challenges Jewish communities face and the possibilities for a brighter future. Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: with Hen Mazzig, Einat Admony, and more. People of the Pod:  What's Next for the Abraham Accords Under President Trump? Honoring Israel's Lone Soldiers This Thanksgiving: Celebrating Service and Sacrifice Away from Home The ICC Issues Arrest Warrants: What You Need to Know Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. __ Transcript of Conversation with Bernard-Henri Lévy and Ted Deutch: Manya Brachear Pashman: What lessons can be drawn from the post-October 7 era? Amid growing isolation and antisemitism, where do opportunities for hope and resilience lie for the Jewish people? I'm throwing it off to AJC Paris Director Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache to explore these critical questions. Anne-Sophie? Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you, Manya. Welcome everyone to today's special episode of People of the Pod. I'm sitting here in our office near the Eiffel Tower for a special and unique conversation between Ted Deutch AJC CEO and Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the most, if not the most prominent French philosopher and public intellectuals. Bonjour. Bernard-Henri Lévy:  Bonjour. Hello. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Today, we will speak about loneliness, the loneliness of the Jewish people in Israel, the explosion of antisemitism in Europe and the United States, the attacks on Israel from multiple fronts since October 7. We will also speak about the loneliness of Western democracies, more broadly, the consequences of the US elections and the future for Ukraine and the European continent.  Bernard-Henri Lévy:, you've recently come back from a tour in the United States where you presented your latest book titled Israel Alone. Ted, you've just arrived in Europe to sound again the alarm on the situation of Jewish communities on this continent after the shocking assault on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam. Israel alone, the diaspora alone, actually the Jewish people, or Am Yisrael alone. As if Israel and Jews all over the world have merged this year over a common sense of loneliness.  So I ask the question to both of you, are we alone? Bernard, let's start with you. Bernard-Henri Lévy:  I am back from a campus tour in the United States of America. I went in USC, in UCLA, in Columbia, in Ohio, University in Michigan. I was in many places, and in these places, in the campuses, it's not even a question. The loneliness is terrible. You have Jewish students, brave, resilient, who have to face every day humiliation, provocations, attacks, sometimes physical attacks. And who feel that, for the first time, the country in the world, America, which was supposed to be immune to antisemitism. You know, we knew about antisemitism in Europe. We knew about antisemitism in the rest of the world.  But in America, they discovered that when they are attacked, of course there is support. But not always from their teachers, not always from the boards of the universities, and not always from the public opinion. And what they are discovering today in America is that, they are protected, of course, but not as it was before unconditionally. Jews in America and in Europe are supposed to be protected unconditionally.  This is minimum. Minimum in France, since French Revolution, in America, since the Mayflower. For the first time, there are conditions. If you are a right wing guy, you say, I protect you if you vote for me. If you don't vote, you will be guilty of my loss, and you will be, and the state will disappear in a few years. So you will be no longer protected. You are protected under the condition that you endorse me. On the left. You have people on the left wing side, people who say you are protected under condition that you don't support Israel, under condition that you take your distance with Zionism, under condition that you pay tribute to the new dark side who say that Netanyahu is a genocide criminal and so on. So what I feel, and not only my feeling, is the feeling of most of the students and sometimes teachers whom I met in this new situation of conditional security and support, and this is what loneliness means in America.  Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you, Bernard. How about you, Ted? Ted Deutch:  Well, it's interesting. First of all, thank you Anne-Sophie, and Bernard, it's an honor to be in conversation with you. It's interesting to hear you talk about America. Your observations track very closely. The comments that I've heard since being in Europe from students in the UK, and from students here who, speaking about America, tell me that their conclusion is that whatever the challenges they face here and the challenges are real, that they feel fortunate to be in university in Europe rather than in the United States.  But the point that you make that's so important everywhere, is this sense that it's not only the Jewish community that expects to have unconditional security. For the Jewish community now, it feels as if expecting that security, the freedom to be able on college campuses, the freedom to be able to pursue their studies and grow intellectually and have different experiences.  That when that security is compromised, by those who wish to exclude Jews because they support Israel, for those who wish to tag every Jewish student as a genocidal baby killer, that when those positions are taken, it's the loneliness stems from the fact that they're not hearing from the broader community, how unacceptable that behavior is. That it's become too easy for others to, even if they're not joining in, to simply shrug their shoulders and look the other way, when what's happening to Jewish students is not just about Jewish students, but is fundamentally about democracy and values and the way of life in the U.S. and in Europe. Bernard-Henri Lévy:  Of course, except that the new thing in America, which is not bad, is that every minority has the right to be protected. Every community, every minority has the right to have a safe space and so on. There is one minority who does not have the same rights. The only minority who is not safe in America, whose safety is not granted, is the Jewish one. And this is a scandal. You know, we could live in a sort of general jungle. Okay, Jews would be like the others, but it is not the case. Since the political correctness and so on, every minority is safe except the Jewish one. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  So if we are alone, if American Jewish students feel alone, as European Jewish students, we are probably not the only one to feel that way, right? I turn over to you, Mr. Levy, and go to another subject.  Since day one of the Russian invasion, and even before that, you have been a forceful advocate for a steadfast European and American support for Ukraine.  Is Ukraine alone today? And will it be even more during America's second Trump administration? Bernard-Henri Lévy:  I've been an advocate of Ukraine, absolutely and I really believe that the freedom for liberty, the battle for liberty, the battle for freedom today, is waged on two front lines. For the moment, it might be more, but Israel and Ukraine. I wish to make that very clear, it is the same battle. They are the same stakes, the same values, and the same enemy.  I'm not sure that every Ukrainian, every Jew, knows that they have the same enemy. The axis between Iran, Putin, China, more and more, Turkey, and the same axis of authorisation countries. So it is the same battle.  The Ukrainians have not been exactly alone. They have been supported in the last two years and half, but in a strange way, not enough. The chancellery, the West, spoke about an incremental support. Incremental support meant exactly what is not enough, what is necessary for them not to lose, but not to win. This is what I saw on the ground.  I made three documentaries in Ukraine on the field, and I could elaborate on that a lot, precisely, concretely in every spot, every trench they have exactly what is needed for the line not to be broken, but not to win. Now we enter in a new in a new moment, a new moment of uncertainty in America and in Europe, with the rise of populism. Which means the rise of parties who say: Who cares about Ukraine, who don't understand that the support of Ukraine, as the support of Israel, is a question of national interest, a question of national security for us, too. The Ukrainian ladies and gentlemen, who fight in Ukraine, they fight for the liberty. They fight for ours, French, yours, American. And we might enter in a new moment. It's not sure, because history has more imagination than the man, than mankind. So we can have surprises. But for the moment, I am really anxious on this front line too, yes. Ted Deutch:  There are additional connections too, between what's happening in Ukraine and what's happening in Israel, and clearly the fact that Iranian killer drones are being used by Russia to kill Europeans should be an alarming enough fact that jars all of us into action. But the point that you make, that I think is so important Bernard, is that Israel has in many ways, faced the same response, except with a much tighter window than Ukraine did.  Israel was allowed to respond to the attacks of October 7, that for those few days after the World understood the horrific nature of the slaughter, the rape, and the babies burning, the terrible, terrible mayhem, and recognize that Israel had a right to respond, but as with Ukraine, only to a point Bernard-Henri Lévy:  Even to a point, I'm not sure. Ted Deutch:  But then that point ended. It was limited. They could take that response. But now we've moved to the point where, just like those students on campus and in so many places around the world, where only the Jews are excluded, that's a natural line from the geopolitical issues, where only Israel is the country that can't respond in self defense. Only Israel is the country that doesn't have the right to exist. Only a Jewish state is the one state that should be dismantled. That's another reason, how these are, another way they are all tied together. Bernard-Henri Lévy:  Don't forget that just a few days after Israel started to retaliate. We heard from everywhere in the West, and United Nations, calls for cease fire, call for negotiation, call for de-escalation. Hezbollah shell Israel for one year. We never heard one responsible of the UN called Hezbollah for not escalating. The day Israel started to reply and retaliate after one year of being bombed, immediately take care to escalation. Please keep down. Please keep cool, etc, etc.  So situation of Israel is a unique case, and again, if you have a little memory, I remember the battle for Mosul. I made a film about that. I remember the battle against the Taliban in 2001 nobody asked the West to make compromise with ISIS and with al-Qaeda, which are the cousins of Hamas. Nobody asked the West not to enter here or there. No one outside the ground said, Okay, you can enter in Mazar-I-Sharif in Afghanistan, but you cannot enter in Kandahar.  Or you can enter in the western part of Mosul. But be careful. Nobody had even this idea this happened only for Israel. And remember Joe by then asking the Prime Minister of Israel about Rafa? Don't, don't, don't. At the end of the day, he's not always right and he's often wrong, but the Prime Minister was right to enter into Rafa for obvious reasons, which we all know now. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Ted, let me come back to you more specifically on the US. At AJC, we support democracy. This is in our DNA. Since the organization was founded 1906 we've been strong supporters of the Transatlantic Partnership since day one. We believe in the alliance of democracies in the defense of our common values. And you know here, there's a lot of anxiety about Donald Trump's re-election. So what is your take on the U.S. elections' consequences for Europe, for transatlantic relations? Ted Deutch: I've been coming to Europe for years, as I did as an elected official. Now in this capacity there is that our friends in Europe are always rightly focused on US policy and engaging the level of commitment the US makes to Europe. The election of Donald Trump, this isn't a new moment. There is history. And for four years in the last administration, the focus that the President had on questioning the ties to Europe and questioning NATO and questioning the commitment that has been so central to the transatlantic relationship rightfully put much of Europe on edge. Now, as the President will come back into power, there is this question of Ukraine and the different opinions that the President is hearing. In one side, in one ear, he's hearing from traditional conservative voices in the United States who are telling him that the US has a crucial role to play, that support for Ukraine is not just as we've been discussing, not just in the best interest of Ukraine, but that it relates directly back to the United States, to Europe. It actually will, they tell him, rightly so, I submit, that US involvement and continued support for Ukraine will help to prevent further war across the continent. In the other ear, however, he's hearing from the America first crowd that thinks that America should recognize that the ocean protects us, and we should withdraw from the world. And the best place to start is Ukraine, and that means turning our back on the brave Ukrainians who have fought so nobly against Russia. That's what he's hearing. It's imperative that, starting this weekend, when he is here at Notre Dame, that he hears and sees and is reminded of not just the importance of the transatlantic relationship, but why it's important, and why that relationship is impacted so directly by what's happening in Ukraine, and the need to continue to focus on Ukraine and to support NATO. And to recognize that with all of the challenges, when there is an opportunity for American leadership to bring together traditional allies, that should be the easiest form of leadership for the President to take. It's still an open question, however, as to whether that's the approach that you will take.  Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you, Ted.  Let me sum it up, our conversation for a minute. We said that the Jewish people feels alone, but we said that we are not the only ones. Didn't you feel that on that lonely road of this year, we've also never felt as strong as who we are, both our Jewishness. A French intellectual I know, Bernard Levy would say our Jewish being, être juif, and Jewish unity. Are they the best answers to overcome our loneliness? Let's start with our philosopher. Bernard-Henri Lévy:  I don't believe only in Jewish unity. I believe in Jewish strength. And in one of my previous books, the genius of religion, I spoke about about that Jewish strength, not military strength in Israel, but spiritual strength, and I think that this strength is not behaving so bad. I told you about the campuses. I told you the dark side.  But there is also the bright side, the fact that the students stand firm. They stand by themselves, by their position. They are proud Jews in the campuses. In Israel, come on. Israel is facing the most difficult war and the most terrible war of its history. We know all the previous wars, and alas, I have the age to have known personally and directly, a lot of them since 1960s about this war with terrorists embedded in the civilians, with the most powerful terrorist army in the world on the north, with seven fronts open with Houthis sending missiles and so on. Israel never saw that.  So the people of Israel, the young girls and young boys, the fathers, even the old men of Israel, who enlist, who are on the front, who fight bravely. They do a job that their grandfathers never had to do. So, resilience. Also in Israel. The most sophisticated, the most difficult, the most difficult to win war, they are winning it. And in Europe, I see, as I never saw, a movement of resistance and refusal to bow in front of the antisemite, which I never saw to this extent in my long life. You have groups today in France, for example, who really react every day, who post videos every day.  Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Some are in this room.  Bernard-Henri Lévy:  Some are in this room. Pirrout is in this room, for example, every day about the so called unbound France. Mélenchon, who is a real antisemite as you know, they publish the truth. They don't let any infamy pass without reacting, and this again, is new, not completely new, but I never saw that to this extent.  Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you, Rene. How about you Ted, what do you think?  Ted Deutch:  more important than ever that as Jews, as Jewish community, As Zionists, that we don't allow our opponents to define what's happening, that the response is never to to feel defensive, that the response. Is to be bold, boldly Jewish, boldly Zionist, unapologetically Zionist. To to do exactly what those students are doing across the United States, that I've seen, the students here who have that I that I've met with that in Europe, a student in in London a few days ago, said to me, she said, when someone yells at me, when they when they scream at me and accuse me of genocide, she said it only makes me want to get a bigger Magen David. The person that that stood up at a meeting in New York a few months ago who told me that, before announced in front of a big crowd that that for years, she's been involved in all of these different organizations in her community to to help feed the hungry and to help kids to read, and all these worthy causes. She said, since October 7, she said, I am all Jewish all the time, and I want everyone to know it the and Israel is perhaps the best example of this. It's impossible to imagine the kind of resilience that we see from Israelis. The taxi driver that I had in Israel. He said, This is so difficult for all of us. We've all known people. We've lost people. It's affected all of us, but we're just never going to give up, because our history doesn't allow it. We have prevailed as a people for 1000s of years and have gotten stronger every single time. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you, Ted. I can keep thinking about this overwhelming challenge that we face as the Jewish people today, which seems to confine us to solitude. Anyway, Jews and Israel are attacked with alternative truths, false narratives. We've witnessed how international justice, our common, universal values, have been turned upside down in the Jewish tradition, we say that we have a mission to repair the world, Tikkun Olam. But how can we make sure to recreate the common world in the first place? Bernard-Henri Lévy:  It's on process number one, continue to try to repair the world, I remind you, and you know that, and Simone Rodan knows it also, in many occurrences, in many situations of the last 30 years when real genocides happened. Real genocide, not imaginary. Real one. In Rwanda, in Srebrenica, in Darfur, when I met with in Chad, with Simone, and so on. The first whistleblowers, the first to tell the world that something terrible was happening, were not exactly Jews, but were ladies and men who had in their hearts the memory of the Shoah. And the flame of Yad Vashem. That's a fact, and therefore they reacted and what could be repaired. They contributed to repair it. Number one.  Second observation, about what Ted said, there is in Europe now, since many years, a tendency to step out, to give up to and to go to Israel. Not only by love of Zionism, but thinking that this is not a safe place any longer for them. I tell you, this tendency starts to be reversed now you have more and more Jews in Europe who say, no, no, no, no. We built this country. We are among the authors of the French social contract.  For example, we will not leave it to those illiterate morons who try to push us away. And this is a new thing. This reaction, this no of the Jews in Europe is something relatively new. And third little remark. 10 years ago in the States, I met a lot of young people who were embarrassed with Israel, who said we are liberal and there is Israel, and the two don't match really well. 10-15, years ago, I met a lot. Less and less today. You have more and more students in America who understand that Israel should be supported, not in spite of their liberal values. But because of their liberal values. And come on, this for a liberal, is a treasure, and it is unprecedented, and there is no example. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  How about you, Ted? How do you think we can overcome the challenge of those parallel realities we feel we live in? Ted Deutch:  Those students, and I think broadly the Jewish community, after October 7, came to realize that as Hamas terrorists rolled into southern Israel, they made no distinctions about the politics of the Israelis. That great irony, of course, is that the peaceniks, or the brunt of these attacks, living along the southern edge of Israel by Gaza, they didn't make determinations on who to kill based on how they practiced, what their politics were, how they felt about Bibi.  And I think what the Jewish world, certainly it's true for young people that I talk to, came to realize is that connection between Israel and the Jewish people is not theoretical, that that ultimately, what's gone on for the past year is is an attack against Israel, Israel as the stand in for the Jewish people, and that defending Israel is really defending all of us. And I think they've come to understand that.  But going forward, I think what you described, Bernard, is new, this is what it means now to be an Or Lagoyim. This is what it means to be a light unto the nations. That in the face of all of these attacks, that Israeli democracy continues to thrive. That the conversation by those, ironically, the conversation that has attempted to demonize Israel by demonizing Bibi, has highlighted the fact that these protests have continued during the time of war. As you point out that this is this is unlike anything you would see, that what's permitted, the way democracy is thrives and is and is vibrant in Israel, is different than every place else, that this is a message that the world will see, that that the that in the face of these ongoing challenges, that the Jewish community stands not just against against these attacks against the Jews, but stands against what's happening In the streets of so many places in America. Where people march with Hezbollah flags, where they're openly supporting Hamas. It's going to take some time, but ultimately, because of the strong, because of the resilience, because of the strong, proud way that Jews are responding to this moment and to those protests, eventually, the world will realize that standing in support of Hamas terrorism is not just something that is dangerous to the Jews, but puts at risk the entire world. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you. I'm a Sephardic Jew, so I cannot just end this conversation speaking about loneliness. How about hope? Can we find some? Bernard-Henri Lévy:  I compare the situation of the Jews today to the situation in the time of my dad, for example, there are some change, for example, the Christians and the Catholic Church. 50 years ago, a huge cultural revolution in the world. It is the change of position of the Catholic Church on anti semitism. It was the Vatican Two Council and the Nostra aetate. It seems tiny, but it is huge revolution, and it consisted in a single word, one word, the Catholic Council of Vatican Two said Jews are no longer the fathers of the Christians, as it was said before, in the best of the case, they are the brothers of the Christians.  This is a huge revelation. Of course, Catholics are not always faithful to this commitment. And popes, and especially the pope of today do not remember well the message of his ancestor, but on the whole, we have among the Christians, among the Catholics in Europe and in. Real friends in America among the new evangelical I don't know if they are friends, but they are strong allies. Abraham agreements was again another big revolution which has been underestimated, and the fact that the Abraham agreements, alliance with Morocco, Emirates, Bahrain stands, in spite of the war on seven fronts. Is a proof. It is solid. It is an ironclad alliance, and it holds.  And this is a new event, and we have in the not only in the top of the state, but in the public opinions of the Muslim world. We have a lot of people who who start to be who are more and more numerous, to believe that enough is enough. Too much war, too much misunderstandings, too much hatred, and who are really eager to make the real peace, which is the peace of hearts and the peace of souls with their other brothers, who are the Jews. So yes, there are some reasons to be optimistic.  Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you very much, Bernard. Ted? Ted Deutch:  I don't think that we can ever give up hope. And optimism is necessary, and I think justified. The things Bernard talks about, I mean, at AJC, our focus on on building democracy, our focus on interreligious work, the work we've done with the Catholic Church around Nostra aetate, now 60 years old and and continuing to build the relationship our Muslim Jewish Advisory Council always looking for opportunities to to find those voices that are tired of all of the war. And in our office, in Abu Dhabi, we've, we've continued to go to the Gulf, to the Abraham Accord states, and beyond, even through this entire war, because there is the hope of of getting to a place where, where Israel is in a more normalized position in the region, which will then change the perception and push back against the lies that those who wish to to see a world without Israel continue to espouse.  All of that is hopeful, and we work toward it. But for me, the most hopeful thing to come from this moment is, AJC works around the world and because the Jewish community now understands how connected we all are as a result of the threats that we face, the opportunity to strengthen diaspora Jewry, to help people realize that the connections between the Jewish community in Paris and the Jewish community in Mexico City and the Jewish community in Buenos Aires in Chicago, in Miami and New York, that they're interrelated and that we don't have the luxury of viewing our challenges as unique in our countries.  By standing together, we're in a much, much stronger position, and we have to continue to build that. That's why AJC's Global Forum is always the most important part of the year for us, bringing together the Jewish community from around the world. That's why the antisemitism summit that we'll be doing here with the CRIF is going to be so critical to building those relationships. We have an opportunity coming out of this incredibly dark time to take the strength and the resolve that we feel and to and to channel it in ways that that will lead the Jewish community to places that a year ago seemed absolutely impossible to imagine. Those 101 hostages need to return home. We stand together calling for them to return home. We stand together in our support of Israel as it wages the seven-front war, and ultimately, we stand together as Jewish people. That's what gives me hope every day. Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache:  Thank you so much. Manya Brachear Pashman: If you missed last week's episode, be sure to tune in for the conversation between my colleague Benji Rogers, AJC's director for Middle East and North Africa initiatives, and Rob Greenway, director of the Allison center for national security at the Heritage Foundation, and former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs on the National Security Council, they discuss the opportunities and challenges President-elect Trump will face in the Middle East.

