Podcasts about european jewish

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  

Happy New Year everyone! We decided to do something a little different for our last recording/first episode of the year, and let's just say it didn't go as planned. Nicole covers the European Jewish legend of the dybbuk as well as the dybbuk box that now resides in Zak Baggins haunted museum. And Liv covers the hogwild story of the little known 2013 assassination attempt of Barack Obama. Buckle up and get ready for one hell of an episode to kick off 2023.Sources:https://allthatsinteresting.com/dybbukhttps://m.imdb.com/title/tt14708338/https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna109196https://wjla.com/news/local/paul-kevin-curtis-conspiracy-centered-on-body-parts-trafficking-87683https://www.thedailybeast.com/paul-kevin-curtis-and-j-everett-dutschke-epic-feud-and-ricin-letters?ref=scrollhttps://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/04/27/179447589/new-arrest-reported-in-connection-to-ricin-letters-casehttps://www.cnn.com/2013/04/18/politics/tainted-letter-intercepted/index.htmlhttps://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRbfjb2c/Thank you so much for showing up and listening each week, we couldn't put out the content we do without the support of our audience. Be sure to follow us on our social media:Instagram and Facebook: SorryIfWeMadeItWeirdTwitter: @WeMadeItWeirdYouTube: SorryIfWeMadeItWeirdTiktok: siwmiw_podRep your favorite weirdos and get your SIWMIW merch here: https://www.sorryifwemadeitweird.com/If you enjoy the content we put out and want to support us financially, you can tip us/buy us a coffee here: https://ko-fi.com/sorryifwemadeitweirdIf you'd like to make a recurring monthly donation AND get access to exclusive bonus content you can join us on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sorryifwemadeitweird?fan_landing=true&view_as=publicHave a weird personal story you'd like to share? Or perhaps a topic recommendation or drink recipe you'd like us to try? Or maybe you just want to ask us a question or comment on a previous episode? Either way we love hearing from you! Send us an email at: sorryifwemadeitweird@gmail.com.Intro and outro music by: cascreativearts on Fiverr

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

For Video Edition, Please Click and Subscribe Here: https://youtu.be/VBRE3DFxiSQ Boyd Melson was born in Orange County, California while his father Nolan Melson was stationed there serving Active Duty in the United States Army. Boyd's father is Louisiana Creole and his mother Annette Melson is European Jewish having been born in Israel. Boyd's parents met in Germany while they both served on Active Duty in the United States Army.  Boyd graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point Commissioned as a Field Artillery Officer. He was the 2004 World Military Boxing Champion and a 2008 U.S. Boxing Team Alternate. During his time on Active Duty, Boye earned his Masters of Business Administration from Touro College.  He is an Eagle Scout, and currently serves in the 361st Theater Public Affairs Support Element Reserve Unit out of Fort Totten in Queens, NY. Boyd is an Iraq Combat Veteran, and currently holds the rank of Major in the Army Reserve. Boyd boxed professionally for five years having donated 100% of his boxing purses to Spinal Cord Injury Research. During his time boxing, he earned the World Boxing Council Junior Middleweight United States Championship and was appointed as the World Boxing Council Ambassador of Peace and Ambassador to the Military. Boyd's story was featured on HBO REAL SPORTS with Bryant Gumbel. He has served as a keynote speaker at various galas for people with various physical impairments. He serves on the Advisory Board for Stop Soldier Suicide. Boyd's exploits were covered by Yahoo, Sports Illustrated, The Huffington Post, and ESPN. Boyd was inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and he is a member of the Great Black Speakers Bureau. In 2021, Boyd released his first Motivational Speaking Music Album "RAINDROPS: Changing Your Weather" that is available on all major music platforms. 

As co-founder of the Bozeman Tea Party, Henry Kriegel is no stranger to political activism or the controversy that can surround it. Born of eastern European Jewish emigrant parents who fled post-WWII Germany with their lives and little else, Kriegel is a first-generation American and a firm believer in the freedoms this country promises, providing some critiques of the governmental bodies sworn to protect them. This interview was conducted in October 2020, over a year ago. While circumstances and conditions changed significantly since then, the issues and point-of-view shared are still relevant.  Additionally, the views expressed by Mr. Kriegel are his own and not necessarily reflective of any organization with which he has an affiliation.  Photos by Ben Johnson Copy by Evil Red Pen

In this weeks episode the urban philosophers return to discuss the biggest conspiracies and what initially lead them down the rabbit whole! Who are the Illuminati, what is freemasonry and what have they got to do with Americas founding fathers. What were the nights templars in search off and did Hitler and the Nazis know more than expected. What Race actually dominates the world? They discuss Zionism what are the origins of Judaism Black Jewish people and European Jewish people who are the originals? Cancel culture continues should we be using the term Black? Fr33 tells us his interesting story of when he drank with freemasons found out what knowledge he gained? B3 FR33 ‘Who Am I ?' To take part contact officialfactsntheory@gmail.com Facts N Theory podcast is a mixture of comedic effort, factual references, Layman's terms, and self-knowledge. Give us your thoughts and subscribe to our podcast! You can follow our visual aids via social media on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/amplifythefree/ youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnGk3xPTG_Y7CNpYEtmd0Lg --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/factsntheory/message --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/factsntheory/message

Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held weekly during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all. About the book: The emancipatory promise of liberalism - and its exclusionary qualities - shaped the fate of Jews in many parts of the world during the age of empire. Yet historians have mostly understood the relationship between Jews, liberalism and antisemitism as a European story, defined by the collapse of liberalism and the Holocaust. This volume challenges that perspective by taking a global approach. It takes account of recent historical work that explores issues of race, discrimination and hybrid identities in colonial and postcolonial settings, but which has done so without taking much account of Jews. Individual essays explore how liberalism, citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, race functioned differently in European Jewish heartlands, in the Mediterranean peripheries of Spain and the Ottoman empire, and in the North American Atlantic world. Speakers: Professor Abigail Green is Professor of Modern European History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her recent work focuses on international Jewish history and transnational humanitarian activism. She is currently completing a three year Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship, working on a new book on liberalism and the Jews, tentatively titled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights. Working in partnership with colleagues in the heritage sector, she is also leading a major four year AHRC-funded project on Jewish country houses. Professor Simon Levis Sullam is Associate Professor of Modern History at Ca' Foscari, University of Venice, Italy. His fields of interest include the history of ideas and culture in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascism; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust; the history of historiography, and questions of historical method. His many publications include, most recently, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy. Professor Adam Sutcliffe is Professor of European History and co-director of the Centre for Enlightenment Studies at King's College London. His research has focused on in the intellectual history of Western Europe between approximately 1650 and 1850, and on the history of Jews, Judaism and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in Europe from 1600 to the present. Professor Sutcliffe's most recent publication, What Are Jews For? History, Peoplehood and Purpose, is a wide-ranging look at the history of Western thinking on the purpose of the Jewish people. Dr Kei Hiruta is Assistant Professor and AIAS-COFUND Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research lies at the intersection of political philosophy and intellectual history, with particular interest in theories of freedom in modern political thought. His book Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity will be published from Princeton University Press in autumn 2021.

Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held weekly during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all. About the book: The emancipatory promise of liberalism - and its exclusionary qualities - shaped the fate of Jews in many parts of the world during the age of empire. Yet historians have mostly understood the relationship between Jews, liberalism and antisemitism as a European story, defined by the collapse of liberalism and the Holocaust. This volume challenges that perspective by taking a global approach. It takes account of recent historical work that explores issues of race, discrimination and hybrid identities in colonial and postcolonial settings, but which has done so without taking much account of Jews. Individual essays explore how liberalism, citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, race functioned differently in European Jewish heartlands, in the Mediterranean peripheries of Spain and the Ottoman empire, and in the North American Atlantic world. Speakers: Professor Abigail Green is Professor of Modern European History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her recent work focuses on international Jewish history and transnational humanitarian activism. She is currently completing a three year Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship, working on a new book on liberalism and the Jews, tentatively titled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights. Working in partnership with colleagues in the heritage sector, she is also leading a major four year AHRC-funded project on Jewish country houses. Professor Simon Levis Sullam is Associate Professor of Modern History at Ca' Foscari, University of Venice, Italy. His fields of interest include the history of ideas and culture in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascism; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust; the history of historiography, and questions of historical method. His many publications include, most recently, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy. Professor Adam Sutcliffe is Professor of European History and co-director of the Centre for Enlightenment Studies at King's College London. His research has focused on in the intellectual history of Western Europe between approximately 1650 and 1850, and on the history of Jews, Judaism and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in Europe from 1600 to the present. Professor Sutcliffe's most recent publication, What Are Jews For? History, Peoplehood and Purpose, is a wide-ranging look at the history of Western thinking on the purpose of the Jewish people. Dr Kei Hiruta is Assistant Professor and AIAS-COFUND Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research lies at the intersection of political philosophy and intellectual history, with particular interest in theories of freedom in modern political thought. His book Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity will be published from Princeton University Press in autumn 2021.

