#yehuda koren

[letyourwordsliveon]

Lover of Unreason by Yehuda Koren

[derangedrhythms]

You know, in bed he smells like a butcher.

Assia Wevill, on Ted Hughes, from ‘A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill’ by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

[hairtusk]

D.H. Lawrence, 'He-Goat' / Assia Wevill, quoted in Eliat Negrev & Yehuda Koren, 'A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill'

[aprettyjewishyear]

אֶלָּא חֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר בְּאָב מַאי הִיא? אָמַר רַב יְהוּדָה אָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל: יוֹם שֶׁהוּתְּרוּ שְׁבָטִים לָבוֹא זֶה בָּזֶה.

However, what is the special joy of the fifteenth of Av? Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said: This was the day on which the members of different tribes were permitted to enter one another’s tribe, by intermarriage.

translation courtesy of Sefaria, Koren-Steinsaltz. Taanit 30b:9.

photo credit to Amy & Stuart photography.

[triple-tree-ranch]

Aryeh Alexander Sandler, the late 5-year-old

The late Gabriel Issachar Sandler, 3 years old

The late Daniel Aryeh Wiplich, 16 years old

The late Elad Fogel, 4 years old

The late Hadas Vogel is three months old

The late Yoav Fogel, 10 years old

The late Yonatan Palmer, one year old

The late Shlomo Nativ, 13 years old

The late Segev Paniel Avihil, 15 years old

Yonatan Yitzhak Elder, 16 years old

Yondav Chaim Hirshfeld, 18 years old

The late Naria Cohen, 15 years old

The late Yohai Lifshitz, 18 years old

The late Avraham David Mozes, 16 years old

The late Roy Aharon Roth, 18 years old

The late Eliyahu Pinchas Ashari, 18 years old

The late Mazel Zaribi, 15 years old

The late Daniel Waltz, 16 years old

The late Amir Naim, 17 years old

Shaked Lasker, the late 16-year-old

The late Omer Menashe Pisakhov, 8 years old

Ella Aboxis, the late 17-year-old

The late Rachel Hali ben Abu, 16 years old

The late Oz Israel ben Meir, 14 years old

The late Nofer Horvitz, 16 years old

The late Avihai Levi, 16 years old

The late Aviad Yehuda Mansour, 15 years old

The late Yuval Abba, 4 years old

The late Afik Ohion Zahavi, 3 years old

The late Lior Azoulai, 18 years old

The late Aviel Yitzhak Atch, 3 years old

Two-year-old Dorit from the late Binsan movie

The late Roni Sarah Hatuel, 6 years old

The late Merav Rachel Hatuel is two years old

The late Hila Esther Hatuel, 10 years old

The late Hadar Simcha Hatuel, 9 years old

Son Jonathan Zuckerman, 18 years old

The late Lior Liorinka Niv, 3 years old

The late Gilad Giladi Niv, 11 years old

The late Avraham Shaked is one year old

The late Tomer Almog, 9 years old

The late Habib Dadon, 16 years old

The late Benjamin Bergman, 15 years old

The late Avraham Bar-Or, 12 years old

The late Shmuel Zargari, one year old

Noya Zar, the late Aviv, one year old

Liran Zer Aviv, the late 4-year-old

The late Erez Gizro Hershkowitz, 18 years old

The late Tom Hershko, 15 years old

The late Daniel Harosh, 16 years old

The late Shmuel Taubenfeld, one year old

The late Moran Menachem, 17 years old

The late Yuval Mandelwitz, 13 years old

The late Abigail Lytle, 14 years old

The late Noam Leibovitz, 7 years old

The late Tehila Natanzan, 3 years old

The late Elisheva Meshulami, 16 years old

The late Elizabeth Liz Katzman, 19 years old

Asaf Blondi Tzur Zollinger, the late 17-year-old

The late Smeder Firstetter, 16 years old

The late Asaf Steyer, 10 years old

The late Issachar Dov Reinitz, 9 years old

The late Tal Kerman, 17 years old

The late Shani Avitzedek Abutzadeka, 16 years old

The late Asnat Abramov, 16 years old

Matan Ohion, the late 5-year-old

The late Noam Levi Ohion, 4 years old

The late Yael Ohana, 11 years old

The late Orly Ophir, 15 years old

The late Noa Orbach, 18 years old

The late Dvir Anter, 14 years old