As the largest Jewish community in prewar Europe, Warsaw, Poland is a prime destination on many European Jewish history tours. One of the unique elements of a visit to Jewish Warsaw is a walk through its vast cemetery. Full of history, kivrei tzadikim and the rich tapestry of prewar Polish Jewry, it provides a singular perspective into a vanished world. While the majority of tours focus on several highlights of the cemetery such as the first chief rabbi of Warsaw the Chemdas Shlomo, the mass grave of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Netziv of Volozhin & Rav Chaim Brisker, the Modzhitz, Slonim & Radomsk Rebbes, etc., there is really so much more there than meets the eye. This episode will explore some of the less frequently visited personalities and memorials of the Warsaw cemetery, including other prominent Warsaw rabbis such as Rav Avraham Tzvi Perlmutter, many other Chassidic leaders such as the Biala, Vorka, Radzymin, Amshinov, Radzyn, Pilov, Sokolov and other rebbes, cultural and political aspects of prewar Warsaw such as the Yiddish writers, Yiddish theater, the Bund, Judenrat head Adam Czerniakow, and much much more. Get ready for an urban lively journey through a historic cemetery!   Cross River, a leading financial institution committed to supporting its communities, is proud to sponsor Jewish History Soundbites. As a trusted partner for individuals and businesses, Cross River understands the importance of preserving and celebrating our heritage. By sponsoring this podcast, they demonstrate their unwavering dedication to enriching the lives of the communities in which they serve. Visit Cross River at https://www.crossriver.com/   Subscribe to Jewish History Soundbites Podcast on: PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/ or your favorite podcast platform Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history or feedback contact Yehuda at:  yehuda@yehudageberer.com  

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) In a bit of a parallel episode to Episode 24 ("The Footballer who Defied the Nazis? The Myth of Matthias Sindelar"), this is the story of Hakoach Vienna. A child of central European Jewish emancipation movements and of the "muscular religion" fashionable at the time, the Jewish club became Austria's first professional champion in 1925, subsequently lost its important players to North American clubs, was home to Bela Guttman in Austria, and was shut down 3 days after the Anschluss of Austria to Germany. It lives on in at least 3 clubs, on 3 continents, one of them a re-formed Hakoah, in Vienna itself. Marcus Patka is here to tell this story. A historian and curator at the Jewish Museum of Vienna, he created and curates the Hakoah collection from the interwar years at the Museum. HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:William D. Bowman, "Hakoah Vienna and the International Nature of Interwar Austrian Sports," Central European History 44 (2011), 642–668."West Ham 0-5 Hakoah: How an All-Jewish Team Defeated the English at their own Game, Conquered Austrian Soccer and Defied the Nazis," An Interview with Michael Lower (University of Minnesota)"How a 1926 soccer match divided the St. Louis Jewish Community," STL Jewish Light, August 3 2023Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. f you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help. Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me. Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige LindInstrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

In 1960, Otto Preminger provoked controversy with his movie Exodus. Based on Leon Uris’s novel, it provides a fictional account of Jewish refugees emigrating to Palestine after World War II. The film concludes with the bodies of a young European-Jewish girl and an Arab man, both murder victims, buried in the same grave in what will soon be the nation of Israel. Preminger leaves the conclusion to us. Is this a metaphor for despair, a dream forever buried? Or is it a symbol of hope, as two peoples with a history of hatred and hostilities come together—in death and in life? Perhaps the sons of Korah, credited with writing Psalm 87, would take the latter view of this scene. They anticipated a peace we still await. Of Jerusalem, they wrote, “Glorious things are said of you, city of God” (v. 3). They sang of a day when nations—all with a history of warring against the Jewish people—will come together to acknowledge the one true God: Rahab (Egypt), Babylon, the Philistines, Tyre, Cush (v. 4). All will be drawn to Jerusalem, and to God. The conclusion of the psalm is celebratory. People in Jerusalem will sing, “All my fountains [springs] are in you” (v. 7). Who are they singing of? The One who is the Living Water, the Source of all life (John 4:14). Jesus is the only one who can bring lasting peace and unity.

In the 1860s, European Jewish communities faced a unique halachic challenge: the arrival of new chicken breeds from distant lands. As these exotic fowl entered the marketplace, rabbis debated their kosher status, igniting an adjacent discussion on how and why the turkey became accepted as kosher. Fowl Play: The Great Turkey-Chicken Debate of the 19th Century

J.J. and Dr. Susannah Heschel survey the fascinating life and brilliant ideas of Abraham Geiger. This guy was flagrantly influential. A practicing rabbi, a leader in the Wissenschaft das Judentums movement and a founder of Islamic studies in Europe, he was on the intellectual vanguard of the 19th century Reform movement, so strap in for a great conversation. Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsSusannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and chair of the Jewish Studies Program and a faculty member of the Religion Department. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish and Protestant thought during the 19th and 20th centuries, including the history of biblical scholarship, Jewish scholarship on Islam, and the history of anti-Semitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press), which won a National Jewish Book Award, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press), and Jüdischer Islam: Islam und Deutsch-Jüdische Selbstbestimmung (Mathes und Seitz). She has a forthcoming book, co-written with Sarah Imhoff, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies (Princeton University Press. Heschel has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Frankfurt and Cape Town as well as Princeton, and she is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and a yearlong Rockefeller fellowship at the National Humanities Center. In 2011-12 she held a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and during the winter term of 2024 she held a research fellowship at the Maimonides Institute at the University of Hamburg. She has received many honors, including the Mendelssohn Prize of the Leo Baeck Institute, and five honorary doctorates from universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany. Currently she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on the history of European Jewish scholarship on Islam. She is an elected member of the American Society for the Study of Religion and the American Academy for Jewish Research.  