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

In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (1906–1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill‑gotten riches, from an early‑twentieth‑century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity. Through the 1920s, 1930s, and most of the 1940s, Bugsy Siegel and his longtime partner in crime Meyer Lansky engaged in innumerable acts of violence. As World War II came to an end, Siegel saw the potential for a huge, elegant casino resort in the sands of Las Vegas. Jewish gangsters built nearly all of the Vegas casinos that followed. Then, one by one, they disappeared. Siegel's story laces through a larger, generational story of eastern European Jewish immigrants in the early‑ to mid‑twentieth century --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/support

For Video Edition, Please Click and Subscribe Here: https://youtu.be/LGd23UKnQy0 https://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-Siegel-American-Dream-Jewish/dp/0300226195 The story of the notorious Jewish gangster who ascended from impoverished beginnings to the glittering Las Vegas strip "[A] brisk-reading chronicle of Siegel’s life and crimes."—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal "Fast-paced and absorbing. . . . With a keen eye for the amusing, and humanizing detail, [Shnayerson] enlivens the traditional rise-and-fall narrative."—Jenna Weissman Joselit, New York Times Book Review In a brief life that led to a tragic end, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (1906–1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill‑gotten riches, from an early‑twentieth‑century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity. As World War II came to an end, Siegel saw the potential for a huge, elegant casino resort in the sands of Las Vegas. Then, one by one, they disappeared. Siegel’s story laces through a larger, generational story of eastern European Jewish immigrants in the early‑ to mid‑twentieth century. Michael Shnayerson, Vanity Fair writer, non-fiction author. "Boom" "Harry Belafonte My Song" "The Contender" "Coal River" "The Killers Within" "The Car That Could."  

For many of us, it is difficult to comprehend the overwhelming enormity of the Holocaust and the 6-million Jews who were murdered by the Nazi regime during WWII. The historical trauma that impacted generations of displaced people and their families following the Holocaust, is the subject of the film WHERE CAN I GO? executive produced by Raleigh-Cary Jewish Family Services in partnership with The Justice Theater Project. The film is the culmination of a year-long program, Kesher, which utilized creative arts therapy to improve mental health and reduce the social isolation of five Holocaust survivors living in North Carolina and sheltered in place during the pandemic. Collectively, they teach us the importance of connecting, understanding, and remembering. About the Guests Tobi Dicker was born in a displaced person camp in Furth, Bavaria, Germany on May 3 1947, to two survivors of the Holocaust awaiting quota from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to send them to Israel. Unfortunately, Tobi became ill and needed hospitalization which caused them to miss their quota. After 15 months of recovery and waiting they received new orders to go to the United States, where they arrived in May of 1950. Tobi grew up in New York and moved to North Carolina in 1994. North Carolina is Tobi’s home, her love. She always strives to remind people of the atrocities of the world. The Kesher program is a wonderful vehicle for which she feels a lot of gratitude. Tobi hopes by viewing this film you will keep in the forefront of your mind we can never be complacent or believe catastrophes can never happen again in the form of discrimination, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hatred. Marianna Miller was born in Presov, Czechoslovakia on August 8, 1925. She was brought to England at the start of the war  to keep her safe. Both her parents were killed by the end in Banksa Bystirica where there is now a memorial for those who were murdered. Marianna came to the United States in 1954 and had a successful career as a social worker working with families. Marianna moved to North Carolina a few years ago to be closer to her daughter. She enjoys the climate and beautiful landscape as well as the people and their new perspectives. She hopes by viewing this film people will understand her experience and connect it to how we treat refugees and children. She wants people to understand what can happen if we are less than decent to each other. Harry Rubinstein was born on December 19, 1930, in Cologne, Germany. His family was split up by Nazi immigration rules just before the war. In September 1939, with the help of a special U.S. visa, he gained passage to America with his family. After a successful career as Dean of Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, he moved with his wife to North Carolina and spend retirement closer to their children. Living in North Carolina has allowed them to be part of a vibrant Jewish community and participate in the lives of their children. Harry is a member of the JFS Kesher group and he wants people to see this film to understand the impact of national socialism and Nazism on European Jewish life. Judy Stevens was born in Gyöngyös, Hungary on June 22, 1946. Before her birth, her mother was in Auschwitz and her father in a labor command in Siberia. Most family members did not survive the war. In fear of another wave of anti-Semitic persecution during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, Judy and her parents escaped the country as refugees to Vienna, England, and then finally to Canada. Judy came to the United States in 1988 and moved to North Carolina in 2017. Living in North Carolina allows Judy to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. She is an active member of her synagogue and within the Wake County Jewish community. Until the pandemic, she participated as an active volunteer in the community teaching students who were learning English as a second language. The Kesher program inspired Judy... Support this podcast

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.

On episode 63 of the podcast, I’m joined by award-winning author, Jennifer Steil, to talk about her brilliant new novel, Exile Music. Exile Music tells the remarkable story of an Austrian Jewish family who has to flee Nazi occupied Vienna during WWII, and then finds themselves living as refugees in La Paz, Bolivia. Jennifer stumbled upon this fascinating and mostly unknown piece of history – European Jewish refugees living in Bolivia – when she was living in La Paz with her diplomat husband, and was inspired to write a novel about it.  During our conversation, in addition to getting the story behind Exile Music, Jennifer and I talk about her life as a journalist turned creative writer; how a job opportunity in Yemen inspired her first book, a memoir called The Woman Who Fell from the Sky; we talk about the time she was kidnapped while pregnant, and how that harrowing experience inspired her first novel, The Ambassador’s Wife; and we talk about the #OwnVoices movement and who has the right to tell whose stories. Jennifer Steil is an award-winning author, journalist, and teacher who lives in many countries (currently Uzbekistan). Her new novel, Exile Music, released by Viking in May, won the Grand Prize in the international Eyelands 2020 Book Awards, and was chosen by Art in Fiction as one of the best novels about art in 2020, and by Book Authority as one of 16 Best New Music Books to Read in 2021. It has received stunning reviews, including a starred Booklist review, and was chosen by Good Morning America as one of the 25 Novels You'll Want to Read This Summer.  Her novel, The Ambassador’s Wife, published by Doubleday in 2015, won the 2013 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Best Novel award and the 2016 Phillip McMath Post Publication Book Award. The novel, which explores white savior complex, freedom of expression, art, terrorism, and parenthood, was shortlisted for both the Bisexual Book Award and the Lascaux Novel Award, and has received considerable critical acclaim, notably in the Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The New York Times Book Review. It has been published in several other languages, including Italian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Polish. This is a riveting episode that goes way beyond the book and digs deep into the writing life. I hope you enjoy it! **************** Get #Lit with these Links about Jennifer Steil and More... To read more about Jennifer Steil and to keep up with her work, visit her online home at Jennifer Steil.com. To purchase a copy of Exile Music, and/ or any of Jennifer's other books, visit the My American Meltingpot online bookstore. Check me out on the Printfresh Pajamas blog where I share my thoughts on books by Black authors to read beyond Black history month. Don't forget, if you want to buy a pair of beautiful PJs from Printfresh, use the code LORILTHARPS at check out for 15% off your purchase. Don't forget Printfresh sells stylish journals too. If you're interested in reading more about the two new memoirs penned by biracial Black women, check out the article in the New York Times. And/or go buy a copy of Surviving the White Gaze and Raceless at the My American Meltingpot Bookshop. To read more about the #ownvoices movement, check out this article on the OwnVoices movement from Read Brightly To get a summary of Colson Whitehead's speech that Jennifer referenced during our conversation about cultural appropriation in writing, you can get a good summary of Whitehead's speech here. ************************************** How to Support the Show 1. Subscribe to the show on your favorite platform. 2. Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts 3. Do your online book shopping on the My American Meltingpot Bookstore 4. Leave me a tip via paypal on the My American Meltingpot Website. Thank you!

West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy is Now Open! 8am-9am PT/ 11am-Noon ET for our especially special Daily Specials, Smothered Benedict Wednesdays!Starting off in the Bistro Cafe, Trump demanded Barr to investigate Joe and Hunter for something.Then, on the rest of the menu, older workers face higher unemployment amid the pandemic; San Francisco officials passed legislation to allow the victims of racist 911 “Karen” calls to sue the caller; and, a North Carolina insurance magnate who is also a prolific GOP donor, has started serving a federal prison sentence for corruption-related convictions.After the break, we move to the Chef's Table where a prominent European Jewish group condemned a Munich auction house selling Hitler's handwritten speech notes; and, over sixty art exhibits were damaged at scores of Berlin museums, with the motive still a mystery.All that and more, on West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy with Chef de Cuisine Justice Putnam.Bon Appétit!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"To those of us who believe that all of life is sacred every crumb of bread and sip of wine is a Eucharist, a remembrance, a call to awareness of holiness right where we are. I want all of the holiness of the Eucharist to spill out beyond church walls, out of the hands of priests and into the regular streets and sidewalks, into the hands of regular, grubby people like you and me, onto our tables, in our kitchens and dining rooms and backyards.” -- Shauna Niequist "Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Show Notes & Links: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/21/1988215/-West-Coast-Cookbook-amp-Speakeasy-Daily-Special-Smothered-Benedict-Wednesdays