Yaakov Avraham Eliyahu, the late one year old

The late Lidor Ilan, 11 years old

The late Oriya Ilan is one year old

The late Gal Eisenman, 5 years old

Gilila Bugla, 11 years old

The late Hodia Hudish Asraf, 13 years old

The late Noy Enter, 12 years old

The late Shubal Zion Dickstein, 9 years old

The late Elmer Dzbrailov, 16 years old

The late Adi Dahan, 17 years old

Jonathan Gamaliel, 16 years old

The late Hadar Hershkovitz, 14 years old

The late Rachel Gila Teller, 16 years old

The late Gabriel Hoter, 17 years old

The late Shmuel Ephraim Yerushalmi, 17 years old

Atara Livna, 15 years old

The late Racheli Hali Levy, 17 years old

The late Shiraz Nimhad, 6 years old

The late Shaul Nimhad, 15 years old

The late Liran Nimhad is 3 years old

The late Avraham Eliyahu Nicham, 16 years old

Baruch Asher Zvi Markus, 18 years old

Her father, the late Malka, is one year old

The late Nehmi'a Amar, 15 years old

The late Linoi Serousi, 14 years old

Avraham Yosef Haim Seton, the late 17-year-old

The late Gaston Parfi Parfinial, 15 years old

The late Ilan Perlman, 8 years old

Aharon Mordechai Eric Krugliak, 18 years old

The late Sinai Kenan is one year old

The late Tal Tzvi Tlik Kurzweil, 18 years old

The late Ran Koren, 18 years old

The late Gal Koren, 14 years old

Asaf Moshe Tzafira, 18 years old

Avraham Nere' Shebo, deceased, 16 years old

Avishai Yosef Shabo, deceased, 5 years old

The late Keren Shatsky, 14 years old

The late Nathaniel Riahi, 17 years old

The late Erez Shlomo Rond, 18 years old

The late Ofer Ron, 18 years old

The late Yafit Rabivo is 14 years old

The late Daniel Bat-El Shafi, 5 years old

The late Adi Sheeran, 17 years old

Sara Tafarat Shilon, deceased, one year old

The late Gilad Stiglitz, 14 years old

Zvi Yaakov Yisrael Shabu Zal, 12 years old

The late Hadas Turgeman, 14 years old

The late Michael Sherashevsky, 16 years old

The late Assaf Avitan, 15 years old

The late Irina Usadchi, 18 years old

The late Yosef Ish-Ran, 14 years old

The late Yossi Elezra, 18 years old

The late Yuri Goshchin, 18 years old

The late Marina Berkovski, 17 years old

Shoshana Rachel Shushi ben Yishai Zalvat 16

The late Adam Weinstein, 14 years old

Yaakov Israel Danino, deceased, 17 years old

Genia Keren Dorfman, the late 16-year-old

The late Ido Cohen, 18 years old

The late Maria Tagiltsev, 14 years old

The late Tamar Messengisar, 8 years old

The late Jacob Kobi Mendel, 13 years old

The late Aliza Malka, 16 years old

The late Mariana Medvedenko, 16 years old

The late Naftali Ben-Zion Lantzakron, 13 years old

The late Ronen Landau, 17 years old

The late Alexey Lupalo, 17 years old

The late Raya Sahivashordar, 14 years old

Hamda Bracha Sahivashurdar, the late two-year-old

Avraham Yitzchak Sahivashordar, the late 4-year-old

The late Irina Nepomniaschi, 16 years old

The late Yelena Nalimov, 18 years old

The late Yulia Nalimov, 16 years old

The late Avraham Nachman Avrom Nitzani, 18 years old

The late Shalhav Tahiya Pess is one year old

The late Yair Amar, 13 years old

The late Yulia Yael Skalianik, 15 years old

The late Michal Sara Raziel, 16 years old

The late Malka Hana Malki Roth, 15 years old

The late Eliran Rosenberg, 14 years old

The late Simona Rodin, 18 years old

The late Menashe Mani Regev, 14 years old

The late Katrina Arias, 15 years old

Anya Eniota Kazachkov, 16 years old

The late Golan Turgeman, 15 years old

The late Yochaved Shoshan, 10 years old

Yehuda, who is one year old

The late Ofir Rahum, 17 years old

The late Gil-Ad Sha'er, 16 years old

The late Naftali Frankel, 16 years old

The late Adele Beaton, 4 years old

[pastedpast]

I didn't buy this book, but took a photo of the blurb in the inside cover. I've typed it out here:

Rachel Beer [1858 - 1927] was a rebel and a pioneer. In the late nineteenth century, at a time when women were still denied the vote, she became the first and only woman ever to edit not one but two national British newspapers - the Sunday Times and The Observer - and to do it simultaneously. It was to be over 80 years before another woman took the helm of a Fleet Street paper. [ Rosie Boycott?]

As a woman she was barred not only from frequenting the London Clubs that fed her rival male editors with political gossip, but also from the Press Gallery of the House of Commons. However, whilst other female journalists were restricted to frocks, frills and frippery, Rachel managed to raise her formidable voice on national and foreign political issues, including the Dreyfus affair, as well as on social and women's issues, often controversially. Rachel was a member of the Sassoon family, who had made their fortune in Indian opium and cotton, and she was aunt of the poet Siegfried Sassoon [war poet, writer, and soldier]. Her marriage to Frederick Beer brought together two wealthy dynasties. Julius Beer, Frederick's father, came from Germany and made his fortune on the London Sock Exchange and as an entrepreneur of railroads and telegraphy. But the loving union of the two heirs also brought Rachel strife and heartbreak - for while the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, attended the wedding, Julius Beer's decision to abandon the Jewish religion and baptize his son led to Rachel being disowned by many of her proudly Jewish family. Rachel anticipated her family's rage, but ultimately followed her heart, only for tragedy to strike when her beloved husband died and she was certified as a person of unsound mind.

Indeed, until three years ago, her grave in Tunbridge Wells laid untended and simply described her as "daughter of David Sassoon'', with no reference to her remarkable achievements. Thanks to the campaigning work of the former Observer journalist Ann Treneman, and donations from the Guardian and the Sunday Times, her grave was cleaned up and decorated with a commemorative plaque. Tunbridge Wells Borough Council also erected a plaque on the building that now stands on the site of her former home, thus finally affording her the recognition that her family failed to offer during her lifetime or in the nearly ninety intervening years.* 

The doctor who judged Rachel to have become mentally unstable was Sir George Savage, who also diagnosed Virginia Woolf as insane a few years later (he is among the figures lampooned in the character of Sir William Bradshaw in her novel, Mrs. Dalloway). Beer had been committed for psychiatric treatment after the death of her husband. (Acc. to Wikipedia, he died of syphilis, which he [possibly] passed on to his wife).

She spent the last two decades of her life living in Tunbridge Wells, but was as good as "erased from history". This book by Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren appears to have been the first attempt at shining a light on this forgotten story.

*Info from a blog called Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship ('The Sad Story of Auntie Rachel' here), which is an interesting read about Sassoon's apparent disregard for his aunt, despite the fact that it was her money which enabled him to buy the comfortable residence where he would spend the last thirty years of his life.

[lovingsylvia]

93 years ago today, on 15 May 1927, Assia Esther Gutmann was born in Berlin, Germany to her Jewish father Lew (Lonya) Gutmann from Latvia (with roots in the Ukraine) and to her  Lutheran German mother Elizabetha (Lisa) Bertha Margarete (née Gaedecke). Her siter Celia was born on 22 September 1929.

At the time of Assia’s birth, her parents were living in Berlin Charlottenburg in Germany and Celia later remembered that “We were brought up like any German girl, without a trace of Jewishness. The house rules and manners were German, but the backbone was Russian”.