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Our guest Ajamu Baraka is on X/Twitter @ajamubaraka Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   FULL TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historic context in which events take place. During each episode of the podcast, my guest and I have probing, provocative, and discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze these events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue before us is the mask is off the hideous connections between Zionism, colonialism, capitalism, and genocide. This is the title of an article in Black Agenda Report, and it's written by the Black Alliance for Peace. It was originally published in or at the Black Alliance for Peace website, which is Black alliance for peace.com. My guest is the chair of the Coordinated Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace and Editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and the Green Party candidate for Vice President of the United States in 2016. Ajamu Baraka Ajamu, my brother. As always, welcome back. Thank you so much. It's good to be with you once again. So Ajamu, the piece opens as follows. In April, students across the US Empire rose up with campus-based encampments designed to bring attention to the genocide against Palestine and demand that their universities divest from economies engaged in active genocidal campaigns. It came as a little surprise to anyone who has ever read a history book that US universities chose to stand by the Zionist genocide machine and instead attack their own students. Ajamu. There were and are a number of forces applying pressure to the leadership of these institutions to punish these students. Your thoughts on the intersection of genocide of Zionism, capitalism and colonialism and how it's now impacting the higher education of kids across this country? Well, the way we approached it, Dr. Leon, was to in fact, make those connections reflected in that piece. We have always taken the position that colonialism is in fact fascism, that the intervention, the invading of the Americas in 1492 by the Europeans was the beginning of the process in which two things happened. The enrichment of Europe as a consequence of the conquering of the peoples, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the theft of their lands and the importation of black people to provide free labor. This was a material basis for the rise of capitalism and the European, so-called civilization. This is and was a colonial relationship. The peoples of these various territories that became Jamaica and Haiti and Colombia and Mexico had their wealth stolen from them and transported back to Europe. While the people themselves lacked any kind of human rights. Colonialism is based on a fascistic relationship in which people are terrorized into accepting oppression. It is the ultimate expression of fascistic policy. So we made the connection there. We said that also there are the connections of the other elements that characterize the rise of Europe and the domination of Europe over the last 500 years. This strange conception of patriarchy, which is something that was alien to most parts of the global south. This came on the heels of the imposition of Christian religions and some of the strange ideals regarding the role of men. And so-called women. So this is also part of the process of European domination. And of course all of this is within the context of imperialism and the rise in development of capitalism. So all of these elements have to be understood to be interconnected, and that if we're going to address the issues that are emerging in Palestine, for example, with the European settler colonial project are called Israel, then we have to make sure we understand these historical processes, these connections, these dots that have to be connected. So that's reflected in our piece. So basically all of the talk about civilizational assistance and humanitarian interventions of the responsibility to protect the Europeans divides over the course of decades. What has happened with Gaza is that they have now been exposed. This system has been exposed to what it is, a brutal, hideous system that degrades and dehumanizes human beings. So that was a thrust, the essence of that piece, An incredibly powerful piece at that. And fact in the piece, peace it's written that black Alliance for Peace has consistently asserted that as people rise up against the deepening crisis of capitalism, the veneer of western civilization and enlightenment will fall revealing the naked aggression and violence inherent in capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy and patriarchy. The horror of the colonial Zionist campaign of genocide is that reveal, this reveal of colonial violence is forcing people to rethink the propaganda they have internalized. But the revelation of facts is not the same as drawing correct conclusions. What got me in that paragraph in the first sentence of the second is this whole idea of rethinking the propaganda because one of the things that I've been saying for a very long time is the Zionist narrative. They're losing the argument. They now realize that the covers have been pulled off, they've been exposed, and they are now going to extra judicial and incredibly extreme measures to try to justify, resurrect, defend that narrative. And I think it's important for people to understand in this conversation that this is not an anti-Semitic conversation. This is an anti Zionist conversation and part of their narrative is conflating the two. And the final point is that not all Jews or Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jews, as in Joe Biden saying very clearly, very publicly, I am a Zionist, and Joe Biden isn't Jewish. Joe Biden is Irish Catholic, a Jammu Baraka, You're absolutely right. Zionism is a political philosophy, but a political doctrine, if you will. It is a doctrine that provided the foundation for a political project, which was a project by advanced by Europeans who define themselves as Jewish, but secular Jews who wanted to capitalize on the rise of and consolidation of nationalism in the latter part of the 19th century to in fact create a national state for Jewish people. And so the ideal that of Jewish nationalism was being consolidated, and they decided that they would attempt to build this national home on the land that was under occupation and controlled by European powers that used to be referred to as Palestine. And that process began there. So this was a political project that then culminated and the creation of the Jewish state or Israel in 1948 with the full support of the colonial powers at that time, and even the victorious powers that came out of the Second World War. But that creation of the European of the Zionist state, 1948, came at the expense as always in the colonial projects of the indigenous people. So you have what the Palestinians referred to as a nack bar where several hundred and 50,000 Palestinians were uprooted and basically displaced. Dozens and dozens of Arab villages across the territory of Palestine were conquered by the Israelis and controlled, and that became the contiguous land basis for the birth of Israel. So this process of colonial imposition is something now that's 75 years old. It didn't begin on October the seventh. It began even before 1948. So yes, this is a process and part of the ability of the Zionist to be able to be successful is the connection of this project with European colonialism, with the subtle appeal to European superiority, the notion that they were bringing something new to the So-called Middle East, creating a paradise out of the desert. These are all very important cultural reference points that provided support for the Southern Columbia project, very similar to what we had in the US territory that became the United States America notions of manifest destiny, being connected to the program of God, the white man's burden both in the US and throughout the world to bring civilization. All of these were themes that helped to provide the support for what we see unfolding today, but today is even more naked, Dr. Leon, because what that statement talked about is the fact that all of this was dressed up in these sort of civilizational discussions, that discussions and language coming out of the European Enlightenment notions of human rights and democracy and civilizational advancement. And so the interventions were always framed. Interventions by Europeans were always framed as something that will be helpful to the natives because of course, the people who were being imposed on, they needed to have that imposition because they needed to be able to develop as human societies. And of course they couldn't do that without the Europeans. So this became the justification for this project. And the violence that was at the center of this was also justified too, because it was those bad natives who didn't understand that they were being saved, that resisted colonialism, that needed to be suppressed, that needed to be eliminated. And so at the court center of the Colonial Project has always been violence. In particular the settler colonial projects. When you have settlers who come to a land and their main objective is to control the land, then the people themselves become an impediment. They're not needed. And so they are clear. That's what happened with the march across the US from the east coast to the west where they shot, murdered and raped and plundered from the east coast to the west, establishing what became the United States of America. We see a similar process unfolding with the settler colonialists in Palestine. They took most of the land about 77% of the land in 1948. And now with this invasion of Gaza and the escalation of violence on the West Bank, they are now prepared to finish the project from the river to the sea. They've always been quite clear about that, that they want that land to be exclusively under the control of the European Jewish ethanol state. And to that point, I'm glad you brought up from the river to the sea because that language, that phraseology was originally Zionist phraseology. And I'm bringing that up because this goes back to the whole conversation about the narrative. Now, if I go on a college campus and I say, from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free. Oh, I'm antisemitic. Oh, I'm using language that is disturbing to the sensibilities of the good Jewish students. That's not their language. The Zionist settler colonialists first used that phraseology. And along the lines of propaganda, I just want to point out a couple of things. One is the New York Times a few months ago had an editorial meeting where they decided they were no longer going to use the term occupied territories, for example. Now that's phraseology that came out of the United Nations, and that has been the internationally accepted reference of that space. They are the occupied territories. But now the New York Times has decided or told their writers, they shouldn't really use that. They should stay as far away from using that language as much as possible. One of the reasons being that when you refer to occupied territory, that means you have an occupier and it means you have the occupied. And international law says that the occupied can use any means at their disposal to resist the occupier. It also means that this whole, one of the things that a lot of people love to start these conversations with is Israel has a right to exist. But if you understand that Israel is the occupier, then that position then becomes in question. So that's just this whole idea of all of these Jewish students at Columbia that were under threat and being challenged. I never saw any evidence to support that story. In fact, when you look at the students that are involved in the protests, what you find is there are a lot of American Jewish students that are working with and supporting the Palestinians. For example, she's not a student, but her last name is Klein. I just draw a blank on her first name. I'm sorry. Naomi. Naomi Klein. Naomi Klein is Jewish, and Naomi Klein was one of the featured speakers at the Columbia protest. So they're going back to the narrative. What I think they are finding is they are losing control of the narrative. And you're right, that narrative is very, very important. The use of language is important and the ruling elements understand The ability to define is the ability to control. Exactly. Exactly. And that's why they were very careful, meaning the ruling elements and even framing what was happening on these college campuses as so-called pro-Palestinian efforts. Well, they weren't really pro-Palestinian efforts. They were anti genocide, anti Genocide Efforts. But the idea was to try to implant in the minds of the average reader that these people took not only a political position, but a position that was in alignment with that of Hama. And so this was the basis of the demonization of these students that didn't allow for violence to be directed at them. People has to have to be reminded. There was no violence in any of these encampments. These were peaceful protests, something that theoretically you're supposed to have a right to in fact do, even if those protests can be somewhat disruptive. But how disruptive was it and is it to have some tense put up on open spaces on a college campus? But as you said earlier, as you intro this conversation, there appeared to be decision made at the highest levels that they were not going to tolerate any real opposition on these campuses, and that what they were going to in fact do was to violently suppress those efforts. The encampments of the protests and the violence was imposed on the students by who the representatives of the states, and these were the elite campuses controlled by political elements firmly in alignment with what party, the Democrat party. So this was something that was a partisan effort, not only in terms of support of Israel, but in terms of support for the Biden policy of support for genocide. Well, Wait a minute. When you put this in a partisan context, then how with that understanding, do you explain Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the house, going to Columbia and standing there and challenging the students and spewing a lot of lies? Again, he was right there in front and center talking about, oh, the students have been threatened and all and no such evidence. And folks, I got to keep going back to this because this is so important. No such evidence has been presented. So Mike Johnson, Republican House speaker, he shows up. A whole lot of Republicans have it. So how do you put that in the partisan context? The majority of the ups have taken place on those campuses that are in alignment with the Democrats. So that's a partisan effort in that sense. But the point you're making, and I think is a very important one, is to remind people that the positions of the US state on Israel is in fact a bipartisan position that the Republicans are, even the non Trumpian Republicans are just as adamant in their support for Israel as the Democrats. So this is the nature of this, what I refer to as the growing consolidation of fascism. The popular perception or the popular position is that the main threat of fascist development in the US is coming from the Trumpian, right? As you know, I've been making the counter argument that the driving force of a particular form of US fascism reflecting the new historical conditions, the conditions of today is emanating from the neoliberal, right? That is fascist. But what we see now in the last couple of months in a very dangerous development, and I'm glad you mentioned Mike Johnson, it's what I consider to be now the real consolidation that's happening in the open, if you can see it. Why do you think Mike Johnson's playing this kind of role? We all know that Mike Johnson wouldn't even be the speaker today without the deal that was cut with Democrats to allow him to be able to avoid being displaced by his own caucus. Why was it that the Trumpian forces have been adamant in their opposition to further money, further us public money being sent to Ukraine in support of the Ukrainian proxy war, but then all of a sudden that criticism is muted and Mike Johnson was clearly in alignment with Donald Trump cuts a deal with the Democrats to allow 61 billion to go to Ukraine. I make the argument that not only is this a reflection, not only is this a reflection of the fact that the very powerful elements in the ruling class have decided that there's going to be a second Trump, but it is a reflection of growing open embracement, if you will, between the Trumpian forces and the neoliberal forces, the consolidation of fascism. So this is a very dangerous, I think, dangerous development here in this country. And right now, the most effective opposition to it are the students across the country. And that's very important, very important that people understand that because what the students are involved in, even if they don't define it as such, is really our anti-fascist opposition. I want to just point out a couple of other points that as we've been talking about this narrative, there is this narrative that the United States is involved in backing the Zionist regime in Israel because it's defending democracy. There's nothing democratic about the Zionist state, the settler colonial state of Israel. Palestinians, indigenous Palestinians do not have the same rights as Jews in Israel. There is nothing democratic about Israel. The United States says it's in Ukraine in order to protect democracy. If that's true, then why did the United States go into Ukraine in 2014 and overthrow the democratically elected Lucas Shanko government in the Maan coup in 2014? Folks, look it up. We're not making it up. This is not conspiracy theory. Why did the and put in place right sector Nazis, real Nazis in Ukraine. The United States says it must go into Haiti. Why? To quell unrest and protect democracy. The United States is the one fomenting the unrest. And the United States, the DEA has been proven with Colombian mercenaries, and assassins are the ones that went in and assassinated the Haitian president, Jovi o Moise. I could go on and on and on Jammu. But again, it's the narrative. Exactly, exactly. And that narrative is important because that determines the politics and this collaboration we see of developing this cross party, this bipartisan collaboration is a very, very dangerous development. And the fact that Ukraine is defined as a democracy is dangerous. The fact that the US continues to define itself as a democracy and a champion of human rights while systematically and simultaneously supporting a genocide in Gaza is dangerous. But you know what? Dr. Leon, the obfuscation of us policies by the control of the narrative is now being diminished. That this is what we talk about in terms of the dots being connected and the veneer of civilization and high principles are now being stripped away. We see the naked reality of what this western project has always been, this western colonial capitalist project has always been what we are seeing in Gaza is the most brutal expression of it ever allowed to be exposed to the US population. And what I mean by that, we have to understand that as brutal as we have seen the situation in Gaza, it's not even the most brutal that has developed over the last few years. People have to remember that NATO under the first black president went in and completely destroyed the most prosperous state on the African continent Libya in the process of bombing campaign that took, that occurred over months, and the arming and equipping and support of a bunch of bandits on the ground is estimated between 30 and 50,000 people lost. Their lives were murdered. The difference was that we didn't see that we had to be relying on reports primarily filtered through the western press. So this is an example that is Gaza is an example, a brutal example of what happens, how the colonial project has unfolded, and now people are beginning to rethink everything. This is what we talk about in terms of questioning the propaganda the one is exposed to as part of a so-called educational process. Everything that you have been exposed to in this country is a lie. You have been exposed to a colonial education that was geared to provide support to a interest of a ruling class that doesn't give a damn about ordinary people, really doesn't give a damn about people in the US at all, and certainly does not see a non-European people as worthy of dignity and human rights. That's why you can have a situation like Gaza where they are starving people to death, bombing and killing children and women primarily In hospital And getting away with it in hospital and getting away with it. Yes. You remember when it first started, Dr. Leon, when Al Shifter was first hit with a bomb and it was like global news, and even the Israelis tried to explain it away because in all of these conflicts, the hospitals that have always been allowed to be an oasis, if you will, within the middle of these conflicts, it will seem to be the most egregious war, criminal war crime when you attack a military, attacked a hospital. Okay? People don't seem to understand Dr. Leon, what the Israeli fascists are during today is really kind of unprecedented. They've been allowed to basically attack and dismantle and destroy something like 36 hospitals. There's not a hospital left. When our shifted was first attacked, there's an outcry, but then it died down. What that said to the fascists, Israeli fascists was, we can get away with this. And that's exactly what they did. So this kind of brutality that we are seeing in Gaza is a reflection of the kind of brutality that made the west what it is today. They tried to rationalize the attacking ealing of hospitals by saying Hamas was using the hospitals as terrorist centers. There were tunnels under the hospitals all proven to be false. Again, the narrative, it was a lie. IDF forces would even dress as doctors and male soldiers would disguise themselves as women go into the hospital, kill 15, 20, 30 people then say, oh, they were all Hamas sympathizers. You mentioned the educational process. Going back to what's happening on the college campuses across the country, you mentioned the educational process. Are there elements within the country that are using this campus unrest as the basis for them to undermine education in the United States? Because we know that that higher education in the United States has been under attack by conservative forces for a number of years. Do you see in some of this, the attacks on the presidents of many of these institutions as being an attack on academia? I do, and I see this as the beginning of a more systematic attack. We've already seen cases where administrations are attempting to put in place rules that would in effect make it illegal, or subject students and faculty members to being suspended, expelled, lose their jobs, Lose their funding, lose their government funding, Lose their government funding, just raising certain kinds of questions as it relates primarily to Israel, but also is born in just Israel is really a US foreign policy. So this is again, for me another example of the consolidating fascism here in this country. Now we are really going to see where we are once the students come back in the fall because for our intents and purposes, we're going to see a bit of a petering out of this. And of course the press is going to jump on this as though this is kind of some kind of reflection of the flightiness of students. Well, no, the organizing will be taking place this summer. The real battle is going to unfold probably in the fall. So it remains to be seen what kind of impact this will have. But all of this is reflective of the complete jettison of liberal values at these liberal institutions and liberal philosophy being, again, primarily driven by neoliberals with their liberal allies, that basically, in order for the US empire to maintain its global hegemony, it has to jettison any constraints. And so any concerns about human rights or human dignity on the part of any of their victims or potential victims that has to be ignored now is about the brutal imposition of power in order to maintain hegemony. That's why they have more than 40 nations under economic sanctions. That's why they have strengthened their military command apparatus around the world, including on the African continent. That's why they using their superior military force and political power to intervene once again into Haiti. So this is a dangerous moment and people have to understand how dangerous this moment really is. I want to move on from this because there are a number of things that we also need to cover, but as we start to wrap up this portion of the conversation, and just as another example of how insidious so much of this is, there's a law professor at Bolt Hall, which is the law school at University of California Berkeley. His name is Steven David Dolf Solomon, and he published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, October 15th, 2023. And the piece is entitled, and I just lost my, here we go. Here we go. The piece is entitled, don't Hire My anti-Semitic Law Students. Would your clients want an attorney who condones hatred and monstrous crimes? And this is a little bit about what he wrote. I teach corporate law at the University of California Berkeley, and I'm an advisor to the Jewish Law Students Association. My students are largely engaged and well prepared, and I regularly recommend them to legal employers. But if you don't want to hire people who advocate, hate and practice discrimination, don't hire some of my students. anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley. And what he's doing here is a number of things. One, again, he's conflating opposition to genocide with antisemitism. He is conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. And when law professors at prestigious institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley Bolt Hall start to write to the law firms that they have influence at, in and or over, don't hire my students because their anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley. That's dangerous. Ajamu Baraka. Well, it really is, and it is reflective of a tendency that's unfolding across the country, unfortunately. But you know what? Dr. Leon is really encouraging that so many young people, so many students are prepared to make the sacrifice. They have understood that their positions could have a major impact on their careers. If you'll, we have a few students in the Black Alliance of Peace who have been thrown out of school, people who have just done their dissertation defense, and now that's up in the air because they were suspended and banned from the campus. And they knew this was a possibility when they decided to not only join but also lead some of the protests. And that is encouraging because what is happening is that there is a new kind of sensitivity, new kind of awareness that's being developed primarily with the Generation Z regarding violence and war. And if you think about it, it's understandable that this will be the generation that will finally be sick of conflicts because these are folks, Dr. Lehigh, that have never known anything but war. My son is 22 years old, just graduated from Hampton University this past Sunday. Way to go boy, congratulations and has never known peace in his lifetime. He exactly the 21st century has been a century of conflict, a century of war. And this was basically predicted by the project for a new American century that he was committed to using the US' superior military strength to impose the US on the rest of the planet to make sure that the US was the hegemonic power on the planet with no competitors. And that's exactly what they have been doing, beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan and up to today. And so this generation who for the first time doesn't have any illusions about the so-called American Dream that has seen the normalization of mass shootings, that has seen nothing but war and conflict their entire life, now they're being exposed to the horrors of a livestream. Genocide. And they have finally said, enough is enough. And so that is encouraging, and it's the base of the kind of alternative political organizing that many of us are involved in because unless we are able to build a movement powerful enough to put a break on these maniacs who are making policies today, we are on a fast track to human extension, extension. I mean, you look at what's happening in Ukraine and you connect that to Israel. This is a moment that these young people are beginning to understand is a moment in which if they don't make the pivot from just being concerned with genocide and Gaza, as important as that is to this being a generalized movement against war and for peace and for social transformation, then I think they recognize we all are facing an existential threat. The Black Alliance for Peace closes its peace with, as the masses of African people examine with new eyes the relationship between Zionists and Palestine, what will we conclude? Will we fall for the ploy to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu for all of Israel's crimes and then fall back to complacency after he is removed from office? Or will we make the connection between Israel and colonialism? Colonialism and capitalism and capitalism and genocide? I'm glad you mentioned in your piece Benjamin Netanyahu, and will we fall for the ploy to scapegoat him? Because what a lot of people don't really appreciate, as you listen to Joe Biden talk about Benjamin Netanyahu needs to go, and Tony Blinken made reference to that. Folks who really don't understand the dynamics and the intricacies of Israeli politics have to understand if you get rid of Netanyahu, who or what does he get replaced with or by? Because most folks don't understand the compromises that Netanyahu had to make in order to remain in power. And he had to compromise if this is even fathomable, he had to compromise with even more hawkish, more racist, more white supremacist elements within that Zionist society than even Netanyahu is. And he's about as racist as one could think they could get. But when you start talking about Morich and you start talking about Ben, I mean these folks are evil personified. They're fascist. And what is interesting about that analysis you just laid out too, is the fact that it is a ploy. And we've been sort of raising this question or trying to help people to this because what they're trying to do is divert attention away from the settler colonial project itself. Its nature and the policies of Benjamin Nhu. But the Nhu policies are reflection of the Israeli society. Over 80% of Israeli society supported the incursion, the invasion of Gaza. There are people who are criticizing the government for not being tough enough. Okay? So it is the project itself. We all have seen those of us who follow this, the images of the Israelis marching with signs kill all the Arabs, death to Arabs, that society has gone actually mad. They really, And many of them, particularly in the West Bank, are carrying weapons supplied by the United States. And these are rogue bans of settlers that are indiscriminately a attacking indigenous Palestinians and murdering them where they stand. I went to the West Bank in 2014 and I saw with my own eyes those kinds of elements, those kinds of racist elements holding guns, one of the most vicious and dangerous places I've ever seen in my life. Lemme add, many of these people weren't born there. These people are from Brooklyn. These folks are from Brooklyn. Exactly. Americans there you could be a Jewish bus rider, a driver one day, and next week you could be a colonialist carrying an M 16 and able to shoot and kill a Palestinian with impunity. But it's a democracy. No, it can't be. It's a democracy. A jama. Yeah. So this is what is being exposed, and this is why we have the uprising and what they don't seem to understand, Dr. Leon, that is the ruling element. There's no reversal. You see these articles where Democrats would say that in essence, this will blow over and people will recognize that the real threat is Donald Trump, and then you'll come back into the fold and vote for Joe. That ain't happening this time, especially even after all of this where you see that Trump is leading across the country, the turnout for Democrats are not going to be anywhere where it needs to be in order to stem this Trump tie. They have really screwed up on this one, the Democrats. I'm glad you raised that point, because there are a lot of people that don't. What those who make those statements do is they try to personalize the atrocities and they try to personalize the policy instead of understanding its American foreign policy. And so when you look at the policies of Joe Biden and you look at a lot of the policies of Donald Trump, Biden has in many regards, been more Trumpian than Trump. Look at, for example, Exactly like you said, it's the same policy. See the cultural war and all that. These are all the only elements that really differentiate these two parties. Underneath that there is unanimity among the ruling elements. Now, there's real conflicts of interest though, because what Trump represents are those class forces that are national. They are the ones that want a bigger piece of the pie within the us, and they feel oppressed by the globalists, by international capital of finance capital. That really is the hegemonic capitalist sector. And so they're the ones that want expanded opportunities. They're the ones that feel threatened by all of this importation coming into the country from places like China understanding that. And they understand this. It ain't just the Chinese government that's importing consumer goods. It's US corporations who use China as a platform to bring stuff into the us. And so they're saying, you all are killing us. The iPhone killing the iPhone is the perfect example. And so that is part of the tension there. And those are the forces that the Trumpian people face represent. But ideologically, they all are connected to. They all support the continuation of the capitalist system. So there's no contradictions there. It is an intro bourgeois struggle, and people make the mistake of allowing themselves to be pulled into that struggle. We've got to define our objective interests and organize around those interests. And when you do that, basically you recognize that it's the duopoly that has to be smashed, that you don't fall prey to all of these games, people being played, the Biden administration, pretending like they're really taking a position against the net, Yahoo and all this kind of crap. I mean, this is about advancing the interests of the most powerful sectors of capital in this country. Final point on this, final point on this, because we could stay on this for a month. Again, just another element of the hypocrisy. So last week, Joe Biden says, I'm taking a stand. I've drawn a line in the sand, and we're not going to send these. We're going to have a pause on these weapons to Israel. Well, today they announced what a $1 billion weapons package on its way to where? On its way to Israel. This is a money laundering scheme. Folks, your tax dollars are being used to buy and send weapons of genocide to the settler colonial state. And remember, it's not like the money's being sent to Israel. This is a lateral transfer, Martin, from of the US state to the pockets of the military industrial complex for the weapons that then get sent to Israel. Say that again, please. This is a lateral transfer from breach. It Closed in the back pew, Reverend Reverend From the conference, from your money's being stolen, taken from you, sent to the military industrial complex, the defense contractors for weapons that are then sent to Israel to commit crimes in your name. Amen. And another example, the US planned to outsource its imperialism in Haiti to Kenya. This is from MSN. The US has long outsourced meddling in Haiti to global south countries. Recently, Kenya has agreed to take over leading a US backed multinational police intervention there justifying its own stabilization mission with Pan-Africanist rhetoric. And William Ruto, the president of Kenya, is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden in the White House on the 23rd of this month as the first, I think it's 200. So-called police. But these are incredibly, incredibly brutal. These aren't New York. This ain't NYPD. This is not LAPD. No. These are US trained brutal hit squads that they're sending in to Haiti via Kenya at the behest of the United States. It's Kenya military. Kenya Military is a misnomer to refer to these forces just as police. That gives us sort of a milder sort of image. If you'll Innocuous, Innocuous. This is a, they're Going to establish law and order. This is a military invasion that is going to result in hundreds of deaths of Haitians because there will be resistance. They've already said there's going to be resistance. And so to save Haiti, supposedly they have imposed this military invasion. Dr. Leon, as you know, one of the things that really has made Western colonialism so effective has always been its ability to divide people, to have people who are people working with them who actually should be against 'em. So here we have one of the most egregious examples of that in this period, with the Kenyas being recruited to front for us white power. In that article or one of the other articles they talked about, they imply that this was, it didn't have a race component to it, that because these are black intervention of troops coming from Kenya and Jamaica and Grenada, that this is just solidarity. This is Pan-African solidarity, and they're using that term stabilization. This is, but this is the white mans bird. This is white saviorism in blackface. The Power behind this, I call it minstrel diplomacy. It's a black face on white imperialism. Exactly. It's menstrual diplomacy. They might as well just start singing mammy, Who's paying for this? The us? How did you move troops from Kenya all the way over to hay Kenya? Just don't have that capacity. Who Feeds them? Who supports them? Who provides the logistics for them? And anybody who believes that a government and a society that can justify genocide, supporting genocide in Gaza, they then turn around and are supposed to be concerned about black life in Haiti. You got to be a fool. I got a bridge for you to sell. I mean, you've got to ask the right questions, folks. Why is the US involved in this? When has the US been on the right side of history in any question? When has the US really been committed to any kind of humanitarian, anything? So this is another move by the US to strengthen itself in the Caribbean and in our region. When we say our region, we say that we are part of the broader Americas. America isn't just the United States of America. America are all of the nations in the Caribbean and in Central and South America. And we have a campaign, the Black Alliance of Peace, where we say that we support the idea of making this region a zone of peace. And we say the only way we can make this a result of peace, we have to eject the US from this region. One of the things that they love to talk about as it relates to Haiti and the violence in Haiti, all these armed gangs that are roaming the roaming the countryside like feral cats or wolves or whatever. And I haven't heard anybody talk about the weapons that these individuals are carrying. Where do the weapons come from and who pays for the weapons? And here's some very simple data. The average Haitian makes $1,694 in a year, $1,694 in a year. That's $4 and 64 cents a day. A sniper rifle costs about $1,800. Where does a Haitian, who makes $4 and 64 cents a day if he or she's lucky amass the money to buy an $1,800 sniper rifle, a 40 caliber Beretta pistol cost close to a thousand dollars, you make $4 and 64 cents a day. Where are you getting these weapons? How are they getting into the country? We don't hear. It goes back to the adage, don't start nothing. It won't be nothing. If the United States were not behind fanning the flames of this unrest, there wouldn't be any unrest. Ajamu Baraka, You're absolutely right. I mean, this is the importation of these weapons. It's all part of a process. You have different sectors of the Haitian ruling class have basically their own paramilitaries And they control the ports, But they're called gangs here at the us. Right? And the other thing that we have to make sure that we are very clear on all of this activity, the vast majority of this, so-called gang activity is centralized in port nce the capital, you go outside Port Prince, it's relatively normal. They're not roaming the countryside basically. It's a porter prince kind of thing. It's a power kind of thing. Okay? And so you're right. This is the military aspect of the conflict, the struggles among sectors of the ruling class in Haiti, the what we call copy doors who are in a cahoots with the powerful economic sectors outside of Haiti, primarily the us but also the Canadians, and even France. So this is another economic struggle being translated into a armed struggle in Haiti. And quickly talk about, because a lot of people listening to this would ask the question, well, what's behind all of this? Why Haiti? And we know the historic aspects of this in terms of the first successful slave uprising throwing France out of Haiti in the 18 hundreds. We know that story, but connecting the dots in the current context, this is I believe a huge, one of the elements is a preemptive move against China. As the United States continues to try to bait China into a war over Taiwan, the United States realizes that they're going to lose access to their cheaper Chinese labor sources. And there is a lot of labor in Haiti. A lot of, again, folks make $4 and 64 cents a day in Haiti. If you look at where Haiti is located, the United States wants to build a naval base in Haiti as another stopgap measure to protect the Pacific. We know that there's oil, some geologists have estimated there's more oil off the coast of Haiti than there is off the coast of Venezuela. We know about the relationship between Nicaragua and China. China wants to build a Suez type canal through Nicaragua. The United States doesn't want that to happen. So a lot of this has, I believe, to do with preemptive measures that the United States is taking in anticipation of what's happening in other places. Your thoughts, sir? I think you're right. I mean, the geopolitics are quite clear that Haiti is one of the largest countries in the Caribbean, if not the largest. And as you said, it is a haven for cheap labor. There's significant foreign investment taking advantage of that cheap labor right now. It has those potential deposits of oil off the coast and politically is key. We remember the connection that was made between Haiti and Venezuela for a few years. And so making sure that Haiti does not move to The petro project, Petro, Where Venezuela was providing Haiti oil below market rates, so way Below So Haiti could then sell the oil generate revenue for itself. And that was seen as a threat to US imperialism. And so those kind of political connections, they understand what many people and many of your listers may not know. Also, they are very strong currents of progressivism or leftism, if you will, in Haing. And the biggest fear that US has is those forces actually able to take power in Haiti that would transform geopolitics in this region. And so yeah, that's why they are intervening. That's why they have encouraged other countries in the Caribbean to be a part of this, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada, to be part of this, what I call neoliberal Pan-Africanism, because they want to keep Haiti in their pocket. Look, the so-called governing council, they just put in place in order to serve on that governing council, you had to commit of this transitional council. You had to commit to the US intervention. You had to be in alignment with it. If not, you are not going to be allowed to serve on that transitional ruling council. And they talk about elections in Haiti, but they talk about the possibility of elections in 2026. So this is not a democratic intervention. This is not on behalf of the interest of Haiti. This is about the interest of US imperialism. Final question. Talk about this in a broader context of a number of African countries demanding now that the United States militarily leave their countries. Niger has done this. I think Chad is demanding that the United States take its troops out. I think Mali is making a similar request. And reen Jean Pierre, by the way, a Haitian American press secretary for the administration says that Ruto coming from Kenya to the United States, that the United States is going to need African leadership in order to promote the United States interest. I'm paraphrasing, but that's their basic point. So once again, menstrual diplomacy of black face on the racist administrative message. But talk about that quickly, please. In the broader context of African countries demanding that the United States leave their soil militarily First, if the US was really interested in African leadership, it would've listened to African leadership that were trying to bring about a peaceful resolution of the situation in Libya before NATO went in and destroyed that state. So we know that's all BS across the African continent. Yes, particularly in the Sahel region, you have these progressive militaries that have taken power because the civilian institutions have been so weak, and one of the first moves they've been making is to try to authentic sovereignty. What they discovered was you cannot be sovereign if you have foreign military troops in your country and that these troops act like and behave as though it's their country. And you can't be sovereign if you don't control your economy and the resources under your soil. Exactly. And so they've been invited to in fact leave, and they are leaving. The US is still dragging its feet in leisure, but this is catching on. And now with we're have time to talk about what's happening with Senegal, but you have another progressive change where the French are going to probably end up being pushed even out of Senegal. So you have a massive transformation taking place on the African continent in this section of Africa for now. But the model is a model that is now threatening to many of the other Conor leaders on the African continent that real change may be in the works. We may have in fact an authentic Pan-African movement. Finally, once again, Folks, I have to thank my guest brother Ajamu Baraka for joining me today. Brother Baraka, thank you so much. Greatly, greatly appreciate it. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wier Leon. Stay tuned. New episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. Do us a huge, huge, huge favor. Go to Patreon, please, and contribute. This is not an inexpensive venture to engage in, and your support is greatly, greatly appreciated. And as you all can see every week, you're getting a hell of a lot for your money. Remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wimer Leon. Have a good one. We're out. Peace. Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Vivien Sieber is an acclaimed author whose poignant work delves into the depths of human resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity. Through her book "Kino and Kinder," she illuminates the harrowing journey of a European Jewish family grappling with the horrors of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust. With a narrative woven from the lives and writings of survivors, enriched by over eighty historic photographs, Sieber brings to light the indomitable spirit of those who faced the darkest chapters of history.The tale begins in 1915 when Paula's family purchased a cinema in Vienna, marking the genesis of a successful venture amidst a thriving cultural backdrop. However, as the spectre of antisemitism loomed larger with the ascent of the Nazi Party, the once-flourishing Palast Kino was cruelly confiscated, symbolizing the tightening grip of oppression.Faced with the escalating threat of Hitler's regime, Paula made the heart-wrenching decision to send her son to safety in England before embarking on her own journey as a penniless refugee. Amidst the backdrop of World War II, Paula found solace in serving as a matron at hostels in Tynemouth and Windermere, tending to the needs of girls evacuated from Europe through the Kindertransport—a beacon of hope in a world engulfed by darkness.Sieber's narrative is interwoven with the poignant recollections of these young girls, whose accounts paint a vivid tableau of the trials they endured—from the insidious spread of antisemitism to the anguish of separation from their families, the adjustment to hostel life, and the enduring trauma of survival amidst the loss of loved ones.Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, "Kino and Kinder" offers a window into the experiences of a Jewish family fleeing the atrocities of the Holocaust. With vivid eyewitness details spanning Vienna, wartime Britain, and post-war London, Sieber crafts a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring legacy of those who emerged from the shadows of history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An investigation by Israeli media has reportedly found that Hamas terrorists used chemical weapons to suffocate Israeli soldiers stationed at the Nahal Oz surveillance control center on October 7. A plot to unearth a buried Hamas weapons cache in Germany and launch terror attacks against the European Jewish community has ended in seven arrests across the continent, Mossad says. NewsNation host Chris Cuomo said on Thursday that he viewed a 47-minute film being screened by the Israeli consulate that shows many of the horrors Hamas terrorists committed on October 7 that have not been seen by the public. A Muslim family in Tennessee was arrested this week for allegedly beating a family member for converting to Christianity. Israel said Friday that the U.S. was “fully aligned on the mission to destroy Hamas,” despite reports that visiting White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had pushed Israel to wrap up the most intense fighting in the next few weeks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Latest Spoken Label (Author Chat Podcast) features Dr Vivien Sieber. Dr Vivien Sieber worked in biosciences and Higher Education and has published over 100 articles and scientific papers. Kino and Kinder: A family's journey in the Shadow of the Holocaust is based on research into her family history and the lives of the Kinder cared for by her grandmother. It is her first book. She lives in Oxford with her husband and dogs. This Podcast talks about her debut novel " Kino and Kinder: A Family's Journey in the Shadow of the Holocaust ". Kino and Kinder the story of a European Jewish family's struggle to survive in the face of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust is brought into the spotlight. Vivien Sieber, reveals the terrible story through the lives and writings of the survivors, illustrating the struggle with more than eighty evocative historic photographs throughout. In 1915, Paula Ticho's family bought a cinema in Vienna. Run by Paula and her sister, Selma, two single Jewish women, the Palast Kino was a great success. As the Nazi Party rose to power in the 1930s antisemitism reared its ugly head and the wonderful cinema was forcibly taken over. Threatened by Hitler's rise to power, Paula sent her younger son, Peter, to safety in England to join his half-brother, Erich, before fleeing herself―a penniless refugee. As the world entered a state of war, Paula found herself a position as a matron at hostels in Tynemouth and Windermere, caring for twenty-five Jewish girls who had been evacuated from Europe by the famed Kindertransport. Sieber uses the girls' own descriptions of their lives and those around them to weave a heartrending tale. From the insidious rise of antisemitism during their childhood in Europe to the distress of leaving their families, adjusting to hostel life, and the trauma of surviving when most of their family perished, the accounts in this profound retelling are all at once distressing, enriching, and evocative. Combined with the myriad realities and experiences of the Tichos, a Jewish family fleeing from the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the eyewitness details about life in Vienna, Austria and Central Europe before World War Two and in post-war London, Sieber's memoir/history of her own family provides the deepest, most powerful picture into what it was really like in those dark, deadly years. More details about this can be found here: https://www.viviensieber.eu/ NB. Please note that this Podcast was recorded in two parts over successive weekends. Originally this was slated to be released separately but after some thought it was decided to release it all together as one Podcast to give it the context it deserved.

Welcome to another captivating episode of "Give a Heck"! Today, Dwight Heck welcomes the incredible Vivien Sieber, a biologist, lecturer, and author of "Kino and Kinder: A Family's Journey in the Shadow of the Holocaust." Vivien shares her unique testimony as the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, shedding light on the struggles of European Jewish families during Nazi anti-Semitism. Join us as we explore Vivien's remarkable journey from biomedical research to academic development, learning technology, and her impactful venture into the world of information literacy. In this episode, you'll discover... Unveiling Family Secrets: Writing "Kino and Kinder" Exploring Holocaust Legacies: A Journey of Discovery Kindertransport: Rescuing Children Amidst Nazi Atrocities From Hospital to Orphanage: Kindertransport's Lasting Impact Contemporary Challenges to Democracy: Lessons from History And so much more! About Vivien Sieber: Vivien Sieber is a multifaceted individual with a diverse background, excelling in various domains. As an accomplished author, she penned "Kino and Kinder," a poignant narrative illuminating her family's experiences during World War II, chronicling her grandmother Paula's role as the matron of a hostel for girls saved by Kindertransport and her father Peter's journey from internment to service in mine sweeping and Naval intelligence. Vivien, also a skilled potter, explores the art of throwing and glazing pots through her venture, www.vivspots.com. Her extensive career spans teaching, administration, and curriculum development in Higher Education, with expertise in e-learning, curriculum design, e-assessment, Open Education, OER, and Digital Literacy. Furthermore, she brings a rich bioscientific background, contributing to research publications and teaching in diverse fields such as biotechnology, radiobiology, genetics, ecological genetics, and plant population genetics, holding a PhD in the latter. With a MA in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and a Diploma in Management, Vivien Sieber embodies a unique blend of literary, artistic, educational, and scientific accomplishments. Connect with Vivien Sieber on… Website: https://www.viviensieber.eu/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivien-sieber-7b88ab3/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siebervivien/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/372743364676132/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@viviensieber517 Twitter: https://twitter.com/VivienSieber YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF2uS7bBTkLCtyWVHuhQVnA Connect with Dwight Heck! Website: https://giveaheck.com (Free Book Offer) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/give.a.heck Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dwight.heck Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Giveaheck YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF0i LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-raymond-heck-65a90150/

Besides remembering what is long gone, decimated by the Holocaust of World War II, the CENTROPA  organization is dedicated to recapturing the vibrant Jewish life of the early 20th century on the European continent.  Their operation is based in headquarters in Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; and Hamburg, Germany.   The organization's full name is Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation.   The motto for CENTROPA is “Preserving Jewish Memory, Bringing History to Life”.  It is a daunting task given the great diversity and variety of the Jewish way of life from 1900 to the 1930s, which was often integrated into every layer of European society.   In this podcast program episode, listen to Lauren Granite, Centropa United States Education Director, describe the ways they accomplish their goals.   It includes the development of educational programs for schools, award-winning films, food recipes from former Jewish kitchens, photos from the Balkan Sephardic communities, and most of all through the archives of interviews and story telling.   It is a noble mission that CENTROPA has and poignant because the more European Jewish history of the 20th Century is brought to life, the value of what has been lost is more profoundly understood.   TO CONTACT: www.centropa.org Granite@centropa.org for educational resources and materials

Vivien Siber is an experienced lecturer, speaker, BBC radio host and in-demand public speaker. In this episode, Vivien discusses the Holocaust in depth, as she is the daughter and grand-daughter of survivors with unique testimonies from family and girls saved by the Kindertransport. In Kino and Kinder the story of a European Jewish family's struggle to survive in the face of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust is brought into the spotlight. Vivien Sieber, reveals the terrible story through the lives and writings of the survivors, illustrating the struggle with more than eighty evocative historic photographs throughout. In 1915, Paula Ticho's family bought a cinema in Vienna. Run by Paula and her sister, Selma, two single Jewish women, the Palast Kino was a great success. As the Nazi Party rose to power in the 1930s antisemitism reared its ugly head and the wonderful cinema was forcibly taken over. Threatened by Hitler's rise to power, Paula sent her younger son, Peter, to safety in England to join his half-brother, Erich, before fleeing herself—a penniless refugee. As the world entered a state of war, Paula found herself a position as a matron at hostels in Tynemouth and Windermere, caring for twenty-five Jewish girls who had been evacuated from Europe by the famed Kindertransport. Sieber uses the girls' own descriptions of their lives and those around them to weave a heartrending tale. From the insidious rise of antisemitism during their childhood in Europe to the distress of leaving their families, adjusting to hostel life, and the trauma of surviving when most of their family perished, the accounts in this profound retelling are all at once distressing, enriching, and evocative. Combined with the myriad realities and experiences of the Tichos, a Jewish family fleeing from the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the eyewitness details about life in Vienna, Austria and Central Europe before World War Two and in post-war London, Sieber's memoir/history of her own family provides the deepest, most powerful picture into what it was really like in those dark, deadly years.

Meet Nate Leipciger, a 95 year old Holocaust survivor who lives in Toronto. Nate was born in Poland in 1928 and when he was 15 years old, he entered Auschwitz. Nate is one of the 11% of European Jewish children under sixteen who lived to see the end of WWII. This number drops to only 1% when you consider Polish Jewish children. Put another way, 89% of Jews (and 99% of Polish Jews) under sixteen were murdered and robbed of the chance to live and shape our world. In other words, Nate is a miracle. Not only is it a miracle that he survived the Holocaust, it is a miracle that at 95 years old, Nate is sharp, witty and mobile! You heard right in the introduction - Nate is still driving! Nate and I first spoke in June, and my normal process is to hold one conversation and then publish the episode. However, after speaking with Nate I realized 1) how ill-prepared I was to navigate a conversation with a survivor and 2) how important it is to tell as much of Nate's story as possible. As a result, Nate and I held additional conversations, the latest being this past Monday, October 23. This most recent conversation provides us all with an opportunity to hear Nate's thoughts on 10/7 and the atrocities Hamas unleashed on Israel. Our discussion on 10/7 begins shortly after the 60 min mark. In 2015, Nate published a book titled The Weight of Freedom. His book details the living hell he and his family navigated while living under the control of the Third Reich. Nate was 5 years old when the Nazis came to power and for the next 12 years he lived under the rule of Adolf Hitler. In 1939, hell touched down on earth, and Nate lived it. It looked like starvation, disease, firing squads, gas chambers, and sexual abuse by fellow prisoners. This wasn't war. This was depravity that was mainstreamed, normalized and systematized. The Nazis were purpose built to exterminate the Jewish people. And they almost achieved that goal having murdered ⅓ of the living Jews at the time. Nate and his family were forced from their home into a ghetto in 1939. And then on August 1, 1943 - Nate and his family were deported to the death camp, Auschwitz. Over 1.1 million people, including Nate's mother and sister, were murdered in Auschwitz. As you will hear, while in Auschwitz, Nate asked his father what they would do if they were marched into the gas chambers. Nate's father responded, “we will march with our heads held high in defiance and we will say the first line of the Shema over and over again.” This episode concludes with Nate saying the Shema and me joining him. I have muted my voice so each one of you will be able to say the Shema with him. Thank god Nate's final Shema was not lost in the darkness of Auschwitz. Instead, Nate's Shemas continue to this day and will be here, for eternity, for all those seeking Nate's courage. May we and god never forget Nate, his words and the wisdom and daas he has chosen to gift all of us.

Dr. Vivien Sieber is a biologist and experienced lecturer with a specialty in genetics and academic development. She is also an author, daughter, and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.  Vivien's book titled “Kino and Kinder” chronicles the story of a European Jewish family's struggle to survive in the face of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust. It is a family Holocaust history that chronicles the journey of a family run cinema in Vienna to a matron of a hostel for girls saved by the Kindertransport. Vivien shares her poignant and powerful family history including how her grandmother had owned and run a cinema as a family business with her older sister, losing her cinema when it was seized by Nazis, and sending her young son to the UK to escape the Nazis, and finally leaving Vienna herself and ultimately becoming a matron at a hostel which served as a safehouse for girls who escaped the Nazis. Although she shares the horrors and atrocities of the Nazis and the Holocaust, Vivien also shares the many positive stories of hope and the kindness of strangers who not only helped Jews escape to safety, but also the many who helped her with the extensive research that went in to writing the book. She also shares the many lessons that came from this terrible time in history, and the most important message of all—never forget.  Download this moving and enlightening episode to hear her story, as well as the many important lessons learned, and why we need to never allow it to happen again.   https://www.viviensieber.eu/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/372743364676132/ https://www.pinterest.co.uk/viviensieber/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF2uS7bBTkLCtyWVHuhQVnA https://www.instagram.com/siebervivien/ https://www.tiktok.com/@viviensieber517 https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivien-sieber-7b88ab3/ https://twitter.com/VivienSieber

One of the world's most acclaimed ceramicists, Edmund de Waal is renowned for simple, hand-made porcelain pots and bowls which are usually displayed in meticulously arranged groups. His work has been shown in museums and galleries including the V&A, the British Museum, the Frick in New York, and at the Venice Biennale. In 2010 Edmund de Waal became widely known as a bestselling author, after the publication of his family memoir The Hare With Amber Eyes which retraced his Jewish European heritage. A dramatic and tragic story about art, exile and survival, it led him on a journey from Tokyo to Odessa via 19th century Paris and Nazi occupied Vienna. On This Cultural Life, Edmund de Waal tells John Wilson about being taken to a pottery class at the age of five by his father, an Anglican cleric who worked at Lincoln Cathedral. He immediately fell in love with the process of moulding wet clay into vessels and was determined to become a potter. After leaving school he spent five months in Japan studying the ancient traditions of pottery with various master ceramicists. He remembers how a visit to the Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto had a huge impact on his understanding of space, contemplation and spirituality. During his first visit to Japan he also met his great uncle Ignatius Ephrussi from whom Edmund first learned about his European Jewish heritage, his family's exile from Vienna in the face of Nazi terror, and the collection of small Japanese figurines, known as netsuke, whose story was told in The Hare With Amber Eyes. Edmund chooses the ceramicist Lucie Rie, another Viennese exile in London, as a major influence on his practise. He describes his working routine in the ceramics studio, and how his pots are often made in response to poetry, citing the work of Romanian-born Paul Celan an American poet Emily Dickinson as particular influences. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Finally, the basic question: What is being “culturally Jewish”? Getting at the difference between a culture and religion, how identity manifests in modernity and how it came to be this way is heady stuff, and of course, in true Jewish fashion, the answer is: it's complicated. Thank goodness for my brilliant baby brother, Zeb, who is a professional Jewish educator like my mom, but also a largely secular Jew, like me, and his specialty in and nuanced thinking about modern Western Jewish history. Some light topics up for discussion include: the birth of nation-states, assimilationism, responses to modernity, what “identity” means, and how, lucky us, we came to be part of the "global cabal." Don't worry, there's plenty of snark too, this ain't grad school! Also, love you Mom, sorry in advance! Tons of terminology in this one, so hit the glossary below, and check previous episode notes for more.  GLOSSARY:Rebbe: Largely used by Hasidic Jews, a Yiddish-German term for "rabbi," also referring to a person educated in and who educates, guides or mentors others in Judaism. Assimilationism: The act or desire to be absorbed culturally and socially into the dominant or majority group.  Zionism: A poitical movement founded by Theodor Herzl in the 1890s to create a Jewish homeland, based in an assimilationist philosophy and cemented by antisemitic incidents like the Dreyfus affair (the false accusation and imprisonment of a French Jewish military officer that came to symbolize Jews' supposed disloyalty).Ghetto: Likely derived from Italian, in the early 1500s it referred to the area of Venice where the Jews were required by law to live. It is most broadly used in the Jewish to refer to the walled-in parts of cities where Jews were imprisoned under Nazi occupation, often before being sent to death camps.Humanism: A philosophical approach with a long history, generally centered on placing importance of the human experience, and well-being of humankind over deities or states. Haskala: A late 18th- and early 19th-century European Jewish intellectual school of thought integrating Judaism and modern European life. Yiddish: Translated to mean "Jewish" in Yiddish, a German-derived dialect integrating Hebrew and parts of the local language generally considered the language of Askenazic Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe. Yiddishkeit: a Yiddish word describing a quality of "Jewishness."Ladino: Sometimes called Judeo-Spanish, it has Castilian origins and is considered the language of Sephardic Jews, who originate in Spain and Portugal, but blends broad languages including Arabic or Greek. Nebbish: Yiddish for a meek, pitiful person.Freedom Seder: https://religiondispatches.org/take-history-into-your-own-hands-why-i-wrote-the-freedom-seder-and-why-its-still-necessary/ Reform Movement: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/reform-judaism/Pale of Settlement: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-pale-of-settlement Support the showLike the show? Support it! Or don't, that's cool too. Just glad you're here! https://www.buzzsprout.com/2196108/supporters/new

Today we're excited to share an episode from the Latitude Adjustment Podcast looking at the role Christian Zionism plays in continuing persecution of Palestinians. Eric Maddox completed his graduate research in Conflict Transformation from Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank, collecting oral histories from the 1948 War. He is the founder and director of the Palestine Podcast Academy, and the host of Latitude Adjustment Podcast. He interviewed Rev. Dr. Don Wagner, a friend of Mondoweiss, and expert on Christian Zionism. From Latitude Adjustment's show notes: While there have been different strains of Christian Zionism dating back to the Sixteenth Century, the most politicized, powerful, and violent iteration of the movement has its roots in the contemporary Christian Evangelical Church. Modern Christian Zionists hold that the ethnic cleansing of roughly 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in historic Palestine in 1948 by Jewish Zionists was the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy in which the so-called Holy Land must be resettled by the Jewish people in order to usher in the return of Jesus Christ as the messiah. Modern Christian Zionism is distinct from the modern form of political Zionism that arose amongst the European Jewish community in the late 19th Century. Don Wagner is a Christian theologian, a former minister, and author. He received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. He is also author of, "Glory to God in the Lowest: Journeys to an Unholy Land". If you want to hear more from the Latitude Adjustment Podcast and the Palestine Podcast Academy, check our show notes for links. - - - - - Support our work Help us continue our critical independent coverage of events in Palestine, Israel, and related U.S. politics. Donate today at https://mondoweiss.net/donate Articles and Links mentioned in the show Don Wagner's articles at Mondoweiss Latitude Adjustment Podcast Glory to God in the Lowest: Journeys to an Unholy Land, Don Wagner Subscribe to our free email newsletters. Share this podcast Share The Mondoweiss Podcast with your followers on Twitter. Click here to post a tweet! If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Podchaser and leave us a review and follow the show! Follow The Mondoweiss Podcast wherever you listen Amazon Apple Podcasts Audible Deezer Gaana Google Podcasts Overcast Player.fm RadioPublic Spotify Stitcher TuneIn YouTube Our RSS feed We want your feedback! Email us Leave us an audio message at SparkPipe More from Mondoweiss Subscribe to our free email newsletters: Daily Headlines Weekly Briefing The Shift tracks U.S. politics Palestine Letter West Bank Dispatch Follow us on social media Facebook Mastodon Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn  

Available on Amazon worldwide. Kino and Kinder: A Family's Journey in the Shadow of the Holocaust is the story of a European Jewish family's struggle to survive in the face of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust. The terrible history of twentieth-century genocide is told through the lives and writings of the survivors and is illustrated by evocative historic photographs. In 1915, Paula Ticho's family buys a cinema in Vienna. It is to be run by Paula and her sister, Selma, two single women. The Palast Kino proves to be a success, but in the late 1930s, the Nazi party's antisemitic policies lead to its being forcibly taken over. Threatened by Hitler's rise to power, Paula sends her younger son, P --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/daniel-lucas66/message

0:00 Intro 0:51 Finding the castle 14:29 Refugee influx 28:41 David Saad 47:57 Sensitivity 54:25 Q&A 1:08:05 Relics that survived We're with Mohamad El Chamaa for Episode 361 of The Beirut Banyan, recorded live at Aaliya's Books. Click to watch: https://youtu.be/Ebjl3XrlyKk We discuss three articles of his long-form articles, including a piece on a forgotten crusader castle, European Jewish refugees arriving to Beirut in the 1930s and a sports history story dating back to the 1970s about a Lebanese Jewish Olympian David Saad. Our conversation includes a Q&A section that reflects on relics from the civil war era, downtown Beirut's devolution, destruction and reconstruction in retrospect and an audience debate on lessons learned from our history vs capabilities that can shape our destiny. Mohamad El Chamaa is a journalist and urban planner. Special thanks to Samer Beyhum for his audio-technical support. What's to become of Beirut's forgotten castle? https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1290303/whats-to-become-of-beiruts-forgotten-castle.html How Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis found shelter in Beirut https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1302727/how-jewish-refugees-fleeing-the-nazis-found-shelter-in-beirut.html I was as Lebanese as Anyone: The Story of David Saad, Lebanon's Last Jewish Olympian https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=0jVlEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT49&dq=david+saad+(b.+1954)&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiryaflorf3AhWH_7sIHYb2CdcQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false Help support The Beirut Banyan by contributing via PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/walkbeirut Or donating through our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/thebeirutbanyan Subscribe to our podcast from your preferred platform. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter: @thebeirutbanyan And check out our website: www.beirutbanyan.com

Alicia brings a multicultural spirit and curiosity to her work and thinking, having been born in Argentina to European Jewish parents, having Spanish daughters, and now living in Spain. In this podcast, Alicia discusses her reflections on a lifetime of experience and work, much of which focuses on women and leadership. She highlights the importance of recognizing age and generational differences, which are often marginalized when we talk of women's issues as if they are universal. Alicia's research identifies how different age groups have different relationships to work and life, and these must be accounted for. Alicia also highlights how sibling relationships are often left out of our sense-making of workplace dynamics. Yet our sibling relations so often get re-enacted unconsciously at work with our peers and teams, and how we react to our bosses/managers. Alicia has lived a rich life, believing that living in precarious contexts not only produces hardship and anxiety but can also stimulate imagination and innovation, as it has done in her own life. Alicia's insights are rich: enjoy this podcast!  Bio Alicia E. Kaufmann holds a doctorate degree in Sociology from Paris and Madrid. She has taught at Instituto de Empresa management school and was a Fulbright scholar twice, once at Yale University in organizational behaviour and the other on leadership. Previously a tenure profesor at Alcalá de Henares University. She is a member of ISPSO (International Society of Psychoanalysis of Organizations) and OPUS (Organization for Promoting Understanding of Society) in London, as well as ICF (International Coaching Federation). Her multicultural background (European parents, born in Argentina, with Spanish children) has opened up a range of interests and curiosity for life that has led her to explore different paths. In 1984, she was part of the executive team of the first Hospital Management School in Madrid. She worked as a facilitator for Stephen Covey, author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" (USA). She has written 28 books, including "Women in Management and Life Cycle (London Palgrave McMillan, 2008), "Change Female Identities" (London Palgrave McMillan, 2012), and "Woman Power and Money: Build Your Puzzle of Success" (editor Madrid, Medialuna, 2016). Alicia is a Certified Analytic Network Coach and a member of the Eco-Leadership Institute. She now works mainly in Executive Coaching in Organizations, reflecting on new cultures and leadership styles, and helping people take up their authority.  Get in contact with Alicia: aliciakauf@gmail.com

Many European Jewish youth do not attend Jewish dayschools and lack proper Jewish education. While on a short family getaway to Venice, Italy I met up with Tali Basali who is providing a solution to solve that problem. Join me in the famous Venice Ghetto as I speak to Tali about life in Venice and her special educational project for European Jewish youth. I promise, more Pulse of Israel episodes will be coming about the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, Italy.

While there have been different strains of Christian Zionism dating back to the Sixteenth Century, the most politicized, powerful, and violent iteration of the movement has its roots in the contemporary Christian Evangelical Church. Modern Christian Zionists hold that the ethnic cleansing of roughly 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in historic Palestine in 1948, by Jewish Zionists, was the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy in which the so-called Holy Land must be resettled by the Jewish people in order to usher in the return of Jesus Christ as the messiah. Modern Christian Zionism is distinct from the modern form of political Zionism that arose amongst the European Jewish community in the late 19th Century.  Don Wagner is a Christian theologian, a former minister, and author. He received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. He is also author of, "Glory to God in the Lowest: Journeys to an Unholy Land".  This interview was recorded on January 24th, 2023 Support Latitude Adjustment Podcast on Patreon Support the Palestine Podcast Academy  

A Shabbaton for European Jewish teenagers in the Austrian capital leads to a discussion about Jewish pride in general, and especially in places where Jews have suffered so much in the past. Eliezer and Mendy also touch upon the development of "shlichus" over time and how Chabad Houses generally operate today.

News items read by Laura Kennedy include: DNA studies show how history shaped genetics of European Jewish populations (details) New stucco masks displayed from Classic Maya city of Toniná (details) New analysis shows human ancestors cooked with multiple ingredients and flavors (details) (details) Winter solstice alignment found in Middle Kingdom tomb in Egypt (details)

Experts Worry Lab Created COVID 19 Strain with 80% Kill Rate May Cause Another Pandemic, Adidas severs business deal with Kanye [YE] over latest anti ashkenazi European Jewish tweets etc., Transhumanism, Genetic Engineering, Gain of Function revelations, Bioweapon Development Experiments via Universities still in operation and much more. Context: Elizabeth Taylor presented by the west as the Egyptian Cleopatra.All gifts, support and donations towards research to be sent via Cashapp: $aigner2019.

There are basically two categories for novelist Elyssa Friedland's work: Jewy and super-Jewy. Friedland has a new book out this week, “The Most Likely Club,” but many listeners will know her from two, very Jewy, earlier works, “Last Summer at the Golden Hotel” and "The Floating Feldmans.” Friedland has written two other novels and is looking forward to the publication of her first children's book soon. Today, in addition to working on her own books, Friedland teaches novel writing at her alma mater, Yale University. She's also a Columbia Law School grad and once upon a time worked as an associate at a major law firm before turning to writing full-time. Her new novel, “The Most Likely Club,” has some of her trademark Jewish flavor in the characters, but weaves together the stories of four women, high school best friends, who are reunited for their 25th high school reunion. Friedland spoke with The Times of Israel for our weekly Times Will Tell podcast, a week before the publication of "The Most Likely Club." The following transcript has been very lightly edited. The Times of Israel: Elyssa, thank you so much for joining me today. Where am I finding you? Elyssa Friedland: You are finding me on Long Island in New York. So we came together, of course, to speak about your newest book, "The Most Likely Club," but also about some of your other great books that, coincidentally actually, I read four out of five of your novels without even knowing that they were written by you, aside from the last one, of course, which I asked for. Wow, that's very flattering. I'm very happy to hear that. You might be the only person other than my mother to do that. You can say that I'm your number one fan, but not in a "Misery" kind of way. I just really enjoyed your work, and I just would read the synopsis of a novel, buy it, read it, and say, this sounds somewhat familiar in tone to another book that I really enjoyed and read. And then I looked up and thought, yeah, same author -- again and again. It was just really kind of coincidental and strange, but fantastic. Well, I'm very happy to hear that. I do think I have a voice that carries through from book to book. So I do try, of course, to vary the plots, create new characters, always keep it interesting for myself, not only for the reader to have something new, but for me. I'm the one who has to be with it a lot longer than the reader does while I'm writing it. And so I do try to always come up with very new ideas, but I think my voice is my voice, so I'm not surprised that there are echoes of it in all the books. So for me personally, I kind of divide your works into extremely, very Jewy and medium Jewy. In the very Jewy category, we have, of course, "Last summer at the Golden Hotel" and "The Floating Feldmans." In the medium Jewy category I would put your newest novel, "The Most Likely Club," which comes out September 6, and then "Love and Miscommunication." Now, the one novel I didn't read, where would that fit in the Jewy or very Jewy spectrum? I would say, "The Intermission," the one you did not read is definitely medium- to low-Jewy. So you haven't missed out on any super Jewy. So let's just very briefly speak about the plot behind "The Most Likely Club." Give us a couple of sentences. What is this book about? "The Most Likely Club" is about four women that were very close friends in high school, and they are reunited. Three of the four of them reunite at their 25th high school reunion and one of them is unable to make it, she says, because of work obligations, and being back together on campus where they went to school. Seeing their former classmates just filled them with all the usual angsty feelings. And they really take a moment to take stock of their lives where they are 25 years out of high school and think about, is this where they wanted to be? Is this where they thought they would end up? After a sort of boozy night of reminiscing and remembering who they once were, they decide to try to make their high school superlative come true. Their "most likely" in the yearbook. And they embark on this plan to actualize some of their dreams from when they were teenagers. And as you can imagine, when you're in your mid-40s, it's difficult to make that kind of life change. And so we follow these women as they try to right the ship of their lives, but of course are met with all sorts of obstacles. And then the fourth friend who is not able to make it to the reunion, of course she folds into the story, and we learn some big surprises about her. And it's really just the story of what it's like to reach middle age, look back and take stock of where you are and really take time to think about if this is where you want to be and when is it too late to make a change. Not only do I know what you're talking about, I live what you're talking about. I realized suddenly when I was reading this book that my high school union will be 30 years in the spring. So, yes, I fully grasped all the different dramas and concerns of each of these women, and it really felt like they were all in me or I was all in them. And when you were writing these characters, did you feel that yourself? That you were splintering off different concerns and challenges of your life as a working mother, wife and professional and putting it into these four different women. Definitely. I mean, when I think about it -- I won't bore your listeners with going into each character -- exactly how I'm similar to them, but for sure there are some that I'm more similar to than others. I would say I'm not a doctor, obviously, I'm a writer. But the doctor character in the book is probably the one that I relate to the most in my day-to-day life, because she and her husband are both working professionals and they have three children, just like me and my husband. We have three children and I definitely still do the lion's share of the child -- I wouldn't necessarily say, like, child raising, I think we share that. But I certainly do the lion's share of the camp forms, the health forms, the dentist visits, the selection of camp and after-schools. I could go on and on. And I know many women who are listening to this can relate to that. And so in her life, Priya the character is named in the book, is really similar to mine. She's really overwhelmed. She doesn't quite understand why it has to be this way, like why her husband, who works basically in the same job, they work at the same hospital, is sort of let off scotch free and he can go out for a run while she's buried and, like, uploading the COVID vaccine cards, essentially. And she just doesn't have a free second to herself. Sometimes when she thinks about what she'd want to do with her free time, she can't even figure it out because she hasn't had free time in so long. And so she's a character that I really relate to in my day-to-day life. Although it was fun making her a doctor because it did still let me escape a little bit because I don't even know that much about the medical profession and I had to research that and it kind of let me have a little bit of distance from her. So I didn't pour every single detail of my life. If she had been a writer, that probably would have been a bit too much. So I have a lot in common with her. But the other women, too, there one character really fixated on her weight. And I'm definitely someone who if I had a reunion coming up, I would try some crash diet and I could see myself getting really obsessed with how I look when I'm going back to school, which is, of course, not the ideal way to be spending your time and your energy. And then the other women as well. There's a very powerful CEO. I'm not her, but she's just someone I don't know if I relate to her as much as I just think about women like that. And the double standard that is applied to women in positions of power and how unfair it is. Like the Hillary Clintons of the world who are just the more ambitious they are, the more maligned they are. So, yeah, I have bits and pieces of myself and all the women and things I see from my friends and just from the headlines that interests me. I just found myself nodding, laughing and wanting to cry with some of the situations. And we won't spoil it because it's definitely worth reading. I just want to mention that while it may sit in the chick-lit category, it is so deep in its message and it so hit home to me as a working mother of seven. It is no question that all of these concerns that especially the Priya character has, every woman I know in our situation of working and having children is facing this mental load challenge.  Now, that's turned to the "Last Summer at the Golden Hotel," which is actually, can I say this, referred to in "The Most Likely Club." I loved that. So tell us briefly, what is this book about? That book is about a hotel in the Catskills, very much like the hotel in "Dirty Dancing," if you can picture Kellermans. I know that's a movie that basically everyone with a pulse has seen. So it's about a hotel that was once the place to see and be seen, a thriving enterprise. But it's set in modern times and it's really on its last leg and needs a lot of refurbishment. Isn't attracting guests the way it used to. It's co-owned by two Jewish families, of which there are now three generations of each family, the Goldmans and the Winegolds. And one member of the Winegold family runs the hotel on a day-to-day basis. And he receives an offer from a casino operator who wants to buy the hotel, tear it down and put a casino up in his place, which is what happens at the Concord Resort, which is one of the greats in the area. And he calls a family meeting at the hotel and reluctantly, the three generations make their way back to campus. I guess I like a lot of back to campus because that's also the case in "The Most Likely Club." And so these three generations come back to the hotel and we learn what's going on in all of their lives. They all have full lives outside of the hotel and so we get slivers of their lives and the complications and the issues they're facing and then how those issues affect what they want to do with the hotel, if they want to sell it or if they want to try to revive it. And in some ways it's really an intergenerational story because the grandchildren who are in their 20s have a lot of ideas about how to make the hotel hip and cool and attract millennials and attract people who are living their lives on social media. And of course, the grandparents, the founder generation, can't really make heads or tails of some of these bizarre suggestions like let's make our own honey and have beehives, let's have all vegan food options, let's have goat yoga, et cetera, et cetera. So as I'm sure you can understand, they have very different ideas of what to do with the hotel. But for everyone, it's an important part of their legacy. And so it's really an emotional decision that has to be made. So I won't give away the ending. Don't give away the ending because I was actually surprised by the ending! But both in this book and in "The Floating Feldmans," it's really a tale of several generations getting together and what ensues right in these little microcosms. "The Floating Feldmans" on a cruise. And you are so good at writing the different voices of the different generations. Talk to me about how you capture the voice of an 80-year-old versus how you capture the voice of a 20-something-year-old. First of all, thank you for saying that. I definitely work hard at it. If I had to say why I am good at that, it's probably that I just have a really good ear when I'm out in the world. First of all, I live in New York City. So living in New York City, just going down the block, you are just constantly surrounded by people of all different ages, genders, and backgrounds. I could imagine if I had a more rural existence and I worked from home in a quiet town and went for a walk and maybe saw one person in an hour, it might be a very different experience. Whereas if I go to buy milk in Manhattan, I'm just surrounded by voices. And so I felt really lucky because I have exposure to a wide range of voices just when I walk down my block. And I think that because I am just a curious person and I'm always listening, I am able to absorb the intonation the verbiage, the mannerism. I look around and I listen. And that I think it helps me channel people that are in a different stage of life than I'm in. And so I just feel really grateful. I credit New York City with my ability to channel these voices that are very different than my own because otherwise, I don't know where else I could say that I get it from because yes, do I know older people? Sure. I have parents, I have in-laws. Do I know people in their twenties? I do teach at the college level, but the truth is, I'm in the classroom with them. I'm doing most of the talking for two hours, and I leave. So I don't think it comes from that. I think it really comes from just living in a bustling place and having a good ear. As you mentioned, you do teach. So is this something that you would give as a tip to your students?  I mean, not everyone can have the luxury of getting to live in New York City, and not everybody wants to. And for some people, from a writing perspective, that would be a terrible place to live because it's so full of distraction. And there's the Ralph Waldo Emerson version of writing, which is you got to go and tuck yourself in a cabin and have quiet. And so there are certainly many people who wouldn't get a stitch of work done if they lived in such a bustling place and would like to be off the grid. So I don't know that I would necessarily give that advice, but I would say maybe just see what you're good at. And if you feel like it's a really big stretch for you and it's not coming across as convincing to write like an 82-year-old man, don't write an 82-year-old man. Write the person that you feel comfortable writing, that you feel comfortable channeling. And maybe that's someone that's very similar to you. Maybe that's someone that you knew once upon a time. Very closely in life or you have some experience with. But you can tell. I think. If it's a massive struggle to channel someone else's voice. If it's very integral to the story. I would just make it my business to at least find someone. One or two people who can an authenticity read. If you're writing an 82-year-old man, find an 82-year-old man and have them read it and correct it. I mean, when I was first starting out, even just writing a male voice, my husband would read my work and he would say, "No man would say that." He can't speak for all men, but he can maybe speak for a majority of men or at least tell me that something didn't ring true to him personally. And then it was up to me to decide what to do with that. But I don't think there's any reason why someone shouldn't reach out and have someone read the work. For this book, "The Most Likely Club," my publisher hired people to read the book, to read the characters for an authenticity read, because there's an Asian character, there is a bisexual character, there's an Indian character. I am none of those things. And so they have these authenticity reads done, and I'm so grateful for that someone who says, "That's really not the way it works in an Indian family," or, "That's not the way I would phrase it." And I really get my publisher a lot of credit because they said to me, "You don't have to take any of this. This is for you to absorb and decide what you want to do." If there was something very offensive, they would want me to do something about it. But it was up to me, and I took basically almost everything because I just want to sound as authentic as humanly possible. It's interesting that you talk about wanting to sound authentic in these niche identities of the Indian or the bisexual, et cetera, et cetera, because at the same time, while they do to me at least sound authentic, definitely your Jewish voice sounds authentic. But it's always very universal stories that you're writing, too. Well, I think that's really true because we're all still people and we all still feel the same things. Of course you want to be factually correct: The only Indian food you know is the kind served in a restaurant, and that's never something that is served in an Indian home? That's not great. But does an Indian 16-year-old girl feel self-conscious in high school? Yeah. So do the Asian girl and the black girl and the white girl and the Jewish girl. Feeling self-conscious when you're 16 in high school is about as universal as it gets. Being middle-aged and thinking, "Oh, my God, how did I end up here? And is this what I want out of life again?" It's a privilege to be able to take the time to even think about that. And I do want to acknowledge that not everyone has the luxury of making the changes they want to make. But I would say if given the time and the space to think about it -- these women are 43. If you ask any 43-year-old, "Take an hour of quiet and think about where you are in your life, is there anything you want to change? I'm pretty sure they'd be able to come up with a couple of things. No matter what they look like or what their background is. Who has an hour, though, right? Let's talk about how Judaism plays a role in your writing. None of the characters are especially observant or religious Jews, but they are so steeped in the culture. Even in the least Jewy books that we identified, there's such striking cultural Judaism. So how is Judaism playing a role in your writing? I think that it's because it just plays such a big role in my own life that it filters over onto the page. I am not observant, but I'm just very culturally Jewish, as comes across in my books. I went to a Jewish day school. I go to synagogue on the major holidays. We celebrate Shabbat in our home, even if we're not observing it in a religious way. But we like candles, we eat challa, we have a Shabbat dinner. And this is the world I know. It's also, like, the humor I know. My grandparents were immigrants. Even my parents were immigrants from Europe. They were born after the war, and they came here from Eastern Europe. And so that's literally the humor that I grew up with, this sort of very Borsh belt, eastern European Jewish humor, and it's just who I am. I feel like I've just been steeped in Jewish culture from a very early age. And I grew up in a Jewish town. I went to Jewish camp. I could go on and on and on. So I feel like my Judaism is just a really big part of who I am. And so then it ends up becoming a natural part of my writing. Even when I don't set out to write the Jewish book, I end up incorporating some of it because I think I just like it and I feel comfortable. It's the opposite of needing the authenticity reads. Here is where I'm in my milieu, I know what I'm talking about. And that feels good because writing is really hard. And then when I can write about something that I feel like I know, first of all, I feel like I can push boundaries more because I feel more comfortable and I could just be more creative and find even more humor because I'm not first trying to learn about it and then write about it. I already know it. So it's a comfortable space for me to be in as a writer, so I find myself returning to it. Have you ever had any kind of antisemitic blowback because of this? Zero. Absolutely zero. And I love saying that. It's honest to God truth. And I've talked about this in previous interviews, but when "Last Summer at the Golden Hotel" came out, in May 2021, it happened to be the same month that there was a lot of media coverage about the rise in antisemitism, and the statistics were staggering about the antisemitic attacks that were happening across the globe. Up some crazy percentage, like up 100%, something really, really horrifying. And my book came out and it was received with the warmest embrace by so many non-Jewish readers. Most of my readers aren't Jewish. And I could just tell you, go on my Instagram, look at the comments, and it was like 1000 comments of, "I didn't know anything about Jewish culture. This is the first book I've read where I've learned a lot about Jewish identity and Jewish culture. And I'm fascinated." It was one positive thing after another after another after another, and it was a great reminder of,, yes, there are bad people doing crazy things, but most people don't hate Jews, and most people are very excited to read and learn about Jewish culture in the way that I love. And the book sold well enough and was distributed widely enough that I can honestly say that it means something that I never came across a single antisemitic reaction. That's really heartening. I wonder about this next novel's reception because it is basically about the inner lives of women of a certain age, my age essentially, and there's not a lot of empathy for that in American society. There's, of course, the Karen Meme. There's all sorts of things of that nature where we women can't have it all, women want to have it all, but suck it up and move on. Are you worried at all about this kind of reception? Yeah, I would say I am a bit worried about that. That people just are sick of what they would call whining. Enough. But I wasn't so worried that I wasn't going to write it because I feel like I'm living it and I lead a very privileged life, and yet I still feel like I can't take it. Like I'm losing it as a working mom, and I'm trying and I'm just coming apart at the seams. And if I feel it, I can only imagine people who don't have as much privilege and the luxuries that I have in my life. And so I know that I write from a place of privilege, I'm aware how much worse it is for people who don't have the resources to have a babysitter and not have to worry about every doctor bill that comes in. I have mostly female readers. And so it will be interesting. I think that people's responses are going to be very personal. It's going to strike a chord either very positively or negatively. People are going to have very strong reactions to the book, and I have to be prepared for that. All right, I'm reminding our listeners that we're about a week and a bit ahead of the publication of this newest book. So by the time they hear it, everything will be fine. It will be published. The world will embrace it, I feel sure, having read it just recently. And really such a pleasure reading your work -- as coincidentally as it has been. And I will, of course, follow you more intentionally from here on out. So really such a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. It was very fun to discuss my books with you. Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Novelist Elyssa Friedland with her new book, 'The Most Likely Club.' (Courtesy)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Once home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, some 50,000 Yemeni Jews, or Teimanim, left their homes between 1949-50 as part of Operation Magic Carpet. They walked for months to reach Alaskan Airlines planes “filled like sardines” that chartered them to safety in the then-young Jewish nation. How did this incredible story unfold and what were the political, social, and economic forces that drove them to leave? In the #1 Jewish podcast in the U.S, the history and personal stories of Yemenite Jews are uncovered and told. Hear from windsurfer Shahar Tzubari, who won a bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, about how his grandparents left behind their life as dairy farmers in Ta'iz, Yemen, to come to Israel, and Ari Ariel, a Middle East historian at the University of Iowa, who delves into what the 2,600-year-old community was like and the dramatic transitions that led to the mass exodus. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Video credits: Sailing - Men's RS:X Windsurfing - Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games Shahar Tzuberi Wins Israel's First Olympic Medal Of 2008 Beijing Olympics  Song credits:  "Emet El Shmeha", by Shoshana Demari "Hatikvah"  “Muhabet” by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) “Middle Eastern Arabic Oud”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989 Photo credit: GPO/Zoltan Kluger ____ Episode Transcript: BENNY GAMLIELI/ZE'EV TZUBARI: During thousands of years, the Jewish people used to dream, that the Messiah would come, to go to Israel, to go to the Holy Land, to see the city of Jerusalem. It was a dream during thousands of years.  MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left, or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations, as some begin to build relations with Israel.  I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman.  Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: Leaving Yemen. [Video clip of Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics Windsurfing RS:X event] MANYA: That is the sound of Israeli Windsurfer Shahar Tzubari in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, coming up from behind to earn the bronze medal. At the same time, he was electrifying his country by winning Israel's only medal in those Olympic Games, he was also fulfilling his mandatory military service to help defend the Jewish state. Two generations before him also served in the Israeli military, including his grandfather who fought to defend Israel against attacks from its Arab neighbors just days after shepherding his family on foot across Yemen to board a plane and make the new Jewish state their new home.   SHAHAR TZUBARI: I just know about the past, of my parents and my grandparents. And I know, they fought for this country. And they fought for independence. And for me, I'm here, and I represent basically what they fought for.  MANYA: Shahar, who now coaches Israel's women's windsurfing team, is a second-generation Israeli whose grandparents and generations before them lived in Yemen. Their journey to the Jewish state resembles that of tens of thousands of Yemeni Jews, who came to Israel from Yemen between 1948 and 1949 as part of a mass exodus commonly called Operation Magic Carpet.  In fact, Yemeni Jews, or Teimanim, are believed to be one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world outside of Israel, existing there even before the destruction of the First Temple. Yemeni Jews spoke a particular dialect of Hebrew and maintained many original religious traditions and others shaped over the centuries by the influence of Maimonides and Kabbalah. Hundreds of Jewish settlements were scattered across Yemen, where Jews primarily served as silversmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, shoemakers, and tailors.  But that population started to shift in the 19th Century, what historians call the “age of migration,” driven largely by economic shifts. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, movement between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean suddenly became much easier. That was true not only for imported and exported goods, but transportation of people too. ARI ARIEL: Most of the time, the story is told starting with Magic Carpet, because that's the big migration. But it's really a much older story. MANYA: That's Ari Ariel, a Middle East historian at the University of Iowa who focuses on Jewish communities in the Arab world and Mizrahi communities, those who immigrated from Arab countries to Israel and elsewhere in the Diaspora.  His own family left Yemen for Israel in the 1920s. Professor Ariel has spent the last decade trying to piece together that lineage and the history of Yemeni Jews. He notes that between 1872 and 1881, Ottomans retook parts of Yemen where they had previously ruled centuries before. They also ruled over Palestine.  But that wasn't the only significant transition. In fact, just in the span of five decades leading up to 1922, monumental transitions unfolded. The Ottoman Empire fell apart. Yemen became independent, both Jewish and Arab national movements arose, and the British, who obtained a mandate over Palestine in 1922, expressed support for a Jewish national home – Israel.  ARI: So, there are big economic changes. More and more imported goods start to enter Yemen, and Yemeni Jews, who are craftsmen, largely, and small-scale merchants, really can't compete. So, you have documents complaining about the price of imported shoes and other kinds of imported things.  So, in 1911, the Zionist movement, for the first time sends an emissary to Yemen, because they want Yemeni Jews to move to Palestine. And here, there's also an economic factor. For the Jewish nation to redeem itself, Jews have to fulfill all economic roles.  What that means is they really want Jewish farmers. So, they send a guy named Shmuel Yavnieli. He goes and he walks, he goes around to different villages. It's kind of an intrigue story. He goes from village to village trying to get Yemeni Jews to move.  When he writes back to Jerusalem, he makes it pretty clear, the only Jews who he thinks he's going to be able to get to move to Palestine are the ones who aren't doing so well economically. And that if the Zionist movement agrees to pay for, say, their transportation or housing, or things of that nature, that they may move, and he is successful at doing that.  From my perspective, as a historian, that's important, too, because from that point, pretty much most Yemeni Jews who leave Yemen are going to Palestine. That's not true initially. So in the earlier periods, you have lots of Yemeni Jews going to East Africa, to India, to Egypt, a small number to the U.S., actually. So you get these movements. But once it's directed by a state, or I guess, a state like structure, in the case of the Zionist movement, at this point, the flow becomes much clearer to Palestine.  MANYA: The Tzubari family's initial departure from Yemen – aunts, uncles, cousins – is part of that larger story of migration. But Shahar's grandparents came amid the events of the mid-20th Century that sparked the most significant exodus. Within a three-month period, nearly 50,000 Yemeni Jews, including Shahar's grandparents and great grandparents, poured out of Yemen and made Israel their new home. This is their story as told to me by Shahar and his father Ze'ev Tzubari. Ze'ev Tzubari's parents were born in southwestern Yemen. For generations they had been dairy farmers. Before they left in 1949 through Operation Magic Carpet, they lived in Ta'iz, once known as the nation's cultural capital.  ZE'EV AND BENNY, TRANSLATOR: [speaking Hebrew]:  ZE'EV: In Yemen?  BENNY: Yes, you remember what they did? ZE'EV: They had, what I remember, goats, cattle, they had cattle. BENNY: In Ta'iz?  ZE'EV: In Ta'iz, there, we had cattle.] MANYA: Ze'ev spoke to me in Hebrew, and a family friend, Benny Gamlieli, translated. Here's Benny. BENNY: By the way, my parents as well came through this project by Alaska [Airlines] and brought, as I said, over 50,000-55,000 Jewish people from Yemen came through this project. You know this Aliyah, that we call the Magic Carpet. MANYA: Operation Magic Carpet was the nickname for a joint venture of the Israeli government, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency, to transport Jews from Yemen to Israel. Its official name was Operation Kanfei Nesharim, which, translated from Hebrew means “On the Wings of Eagles”, referring to the passage in Exodus: “how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to me…” BENNY: So during thousands of years, the Jewish people used to dream, that the Messiah will come, to go to Israel, to go to the Holy Land, to see the city of Jerusalem. It was a dream during thousands of years. MANYA: There are a number of theories about why the exodus from Yemen took place at this moment in time and the circumstances surrounding it. Ze'ev's translator, Benny, said Jews and Muslims lived side by side. But being Jewish wasn't easy. Since the seventh century, Jews in Yemen were considered second class, which varied in meaning from ruler to ruler. Since 1910, the imam of Yemen had an agreement with the Ottomans to take care of the Jews.  But that did not prevent the Yemeni government from imposing heavy taxes or applying an even more troubling interpretation. Known as the Orphan's Decree, Yemen required any Jewish children under the age of 12 who lost a parent to be handed over to a Muslim family and convert to Islam – ostensibly for their protection. In 1924, the King of Yemen restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. Then, in November 1947, after the Holocaust sent a wave of European Jewish immigrants seeking refuge in their biblical homeland, the United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state.  Days later, rioters targeted Jewish homes and businesses in Aden. That pogrom killed an estimated 82 Jews. In 1948, the King of Yemen, the imam, opened the window for three months for Jews to leave under two conditions: leave everything behind, and teach the Yemeni Muslims your trades in order to maintain the economy.  With only three months, Jews seized the opportunity. ARI: It's not entirely clear why he gives permission at that point. But there are different stories. One is that maybe a Yemeni Rabbi tells him a story about a dream, that this is kind of fate and that Yemeni Jews are supposed to . . . because the Imami its legitimacy is religious, and it understands these kinds of movements. So, the idea of a Messianic movement is kind of appealing to the Muslim side of this as well, in a sense.  There's another story that he's paid. There's some sort of element of bribe because people are given money for the number of Jews that leave Yemen. MANYA: But that moment was also a time of political strife in Yemen that – as most times of political strife do – threatened the welfare of the Jewish community. After the riots in Aden, Jews already had good reason to worry.  Then in 1948, the imam of Yemen, who had agreed to take care of the Jews, was assassinated. If Jews saw their fortunes aligned with the imam, now they had even more reason for concern. ARI: It's about a moment of political instability and about the changing nature of government and society in Yemen, which pushes some Jews to leave because they've been so aligned with the imam.  MANYA: Jews came from hundreds of towns and villages throughout Yemen, some walking for weeks and months to reach Aden, where between June 1949 and September 1950 more than 380 flights took off for Tel Aviv. Those Kanfei Nesharim, eagles' wings, were provided by Alaska Airlines. BENNY: Alaska Airlines was the only company who agreed to do the journey. And you know what they did to absorb as much as they can in one plane? They took off all the seats and they filled them like sardines.  MANYA: For the harrowing mission, the airline stationed flight and maintenance crews throughout the Middle East and outfitted newly acquired war-surplus twin-engine planes, with extra fuel tanks to guarantee a non-stop 3,000-mile flight.  British officials warned pilots that if they had to stop along the way, those angry about the establishment of Israel, would surely kill the passengers and crew. To reassure the Yemeni passengers boarding the one-way flights from Aden to Tel Aviv, the airline painted the outstretched wings of an eagle above each airplane hatch. Planes were shot at, the airport in Tel Aviv was bombed. But miraculously, no lives were lost. BENNY: For three months it was a crazy situation. And the government cannot say, ‘Oh, we have no room for you.' That's why they built tents.” MANYA: Tents. A temporary tent city, or a ma'abara in Hebrew, was where Ze'ev's parents and grandparents lived when they first arrived in Israel. ZE'EV: [in Hebrew: Five meters by five meters, that in each corner of the tent was a family. Here's a family, here's a family, here's a family . . .]  BENNY: Five meters by five meters one square. And in each tent, four different families, each corner of the tent was settled by a family.  MANYA: Ze'ev's family shared a tent with other families from Yemen. That wasn't always the case. Sometimes each corner would be occupied by families from four different countries. Another tent could have Olim Chadashim, the Hebrew term for new immigrants, from Romania, Iraq, Yemen, and Egypt.  BENNY: Impossible to describe that terrible situation, that years, the beginning of the State of Israel, of course, until the government, you know, start to build, to establish cities and to try to absorb as much as they can, Olim Chadashim, you know, Jewish from all over the world. MANYA: In 1952, Ze'ev was born in one of those 5-meter-by-5-meter tents. But his father Natan did not know right away that Ze'ev had been born. He was already fighting for the Israeli army's Golani Brigade, the troops that defended the Jewish state from the Arab nations that attacked Israel as soon as it declared independence. ZE'EV: My father was in the army. Yeah. He didn't know that I was born.  BENNY: He knew it later because he was busy in the army in one of the missions, one of his job, whatever, as a young fighter, so it took it took a few weeks, (ZE'EV: a few weeks) to find his father to let him know that ‘You're lucky because the boy was born . . . now you have a son.'  That was the beginning of the war. It's funny to say the beginning and the end – no beginning and no end. War, all the time.  The minute when the Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared about this young state of Israel, declared our independent country, at the same time – booming and shooting from the four different countries, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, attacked Israel. So we have 10 months of fighting, 24 hours a day.  So his father Natan, he went to the army and by the way, in the army, he didn't get money, let me tell you, but you know what, he got? Uniform and food. That's enough, I can survive. You know, you know what I mean? As long as they feed him, and bring him some uniform, clothes, thank God, everything is okay. Every second, day was, you know, problems, shooting, whatever along the border. So, we have to protect the young country that starts to build itself. MANYA: Natan returned after the birth of his son. The government moved the families to cabins where Ze'ev's sister was born, and eventually to an apartment where his younger brother was born and raised.  Natan connected with an older brother who had come a decade earlier and found work building roads and planting trees – literally laying the foundation for and cultivating the nation of Israel.  ZE'EV:  Ok, so after that we [in Hebrew: . . . good, let's speak in Hebrew. We studied at the schools, and my mother would always say ‘I work like a donkey for you, only so you should learn and exceed your parents.' She used to work for an Ashkenazi family, they owned a pharmacy . . . Yes.] MANYA: His mother found a job working as a nanny for the family of an Ashkenazi pharmacist. BENNY: She found, his mother, the way they treat the children, how much they spend, because they have money. And it's mainly for education, mainly for studies. Because of the study. She said, ‘I'll do my best for my children as well.' MANYA: While progress has been made in closing the education and income gap between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim in Israel, it was difficult from the start. At that time, many Ashkenazim, Jews from Europe, had more financial resources and they were well-educated. Meanwhile, Mizrahim, including Jews from Yemen, left everything behind and did not have the same level of education. But Ze'ev's mother saw no reason why her family could not follow the same path as the Ashkenazi family for whom she worked. She and Natan set out to forge a bright future for their children. BENNY: And she said, she talked to her children. And she said ‘Listen guys, we are poor people. But I work 24 hours a day just because of one reason. I want you to study. I want you to be well-educated. I'll do my best. I sacrificed my life for you, for the three of you, and your father as well.' So, their parents work, as I said, so hard to earn money to promise them a good education.  And she found, because she learned from the Ashkenazi family, she said, why not to do the same for my children and that's why he describes the very hard difficult situation at that time, that how many hours a day they miss their mother because she was out working trying to get more money to promise them a good education in Tel Aviv at that time. MANYA: Ze'ev understood and appreciated what his mother and father provided and did what they asked of him. He studied and took care of his brother and sister while his parents worked.  At the age of 16, he entered a special military academy in Haifa, then, like his father Natan, served his time in the Israeli Defense Forces.  When he got out, he found a job working for a utility company on the Sinai Peninsula, which at that time, prior to the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty, was under Israeli control. BENNY: The peninsula of Sinai, it's a huge area, it's a desert, but with a beautiful golden seashore from Eilat to Sharm El Sheikh. 250 kilometers, which is like, 150-60 miles length to the south, and the southern city of that peninsula, called Sharm El Sheikh.  And a lot of young people went there, mixed with the Bedouins, to find a job and he earned a lot of money because as long as you work far away from the center, from the country, you have a chance to earn much more. So let's say, a double salary a month. Gave him a chance to help his family in southern Tel Aviv and the old place that he used to live, his parents.  MANYA: But in addition to earning money to send back to his family, Ze'ev also took advantage of that beautiful golden seashore and took up a hobby – windsurfing. He married an Ashkenazi woman, the daughter of a German businessman who left Germany before the Holocaust. Instead of returning to the HaTikva neighborhood, what was then a high crime area in Tel Aviv, Ze'ev and his wife moved to Eilat and when he became a father, Ze'ev took Shahar and his sister Tal to the shore of the Red Sea every day in hopes they too would fall in love with the ocean. And they did.  SHAHAR: I started windsurfing as well at the age of 6-7. Basically, she was windsurfing for fun as I was windsurfing for fun. And when I got to the age where I had to decide, I decided to go for a special athlete program in the army, because I was good. And I wanted to go to the Olympics, and I wanted to continue with the sport.  MANYA: Because Shahar grew up in Eilat, away from where his father's family remained, his exposure to Yemeni customs and culture was limited.  SHAHAR: So I kind of knew the roots of my father. And every time we went there, we went to the market, and I saw my cousins, and they were going to the synagogue with my grandparents. And we did the kiddush, and eating Yemeni food and connecting more to the roots of the Yemen side of my family, and hearing the stories and sharing the stories. But in a way, I was a bit disconnected, because I was living in Eilat.    So, like, less connected to the Yemen side, but my family name Tzubari and the roots. Also my appearance, it's more Yemeni. So when I became more known, the connection with the Yemen side became stronger and stronger.  MANYA: Shahar lost his grandparents this past year. But before they passed away, he made a point to listen to their stories.  SHAHAR: We tried to observe many of the history and their story about coming to Israel. And it's fascinating that when they were young, at the age of 10, or 12, they walked so many miles to come here, because they had hope. They didn't know what to expect, but they had hope. That they come here, and everything will be better. MANYA: He appreciates how far the family has come since his grandparents and great-grandparents arrived in Israel and lived in that 5-meter by 5-meter tent.  SHAHAR: Basically, it's a funny story. Because where my father was born and raised, or where my grandparents first lived when they came to Israel, now it's the most expensive place in Tel Aviv. And the parents of my wife are living in this neighborhood, in the penthouse. MANYA: Shahar also recognizes the role he plays in his family's and nation's progress, and how intertwined the history of his family is with the future of the Jewish nation. He realizes now that protecting Israel, defending the Jewish state, is part of growing up Israeli. It's not the diversion he once resented.  SHAHAR: So when I was young, I felt like it's kind of stalking me. But now I'm older, and I have athletes, which are also soldiers, because now I'm a coach, and I see all the positive things, because sometimes athletes think that they are the center of the world. And it's not so true because they are living in a system, doesn't matter which system it is– it's the Federation, it's the Olympic committee. You always have a boss, and you're always in a system.  And I think that the journey that I pass in the IDF, it's a good journey to build yourself and realizing and taking everything out there . . . and realizing that, okay, I might be the best athlete in the world, but I still have responsibilities. So it gave me a lot of tools and abilities for life. MANYA: In March 2021, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels deported the last three Jewish families living in Yemen, marking the end of that country's 2,600-year-old Jewish community within its borders. I asked Shahar if he would ever want to go to Yemen to trace his family's footsteps, once it's safe for Jews and Israelis.  SHAHAR: For me, it's a pity that, of course, this is life and politics, but I can't go there because I'm an Israeli, and I have an Israeli passport. And if I had another passport, I could go … Yeah, it's a shame. I have this thing that I really want to visit all the Arab countries, not only Yemen, because as an Israeli, learning about the conflict . . . in the end, I think that all the Arab nations, we are very similar. And we are neighbors, and you know, as neighbors, we have the same temperament. And we share many of the values of the family, and being together. For me, I think being able to visit those places, it's a dream come true. MANYA: Just as military service and family history have shaped Shahar, windsurfing has given him perspective too. The waters of Eilat can be soothing, serene, utterly breathtaking. But storms churn up fierce waves for which the strongest surfer is no match. And that's when Shahar really likes to be on the water. A fearless determination that goes back generations.   [Video clip from after the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics Windsurfing RS:X event] Moments after he sailed across the finish line in Beijing and claimed that bronze medal, Shahar plunged into the water. A reporter shoved a cell phone into his hand to film Shahar sharing the victory with his family back in Israel.  Nearly 60 years later, another leg of the journey from Ta'iz was complete, another dream fulfilled.   SHAHAR: If you think about it … just to, one day, to wake up, take all your belongings and move. It's a brave act. In hard times, or not even in hard times, just sometimes when I do represent my country as an athlete, so I think about those moments, and it makes me feel pride that my grandparents or my family look at me and say ‘OK, it was worth it.' MANYA: Yemeni Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they had never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories.  Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions and memories alive. Call 212.891-1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Many thanks to Shahar and his father Ze'ev for sharing their family's story. And thank you to Benny Gamlieli for translating Ze'ev from Hebrew. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus.  The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

Welcome to May 28, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate barbecue classics and popular patties. Brisket is one of the most prized cuts of barbecue meat, but it wasn't always so popular. In fact, it was once considered to be of very poor quality. However, that changed in the early 1900s when European Jewish immigrants arrived in America and made their way to Texas. Brisket had long been a staple of Passover meals because it was kosher. And since there were so many cattle in Texas, beef brisket was easy to come by. Ranchers took note of the way their new neighbors prepared brisket and made a slight change—instead of slow-cooking the tough cut of meat in an oven, Texans began to smoke it. On National Brisket Day, celebrate with a helping of this BBQ classic. Hamburgers are one of America's most popular foods, so it's no surprise that dozens of people take credit for their invention. The idea for a cooked patty of ground beef originated in Hamburg, Germany, and years later someone put the patty between two slices of bread. And those are the only details anyone seems to be able to agree on. This culinary superhero doesn't appear to suffer any setback from its lack of an agreed upon origin story, however, with places like McDonald's selling 75 of them every second! On National Hamburger Day fire up the grill or grab your favorite takeout for a flavor that always delivers the taste of home.  I'm Anna Devere and I'm Marlo Anderson. Thanks for joining us as we Celebrate Every Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

S1 Ep 20: In this episode Rabbi Spiro and Ellie are dissecting the birth of the word “antisemitism” and how only 75 years ago, the racial and scientific dialogue of the age, and well-devised language and marketing, crafted a new and dangerous justification for hatred that ultimately ended up purposefully wiping out ⅔ of the European Jewish world, and ⅓ of all Jews worldwide in full view of civilized humanity. Want more history? Go back and listen to this series from the beginning, as Winston Churchill once said “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” so we are going all the way back, so we can understand what is happening now and plan for the future. Check out more about Rabbi Ken Spiro and his work at www.KenSpiro.com Learn more about The Jewish Family Insitute at www.MyJFI.com To send us questions and ideas for topics email us at rememberwhatsnext@gmail.com or leave us a voice message at anchor.fm/rememberwhatsnext --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jfi-remember-whats-next/message

Stephen Fry knows that people always think of him as being quintessentially English, but his mother is from a large European Jewish family. Stephen traces his maternal grandfather, Martin Neumann, back to modern-day Slovakia, and finds out what happened to the relatives who didn't manage to escape the Nazis. He also solves a mystery that surrounds his father's mother.

Rabbis Bechoffer and Kivelevitz discuss the major theories put forwatd to explain the destruction of the European Jewish world,and focus primarily on the problems surrounding the views of Rav Avigdor Miller Zatza"lPlease leave us a review or email us at ravkiv@gmail.comFor more information on this podcast visityeshivaofnewark.jewishpodcasts.org See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This podcast is powered by JewishPodcasts.org. Start your own podcast today and share your content with the world. Click jewishpodcasts.fm/signup to get started.

Lefty aka Poppa Left is a Hip Hop artist based in New Jersey with a European-Jewish background. Lefty tells us how his fathers passing when he was just a teenager, motivated him to pursue Hip Hop which at the time helped him overcome personal challenges in life. Lefty also tells us the interesting story of his Grandfather being taken to a concentration camp during World War II. Tune in and find out how this story is connected with his artist name today, and find out what's next for a bar heavy artist such as Lefty. Tune in for Lefty's freestyle on the show and Don't forget to follow us on Instagram @The_QBPC and follow Lefty @PoppaLeft Also leave us 5 stars on ALL steaming platforms!!

The drama continues with the final arrivals of European Jewish refugees into Shanghai, 1941-42. Afterward, the China option, that had previously served as a safety net for Jews seeking refuge far from the Nazi's, was no longer available. Sugihara Chiune, Tadeusz Romer, Laura Margolis and others are also introduced in this episode. The series will conclude in the next episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I had the privilege and a thrilling experience to meet and spend a few hours with two brave and genuine human beings, Samah Salaime and Noam Shuster from Wahat Al Salam/Neve Shalom/Oasis of Peace.  What is the meaning of co-existence of Palestinians and Israeli. “I am Jewish/Israeli but I was nurtured by Palestinian mothers just like I was nurtured by my own mothers. I can't celebrate Israeli independence day without recognizing that there is another side to the story of what happened to Palestinians in 1948 in those exact times. It doesn't contradict or threaten my identity. I think Acknowledgement and recognition are only ways for us to truly live together on this land.”  “I like to talk a lot about existence….The Jewish narrative is a very Eurocentric narrative that we are taught about the holocaust and the history of Israel that is very main stream. And the Palestinians have their own history of the catastrophe in 1948 but within in the Jewish context what I didn't learn in school or even in the environment I grew up in, is actually the history of my mother and my family from Iran. The non European Jewish history, we have a long history of Jews living with side by side with Muslims in the Arab North African Middle Eastern world. The holocaust happened in Europe, it didn't happen to the Jews living side by side with Muslims, there is thousands of years of shared life , culture, politics, everything, and I think it is a shame, that we are not using this narrative."  “...oppressed by power.” “..we are paying the price...” "My father is son of a holocaust survivor from Romania, and my mother was born in Iran.” For complete conversation listen visit the following links. http://wasns.org/was-ns-residents-address-audiences https://www.oasisofpeace.org/contact-us Shua - شعا ع  www.lightupwithshua.com - Podcast http://bit.ly/2nc9tZM - Youtube channel http://apple.co/2BteyA3 - iTunes https://goo.gl/wcF8ZS  - Tunein.com https://www.instagram.com/lightupwithshua/

People are often surprised when Robin Amer tells them her family is from the South. That's because her family is Jewish, and a lot of people don't realize there are Jews in the South, especially in tiny towns like Natchez, Mississippi. But Robin's family has lived there for 160 years, and their traditions—and foodways—are a unique hybrid of their European Jewish heritage and their Southern home. The Jewish community in Natchez has been dwindling for years, though. Now, it's down to only a handful of people, including Robin's 96-year-old grandmother and 98-year-old grandfather. In this episode of Gravy, Robin returns to Natchez to learn what might be lost when they're gone.