Show notes below: Talking Shit with Tara Cheyenne is a Tara Cheyenne Performance Productionwww.taracheyenne.comInstagram: @TaraCheyenneTCP  /  FB: Tara Cheyenne PerformancePodcast produced, edited and music by Marc Stewart Musicwww.marcstewartmusic.com  © 2020 Tara Cheyenne Performance Subscribe/follow share through Podbean and Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts/iTunes and Spotify. Donate! To keep this podcast ad-free please go to: https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/13386 Show Notes: Tasha Faye Evans is a Coast Salish dance and theatre artist with grandparents also from Wales as well as European Jewish descent. Her career continues to be a collection of collaborations and performances with national and international Indigenous artists, including Starr Muranko’s "Spine of the Mother", Raven Spirit Dance’s  "Salmon Girl and Confluence", Marie Clements’ "The Unnatural and Accidental Women", and Thomson Highway’s "The Rez Sisters".  She is currently creating a new dance solo in collaboration with carver Ocean Hyland called, "Cedar Woman". Tasha has also been focusing on redress and Coast Salish cultural resurgence, particularly in Port Moody, BC where she is raising her two children. Over the past four years, she has been engaging Port Moody and the public at large in arts-based community development projects offering Coast Salish cultural events and education led by local First Nations artists and Knowledge Keepers. She is responsible for two Coast Salish house posts designed, carved and raised in ceremony and is in the process of coordinating Port Moody’s third National Indigenous Peoples Day event.  She has produced three festivals, including the "Welcome Post Project", "Stawk: Water is Life", and "Xapayay: Tree is Life" online festival and art show. This past year,Tasha collaborated with Kwikwetlem  and Tsleil Waututh Nation to create the first two of five posts she hopes to raise along Port Moody’s iconic 2.5 km Shoreline Trail. These posts will create a path of healing along the water and reignite the stories and songs of the Coast Salish Nations who have been caring for this land long before it was known as Port Moody.  Links: A Message from Tasha Faye Evans, Curator:Xapayay: Tree of Life 2020 - noonscreek.org noonscreek.org Tasha will be an Artist-in-Residence at The Dance Centre this coming season:https://thedancecentre.ca/residencies-projects/artist-in-residence/ Raven Spirit Dance: https://ravenspiritdance.com/ Bard On The Beach:https://bardonthebeach.org/whats-on/bard-beyond-the-beach/  About Tara:Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is an award winning creator, performer, choreographer, director and writer. Artistic Director of Tara Cheyenne Performance, she is renowned as a trailblazer in interdisciplinary performance and as a mighty performer "who defies categorization on any level"(The Georgia Straight).Tara is celebrated nationally and internationally for her unique and dynamic hybrid of dance, comedy and theatre. The string of celebrated full-length solo shows to her credit includes bANGER, Goggles, Porno Death Cult, and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember, and she partners regularly on multidisciplinary collaborations, commissions and boundary-bending ensemble creations. When she isn’t creating innovative movement for theatre, Tara performs around the world- highlights include DanceBase/Edinburgh, South Bank Centre/London, On the Boards/Seattle USA, and High Performance Rodeo/Calgary. Recent works include The Body Project (premiering 2020/21 season) The River with dance artist Miriam Colvin and artist and activist Molly Wickham (premiering 2021 in Wet'suwet'en Territory), empty.swimming.pool with Italian dance/performance artist Silvia Gribaudi, (Castiglioncello, Bassano, Victoria, B.C. and Vancouver, B.C.), how to be (Vancouver, B.C.) , and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember (currently touring). Tara lives on the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation)/East Vancouver with her partner composer Marc Stewart.

Babenhausen is a town in Germany with a long history that reaches back over 800 years. Remnants of that past can still be seen today in the fortified city wall, Witch's Tower and old churches. The town has been the scene of witch hunts and the rebirth of European Jewish life in a displaced persons camp. The Babenhausen Barracks is today a museum, but once served as a military post for Germans and Americans. There are stories of deaths here that have left behind a spiritual residue and many people through the decades have experienced activity that they cannot explain. Join us as we share the history and haunts of the Babenhausen Barracks! The Moment in Oddity was suggested by Nancy Doi and features the Forestiere Underground Gardens and This Month in History features the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Check out the website: http://historygoesbump.com Show notes can be found here: http://historygoesbump.blogspot.com/2020/07/hgb-ep-346-babenhausen-barracks.html Become an Executive Producer: http://patreon.com/historygoesbump The following music is from https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/: "Vanishing" by Kevin MacLeod (Moment in Oddity) "In Your Arms" by Kevin MacLeod (This Month in History) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) All other music licensing: PODCASTMUSIC.COM License Synchronization, Mechanical, Master Use and Performance Direct License for a Single Podcast Series under current monthly subscription. Bavarian Beer Hall 2 by 5 Alarm Music Lurking Shadow by 5 Alarm Music

Academy Award-winning composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel does a lot of traveling, soaking up the musical traditions as he goes. His recent album, Migrations, received a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category. In this episode, Bermel teaches about composer Bela Bartok who inspired one of the pieces on the album. Bartok moved from his native Hungary to New York City at the outset of World War II, and while a lot of great music came out of his journey, his is also a really human story about being a stranger in a strange land. Bermel also talks about the migration of his own European Jewish family and how it influenced his work.

Irving Roth speaks of the gates closed by democracies, especially the betrayal by the FDR administration, to rescue European Jewish men, women and children, six million of whom were murdered in unspeakable ways. He draws on his experience growing up in a small town in what became Fascist Slovakia after the appeasement by Britain and France at Munich in 1938 broke up what was pre-WWII Czechoslovakia. First it was No Jews allowed in the town parks, no bathing in the beach on the River, then no Jews allowed to attend school. Then after the Final Solution Nazi Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, 1,800 of the town’s 2,000 Jews were marched to the synagogue, locked inside and “resettled” -meaning sent to one of the six Nazi killing center. He and his family were among the 200 Jews left behind. He tells of the loss of his family's lumber business through “aryanization” and betrayal by Christian friends in his community in Slovakia. The family escape in 1943 to a small village in Hungary in 1943 here they have relatives, while his parents move on to find work in Budapest. That haven ended in 1944, when the Horthy and Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross party capitulated to German occupation and Eichmann began transports to Auschwitz – Birkenau. Beyond the Matrix 12FEB2020 - PODCAST

The recent commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz - Birkenau death camp by Russian Forces on January 20, 1945 and the gathering of 50 world leaders at the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Va Shem in Jerusalem brought new focus on the question of why didn’t the allies Bomb Auschwitz? A BBC/PBS documentary, “Bombing Auschwitz” was accused of being a “whitewash” of FDR’s betrayal of the six million European Jewish men, woman and children murdered in unspeakable ways during the Holocaust. Those accusations and more were the comments of a frequent guest on Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix, Dr. Rafael Medoff, executive director of the David S. Wyman, Institute of Holocaust Studies. Rod Bryant and Jerry Gordon discussed these issues with Dr. Medoff. Dr. Medoff is the author of more than 20 books on this and related topics; the most work being "The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust". The title stems from conversations between President Roosevelt and Rabbi Wise, a leading American Jewish Leader of both the World and American Jewish Congresses to pressure American Jews not to pursue rescue of European Jews as a ‘diversion’ of the war against Nazi Germany. A major chapter in Medoff’s latest book deals with the bombing Auschwitz controversy. Beyond the Matrix 05FEB2020 - PODCAST

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.

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.

Today’s episode is one of the pop-up episodes of AnthroDish which focus in on some of the speakers and guests of the 2019 Terroir Food Symposium. These are quick mini episodes that capture some of the perspectives of folks in the food industry around the theme of choices – the choices they make within their own work and its impact on their communities, businesses, and selves.  Today mini-episode features Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, two of the co-founders of The Gefilteria. Launched in 2012, it’s mission is to reimagine eastern European Jewish cuisine, adapting classic dishes to the values and tastes of a new generation. Jeffery and Liz believe that Old World Jewish foods can be beautiful, inspiring, and delicious. They produce limited runs of their signature artisanal gefilte fish each spring and fall, cooking a wide range of Jewish foods from the Ashkenazi culinary tradition for unique dining events. They seek to inspire others to reimagine and rediscover this incredible cusiine in their home kitchens. While they don’t have a storefront, they host tons of classes and experiences in their community around Brooklyn and worldwide, and have a brilliant cookbook called the Gefilte Manifesto. Jeffrey and Liz are so delightful to speak with, and the conversation that unfolded is one that I still think about on a fairly regular basis!  Learn More About The Gefilteria:  Website: http://gefilteria.com Instagram: @gefilteria The Gefilte Manifesto Cookbook Queer Soup Night Jeffrey's Website

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

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.

Natasha Solomons will delight with her British accent and lush re-telling of what HOUSE OF GOLD is about. This sweeping novel about a WWI-era European Jewish banking family and what happens when the war hits has already been optioned by the same TV production company that did "Downton Abbey." Listen to Natasha talk about parenting, writing, Europe and more! 

In this episode, B'nai B'rith International CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin is joined by Frank Goldman, the grandson of former B’nai B’rith International president Frank Goldman. As B’nai B’rith’s president, Goldman spearheaded the first openly pro-Zionist position that the organization had ever taken by publicly calling for the unrestricted immigration of European Jewish refugees into then-British controlled Palestine. This was a highly controversial stance to take at the time. Goldman also organized a succession of meetings that eventually led to the formal recognition of Israel by the U.S.