After Hitler was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933 and living in Germany became too dangerous, her parents decided to leave Germany for Pisa, Italy and to subsequently move to Tel-Aviv in the British-mandated territory of Palestine.

In 1943, Assia met the British soldier John Steele, whom she followed to England in September 1946 and they married on 17 May 1947. As her biographers Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev wrote in an article in The Telegraph in 2006 "she had entered an essentially loveless marriage with an Englishman at the age of 20 – largely to enable her family to emigrate to England." In April 1948, the couple emigrated to Vancouver, Canada and divorced one year later. In the meantime, her family also moved to Canada and they were all living together again.

Assia enrolled at the University of British Columbia where she studied art. She met her second husband Richard Lipsey on 21 October 1952 and moved to London, England with him one year later and back to Canada in 1956.

In the same year, Assia met the Canadian poet Davil Wevill whom she instantly began an affair with. In 1959, Assia and Richard Lipsey decided to separate and Assia went with David to Burma, now Myanmar. When the divorce was through in early 1960, Assia and David married on 16 May 1960 in Rangoon (Yangon), Burma.

After coming back in London the same year, they were apartment hunting in the summer of 1961, when they came across the apartment ad for 3 Chalcot Square, near Primrose Hill; the apartment Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes wanted to sublet. Sylvia and Ted immediately liked the couple and became friends with Assia and David. In May 1962, they invited to visit them at Court Green in Devon. Numerous sources and Hughes’ own poem “Dreamers”, published in Birthday Letters in 1998, claim that it was during the visit that Ted fell under Assia’s spell. A few weeks later, they started an affair.

After Sylvia Plath’s death, Assia moved to Court Green where she lived with Ted and his children Frieda and Nicholas. On 3 March 1965, she gave birth to her daughter Alexandra Tatiana Elise, nicknamed Shura, while still being married to David. 

However, she was not happy in Devon; she felt haunted by Sylvia’s memory and her relationship with Ted began to crumble because he refused to commit to her and was having various affairs. In 1968, Assia moved with Shura to London. In February 1969, her divorce from David was finalized. And just one month later, she killed herself and her daughter on 23 March 1969 in the same manner Sylvia Plath committed suicide.

Source: “Lover of Unreason. Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath’s Rival and Ted Hughes’ Doomed Love” by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev, 2006

[punkrockandreticence]

Ted Huge Asshole.

On the reading list:

Lover of Unreason by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

Loving Sylvia Plath by Emily Van Duyne

[autumnbell32]

*Trigger Warning- suicide discussed

Current reading ^

...for some reason I feel this ache deep in my heart, like I’m betraying Sylvia Plath by reading about the destruction of her marriage (and possibly the unraveling of her life) from an angle closer to the other woman- Assia Wevill. The entries written days before Plath ended her life were never released, and I feel like maybe the book will help me fill in the gap? I’ve never experienced the kind of loss she did- when her husband left her and her two small children (literal babies) for a mutual friend. Out of this some of her greatest poetry was born...maybe at a price, I’m not sure.

**omg

omg assia wevill committed suicide as well after a fight with hughes. she also took the life her of four year old daughter. i had no idea.

[jewishbookworld]

The Prince and the Emperors: The Life and Times of Rabbi Judah the Prince by Dov Zakheim

The Prince and the Emperors: The Life and Times of Rabbi Judah the Prince by Dov Zakheim

A biographical account of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (Rabbi Judah the Prince), also known as Rebbe, and the human and historical context that shaped the Mishna and Gemara. Drawing upon both Jewish and Roman sources, it provides a portrait of this important rabbinic sage, as well as insight into the Jewish encounter with Rome.

[letyourwordsliveon]

Lover of Unreason

[derangedrhythms]

[…] she was alarmed by his voracious sexual appetite, his superstitions about marriage and his black moods.

Assia Wevill on Ted Hughes, from ‘A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill’ by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

[nevinslibrary]

Totally Random Non-Fiction Tuesday

This book is horrific. I mean, it’s an amazing book, but, since it’s the story of Elie Wiesel’s time as a teenager when he was in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during World War II it's not an easy read.

It doesn’t shy away from anything, and, if you haven’t read it during the school years, I highly recommend reading it now. It’s intense, but also moving. And, I’m a little stunned that I haven’t recommended it until now.

You may like this book If you Liked: The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya, Wrestling With Life by George Reinitz, or In Our Hearts We Were Giants by Yehuda Koren

Night by Elie Wiesel

[nas-asas-do-tempoo]

A incrível história dos sete anões de Auschwitz

A família Ovitz, que sobreviveu inteira ao nazismo graças a um dos homens mais perversos da história: Mengele.

De todas as histórias absurdas desse período, poucas são mais incríveis que a dos sete anões de Auschwitz: uma família romena, de nome Ovitz, que conseguiu passar pelo célebre campo de concentração por causa de sua deficiência. Eles são o tema de um novo livro: Giants: The Seven Dwarfs Of Auschwitz, de Yehuda Koren e Eilat Negev. Eram do vilarejo de Rozavlea, na Transilvânia. O pai, anão, teve dez filhos, sete deles verticalmente prejudicados. A mãe, preocupada com o futuro deles, vendo que tinham talento artístico, fez com que montassem um grupo, a Trupe Lilipute. Nos anos 30, fizeram sucesso na Europa Central, cantando, dançando e estrelando esquetes. Os maridos e mulheres deles entravam imediatamente no time para ajudar no que fosse necessário. Moravam todos juntos, numa comunidade.

Quando Hitler tomou o poder, eles estavam duplamente condenados: primeiro, por ser anões (os nazistas tinham um programa de eutanásia para deficientes físicos e mentais, de modo a preservar o arianismo); depois, por serem judeus.

Em maio de 1944, os Ovitz foram mandados para Auschwitz – os sete anões e os cinco normais. Ao vê-los, os soldados imediatamente identificaram uma oportunidade de agradar o médico que estava coleccionando o que chamava de aberrações – gémeos, corcundas, gigantes, hermafroditas, obesos etc. Não pensaram duas vezes. Apesar de ser noite, sabiam que ele gostaria de ver aquelas pessoas.

Josef Mengele, o médico, adoptou-os para seu circo de horrores. “Eu fui salva pela graça do demónio”, disse Perla Ovitz.

Os soldados da SS eram brutais com os prisioneiros, mas não com os Ovitz. Como não havia outra família de anões, Mengele era um pouco mais cuidadoso com a trupe. Os Ovitz dispunham de rações mais fartas, podiam usar as próprias roupas, não raspavam o cabelo. Alguns dos prisioneiros que os viram no campo achavam que estavam tendo alucinações.

Viraram uma atracção dos encontros nocturnos dos chefes de Auschwitz (os kapos). Um cantora lembra que o programa dessas saturnálias incluía foxtrote, casais do mesmo sexo dançando, homens e mulheres bêbados rindo, contando piadas sujas. Os anões eram parte do cenário, acompanhando a orquestra batendo as mãos e os pés.

Os Ovitz viraram uma lenda. Livros de sobreviventes diziam que eles foram executados todos juntos ao lado de uma vala; que o bebê do grupo teve sua cabeça esmagada na parede por um oficial (um expediente comum); que fugiram.

Na verdade, a família escapou com vida. Em 1949, foram para Israel. Lá fizeram seu último show, em 1955. Perla morreu aos 98 anos. Tudo graças à sorte, ao imponderável, às suas características físicas – e, principalmente, à curiosidade doentia de um dos homens mais perversos da história.

[jewishandmore]

Judaism in "Do it ourselves"

Yom Kippur Morning 5781 Monday, September 28, 2020 Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York by Rabbi Jonathan Freirich

What a year.

2020, 5780 the year just past going into 5781.

It doesn’t look like it will let up any time soon.

Look at our world, our country, our city, our community, our Temple family.

You have risen to the occasion. You called everyone in our community multiple times when we first started this shut down journey on Friday, March 13. Do you remember? You organized yourselves in making sure that every TBZ member heard from someone more than once.

Knowing that we entered uncharted territory the people of our Temple Beth Zion family have over and over again come together to support the synagogue and each other. Just listen to a few of the amazing volunteer-initiated efforts that have started during this time, and this list is in no way exhaustive:

Chiavetta’s chicken fundraisers; a new initiative this year.

The innovation of lending out prayer books for the High Holy Days.

Special gifts for every member in honor of the High Holy Days.

The whole Sunday Palooza, including food drive and recycling drive.

Distributing individual Religious School packages to each and every religious school student and family.

Feast Before the Fast just yesterday.

A High Holy Days brought to you through an amazing production team led by our volunteers, and coordinated by the Ritual Committee of volunteers who manage every aspect of honors and service lay out and came here in advance to record Torah and Haftarah readings and blessings and English readings and the Kol Nidrei message and announcements.

Creating and participating in a whole new way of worshiping and connecting, many of us are now more connected than ever before because we have overcome mobility obstacles and figured out how to Zoom across generations and distances.

Broadcasting Jewish music today on WNED Classical - again led by the efforts of volunteers.

Joyful occasions and commemorations, B’nei Mitzvah and celebrations of life, ways to build community and family that we had never explored before, all while navigating the challenges facing all of us as individuals and a world, supported by all of you who continue to show up with kindness and compassion and support TBZ more enthusiastically than ever. This past Shabbat was our first Saturday morning since August 1 without a Bat or Bar Mitzvah or Rosh Hashanah - all of you have been participating to support all of these celebrations.

Sisterhood, Brotherhood, Gift Shop, Sukkah, Task Forces and our constantly devoted Board of Trustees, committees overseeing our finances, and always innovating on how we will enter a new future as an organization in our Jewish community, preserving and improving our wonderful buildings, seeking new models of collaboration, and so much more - most of you have no idea how many hours our volunteer leaders devote to TBZ and there’s no way to list all of them or all that they do.

Generosity in these difficult times - all of you continue to figure out ways to give of your time, talent, and treasure to make TBZ into the warm, welcoming, and hamishe place that so many depend upon.

Patience and enthusiasm with our team as we figure out technology and remote gathering and innovate and improvise, building the plane as we fly it - thank you all so much for sticking with us. You have comforted each other and found new ways of “being there” for each other even when we can’t actually share space and time and hugs.

In all these ways and so many more, you have shown every member of Temple Beth Zion that we are first and foremost a community of caring people, compassionately engaged with each other to build and maintain the fabric of interconnectedness that is Judaism, that improves and maintains our lives through all the principles of our ancestors applied with love and care.

In all of this, you volunteers and leaders of Temple Beth Zion, you embody the teachings of our tradition. The way we behave at Temple Beth Zion follows the first teaching of the Torah about building community - we model ourselves after Abraham, the first of our ancestors, who demonstrated that caring and compassion are expressed first of all through hospitality. When all of you have led through welcome, you have followed Abraham’s model.

Here is a story emphatically showing just this from the Talmud, discussing what we are allowed to do for the sake of hospitality.

The Talmud starts:

One may move baskets of produce on Shabbat for guests and in order to prevent the suspension of Torah study in the academy. Rabbi Yocĥanan said: Hospitality towards guests is as great as rising early to go to study. And Rabbi Dimi from Neharde’a says: Hospitality towards guests is greater than rising early to study, as it teaches: For guests, and only afterward: to prevent suspension of Torah study. Rabbi Yehuda said that Rav said on a related note: Hospitality towards guests is greater than receiving the Presence of God, as when Abraham invited his guests it is written…

And here is the full story from Genesis, chapter 18: 1 Now God was seen by [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre as he was sitting at the entrance to his tent at the heat of the day.  2 [Abraham] lifted up his eyes and saw: here, three men standing over against him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the entrance of his tent and bowed to the earth 3 and said: My lords, pray if I have found favor in your eyes, pray do not pass by your servant!

The Torah uses very few words, so let’s expand them a little. God is seen by Abraham while Abraham is sitting at the entrance to his tent. Then, Abraham looks up and sees three men, and leaves God’s presence in order to greet the new visitors and offer them hospitality.

This is the interpretation that the rabbis of the Talmud use as they continue: Abraham requested that God, the Divine Presence, wait for him while he tended to his guests appropriately. Rabbi Elazar said: Come and see that the attribute of the Holy One, Blessed be God, is not like that of flesh and blood. The attribute of flesh and blood people is such that a less significant person is unable to say to a more significant person: Wait until I come to you. While with regard to the Holy One, Blessed be God, it is written: “And Abraham said: Adonai, if now I have found favor in Your sight, please pass not from Your servant.” Abraham requested that God wait for him due to his guests. [BT Shabbat 127a, Koren Talmud Bavli, The Noe Edition, Shabbat Part Two, Commentary by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, page 249]

When we are dealing with people, it is difficult to ask a more important person to wait while we go and attend to the needs of a less important person. It’s the right thing to do, but it is difficult. With God it is different. When hospitality and taking care of the needs of others arise, even if God is right there talking to us, then God will wait while we take care of other people.

The Talmud tells this story about Abraham to make sure that we understand just how important it is to welcome the stranger and attend to the needs of those around us.

And all of you at Temple Beth Zion understood this even before I brought forward this story. You understand that the life of a community is about the people in our community. You understand that we don’t communicate that by telling people how important all of you are, we communicate that by showing up for each other, by making it clear that we know that caring actions speak clearly. You have spoken clearly this year. The plans you continue to make for the months to come, with all the uncertainty around us show that you will continue to speak clearly through your actions that the people of Temple Beth Zion, the Jews of our community, and the people of Western New York are so important, that sometimes we have to ask others to hold on while we welcome and care for one another.

Thank you.

And of course, thank you to our whole TBZ team.

The whole team of us who work with and for you so appreciate the Temple Beth Zion mission. When we partner like we have, we become so much more than the sum of our parts. We accomplish something truly holy - we build a community that cares.

In the early 1970’s “Do it yourself” Judaism was made a big thing by the publication of “The Jewish Catalog” by the founders of the Havurah movement - empowered Jews who felt that formal Jewish life was lacking for participation and doing by Jews. The 2020 update, nearly fifty years later is that Judaism is “Do it ourselves”. Each and every one of you has taken up the banner of doing Jewishly together, taking an action that makes a difference for more than an individual, putting our community’s well-being first.

We may speak of the number of families who belong to Temple Beth Zion, but we don’t really act like we are multiple families. We are one Temple Beth Zion family, and we have been doing Judaism for ourselves for a long time. The crisis our society has encountered over the last six months has only brought forward the spirit that has inspired Temple Beth Zion for generations: we build a “do it ourselves” Judaism every day of the year.

On this day, as we are re-energized and reminded by the words of our sages and our prophets, that empty fasts and rote rituals are not what God demands of us. All of you at Temple Beth Zion can be inspired by your “do it ourselves” energy that you have already exerted - you are the people who will help make 5781 a better year. You are the community that will continue to care for each other. We do for ourselves because, in these words inspired by Hillel the Sage:

“If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?

If we are only for ourselves, what are we?

If not now, when?”

We are the ones who will make the improvements we need.

We will confess and atone, remember and re-energize, and take up the task again as we enter a new year ready to continue caring for one another and doing Judaism for ourselves.

May we all inscribe ourselves for a better year in the Book of Life that we all write together.

L’shanah tovah.

[panburger-partner]

I recently read this biography about the Ovits family who were dwarves who performed a traveling show during this time and it brought up a lot of these points; women were aware of what was happening and they were able to "stay ahead" of some of the trouble by traveling away from the area. They ended up in the camps and were able to save people by adding them to their "family" which was being used for experiments instead of just killed outright.

https://www.amazon.com/Giants-Dwarfs-Auschwitz-Extraordinary-Lilliput/dp/1849544646

This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question