The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States, Jewish journalists, poets, and thinkers gathered in cafés to socialize, argue, create, and simply to be in a space that welcomed them. In A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press, 2018), Shachar M. Pinsker, Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, provides a rich and detailed portrait of café life in six major centers of Jewish life and thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book is a welcome addition to the study of European Jewish thought and culture, and to the understanding of the motive forces behind Jewish creativity during a period that included large-scale emancipation, immigration, and destruction in the Jewish world. David Gottlieb earned his PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago in 2018. He serves on the teaching faculty of Claremont Lincoln University, and teaches for Orot: The Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States, Jewish journalists, poets, and thinkers gathered in cafés to socialize, argue, create, and simply to be in a space that welcomed them. In A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press, 2018), Shachar M. Pinsker, Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, provides a rich and detailed portrait of café life in six major centers of Jewish life and thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book is a welcome addition to the study of European Jewish thought and culture, and to the understanding of the motive forces behind Jewish creativity during a period that included large-scale emancipation, immigration, and destruction in the Jewish world. David Gottlieb earned his PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago in 2018. He serves on the teaching faculty of Claremont Lincoln University, and teaches for Orot: The Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States, Jewish journalists, poets, and thinkers gathered in cafés to socialize, argue, create, and simply to be in a space that welcomed them. In A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press, 2018), Shachar M. Pinsker, Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, provides a rich and detailed portrait of café life in six major centers of Jewish life and thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book is a welcome addition to the study of European Jewish thought and culture, and to the understanding of the motive forces behind Jewish creativity during a period that included large-scale emancipation, immigration, and destruction in the Jewish world. David Gottlieb earned his PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago in 2018. He serves on the teaching faculty of Claremont Lincoln University, and teaches for Orot: The Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States, Jewish journalists, poets, and thinkers gathered in cafés to socialize, argue, create, and simply to be in a space that welcomed them. In A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press, 2018), Shachar M. Pinsker, Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, provides a rich and detailed portrait of café life in six major centers of Jewish life and thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book is a welcome addition to the study of European Jewish thought and culture, and to the understanding of the motive forces behind Jewish creativity during a period that included large-scale emancipation, immigration, and destruction in the Jewish world. David Gottlieb earned his PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago in 2018. He serves on the teaching faculty of Claremont Lincoln University, and teaches for Orot: The Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States, Jewish journalists, poets, and thinkers gathered in cafés to socialize, argue, create, and simply to be in a space that welcomed them. In A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press, 2018), Shachar M. Pinsker, Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, provides a rich and detailed portrait of café life in six major centers of Jewish life and thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book is a welcome addition to the study of European Jewish thought and culture, and to the understanding of the motive forces behind Jewish creativity during a period that included large-scale emancipation, immigration, and destruction in the Jewish world. David Gottlieb earned his PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago in 2018. He serves on the teaching faculty of Claremont Lincoln University, and teaches for Orot: The Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago. 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/

On this month’s podcast we discuss the role of science in fine art.  Specifically, what can science tell us about a work of art’s origin and authenticity?  Can science help us discover fakes and forgeries undetected by traditional connoisseur style observation?  We are joined by the famous art scientist Jamie Martin to discuss these issues, recount famous forgery scandals, and delve into his techniques and practices. Resources: http://orionanalytical.com/media/ http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/sotheby-s-at-large/2016/12/scientist-art-world-james-martin.html https://www.wired.com/2016/12/how-to-detect-art-forgery/ https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-8-most-prolific-forgers-in-art-history-that-we-know-of https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/wolfgang-beltracchi-helene-art-scam https://news.artnet.com/market/forger-wolfgang-beltracchi-exhibition-296551 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/arts/design/ken-perenyi-art-forger-now-sells-his-work-as-copies.html Episode Transcription:  Steve Schindler:  Hi. I'm Steve Schindler. Katie Wilson-Milne:  I'm Katie Wilson-Milne. Steve Schindler:  Welcome to the Art Law podcast, a monthly podcast exploring the places where art intersects with and interferes with the law. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And vice versa.  The Art Law Podcast is sponsored by the Law firm of Schindler Cohen & Hochman LLP, a premier litigation and art law boutique in New York City. On this episode of the podcast we will be discussing the role of science and fine art. Specifically what can science tell us about the work of arts origin and authenticity? Can science help us discover fakes and forgeries that would be undetected by more traditional connoisseur-style observation? Steve Schindler:  We’re here today with Jamie Martin, Senior Vice President and Director of Scientific Research at Sotheby’s auction house, a title that really doesn’t do Jamie justice. Jamie is an artist, art conservator and forensic scientist. In 2000, he founded a company called Orion Analytical that became the preeminent materials analysis and consulting firm, specializing in the scientific analysis of art and cultural property. Working at the intersection of art and science, Jamie has revealed multimillion dollar forgeries in the art market, taught at The Getty Conservation Institute and the FBI, and conducted more than 1800 scientific investigations for museums, galleries, insurance companies, and private collectors around the world. Katie and I have both worked closely with Jamie and it is a genuine pleasure to welcome him to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast Jamie. Jamie Martin:  Hi! Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yes, thanks for being here Jamie. So what can science tell us about art? Jamie Martin:  The way I like to phrase it is, is that science helps art tell its own story. Science can reveal the structure of the work, its composition and its condition. Steve Schindler:  How Jamie would you say that science intersects with questions about authenticity and fraud? Jamie Martin:  Well, in about 2009, the College Art Association codified guidelines and standards for authentications and attributions. Steve Schindler:  What is the College Art Association? Jamie Martin:  I'm not a member, but my understanding is that it’s a national association of art historians principally in colleges but also working privately or working in museums as well. Steve Schindler:  Okay, so they came out with some guidelines? Jamie Martin:  They did and in codifying guidelines they identified three essential elements involved in the authentication attribution process. The first oldest most important and never to be replaced is stylistic connoisseurship, which is examination with learned eye of the scholar. The scholar is the person or the entity that attributes and actually authenticates work of art. The second essential element is the provenance of the work or the documented history from the time it left the artist studio to present day. And usually that’s fractured or incomplete in some way. The third essential element which has been part of these kinds of studies for at least a 100 years, but was codified in this document, is scientific or technical examination. And the role of science and technical examination in authentication and attribution studies is twofold, one is to test the claimed attributes of the attribution of the work and also test the claimed attributes of the provenance. In other words to see if the physical substance of the work is consistent with its attribution and provenance, the other principle aim of science and technology is to provide investigative leads, so to better understand the object – essentially to let the object tell its story about where it was, when it was, what it was. And those leads can help art historians and researchers better place the object in time, in some cases in a particular artist studio. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So what is the analysis of the work actually look like in terms of what you’re doing, maybe walk us through a typical examination of a painting? Jamie Martin:  So generally speaking from start to finish, every exam would start with visual inspection of the work in bright white light, the same way that a connoisseur would examine the work.  They want to see the composition, or the design. They want to see the color, the opacity, essentially the facture of the work, the way the work is constructed. They’ll then move the light to the side, which is called raking light, and that reveals information about the texture of the work. And often identifies the presence of restoration or alteration, because in an authentication study a scientist doesn’t want to inadvertently identify restoration as original, find a problem and reach a wrong conclusion.  Scientist and conservators then use ultraviolet light which, when I was a teenager these were lights on the ceiling of my room that illuminated Led Zeppelin posters. Steve Schindler:  I had the same posters and the same lights – by the way. Jamie Martin:  Alright. So we use the same lights now to illuminate works of art and materials have inherent fluorescence which allows us to see the distribution of different materials and often the distribution of restoration and alteration. We then use infrared light. We can't see infrared light as humans, but we can use cameras to detect it and record it and create an image. And with that we can often better see restoration, but more importantly we can see through the paint. We can see through some materials to see what lays beneath, so artist underdrawings. We can see inscriptions that have been obliterated or erased. And all of those are noninvasive techniques that basically tell us about the object as a whole. We then take the object and we put the object under what’s called a stereo binocular microscope – a microscope that gives us a three dimensional color image of the work and magnifications up to about 90 times – and with this we can look at the fine detail of the work.  We can begin to understand its structure and its condition.  We create a mental inventory of the number of different materials. We account for the presence of restoration. And this process helps guide the subsequent analyses that we do. The best most reliable way to analyze the work from a statistical point of view is to take the work of art, put it in a blender, destroy it, mix it up into a powder, take a pinch and analyze it.  We obviously can't do that. So we have to select visually representative areas of our work and conduct our analyses on that. We have a range of noninvasive techniques that we can use. Not taking a physical sample, actually not touching the work of art, we can identify the elemental composition, so the elements like sodium or lead or mercury, we can identify where they are in the work. In the case of Remington sculpture, that can help determine whether the work was cast before Remington died or if it was cast after the artist died. And if after, whether it was authorized or unauthorized.  If it’s a work of art like a painting or a painting on paper or a drawing, we can map the elemental composition of the work. So we can look for elements that stand out. Given the attribution, let’s say an artist who’s painting in 1800, if we find concentrations of elements associated with original material that is part of the object and those elements only became part of paints after 1800, then that raises red flags about the work. And then we can use other techniques to identify what those materials are. In variably however in most cases we need to take a sample and we need to analyze the sample so that we understand the full composition of the material to give you an idea of the kind of sample, the sample size that we need are typical sample sizes range from about 1/1000th of a millimeter to about 40/1000ths of a millimeter, which is about the width of a human hair. Katie Wilson-Milne:  How do you even collect a sample that small? Jamie Martin:  It’s good question. You collect it using the same microscope that you use to find the sample location, so using a microscope that’s analogous to a surgical microscope, same kind of microscope a neurosurgeon would use. And we actually use neurosurgeon tools. I use a scalpel. And I’ll use the scalpel to remove such a tiny piece of material, I can only see it with a microscope, but that one little tiny microscopic specimen can be used for one or two or five or ten separate analyses depending on what the questions are. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Jamie I think one question we shouldn’t let go by for too long is how are you qualified to do this work, right. I mean the way you described the analysis of the art, presupposes a certain amount of knowledge when you look at the piece under the light initially and you’re sort of doing the visual analysis. How do you know how to do that? Jamie Martin:  Well, conservation scientists have different backgrounds, some are PhDs who have advanced degrees in chemistry or engineering. Others come from the conservation ranks. And that’s the route I took. My background is a little different. It’s a bit unique in the field, when I was 13 my father gave me a microscope, a chemistry set and sent me to art school. And so from a very young age I was taught how to mix different powdered pigments together to make paint. And how to stretch canvases much the same way it was done in old master days in workshops. And at the same time I was blowing little things up in my bedroom with my chemistry set and beginning to explore the world with a microscope which sits on the desk I have now. After high school I attended a traditional art school in Baltimore. And we were taught to emulate the techniques of the old masters and one thing I became very proficient at doing was doing copies in museums where I could create works in some cases that were indistinguishable from the originals. I did a copy of William Merritt Chase of the Baltimore Museum of Art. And as I was walking out with it one day, the director of the museum asked me if I was taking it back to storage.  And I sort of laughed. Steve Schindler:  You were in training either to be a conservation professional or a forger – Jamie Martin:  Well that – that’s very interesting when I applied to the conservation graduate programs which included Winterthur, the admissions committee raised questions and flagged me, because my art portfolio was so strong and my ability to copy was so good. They were concerned if they trained me as a conservator and a scientist that I would be a master forger. It turns out and I didn’t know at that time, I'm a bit of a master detective at catching forgers.  So I got a graduate degree in art conservation at the University of Delaware, then I went on to postgraduate work at University of Cambridge. Then I set about creating the first two fee-for-service conservation analytical labs in the United States, one in a museum and one privately and they were both setup to provide basic conservation science services to conservators and museums that didn’t have scientists. So what equips me to take samples and what equips me to interpret the data and reach reliable, accurate conclusions is having taken about 15,000 samples and having conducted about 13,000 FTI or analyses.  It’s just a lot of experience, the good luck, good fortune of working with really good scientists over the years who were able to teach me the tools of the trade. And then being surrounded by excellent people in museums and the conservation field and interestingly also in the art law field. Steve Schindler:  So let’s talk about your detective skills, because one of the ways that we met was in connection with a case involving fakes and forgeries. How prevalent are fakes and forgeries in your view in the art market? Jamie Martin:  Well, we really don’t know.  We read in newspapers and magazines from time to time that it’s been estimated that 50% of works are fake or 80% of works are fake, but if you dig a bit deeper into those articles it’s often someone trying to make the claim to attract business and create a fear that everything is sold in the market place is potentially a fake. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah, I feel like I've read articles, “half the works on every museum all are fake, you just don’t know it.” Jamie Martin:  Yeah, we just don’t know, there’s been no study done. There’s no data to look to. What we know publically is probably a small fraction of the art forgery case isn't fakes that are in circulation or from cases like the Beltracchi case or the Knoedler case or the Rudy Kurniawan case that dealt with wine, there are lot of investigations being done behind the scenes by law enforcement that we’ll probably never know about. And a lot of investigations I did were done under confidentiality agreements that I can't discuss. Someday I hope the FBI will get on to it, burst the forgery ring and make people whole. I would say that forgeries can be a significant problem, depending on what is being forged or faked and where it’s being sold. So generally a ring of forgers has a target market in sight. They more or less know the market that they want to create the works for and sell the works for. There is some evidence to suggest that forgeries pertaining to a particular artist spike up after a big exhibition on the artist or after publication of the catalogue raisonné, because there’s a lot of technical information and a lot of visual information that a forger can take and create a pastiche – using some of the materials that are disclosed in the publication. It’s one of the reasons why scientists like I, scientist in museums often don’t disclose everything we find, but withhold some important information, so that we don’t give away all the secrets of detection or we don’t disclose publically all of the stupid mistakes that forgers are making. We like them to continue to make those stupid mistakes. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So can you tell our audience briefly about the Beltracchi case? Jamie Martin:  Yeah, so Wolfgang Beltracchi and his wife devised a really sinister scheme to create a large group of fake works that reportedly created in Europe, say between 1910 and 1930. And they would use publications that sided exhibitions of works by known artist that didn’t give illustrations, didn’t give sizes.  They gave the artist name, the date, and the title of the work. And that was the basis of the provenance for the work. They could create a work, point back to that publication and say, “Oh, here’s the work.” What was particularly clever was that they created the false provenance of the so-called “Jagers collection” and Jagers happened to be Beltracchi’s wife Helene’s maiden name. And what Beltracchi did was to create framed posters of his fakes, he put them in a room. He had period furniture. Katie Wilson-Milne:  I love this part. Jamie Martin:  And his wife dressed up as her grandmother and posed with the works.  Beltracchi used an old box style camera that would make the image a little blurry. He printed the photographs on deckled paper, which would have been period, photocopied them. And then you can imagine when Helene would take the painting and present the perspective owner with the photograph of the painting photographed with her grandmother, people would say, “Oh my God, the family resemblance!  You look so much like your grandmother.” And as this often the case with fakes and forgeries it doesn’t take much to nudge someone to the point of accepting what is false as true. They didn’t look deeper.  That was enough for them to believe the story that Beltracchi assembled. Steve Schindler:  It always seems in these cases that the purchasers and fakes so much want to believe.  Whether it’s in the Rudy Kurniawan case that you just eluded to before – passionate collectors of wine want to believe that they’re getting these rare vintages so much that they overlook obvious clues.  In other cases, they buy works where the signatures are misspelled, as we’ll get to, so part of it just seems to be tremendous excitement and passion on the part of the purchasers. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Well and there’s no incentive for anyone in that chain to want something to be fake, right? The buyer wants it to be worth what they paid for it. They want it to be by the artists they think it’s from. So who in that chain wants to disrupt that? Jamie Martin:  Well, in a very clever way of introducing the fakes is to introduce the fakes that art fairs or dealers where there’s a real time pressure to purchase.  So for example in an art fair, a fake might be exhibited, and you might get two people in the span of two or three days looking at the work, basically competing for who’s going to purchase the work. There really isn't the time to step back to examine the claimed attributes, so the work is attributed to artist X in year Y. I think I’d like to step back, look at some books published on the artist perhaps the catalogue raisonné and see if this work really fits. And then I want to look at the provenance. And I want to find out if there was actually a Jagers collection. And if not, those are going to raise red flags for me. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So how did he get caught? Jamie Martin:  Beltracchi got caught, because the Doerner Institute in Munich, Germany was given a painting by the police to examine and they found two things working with an art historian who probably was the first person to break the case. He noted that the fake labels that were applied to the back of many of the works were of a gallery that didn’t exist at the time the works were purportedly dated. So the gallery label dates were mismatched. The Doerner Institute then examined the painting and they found that the painting contained historically inaccurate materials. So pigments that weren’t introduced and used at paints at the age of that particular work of art.  And that’s enough to conclude that the work couldn’t have been – could not have been constructed at that time, and that raised huge flags. At that point I understand that police began to assemble lists of works that were likely Beltracchi fakes. I became involved through looking at a number of works for private collectors and auction houses and was commissioned actually by 60 Minutes to examine a fake Beltracchi work in the style of Ernst, so I could explain to Bob Simon how Beltracchi created the work, but more importantly how Beltracchi got caught. Now Beltracchi was very careful about his materials. He would purchase old canvases that would have been used in the same period, so if you tried to date the canvas, it would be appropriate. And he tried to select paints that contained pigments that would be used at that time. So he would go to the store and he would look for Winsor and Newton paint and he would turn it around and look at the label. And it would say Zinc White. And that was the limit of Beltracchi’s knowledge of paint manufacturers. Now because paint manufacturer from time to time hired me to reverse engineer their competitors’ products to tell them what they were using to make paint, I was aware that manufactures often topped off or added materials to paints. And in this case the manufacturer added a little bit of a very opaque pigment called Titanium White to the Zinc White. And they used modern synthetic organic pigment called Phthalocyanine Blue that they used to top off or make the blue paint that Beltracchi used more intense. And those two materials were very easy to detect. And they proved that that those works were not authentic. Beltracchi himself I think was quoted saying, “Ah yeah, the Titanium White.” Katie Wilson-Milne:  We should probably interject, Steve, to explain the legal background that it’s obviously not illegal to copy something that’s in the public domain, if you say it’s a copy and you tell people that you painted it and it’s not by the original artist. What is illegal is fraud and pretending that a work authored by you is by another person and leading a buyer, inducing a buyer to buy that work based on that fact. Jamie Martin:  Correct. Steve Schindler:  And so one question, Jamie, is – you mentioned before that you, one of the things you search for are these anomalies and you’re able to determine whether a work could have been created at the time that it was purported to be created, but do you actually authenticate works? Jamie Martin:  No, rarely will scientific or technical examination unilaterally attribute or authenticate a work. And -- Steve Schindler:  Why is that? Jamie Martin:  Well, because there isn't a chemical or material fingerprint that would allow you to individualize a work to one and only one artist at a particular time. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So science can't tell you something is authentic, but it can tell you something is fake? Jamie Martin:  It can tell you that something is fake.  From time to time, you can form a conclusive, reliable, durable opinion that a work is fake based on science. It can also buttress an attribution more provenance, but it will never substitute for the absence of or a defect in provenance or stylistic connoisseurship. Steve Schindler:  Do you think in the area of stylistic connoisseurship which, is often criticized as being sometimes objective, insular, elitist, whatever you will – whether there is a place for science or an opportunity for science to replace the work of the connoisseur and I'm thinking particularly about advances in artificial intelligence the type of technology that makes an Apple iPhone work, the facial recognition. Do you sense that there is a place for that kind of technology in making attributions or authentications? Jamie Martin:  For probably about 10 years there’s been an emphasis in the computer science and physics disciplines to use image processing, computer analysis and things like fractal analysis, sparse coding analysis to essentially replace what – in some cases is viewed as the subjective eye of the kind of connoisseur – with the more “objective eye” of the computer looking at a photograph. There’s been some interesting and promising research done which I believe can enhance the work of authenticating or dating works, that is, clearly showing that something is inconsistent with the work of an artist. Or in the case of Dürer drawings – comparing Dürer drawings to see how closely the strokes and the pressure applied to the implement and the basic composition is.  However I haven’t seen any technology at this point that is able to accurately attribute works absent the human input of a scholar, of a conservator, of a scientist. I think it’ll probably happen in my life time.  It’ll hopefully happen before I retire. Katie Wilson-Milne:  You describe a very complimentary process, but there has been some suggestion that there’s a tension between a traditional connoisseur – a PhD in art history, works at a museum – and scientific analysis that, I don’t know, there’s a perceived fear that science is replacing that scholarly expertise.  Is that something you come in contact with or you also perceive? Jamie Martin:  Well, so there are a universe of conversations probably that are going on and they’re informed by different experiences and backgrounds and opportunities. I haven’t experienced that tension myself, before or since coming the Sotheby's, but I come from an old school conservation science background where I'm one of three players. I view it as a three legged stool. And that first most important leg of this stool is the curator, is the catalogue raisonné author, is the independent expert. The second leg is the provenance leg, and I'm the third leg.  My job is there just to steady the stool. Steve Schindler:  You’re telling yourself short Jamie but – Katie Wilson-Milne:  You’re creating a stool, but yes we take your points. Steve Schindler:  Yeah, one of the things that also dawns on me because we – we have experienced the problem in what we do of authenticators being reluctant now to authenticate work for reasons that we’re all well aware of: they get sued. They get sued by people who view themselves as possessing authentic works and they disagree with authenticators’ opinions. Katie Wilson-Milne:  What would be the basis for a lawsuit on those grounds? Steve Schindler:  Well, we’ve seen a lot of different theories, most of which had been rejected. It could be a theory of negligence, there have been reasons as wild as antitrust theories that have been set out. And the interesting thing is most of the lawsuits against authenticators end up either being settled or dismissed favorably towards the authenticators, but they have to spend an awful lot of money defending themselves, which is why they – in many cases, foundations and authenticating boards have stopped authenticating, and experts who are not paid a great deal of money typically to give opinions and find themselves tremendously at risk and we’ve been working in the art law community trying to remedy that legislatively at least in New York, but it does dawn on me that machines can't get sued probably, not yet. And so if there was a room for science to provide a clear or more objective authentication, it might alleviate some of the burdens on the whole process, I don’t know if you have any reactions to that. Jamie Martin:  I do I guess, I think the Knoedler case was probably a textbook case of where an expert in good faith working first for the Knoedler gallery and its director in providing reliable, accurate opinions on the attribution of authenticity of works and then subsequently working for a number of people who purchased works from the gallery – again in good faith providing accurate, reliable durable data and conclusions got caught up not in a lawsuit but in a flurry of subpoenas. Katie Wilson-Milne:  This expert is you, Jamie. Jamie Martin:  This expert is me. And I had never heard of a third-party expert having to retain legal council to produce documents and to represent the expert in court to answer allegations of obstruction of proper discovery and handling of evidence before. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So even the scientist can get caught up in these legal issues. Jamie Martin:  And it had a chilling effect during the Knoedler case.  Before Knoedler, I could pick up the phone and call someone of the National Gallery and ask if I could come in and look through the research files on a particular case. Once the subpoenas went out and Knoedler, which included the director of the National Gallery – I would call the National Gallery and I was told by my colleagues, “We’ve been instructed by the legal counsel not to answer the phone when you call.”  Now since Knoedler, that’s gotten better but the chilling effect in Knoedler was that you could be caught up in this and your life could be turned inside out. And other scientists who you know could say horrible things about you that had no basis in fact. And that was just the way the system worked. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Let’s talk about the famous Knoedler case which, you were involved in it, we were also peripherally. Steve Schindler:  Full disclosure – I guess at this point, since Jamie brought it up. We were representing Jamie and that’s how we were – fortunate enough to meet him and to be sitting here with him today. Katie Wilson-Milne:  There were many, many lawyers involved in the Knoedler case. All right, so the Knoedler Gallery was the oldest and one of the most respected art galleries in New York City and the United States. It had been a business for 165 years in a beautiful town house on the Upper East Side. And in 2011, at the end of 2011, it abruptly shut down declaring bankruptcy. In the background of this declaration of bankruptcy in going out of business was a brewing scandal over the sale of about 40 works of art that Knoedler sold and had alleged work created by who’s who of modern masters: Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, William De Kooning, and others. There was one other dealer, Julian Weissman, who had sold 23 similar works of art. But we’ll focus on the Knoedler aspect of this. These works were said to have brought in up to $80 million in profits for the dealers and following the galleries, closing this started to come out. There were rapid succession of lawsuits that were filed by collectors, alleging that these works were fake. And not to give away the end of the story they were fake. The provenance of these works had been sketchy. The works had all been brought to Knoedler by a Long Island art dealer, her name was Glafira Rosales who claimed to have obtained these works – never before seen on the market – from the children of a European Jewish collector, who wanted to remain anonymous for a variety of tantalizing reasons which people can look up in the newspaper. This collector had supposedly bought these works through a dealer and friend of these artist directly from the artist studios in the ‘60s – the ‘50s and the ‘60s. So that’s why the works had never been seen on the market before. The story changed slightly over time and no documentation was ever provided by Rosales substantially in these origins, but that was the story that gallery retold to the buyers of these pieces and then later when they were brought in to these lawsuits. So Knoedler and its President, a woman named Ann Freedman did maintain that the works were genuine through the beginning of many of these lawsuits, notwithstanding the fact that Jamie demonstrated that many of them, conclusively were not genuine. But in August 2013 in a parallel criminal investigation at the U.S. attorney’s office was involved in, Rosales was indicted and the FBI raided a house in Queens, where a very talented Chinese immigrant artist had been creating all these works. He had been creating these De Kooning’s and Motherwell’s and Rothko’s and the evidence was right there. Steve Schindler:  He had an amazing repertoire. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah it was incredible and it – and when law enforcement got at the house the doors were open, someone told me that or I read somewhere that a cereal bowl was half full and this artist had just fled.  Nothing had been really taken or disturbed, so it was pretty conclusive, after this Knoedler and Ann Freedman changed their story. They admitted the works were fake. And then they argued that they had also been defrauded, that they had no way of knowing that the words would have been fake. So there were series of civil litigations, most of them have settled, no criminal charges were ever brought against the gallery or Ann Freedman.  Glafira Rosales was indicted. She pled guilty. Steve Schindler:  She pled guilty and was given a very lenient sentence, which was house arrest, I believe, and some restitution. Katie Wilson-Milne: Yeah and the Chinese artist is no longer in the United States and that’s all we know. So Jamie tell us how you were involved in the Knoedler case? Jamie Martin:  Well, I was first hired by Ann Freedman and Knoedler Gallery to look at two purported Robert Motherwell paintings. And what became clear early on is that the works were created over old paintings, part of which had been removed with an electric orbital sander which was not a practice that Motherwell used. So that was one clue.  Another clue was that the works had a series of white grounds that were materials that Motherwell was not using in the 1950s. One painting was signed and dated ‘53, the other was dated ‘56 is I recall. So I was finding materials that Motherwell wasn’t using till late ‘60s and I was finding pigments that weren’t introduced in paints until the ‘70s. So that work concluded and some years later I was asked to examine Jackson Pollock painting that was purchased for around $17 million. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Also by the gallery or as – Jamie Martin:  Yeah, it was sold by the gallery as a work by Jackson Pollock and within just a few days I was finding acrylic paint and I was finding pigments that weren’t being used and artist paints until the 1980s and 1990s. I issued a report, the attorney gave it to Knoedler, and Knoedler closed the next day. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And so you were hired by a collector, a buyer to do that analysis? Jamie Martin:  Yeah. I then became involved in a series of other works including a purported Mark Rothko painting and that painting was a fake based on a number of features, the principle one being that the Chinese forger used a white ground underneath the paint. Mark Rothko never used white grounds in the 1950s. Katie Wilson-Milne:  What are white grounds? Jamie Martin:  A ground would be like a primer, it would be like a base coat that was applied to the canvas. In the 1950s Rothko was using a transparent colored ground and in this case it was an opaque white ground and it was a white ground that you could see at the edges, if you’re new to look for it. So that was a tip off on that work and they were whole selection of other works that I examined. For collectors, also for the U.S. attorney’s office and FBI, and to put it in a nutshell, what I was finding in this group of more than 20 works was a pattern of reuse of old paintings to make new paintings, so that the backs of the paintings looked appropriately old. Katie Wilson-Milne:  This is a common technique right?  Beltracchi was doing this too. Jamie Martin:  Very common technique. Take something that’s old and recycle it and on the front paint something that’s new and make it look old. So that was another thing I was finding – that material was being applied to the front of the works to make it look artificially old. I was also finding co-occurrence of the same material. So many of these works painted by more than five artists over a period that spanned about three decades from the late ‘40s to the early ‘60s contained the same white grounds.  I mean, the same white paints. Katie Wilson-Milne:  By different artists. Steve Schindler:  So this was a case where you were fortunate to be able to have tested a number of works by the same forger and even though each work in itself had anomalies that led you to conclude that they were fakes, when you looked at them collectively and it was overwhelming? Jamie Martin:  Exactly, so it was pointing to a common source for all of the paintings and that work continued. I was asked to examine the materials that were ceased from the Chinese forger’s garage which was an interesting process to go through for about six months. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So you were working with the FBI for then. Jamie Martin:  I was.  I was working for the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office on the case as well. So I was able to look at the evidence that they ceased. I was able to examine practice paintings that the forger had created to try to achieve something that look convincing. Katie Wilson-Milne:  You described several anomalies, what was the real smoking gun for you in the Knoedler case? Jamie Martin:  Well, it was a different smoking gun for different works, I mean we – we knew for example that Jackson Pollock died in 1956, so when I'm finding polymers and when I'm finding pigments that were first discovered and patented and first used in paints decades after his death, the only explanation would be time travel – which I'm not a big fan of, so these were obviously fraudulent works. There were also features that contradicted the provenance. One thing that was mentioned in the provenance was that the works were collected over a period of a few years. And they were stored for decades and they were stored in a “hermetically sealed room,” which implies a room that had stable conditions – clean, archival – and many of the works showed paint transfers. They showed accumulation of debris and grime, which was just inconsistent with the story. And that’s one of the features we look at. We not only look at the composition of the work that we’re studying, but we look at the provenance.  We look at the story to see if we see evidence of that or evidence that speaks against it. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Am I remembering correctly that you found a fleece fiber in one of the paintings? Jamie Martin:  Oh, that was a different painting. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Oh okay, I love that. Steve Schindler:  That was a different case, but that’s also one of my favorite stories. Why don’t you share that with us? Jamie Martin:  This is a work that was signed and it was dated 1932 and the work was fairly large. As I recall, it was about 24” by 36” or 32” by 48” and as usual, I went through all the first steps with the work: technical imaging, stereo microscope exam.  I made an inventory of all the materials used to create the work, from the canvas to the primer to all the different paints in the pallet. I analyzed all these materials, and I found that the binders and the pigments were consistent with paints that could have been used in 1932.  And that’s the point at which a lot of scientists or labs would stop and they would write a report. Katie Wilson-Milne:  It looks good. Jamie Martin:  It looks fine, we find nothing to speak against it.  That wasn’t my style, that wasn’t my practice, in part, because it’s informed by a forensic approach. So at that point whenever I engaged in a study and I find a result like that I start over. And I look at every square millimeter of the painting under the stereo microscope and I look for what’s called adventitious material, material that doesn’t belong there. Something that wasn’t part of the paint, something that the artist didn’t intend to include in the painting and I got – I started the bottom and by the time I got to the top two thirds of the painting, I found a fiber in the paint. And I knew it dried in the paint because two ends stuck out and the center was deeply embedded in dried paint. And I took a very small sample of that fiber and analyzed it and I found polypropylene. Polypropylene fiber was first discovered and introduced in 1958. So on the basis of finding one fiber I was able to conclude that there was no way that that work was painted in 1932. I had to spread out, I had to be sure that all the paint was integral across the surface.  Fast forward to 2015, there’s a book published in Paris called The Forger. And it’s a story of a young man who meets a master forger who teaches the young man all the tricks of the trade and the last trick of the trade is: when you’re creating a fake you should always wear a cotton or linen smock, because if one synthetic fiber falls from your clothing and becomes embedded in the painting a good scientist will find it and declare the work a fake. That’s been part of a lecture I've given that was on the Columbia Art Law School website for eight years. And I suspect the person writing the book has internet connection. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah, I do just want to say before we get off Knoedler that it would be hard to overestimate how significant this scandal was for the art world. I mean the art world is a very secretive place deals happen privately, there was not a lot of paperwork and the fact that this scandal was going on and being covered up so well for – well over a decade and that 10s of millions of dollars were being made off the sale of these fake works was really disturbing and even art world people who certainly don’t follow legal claims and cases know about this case, because of the amount of money and the number of forgeries, but also because of the significance of the Knoedler gallery to New York, it really pioneered the art gallery world and it had been at the forefront of the art gallery world in the United States for really long time. So if a buyer went to Knoedler they felt like, “well, if there’s anywhere I can go and I can trust what they’re going to tell me, it’s the Knoedler gallery.” And that really upended people sense of safety I think in the art market. Steve Schindler:  Right, and that was also reinforced by the judge who was hearing these cases in one of his decisions, because the Knoedler gallery and Ann Freedman, one of their defenses was well these sophisticated buyers should have known better, should have done their own due diligence and one of the things that judge said was, “but they were buying these works from Knoedler. They were buying them from one of the most respected galleries in New York.” Katie Wilson-Milne:  Which is the due diligence. Steve Schindler:   Right. Well actually, and one of the things – as long as we were talking about Knoedler still – that always interested me was how Ann Freedman used the fear of authenticators to speak out in her favor and we had represented a couple of these individuals who invariably recalled over to a gallery with a crowd of people shown a fake work and who looked at it and either didn’t say anything or said, “oh that’s nice” or something along those lines. And then afterwards she claimed that they had authenticated these works. And the way that they had authenticated them was to not shout out in a crowded room, “I think this is a fake!” Katie Wilson-Milne:  They stood in front of the work. Steve Schindler:  And they didn’t say anything. So – and of course they would never do that, they were not asked to do that, but even in the most ideal conditions most of these types of experts would have been afraid to speak out like that for fear of being sued and dragged further into this kind of case in the way that Jamie mentioned that he was. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And another significant aspect of Knoedler, and one of the reasons we are so thrilled to be talking to you, Jamie, is that it was one of the first times I think for a lot of people that they understood how science could interact with claims of fakes and forgeries and it was in such a public way that I think the scientific analysis of art hadn’t been widely discussed or understood before. I don’t know if you could talk a little bit about how important scientific analysis was to the outcome of the Knoedler scandal in general but also if you’ve seen the importance of scientific analysis or people’s perceived – how they perceive the importance of scientific analysis increase after Knoedler? Jamie Martin:  Well, I think what you have seen after Knoedler is an increase in the number of investor backed art analysis labs who are offering services to art investors and to some degree of art collectors. So, it was clear from Knoedler, because Knoedler was so widely publicized and covered over such a long period of time. And that the science really did factor quite importantly in the determinations that people recognized that science can be a very effective and necessary tool to assess those claimed attributes. Katie Wilson-Milne:  I will just say that, I perceive the scientific analysis of Knoedler being one of the most important aspects of the proof that was used in those cases and that without the science there were such competing opinions from so called connoisseurs that it was difficult for a non-expert audience like the judge or if there had been a jury to make sense of those kinds of claims, but when there’s the scientific report it sort of – it changed the game in the case. Jamie Martin:  Yeah, I testified in the De Sole case in January 2016, and what I heard after the trial was that the jury really did rely on the scientific information – the presentation of the findings in such a straight forward, visually accessible way – allowed them to understand the weight of the scientific evidence against the works, much in the same way that the testimony about the financial analysis and accounting did to. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Right. The De Sole case, just for our audience, was one of the biggest Knoedler cases that went to trial and then ultimately settled. Steve Schindler:  So, Jamie, if we were assembling the all-time Hall of Fame of forgers, who do you think would be on the top of the list? Who is the best all-time forger in whatever categories you want to rate them? Jamie Martin:  Let’s say, so this would be modern times, this would be since Van Meegeren  because fabulous forgeries were going on in Greek and Roman time and every time since. And Thomas Hoving talks a lot about that in his book. Van Meegeren was an incredible forger who exploited what he knew conservation scientists could and could not do. He knew that we could identify pigments. He knew that we had trouble identifying the binder, the liquid or glue that you mix with pigments to make paint. So he was very careful in his selection of pigments.  In order to make his paintings dry quickly he threw in a synthetic polymer called Bakelite, which, after he created the work, he would put it an oven and heat it for some hours or days and it would be rock hard, as if the paint had aged naturally over three or 400 years. He was later found out.  He was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and the court instructed him that if he really was a master forger, he should paint a fake Vermeer in the court room. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So he was forging Vermeers? Jamie Martin:  He was forging Vermeers, and he sold a work to Goebbels, and he was in a lot of hot water over that. Steve Schindler:  Wasn’t that also one of his defenses and the collaboration allegation, that, “Well I wasn’t collaborating, I sold him a fake, I sold the Nazis fake art, not real art.” Jamie Martin:  Yeah. It was worth a try, it was a little flimsy. The thing is is that forgers have access to the same technical literature that I do. So conservation scientists like us, we publish the results of our findings, of analyses of documented artists, and if a forger wants to go and read our findings and try to replicate the same materials, theoretically they can do that. And there is a lot of evidence that forgers do look at technical literature. The best forgers I've seen – well, the worst forger I've seen, is a man named William Toy and he was creating fake paintings in Louisiana. His downfall was his love of cats. Katie Wilson-Milne:  That’s a classic downfall! Jamie Martin:  He had 20 or 30 cats in his home, and I did the project for the FBI, and they gave me memory sticks from cameras that showed cats all over his house, including cats on the table where he made his fakes. And in every one of the fake works I examined for the FBI I found cat hair embedded. So he was not a careful forger, but the forgers – Steve Schindler:  There were lot of lessons in that story. Jamie Martin:  Yes. Steve Schindler:  Some involved cats. Jamie Martin:  Yeah, don’t paint around cats and don’t wear polar flees when you’re creating an old master. The better forgers, the forgers that really had the painting skill, the kind of skill that I learned when I was painting, would have to be Beltracchi and then one other forger who’s name I refuse to speak publically, because he is absolutely unrepentant about his work.  But he’s probably the most technically gifted painter-forger I've ever seen. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And never caught. Jamie Martin:  No, caught. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Well, he was caught but not punished. Jamie Martin:  I caught him many times, but he was never indicted and he was never brought to account. Katie Wilson-Milne:  We’ll post links to some of these references. Steve Schindler:  We’ve also seen him bragging about his accomplishments and it’s frustrating. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah he speaks often in public in New York about his great skills. Steve Schindler:  We could do this probably for another hour, but we know you have places to go and every good thing has to come to an end, but thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. Jamie Martin:  You’re welcome, it’s always a pleasure. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Until next time I'm Katie Wilson Milne. Steve Schindler:  And I'm Steve Schindler bringing you the Art Law Podcast. A podcast exploring the places where art intersects with and interferes with the law. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And vice versa. Produced by Jackie Santos

Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II is a new recording of music created during the darkest chapter of European Jewish history. During these years, a group of scholars attempted to preserve songs written by Jewish Red Army soldiers, refugees, victims, and survivors of Ukrainian ghettos. Following the war, the researchers were arrested during Stalin's anti¬-Jewish purge and their works were confiscated. In the early 2000s, Yiddish Professor Anna Shternshis traveled to Kiev where she discovered that these songs had survived. Anna shares the history of these deteriorating, fragile documents, which contain some of the most poignant and historically important Soviet Yiddish songs of World War II. Episode 0177 March 9, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

The Ottoman Empire is no more. The British have won the Great War, becoming "the Iron Wall" sought by the Zionist movement to strengthen their political position in Palestine. The Zionist Commission negotiates with Arab nationalist leaders outside of Palestine, bypassing Palestinians who have little politcal control of their own land. The theoretical "Arab Question" is becoming less theoretical, as Palestinians are not interested in leaving their homes unless forced. Unprecedented acts of violence and anti-Jewish riots terrify an increasingly militant Zionist movement, whose members are attempting to forge a new Jewish identity. The settlers who once fled European anti-semitism now set out to establish a European-Jewish society, carved out of the Middle East. As the political climate becomes increasingly sectarian, an all-out clash seems inevitable. The Movements is a leftist history and politics podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. Transcripts may be requested for accessibility reasons by e-mailing movementspod@gmail.com. Find us on facebook and twitter @movementspod and support the show by donating at https://www.patreon.com/movementspodSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/movementspod)

Zionism, the nationalist movement to establish a Jewish state, was born out of the broken promise of European Liberalism and enlightenment values. As pogroms and anti-semitic conspiracy theories spread throughout Europe, Jewish intellectuals inspired by Nationalism set out to create a “New Jew” in Palestine. But Palestine is already inhabited by Arabs, including Arab Jews and Sephardim, who ask that their European brothers and sisters learn rather than destroy the local culture. The Arab masses are forced into wage labor after being dispossessed of their land by European and Arab capital, who proceed to sell the land to European Jewish settlers. Without political control of their own land, Palestinian intellectuals begin to assert themselves and build a modern nationalism of their own. Jewish socialists split over the question of Zionism, as revolutionaries denounce the emergence of Zionism in the movement for rejecting worker internationalism in favor of ethnic chauvinism. As more Jews immigrate to Palestine and Arabs barred from employment, the logical conclusion to “the Arab Question” becomes more and more clear. The Movements is a leftist history and politics podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. Transcripts may be requested for accessibility reasons by e-mailing movementspod@gmail.com. Find us on facebook and twitter @movementspod and support the show by donating at https://www.patreon.com/movementspodSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/movementspod)

Holocaust studies deal with the myriad aspects of the mass murder of Jews. The subject of genocide overshadows the very important impact the Holocaust has made on post-war societies. This impact covers many disciplines such as sociology, psychology, law, theology, ethics, philosophy, politics, medical issues, history, literature, art, and others. Only by grouping all of these disciplines together in one area, Post-Holocaust Studies, can one understand multi-disciplinary issues such as migration and other survivor subjects, restitution, memory, etc. The grouping of post-Holocaust issues also provides a looking-glass on contemporary societies. Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is the former Chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His many books deal with European-Israeli and European-Jewish issues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism and the International Leadership Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

1. IDF Shells Hamas Position In Gaza After Coming Under Fire The Israeli army has just released details of an overnight incident in which IDF tanks shelled a Hamas position in southern Gaza in response to gunshots fired at IDF troops from over the border. #IDF #Gaza ____________________ 2. Israel Approves Construction Of 2,500 New Homes In West Bank Israel has just approved the construction of 25 hundred more homes in the West Bank most of which will be built in existing settlement blocks. #Settlements #WestBank ____________________ 3. P.A. Says There's Been No U.S. Promise Against Moving Embassy Senior Palestinian officials are denying reports that the White House gave them behind-the-scenes promises that Washington will not to carry through on President Trump's promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. #PA #Embassy ____________________ 4. Israeli Officials Sending Mixed Messages To Trump Initial talks between Israelis and the Trump administration are covering a range of issues that require policy clarification. Foreign policy expert Dan Diker says Prime Minister Netanyahu will have to figure out what he really wants before he meeting with President Trump next month in the White House. #DanDiker #SteveLeibowitz #Trump ____________________ 5. Under Cover Of Night, Syrians Seek Help From ‘Israeli Enemy' Israel has treated more than 2600 Syrians wounded in civil war who make their way to the Jewish state for help. #Syria #Treatment ____________________ 6. European Jews Plea For Israeli Aid In Fighting Anti-Semitism Israeli security officials took center stage at this year's annual meeting of the “European Jewish Association” in Brussels. European Jewish community leaders are turning to Israel for help in fighting anti-Semitism. #Jewry #Europe ____________________ 7. Israeli Company Forever Changing The Way We Pay Shlomi Cohen, CEO of On-Track Innovations speaking at ILTV studio about On-Track-Innovations (OTI) and the secure, cashless, mobile, wearable payment solutions that it has created. #ShlomiCohen #OTI ____________________ 8. Israel In Top 10 Of Bloomberg's “Most Innovative Countries” In the “Bloomberg Innovation Index for 2017” Israel was found as the world-leader in the number of researchers it has per capita. It came second for it's high level of research and development and third for the density in high-tech. #Bloomberg #Israel ____________________ 9. Several Jewish Actors Recognized With Oscar Nominations This year's nominations for the academy awards includes two Jewish actors competing for the top honors, one of whom is even an Israeli. #Oscars #Jews ____________________ 10. Israeli Team A Finalist In Google Lunar X-Prize Race Israel's “Space I-L” team among finalists in Google Lunar X-Prize race that involves 2017 landing and navigation of a robot on the moon. #SpaceIL #Google ____________________ 11. Hebrew Word Of The Day, YAREAH | ירח = MOON Learn a new Hebrew word every day. Today's word is "yareah" which means "moon" #Learnhebrew #Hebrewwordofday #Iltvhebrewwordofday _____________________ 12. The Weather Forecast Tonight should be cloudy with a chance of light rain and a low of fifty-three; or twelve degrees Celsius. You can expect more clouds and a drop in temperatures tomorrow to a high of sixty-five or eighteen degrees Celsius. #Israelweather #Israelforecast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Few could imagine the extent of Nazi Germany's antisemitic policies. The Wannsee Conference, held in January of 1942, outlined the horrific "Final Solution" to exterminate the European Jewish population.

Few could imagine the extent of Nazi Germany's antisemitic policies. The Wannsee Conference, held in January of 1942, outlined the horrific "Final Solution" to exterminate the European Jewish population.

May 3, 2015. Mark Glickman discussed his book, "Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books," an epic story about the largest collection of Jewish books in the world--tens of millions of books that the Nazis looted from European Jewish families and institutions. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7361

In recent months, a large number of extreme anti-Semitic expressions by elected representatives of the British Labour Party have come to light. The publicity has forced Labour, which is under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, to investigate anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism in the party. The anti-Semitism issue is overshadowed by the many consequences of Brexit, which include a major crisis in Labour. Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is the former Chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His many books deal with European-Israeli and European-Jewish issues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism, and the International Leadership Award by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, examines new evidence of the role of oil politics in the founding of U.S. policy towards Israel. Gendzier discusses and contextualizes the response of U.S, policy makers to the Holocaust and the plight of European Jewish refugees, and also provides a nuanced account of the role of the American Zionist movement. This book brings a new perspective on the origins of issues that are still very much with us today.

In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, examines new evidence of the role of oil politics in the founding of U.S. policy towards Israel. Gendzier discusses and contextualizes the response of U.S, policy makers to the Holocaust and the plight of European Jewish refugees, and also provides a nuanced account of the role of the American Zionist movement. This book brings a new perspective on the origins of issues that are still very much with us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, examines new evidence of the role of oil politics in the founding of U.S. policy towards Israel. Gendzier discusses and contextualizes the response of U.S, policy makers to the Holocaust and the plight of European Jewish refugees, and also provides a nuanced account of the role of the American Zionist movement. This book brings a new perspective on the origins of issues that are still very much with us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, examines new evidence of the role of oil politics in the founding of U.S. policy towards Israel. Gendzier discusses and contextualizes the response of U.S, policy makers to the Holocaust and the plight of European Jewish refugees, and also provides a nuanced account of the role of the American Zionist movement. This book brings a new perspective on the origins of issues that are still very much with us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices