Are the Kotel Clashes Worth It?

Thursday, Nov. 16, in Jerusalem is a day that I will never forget.

The day began with a moving prayer service at Robinson’s Arch, the egalitarian prayer space, celebrating the ordination that evening of the 100th Reform rabbi at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s (HUC-JIR) Jerusalem campus. I was finishing a 10-day trip to Poland and Israel sponsored by HUC-JIR in celebration of the historic event.

As a member of HUC-JIR’s board of governors and as a proud Jewish American and Reform Jew, I had a wide range of experiences on the trip that elicited wonder as well as deep concern.

The Robinson’s Arch service was meaningfully led by two women and included a series of female Torah readers. What happened next has been written about extensively, as well as recorded: the encounter between our group and the police at the Kotel.

Unbeknownst to me, the Reform leaders at the Kotel that day had planned to enter the public plaza at the Western Wall carrying eight Torah scrolls and conduct a brief Torah service. Under the Kotel’s rules — enforced by a government-funded nonprofit headed by the Kotel’s Orthodox chief rabbi — it’s forbidden to bring Torahs into the public plaza from the outside. Additionally, the separation of men and women is strictly enforced in the prayer spaces.

In what some describe as an act of civil disobedience, the people carrying the eight Torahs marched toward the metal detectors at the entrance of the plaza. The confrontation, at times quite violent, occurred as the Torah holders forcibly entered the Kotel plaza despite the resistance of the police and several Charedim. In the past, I have witnessed the Women of the Wall Rosh Chodesh services, at which women praying faced similar resistance, but I have never experienced anything like what unfolded that morning at the Wall.

From the stories I have read and the videos I have seen, our group has been hailed as heroes, standing up to the Orthodox to insist that all Jews, not just Orthodox Jews, have the right to pray freely at the Wall. While I fully support a mixed-gender and trans-denominational prayer space at the Kotel, I simply cannot condone an unnecessary provocation, which will have a lasting effect in North America and Israel and in how the progressive Jewish community in North America views Israel. In my conversations with many Israelis, they show little interest in the Wall and don’t understand why it is so important to Diaspora Jews.

I know that I am in a small minority within the Reform Movement in North America on this matter — possibly a minority of one. Many of our HUC-JIR students who are spending the year in Israel were there, and some were subjected to physical and emotional violence. How this will influence their view of Israel will emerge in the coming months and years. My fear is that this will be chalked up to being simply a part of the “Israel experience.”

I have never experienced anything like what unfolded that morning at the Wall.

I am a firm believer that Israel is for Israelis, a country where I am not a citizen. After speaking with many Israelis, I have learned that what is important to them are social issues — income inequality, civil marriage, civil divorce and a host of other matters that Diaspora Jews also support. Not the Wall.

I never believed the Israeli government would honor the agreement for an egalitarian worship space at the Kotel, and I thought that all the rejoicing when it was announced was both premature and self-deceiving. Having now experienced this event firsthand, I am more convinced than ever that pressing for equal worship at the Kotel is not worth risking bodily harm. I think North American progressive Jews are fooling themselves into thinking that this most recent demonstration will further the cause of establishing equality of worship at the Wall. I hope I’m proven wrong.

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Jay Geller, a Los Angeles lawyer, is on the board of governors of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. These opinions are his and do not represent those of HUC-JIR.

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It’s Time to Speak Up for the Rohingya

When Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin proposed a new law to prevent “acts of barbarity” at a law conference in Madrid in October 1933, he included “acts of extermination” against ethnic, religious and social groups. He included in his definition massacres, pogroms, economic destruction and acts of humiliation.

Adolf Hitler had become chancellor of Germany earlier that year. Lemkin saw the writing on the wall for the Jews and wanted the legal tools to stop what he saw could well happen.

By 1943, Lemkin’s own parents had been murdered in Poland. He also came up with a name for what was happening to the Jews: “genocide,” the destruction of a people.

He was not the only Jew to understand that what the Nazis were doing ultimately would lead to the Jews’ destruction. Recently, I bought a book from an antiquarian bookseller titled “The Yellow Spot: The Destruction of Europe’s Jews.” It appeared to be about the Holocaust but was published in 1936, six years before the “Final Solution.” How did the authors know what the outcome would be?

The book listed the many restrictions Germany had imposed on its Jews. The only logical conclusion was that the Jews would not survive in Europe. It’s a familiar list: restrictions on conducting business, restrictions on travel, citizenship laws that defined marriage, ID cards indicating ethnic and religious backgrounds. Jews were barred from attending school, restricted from holding government positions, forbidden to worship.

Bring the same list into 2017 and add restrictions on cellphone ownership, and it could be referring to Rohingya Muslims living in Myanmar.

The reports we have heard in our interviews are all too familiar.

I recently spent time interviewing Rohingya refugees who had fled genocidal violence in Myanmar. Their testimonies will be added to the USC Shoah Foundation’s archive of witnesses to genocide, the repository founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 to document Holocaust survivors. The reports we have heard in our initial interviews with the Rohingya are all too familiar.

Over the past four decades, there have been several waves of Rohingya refugees fleeing for their lives. That is not surprising, since their exclusion is baked into the Myanmar constitution. A people who are barred from citizenship have no rights. They are a religious Muslim minority in a hostile Buddhist environment. Government, military, police and religious leaders all agree that Rohingya are a bad thing, but for no apparent reason.

The Rohingya keep to themselves, practice their religion in peace, keep their traditions and don’t return violence with violence. They speak in a unique dialect that the majority in Myanmar do not understand. They often live in separate villages. This placid people are hated for no apparent reason.

I had hoped the refugees would tell us that they had heard about violence in other towns and then fled the country to be sure. But that is not the case. Myanmar’s military, local police and Buddhist nationalists chased them from their burning homes, shooting many in the back as they scrambled into the forests.

In November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, then just 17, took matters into his own hands on behalf of the Jewish people and shot Ernst vom Rath at the German Embassy in Paris. The next day, Germany unleashed a nationwide pogrom against the Jews, their homes and their property. We know it now as Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass.

Kristallnacht was not a reprisal — it was violence waiting to happen. On Aug. 25 of this year, a small number of Rohingya activists reportedly attacked a number of police outposts. Myanmar authorities used that as a pretext to let loose an organized genocidal assault on the Rohingya — burning houses, looting property, destroying madrasas, raping women and murdering in village after village.

Raphael Lemkin understood that genocide was a series of acts calculated to erode, exclude and dehumanize people, until killing them all becomes the only — and final — solution. Most Rohingya have survived for now, but they experience the daily pain of living through genocide in slow motion.

It’s incumbent on us to alert elected officials to the plight of the Rohingya. Without international intervention, they likely will become the next genocide victims. As  Paula Lebovics, a Los Angeles Holocaust survivor, often reminds me, silence is not an option.

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Stephen D. Smith is the Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation.

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Prophets of Eros

As a Jewish girl growing up in a non-Jewish suburb, I often wondered, while reading “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which of our neighbors would have hidden me and my sisters in their attic. Recently, I find myself asking a more adult version of this question: After profound trauma, would I have been able to find my way back to eros, to a fully lived life?

One of my favorite rabbinic legends describes the ancient Israelite women seducing their husbands while in captivity in Egypt. Pharaoh oppresses the Israelite men with backbreaking labor as a subtle form of genocide: They are too exhausted to make a new generation of Israelites.

The Israelite women realize that their tribe is in danger, and according to the rabbis, they take action. Drawing their husbands out to an orchard and gently teasing them, they lift up handheld copper mirrors, saying, “I’m more beautiful than you are!”

Both Dr. Ruth and Esther Perel lack any trace of prudishness. Both emanate love and wit.

In this midrash, the ancient Israelite women are not just heroines of tribal continuation. They also are keepers of eros. They teach pleasure despite oppression — survival of both the body and the soul.

Which brings me to today. In an era when sexuality tends more toward the commodified and the alienated, who teaches us about the inner erotic life, with its vulnerability, pleasure and its ability to transform us? Who are today’s prophets of eros?

This is not a rhetorical question. I have an answer — actually two, and both are Jewish women: Ruth Westheimer and Esther Perel.

During that same era of girlhood when I wondered about my neighbors hiding me, I also listened covertly to Westheimer’s late-night radio show on a tiny AM radio I kept hidden beneath my pillow.

My most important sex education wasn’t the embarrassing biology lessons of middle school, but “Dr. Ruth’s” teachings of how pleasure, self-acceptance and joy can be accessed through the erotic.

Perel is a generation younger, a couples therapist finding rather unlikely celebrity these days. In her beautiful, moving podcast, “Where Should We Begin?,” Perel invites us into the intimate space of couples therapy as she helps people access their connection to eros after trauma.

Sometimes the trauma is past abuse. Often it is an affair. Occasionally it is simply the trauma — for women and men alike — of living under patriarchy.

I find myself now listening to Perel’s podcast with an adult version of my previous mania for Dr. Ruth’s radio show. In fact, the two women have much in common. Both lack any trace of prudishness. Both emanate love and wit. Both possess charming accents. And both are Jewish women who grew up in displaced communities profoundly traumatized by the Holocaust.

When Westheimer was a 10-year-old girl, her father was taken by the Nazis, and her mother placed her on a train out of Germany, hoping to save her life. This was the Kindertransport to Switzerland. She would never see her mother again.

Perel was born a generation later in Antwerp, Belgium. She is the daughter of two Jewish refugees, Holocaust survivors who lost their entire families in the camps. She writes beautifully about how her parents, who had lost 16 siblings between them, nonetheless taught her about joy and eros:

“Trauma was woven into the fabric of my family history (and would inspire my work for years to come). They came out of that experience wanting to charge at life with a vengeance and to make the most of each day. They both felt that they had been granted a unique gift: living life again. My parents didn’t just want to survive, they wanted to revive. They wanted to embrace vibrancy and vitality — in the mystical sense of the word, the erotic.”

I see Westheimer and Esther Perel as our modern incarnations of the ancient Israelite women in Egypt.

All of them share a prophetic Jewish women’s voice; all are guardians of eros. Their very response to trauma is finding a renewed commitment to life force, to joy — and to helping other people access their own erotic selves.

Thinking back, I remember that Anne Frank, too, wrote about finding eros. Even in her brief life, even in the very midst of tragedy.

The light and the dark intertwine. No matter how dark the past, we can recommit to finding the beating heart of eros, and remember that life can — must — still be lived in all its fullness.

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Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician and Torah teacher who lives in Portland, Ore.

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Smashing Idols in Tinseltown and Beyond

According to the familiar Midrash, Abraham’s father, Terah, was a craftsman and salesman of idols. But Abram (Abraham’s original name) scoffs at the adults who worship idols. Having watched his father make the sausages, so to speak, he can’t worship them.

While Terah is away, Abram smashes all of the idols except the largest one, placing an ax in its hand. When Terah returns, he’s furious. Abram explains that the idols had brawled until one idol emerged victorious. Terah is incredulous: “Idols don’t destroy idols,” he says, “people do.” Abram smiles. “Exactly,” he says. “So, why worship them?” Terah hauls Abram to the royal court of Nimrod, where he is sentenced to death by fire. According to the legend, God saves Abram from the crucible.

Idol smashers are courageous and strong. Many Abrams have emerged from the current cultural crucible. These heroes break false cultural idols. They slay producers like Harvey Weinstein, directors like Brett Ratner and actors like Kevin Spacey. As we overturn boulders, the hideous creatures hiding beneath are scurrying blindly into the sunlight. We’re experiencing a massive cultural revolution — listening to victims of alleged abuse and believing them.

Today’s idol smashers are shaking Hollywood, and its edifice is wobbling. To some, Hollywood is a cesspool of vice run by vile, abusive men. As Hollywood idols are smashed, only debris remains. And the scornful public’s instinct is to discard Hollywood’s art, once beautiful and inspirational.

But there’s a more optimistic view.

Hollywood isn’t monolithic. It’s comprised of more victims of alleged abuse than reputed abusers. For every Hollywood villain, there are many heroes, people who succeed without harming others.

Hollywood also has its superheroes, people trying to change the world.

Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe. In real life, she stood up to Brett Ratner, the disgraced producer who has been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct. Gadot made it known that she wouldn’t work on a “Wonder Woman” sequel if Ratner were involved. Warner Bros. responded by dropping Ratner from the film.

When Jimmy Fallon returned to the “Tonight Show” a week after his mother’s death, he told viewers that his mom “ … would squeeze my hand three times, and say, ‘I love you.’ Last week, I was in the hospital, and I grabbed her hand and squeezed. ‘I love you.’ ”

During the same broadcast, Taylor Swift debuted her song “New Year’s Day,” which happened to include the lyrics, “You squeeze my hand three times in the back of a taxi. … ”

Swift wasn’t a scheduled guest. Producers had invited her to add a special touch to Fallon’s return show, and she agreed without hesitation. When she serendipitously sang “squeeze my hand three times,” there were tears all around. Afterward, the two stars embraced, overwhelmed with emotion. Swift’s brilliant performance and unbridled support for Fallon were heroic.

For every Hollywood villain, there are many heroes.

Drake may be the biggest superhero of all. Performing on Nov. 15 in Sydney, the artist was mid-song when he stopped to chastise a man for reportedly groping women in the audience. Drake’s righteous indignation and public calling-out is the stuff of superheroes.

If you need further reassurance that Hollywood is not a cesspool, see the feature film “Wonder,” a remarkable 100-minute sermon on kindness, acceptance, love and magnanimity. Wonder grabs you by the soul and, in the words of Henry Ward Beecher — used beautifully in the film — “carries up the most hearts.” It’s a reminder that no one does inspirational and powerful storytelling better than Hollywood.

One by one, false idols are falling. Morality pundits at Fox News, hypocritical politicians (left and right), Silicon Valley misogynists and Hollywood Neanderthals have been exposed and destroyed.

After Abram smashed the idols, he discovered God, the Creator. Not made of stone, wood or clay, Abram’s God was the maker of stone, wood and clay. Abram partnered with the Creator to teach morality and kindness, and together they changed the world.

We should celebrate the destruction of Hollywood’s false idols, but we should not discard Hollywood and all of its culture. Instead, let’s replace those idols with the Hollywood stars who light up our world with love and kindness.

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Letters to the Editor: Rabbi’s History Lesson, Privilege, College Students and Thanksgiving Haggadah

Rabbi’s History Lesson Misses the Mark

Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem comes to a living room in Bel Air to make sure we know how to judge the Israelis in their fight for … survival? (“Hartman Examines How the Six-Day War Forever Changed Jews and Judaism,” Nov. 3.)

No, not so! He is helping us judge an Israel which arrogantly and accidentally won yet another war with a people who seem not to tire of the attempt to make the area “Judenrein,” helping finish Hitler’s work.

According to Hartman, Israel’s sin was in winning the ’67 war and inheriting a bunch of people no one else seems to want, in an area which no one seemed to have wanted.

The 800,000 Jews kicked out of their Arab countries were absorbed into Israel. The 800,000 Arabs who fled the area have not been able to do the same, unfortunately, and Hartman blithely blames the Jews and hangs their well-being on Israel — somehow forgetting he is now talking about hanging the welfare on the almost 5 million enemy combatants they have become. Yes, we have been forced to occupy an unwanted people, even if naysayers think we are somehow occupying our land.

Rightly so, he contends that Israel could be “an inspiration” to the world. How? By giving up the power to defend against the enemy, saying that power, to be able to defend one’s self, “undermines one’s civility.”

I have worked in the wards of many mental institutions, and there have been many conversations that made little sense in the rational world. Hartman’s convoluted logic stands up there with the best.

To Hartman, in his own words, Israel’s survival, in the face of the Arab onslaughts, has been a major contributor to worldwide anti-Semitism.

So good for you, Rabbi Hartman, and to your hosts, Debbie and Naty Saidoff — and to the Journal for giving any and every crazy idea a forum to spread narrishkayt. Those of us who are genuinely inspired by what Israel has accomplished in the face of such huge adversity will try to hope that people like you will never make sense to those “shomrei Yisrael,” the brave guardians of Israel and the Jewish people.

Steve Klein via email

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‘Privilege’ and What It Means at UCLA

Gabriella Kamran learned how to spell “privilege” at UCLA; would that she had learned what it means to be a Jew at my alma mater (“Are Jewish College Students Privileged?” Nov. 17). She approvingly quotes current UCLA student leader Rafael Sands and his reasons for not attending this year’s AIPAC conference, to wit: “Inviting Donald Trump and Mike Pence to speak at AIPAC represented American Jewish complicity in the administration’s ban on Muslim immigration, animosity toward undocumented people and hostility to reproductive choice.” Sands condemns American Jews with one broad swipe and at the same time rejects the idea of listening to a speaker with views different than his own. One wonders if he was on the UCLA student council when it voted to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at Israel.

Louis H. Nevell, Los Angeles, UCLA ’56

Being a baby boomer, I’m puzzled at the millennial obsession with ethnic or racial privilege, since we’re all products of our past. The civil rights movement has succeeded remarkably in leveling the playing field, but we’ll never be totally equal. People with two caring parents generally do better than those without, as do those who bathe regularly. Of course, as a group, whites are privileged, but many individual whites are not, and increasing numbers of Blacks and other ethnicities are.

Jews descend from a people who led the world in eliminating superstition, idol worship and human sacrifice. Our ancestors were the first to assert that all humans are meant to be free, and realized that this required morality, which they fostered in the Ten Commandments. Thus, our Israelite ancestors were the first to possess a conscience, and passed on this cherished gift by instituting Torah education.

Because they were attacked by one empire after another, and had to live among often hostile gentiles, only the most daring and resourceful survived. So is it any wonder many of us reflect these qualities today? Should we be ashamed of this? Of course not.

Young Jews should support others, but not at the price of abandoning Israel, which is the covenant basis for the belief system that makes us who we are.  They must insist that Israel has every right to exist; her rebirth is indeed a miracle. The reason there isn’t peace is because Palestinian leadership rejected statehood and peace in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, and it is they who must change.

Young Jews must decry condemnation of Zionism and reclaim its glory. If Students for Justice in Palestine, Black Lives Matter, liberal professors and other “progressives” reject this, Jews must reject them. Jews will never gain respect by abandoning Israel or betraying our heritage. We command respect when we take pride in who we are and stand tall knowing where we come from. If that’s “privilege,” so be it.

Rueben Gordon via email

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College Students Are Too Coddled

It was refreshing to read Karen Lehrman Bloch’s column (“The Privilege of Gratitude,” Nov. 24) about the victimization culture toward which U.S. society has been evolving. A notable example is so-called “safe spaces” on college campuses. U.S. college students rank among the most mollycoddled and fortunate people on Earth, yet now they need safe spaces to hide in? The billions of less fortunate people who must deal with real-life problems don’t have such spaces and neither will college students once they enter the real world.

Ben Zuckerman, Los Angeles

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What’s the Matter With Our Public Discourse?

Reading Philippe Assouline’s analysis (“My Rant Against Conformity,” Nov. 24), I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt might think of our public discourse: “Radical Republicans posturing as conservatives and sniveling Democrats cowering behind political correctness!”

Denouncing those expressing opposing opinions are the new fascists in our land and anti-social media inflames their half-wit intolerance. As Yeats wrote: “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

David Taylor Johannesen, Boston

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FROM FACEBOOK …

‘A Thanksgiving Meal Haggadah’

We are Catholic with many roots and family that are Jewish. This is beautiful!! Thank you! It is indeed good to give thanks to the Lord!

Mariely Madero de Gessler

Thanks so much for this! I love Thanksgiving but I’ve always wondered how it fits into Jewish life. I might just print this for reading at our Thanksgiving gathering this year!”

Josie Mintz

Fabulous commentary. I shall read at our Thanksgiving table.

Norman Wexler

Perfect for this Thanksgiving Day ’17: Thank you and be blessed.

Paul Magnuson

Things I didn’t know. Thank you.

Leslie Hunt

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Into the Heart of Chabad

Shabbat begins. I follow Rabbi Reuven Wolf into 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn — Chabad World Headquarters. The prayer space is packed with bearded rabbis in black fedoras. We join a line streaming single-file toward the center of the room. Maximum occupancy by code is probably 350, but there are a thousand inside, and hundreds more arriving by the minute.

I’m here because my friends Rabbi Ephraim Mintz and Wolf both invited me, each promising a unique experience. I once witnessed a fan getting trampled by a celebratory mob at a football game. I wonder if I’ve made a good choice.

Physical pressure builds with every step. I trip over someone’s foot and instantly flash back to the trampling, but the guys around me hold me up and carry me forward. It’s too late to turn back. Independent motion is impossible.

We reach the heart of the room. Our bodies sway as waves of energy pass through us. The crowd synchronizes as we chant Psalms, thanking the Eternal One for Shabbat, Torah and life.

We break into a wordless song, a nigun, composed for this very night 40 years ago, when the Lubavitcher Rebbe completed his recovery from a near-fatal heart attack and returned to this room. He created this army of singing, dancing rabbis. They are the teachers and lamplighters he dispatched to the corners of the earth, armed with love, Torah and unshakable faith in their ability to hasten the redemption of humankind.

Though the rebbe died 23 years ago, their work has never slowed. His army returns to Crown Heights in Brooklyn once a year for the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchim (emissaries). They reconnect with friends and family, attend workshops and pray.

The soldiers of the rebbe’s army are not just men, but whole families. This week, the dads are in town. In February, the moms, or rebbetzins, will gather for their conference. Reoxygenated in Crown Heights, these families bring the light of Judaism to 100 countries, a number that grows every year.

The weekend culminates in the Sunday night gala. The event’s infrastructure is breathtaking. I recently attended a fundraising gala at the California Science Center and was impressed by scope of that event, which catered to 1,200 guests.

The Chabad gala welcomes 6,500.

The room is vast. Passing through elaborate security measures, we encounter 650 elegantly decorated tables, high-tech lighting, a camera crane, a massive video display nearly 100 yards long, a revolving stage and hot, tasty food for all.

What really sets this night apart, however, are two stories and an unauthorized nigun.

Rabbi Asher Federman of Chabad Virgin Islands shares how consecutive hurricanes crushed his beloved island just before Rosh Hashanah. Everyone was told to evacuate, but some simply couldn’t.

As Rabbi Federman’s large family boarded the last boat off the island, he bent to hug his children goodbye. Someone suggested he leave with them.

His kids immediately protested: “Daddy can’t leave! Who’ll take care of our Yidden? Who will blow the shofar for them on Rosh Hashanah?”

Rabbi Yonasan Abrams shared the story of a 9-year-old boy in San Diego, whose family had come to know the local Chabad emissaries. The boy asked his father if he could bring a Torah scroll home on Simchat Torah.

Without musical accompaniment or visible direction,

our voices rise in a stadium-like chorus of unrestrained joy.

He asked because his mother lay at home, too weak from chemotherapy to attend services. The next day, the Chabad family led a procession of singing and dancing worshippers, with Torah scrolls, to the boy’s home, where his mom celebrated her last Simchat Torah on earth with immense joy.

The boy dedicated his life to sharing that joy with others by becoming a Chabad emissary himself … the rabbi telling us this tale.

The night traditionally ends with singing and dancing, so the occasional outbursts of song around the room are quelled quickly to accommodate the three-hour program of speeches and videos. At one point, however, the rebbe’s recovery nigun spontaneously fills the room and neither the emcees, nor the orchestra, nor the VIPs can stop it. Without musical accompaniment or visible direction, our voices rise in a stadium-like chorus of unrestrained joy.

That’s when I finally grasp that the sea of matching beards, hats and fedoras actually is composed of rule-breaking iconoclasts like me, fueling up to battle soulless secularism with meaning and purpose. And I am all in.

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Salvador Litvak shares his love of Judaism at http://ift.tt/2xNgOjC, where a video of the rebbe’s recovery nigun is available.

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Spiritual, Not Religious

On a family trip to Mexico City last week, we decided to spend Shabbat doing one of the most unrestful activities I can think of — we hiked up a pyramid.

There is absolutely nothing Jewish about the Teotihuacan pyramids, although they once functioned as a kind of religious site, built in honor of sun and moon, and were used over the millennia for various unseemly rituals, including human sacrifice. The Aztecs stumbled upon the pyramids built by an unknown ancient civilization and named them Teotihuacan, meaning “birthplace of the gods.”

Between the polytheism and the barbarism, it was an unconventional choice for the Sabbath. Go figure, then, that we bumped into a group of yogis from Los Angeles who turned our secular exercise into a spiritual imperative.

“It’s meant to be that we’re meeting you here today,” a woman with curly hair and an Australian accent exclaimed.

Spirituality ultimately fails in its aims if limited to personal
satisfaction.

The yogis were in Mexico City for a public meditation “superclass” to be held the following morning, led by their African-born, L.A.-based guru, Joseph Michael Levry, founder of Naam Yoga in Santa Monica. Levry is an internationally known author, speaker and teacher who draws on various wisdom traditions — including kabbalah — to teach a mind-body healing practice. On Sunday, he was scheduled to lead his fifth superclass in Mexico City, in downtown’s Zócalo central square. Thousands were expected to attend.

“You have to come!” a blonde from Belarus said.

As they offered my father chewable hydration pills for the uphill climb, they extolled the virtues of Levry’s practice and how it heals ailments, decreases crime and manifests your dreams. Sensing my innate skepticism, one of them asked, “Are you a journalist?”

“I’m a Jew,” I said.

“So am I!” the Australian said. “I mean, I wasn’t born Jewish, but I am Jewish. I’m in love with Israel. Jerusalem is the most amazing, holy place I’ve ever been.”

Turns out, Levry took his disciples to Israel for a “Divine Spiritual Alchemy Retreat,” where they meditated at sunrise by the Dead Sea and chanted for peace at the Kotel.

Maybe this is bashert, I thought.

So I set my alarm for Sunday morning and rallied the troops for meditation con Los Mexicanos. If Levry’s superclass was really capable of supernal healing power, I had a lifetime of Jewish neuroses to drain from my system.

Here’s what I didn’t expect: 10,000 people gathered in one of the world’s largest and oldest public squares, waving their hands in the air chanting, “Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh Adonai Tz’vaot M’lo Khol Ha’aretz K’vodo.”

Imagine if the Aztecs had met Joseph Michael Levry.

For the next hour, my family and I stood, sat, sang and laughed; we stretched, we danced, we chanted familiar words in dialects I’d never heard. Levry told a story about Moses, followed by a chant of “I am / I am / I am that I am.”

A few rows in front of me, a young woman wore a headscarf imprinted with shimmering Hebrew letters that glinted in the sunlight. It felt as if the universe had conspired to bring a group of American Jews to spiritual enlightenment via Mexican ruins and an African-born yoga master.

As beautiful as the moment was, though, I couldn’t shed my skepticism. The Jewish aspects only reinforced my worry that this experience might belong in the category of “spiritual, but not religious,” drawing wisdom from religious tradition while draining it of religious obligation.

Because while prayer and meditation can pry open our hearts and bring us into contact with the Divine, we make a mockery of spirituality if we spend our lives soothing our own souls and meditating on mountaintops. Jewish tradition tells us that the test of an enlightened spirit is not found in meditative bliss, but in contact with the world and other human beings.

Devotion to God can be beautiful, meaningful — even fun — but the religious life teaches us that the best way to love God is to demonstrate that love through moral action.

In a busy, crazy, tragic, broken world, it was inspiring and reassuring to see so many people engaged in the spiritual quest — the precursor to a better world. But spirituality ultimately fails in its aims if limited to personal satisfaction. Self-healing is not enough.

The religious life intentionally pairs spirituality and service, because without obligation, spiritual ecstasy is just an exercise in narcissism.

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Danielle Berrin is a senior writer and columnist at the Jewish Journal.

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‘Wonder’: A Call to Our Better Angels

“Who is it that I aspire to be?” asks Mr. Browne in the new film “Wonder.” “That is the question we should be asking ourselves all the time.”

Mr. Browne is August “Auggie” Pullman’s fifth-grade teacher. Auggie was born with severe facial deformities. By age 10, he has had 27 surgeries, enabling him to breathe, see and hear without an aid.

Still, he continues to look different, or, as Auggie puts it, “not ordinary.” Nevertheless, his mother, having home-schooled him until now, feels he’s ready to enter a mainstream school.

The genius of the story is that it starts out being about Auggie’s resilience in facing the real world without his astronaut helmet to shield him, but evolves into a test of another kind — the other kids’ ability to accept difference.

Not surprisingly, most of the kids don’t do well when first coming into contact with Auggie. They stare, mock him and bully him. They are afraid to touch him, thinking he has “the plague.”

Fortunately, they are surrounded by adults who guide them and teach them that each of us can choose on an hourly basis to reach for our best selves. “When given the choice between being right or kind,” says Mr. Browne, “choose kind.”

A couple of the kids begin to look beneath the surface, to see Auggie’s character — his heart and soul. They discover that he’s not just smart, funny and fun, but he’s a really good friend. Interracial friendships and relationships also blossom.

While Auggie continues to grow stronger, the adults stay on message: Every moment is a choice. No one is born ugly on the inside. We are continually making the choice to live lives of kindness and compassion.

The kids backtrack. Auggie loses confidence. “You are not ugly, Auggie,” reassures his mom, played beautifully by Julia Roberts. “You have to say that because you’re my mom,” Auggie cries.

“Because I’m your mom it counts the most, because I know you the most,” she responds.

True beauty can be found only well beneath the surface.

“Wonder” even teaches compassion for bullies. After hearing about one of the bullies, Auggie’s mom says: “He probably feels badly about himself. When someone acts small, you just have to be the bigger person.”

One can see the movie, based on R.J. Palacio’s 2012 novel of the same name, as one big smack in the face at President Donald Trump and his politics of hate. And, sadly, it is. Watching the movie, one can’t help thinking about Trump mocking a disabled reporter, his bullying of anyone who criticizes him, his repeated attacks on women as “fat” and “ugly.”

But the movie is just as much a rebuke of the fashionable politics of victimhood and conformity. Auggie has no interest in either one. “You can’t blend in when you were born to stand out,” says his sister.

The immaturity and cynicism of both political extremes has led to divisiveness worse than in any schoolyard, a space where we now look for the worst in each other. “Wonder” shows the ugliness of people, but more important it shows the beauty — our profound capacity for empathy.

Unfortunately, in our country today the responsible adults seem to have left the room. Who is guiding us to reach for the better angels of our nature, as President Lincoln put it in his first inaugural address? Can a children’s movie become the moral leader the country so desperately needs right now?

One can see the movie … as one big smack in the face at President Donald Trump and his politics of hate.

“Auggie can’t change the way he looks,” says Principal Tushman to the parents of the lead bully, who had Photoshopped Auggie out of the class photo so they wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of their friends. “Maybe we can change the way we see.”

We needed “Wonder Woman” to show us how a strong female leader acts. Perhaps we need “Wonder” to teach us that we — each of us — can be the superheroes of our lives.

Or, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it: “There is a difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. The righteous are humble, the self-righteous are proud. The righteous understand doubt, the self-righteous only certainty. The righteous see the good in people, the self-righteous only the bad. The righteous leave you feeling enlarged, the self-righteous make you feel small.”

The true wonder is that this movie came out just when our country needed it most.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic living in New York City.

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Homeless for 1,900 Years … and Then a U.N. Vote

When I left for Israel recently for a quick one-week trip to visit my son, I didn’t expect I’d be experiencing a cross section of Israeli society. We started in a funky hotel in Tel Aviv, where we were surrounded by hipsters, healing spas and fusion restaurants. Then, instead of spending Shabbat in Jerusalem (as I usually do), we were invited by my cousin, the mayor of Dimona, to spend Shabbat in his little town in the Negev Desert.

If Tel Aviv is SoHo, Dimona is Sinai. This is a desert town that looks like a desert town — humble, simple, hardworking. The majority of residents have Sephardic or Russian roots. Building housing is a top priority — there’s construction everywhere. There’s also plenty of faith: In a town of 40,000, there are about 70 synagogues.

After Dimona, we drove north to the mystical city of Tsfat, where we visited the graves of holy men like Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Tsfat is one of those places where every day feels like Shabbat. But in the midst of its devout enclaves, you’ll also find hip art galleries that celebrate beauty and not just Torah.

At each stop, we tasted a different Israel. We could have visited countless other places throughout the country and experienced similar diversity. This is part of the miracle of Israel — it changes everywhere you go. How could it not? Jews have come from all over the world to populate the Jewish state, joining the indigenous Jews and Arabs and Bedouins who were already here.

Today, more than 100 nationalities are represented in this tiny country. There’s even a group of African-Americans known as the Black Hebrews, who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Many of them live in Dimona, where I got to meet one of their leaders, Prince Immanuel Ben-Yehuda. The prince told me he grew up in Oklahoma, where his parents taught him the Old Testament and to love the land of Israel. (I filmed our interview and will post it on jewishjournal.com.)

The seeds of Arab rejection and animosity were planted from the very beginning.

In one short week, I tasted the multicultural miracle of Israel, a miracle that would never have happened had it not been for another miracle that preceded it 70 years ago — a vote at the United Nations. This seminal event, which is the subject of this week’s cover story by historian Gil Troy, is not without its complications.

On the Saturday night of Nov. 29, 1947, the newly formed United Nations General Assembly gathered in New York at the Queens Museum to vote on Resolution 181, which called for the partition of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state. After weeks of endless drama and lobbying for votes, the final tally was 33 member states voting in favor, 13 against and 10 abstaining.

The Jewish state was on its way.

But as you’ll see in our cover story, the drama was only starting. The seeds of Arab rejection and animosity were planted from the very beginning. This rejection was so loud and threatening that the resolution itself expressed concern:

“The [British] Government of Palestine fear that strife in Palestine will be greatly intensified when the Mandate is terminated, and that the international status of the United Nations Commission will mean little or nothing to the Arabs in Palestine, to whom the killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations. Thus, the Commission will be faced with the problem of how to avert certain bloodshed on a very much wider scale than prevails at present ….”

As the historian Troy writes, the resolution was “cursed” by the adamant Arab rejection of a plan that could have brought “70 years of peace.” Instead, it has brought 70 years of conflict that continues to this day. As fate would have it, Nov. 29 also marks International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, observed annually by the United Nations. Just last year, the General Assembly passed six resolutions condemning Israel and supporting the Palestinians.

It’s not a coincidence that the Nov. 29 vote does not rank as high as other dates in Israeli lore, certainly not as high as May 14, 1948, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion officially declared the State of Israel, or even Nov 2, 1917, when the Balfour Declaration called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

If anything, the proximity of the 1947 vote to the Holocaust has only fed the false narrative that the creation of Israel came only because of that darkest horror, overlooking the 3,500-year Jewish connection to the land.

“The delegitimizing narrative claims Europeans sinned by killing 6 million Jews from 1939 to 1945, then exorcised their guilt by ‘giving’ Palestinian land to the Jews on Nov. 29, 1947,” Troy writes.

For those who cherish the Zionist dream, including the Black Hebrews from Oklahoma, Nov. 29, 1947, was a miracle indeed.

This delegitimizing narrative has fueled the lingering hostility toward the Jewish state, embodied today by the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

And yet, despite all the rejections and wars and condemnations and anti-Israel resolutions and terror attacks and calls for boycotts, here stands Israel — the little country that could, the little country that accepted the Partition Plan, the little country that is still standing, still thriving, still arguing, still creating, still struggling, still innovating, still fighting back, still making do with what it has.

Animosity or not, after 1,900 years of homelessness, the founders of Israel simply could not refuse an offer to return to the land of their ancestors. For those who cherish the Zionist dream, including the Black Hebrews from Oklahoma, Nov. 29, 1947, was a miracle indeed.

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Mennonites and BDS: A Lawsuit Amid a Legacy

Ellen Koontz, a Kansas contract schoolteacher, is asking a federal judge to re-affirm the anti-Jewish boycott campaign begun by Adolf Hitler on April 1, 1933, openly adopted shortly thereafter by the Mufti of Jerusalem as part of the Arab-Nazi alliance during the Holocaust, internationalized against the Jewish State after WWII by the Arab League in December 1945, made illegal in America by a 1976 amendment to the Tax Reform Act and a 1977 amendment to the US Export Administration Act, which governs commercial activity impacting foreign policy, reaffirmed by continuous Presidential Executive Orders, and re-labelled in recent years with glitter and violent disruption as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise known as BDS.

The IRS publishes specific reports explaining the criminal nature of anti-Israel boycotts by individuals or companies in commercial transactions as a function of foreign policy. In this vein, anti-BDS legislation has been adopted by more than 20 states, including Kansas. Koontz says Kansas Law HR 2409 infringes on her religious right to boycott Israeli Jews and those individuals and companies who do business with Israel.

So, Koontz sued—Koontz vs. Watson—to overturn the Kansas law and now seeks a temporary injunction of the enforcement of HR 2409. Watson disguises her purely political campaign as a religious duty handed down from the sixteenth-century, non-confrontational teachings of the pacifistic Mennonite religion.

Koontz has duped the court.

The Mennonite Church USA has abandoned its spiritual underpinnings and jumped from its religious exemption into the realm of political and racial bias.

Among the little-known Mennonites are some of the finest people on the planet, considered “salt of the earth” precisely because they faithfully embrace Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount,” admonishing, “You are the salt of the earth.” Mennonites are, in fact, a wing of the of the Anabaptist movement that eschews baptism at birth in favor of free-will, adult, belief-based baptism. Sixteenth century Dutch Catholic priest Menno Simons and his followers broke away from the Catholic Church, joined the Anabaptists, and adopted the seven principles enunciated in the Sermon on the Mount. These include adult baptism, a credo against swearing oaths, and turn-the-other-check Christian pacifism. So fervent is the Mennonite ethos of non-confrontation that not members only refuse military service, but they shun lawsuits and most types of confrontational behavior. What’s more, since, the essence of government is the enforcement of law, many Mennonites have shied away from being involved in government altogether, historically harboring a quasi-anarchism that sometimes expresses itself in tax resistance, civil disobedience, communal separateness, and classic conscientious objection in times of war.

For their beliefs, Anabaptist Mennonites have been beheaded, burned at the stake, and suffered repeated group expulsion or been forced to flee. Mennonites and other Anabaptists have traditionally lived in closely-knit and identifiable communities and commonly marry within the group, passing on recognizable family names. As a result of centuries of persecution and surviving cohesion, they are considered an ethno-religious group akin to the Jews.

Some experts estimate that of 1.2 million self-identifying Mennonites worldwide, fewer than a third live in the United States, with the next largest concentrations being in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia.

More than a few Mennonites, especially the most Bible-believing old-time Mennonites in Kansas, have whimsically wondered out loud if they are not “a lost tribe of Israelites,” a branch of Wandering Jews scourged and scarred for their beliefs. It is a comic comparison that one branch of the Anabaptists, the buggy-driving Amish of Pennsylvania fame, dress like East European Hasidism and many even speak a Low German dialect known as Plautdietsch, which resembles Yiddish. Some will remember the film The Frisco Kid where a Polish Hasidic Jew, played by Gene Wilder, encountered Pennsylvania Amish farmers; they looked and spoke alike, and for a while, believed they were “lansmen.”

The Anabaptist movement has been cleft by many schisms within schisms. These include the Mennonite branches, which are splintered into numerous direct and indirect offshoots protruding from offshoots. The list is long and only begins with the Dutch Mennonites, German Mennonites, Russian Mennonites, Old Mennonites, Mennonite Brethren, Beachy Mennonites, River Brethren, Hutterites, and others.

No one speaks for the Mennonites. They answer to no one but their God and their conscience. But in the highly-fragmented world of Anabaptist Mennonite thought, there are several sects and branches which have darkly drifted far away from the teachings and have embraced hate, fascism, terrorism, and politics.

During the Holocaust, Nazism appealed to many German and Ukrainian Mennonites. In 1942, the Molotschna Mennonite colony in the Ukraine formally hosted an SS gathering and raised the swastika flag, as the Mennonite Library and Archives in Kansas has preserved. Ukrainian Mennonites volunteered to assist Nazi death squads as they machine-gunned helpless Jews in pits.

Other Mennonites in Poland served as brutal camp guards in concentration camps such as Stutthof, where some gained infamy for their vicious treatment of prisoners.

Mennonites in the Stutthof area regularly exploited slave laborers to build factories and harvest farms. One particularly brutalizing Mennonite SS officer was known as “Lord of Death and Life.”

Nazi Mennonites were interned as collaborators by Soviet forces when the Third Reich withdrew from occupied eastern Europe. As Hitler’s Germany collapsed, Nazi Mennonite colonies transplanted to Paraguay, where they joined existing Nazi-like colonies that for years racially afflicted and exploited indigenous Indians. Auschwitz mass murderer Josef Mengele fled to Paraguay, where for a time, he found shelter among Mennonite colonies near the Bolivian border.

Groups of Paraguayan Nazi Mennonites later migrated to Canada, where they encountered established Russian Mennonite communities. A study published by The Manitoba Historical Society found the three leading Canadian Mennonit

e newspapers during the Hitler era to be overwhelmingly pro-Hitler, spewing racial and anti-Jewish theory. The pro-Nazi newspapers —Der Bote, The Mennonitische Rundschau, and theSteinbach Post—were not religious but Nazified community news outlets. Mennonite Nazism, for years hushed up, is now being explored by Anabaptist historians in conferences, books, and journal articles. Nazi Mennonites acted not as a religious group but as a fascist ethnic group.

The catalog of other dark deviations from Mennonite piety has recently included the Mennonite Church USA (MC-USA). Leadership of this faction has steered its flocks away from religion and into undisguised alliance with Jew hatred, economic warfare, and confrontation tactics. Originally one of the largest but already shrinking down to one of the smallest groups within the Mennonite realm, the MC-USA finalized its departure from the Mennonite mainstream in May 2015 when it re-defined membership and required adherents to agree to same-sex marriage and increased involvement in pro-Palestinian issues.

“Our interactions show that the church is divided on understandings of human sexuality and same-sex marriage,” and other MC-USA agreements, including its anti-Israel program, the MC-USA board conceded in a 2015 statement. But the board asked for “exercising Christian forbearance with those who differ in their understanding and application of those agreements.”

The MC-USA’s resolution same sex unions and other LGBTQ issues passed, but the anti-Israel BDS resolution was delayed for two years by a 55 percent majority, showing that many were reluctant to stray into this political territory. Nonetheless, from that moment, Mennonites began to flee MC-USA.

By the end of 2016, an estimated 17 percent had formally withdrawn that year, that is,16,416 out of 95,308 members. In a January 26, 2016 Mennonite World Review report on the exodus, a subhead explained, “A few churches want to stay with MC USA; others are dropped from denomination’s membership number.” The article reported that the largest component of MC-USA’s church rolls—those affiliated around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had almost entirely disaffiliated. “Last fall’s proposal from LMC’s [Lancaster Mennonite Conference] Board of Bishops to withdraw, was ratified by 82 percent of credentialed leaders.” Mennonite World Review asserted, adding, “The updated Lancaster membership for MC-USA (1,091) means 92 percent of the conference’s members are not considered to be in churches “opting in” to MC-USA.”

Just days before the controversial May 2016 MC-USA resolution, the Franklin Conference in Maryland and Pennsylvania voted to quit, precisely over political resolutions, especially LGBTQ issues.

MC-USA officials issued a statement, “As a national church, we are mired in conflict. Many believe a split is inevitable, given our polarization specifically on issues of human sexuality and scriptural interpretation.”

An April 2016 Mennonite World Review editorial asked whether MC-USA should disband itself, asserting, “Dissolving MC-USA would clear the way to bring back the small, comfortable denominations Mennonites prefer.” A Religion News Service report, written by a former editor of the Mennonite World Review and reprinted in Mennonite World Review, opened with the conclusion: “A year ago, Mennonite Church USA was one of many Christian groups struggling with dissension over the place of gays and lesbians in the church. Today, it’s not just struggling, but falling apart.”

In July 2017 at its national conference, and with only about 75,000 solidly pro-BDS remaining in the whittled down MC-USA, the boycott resolution finally passed. Some 98 percent of the delegates approved. The vote was orchestrated in open collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group now reviled in much of the Jewish community for its leadership of the anti-Israel movement. JVP attended the conference and spoke on stage. In celebration of the various resolutions adopted, Hillsboro, Kansas Delegate Tim Frye was quoted by Mennonite media as proclaiming, “For the past 100 years we’ve tried to be normal … We need to go back to being weird again.”

MC-USA’s July 2017 BDS resolution was just its latest act of anti-Israel agitation. It co-sponsors an agitation brigade, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), which, according to Israeli officials, harass Israeli soldiers at security checkpoints during regularly scheduled confrontation riots by uttering insults at security forces, nose-to-nose, hoping soldiers will over-react as cameras whir. Sometimes CPT obstruct soldiers before anti-terrorist arrest efforts. CPT coordinates with similar confrontation efforts waged by groups such as the International Solidarity Movement. On American campuses, CPT has teamed up Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, both groups now known for harassing Jewish students for their identity. Economic warfare, anathema to most Mennonite religious precepts, is now a holy obligation at MC-USA.

The Kansas anti-BDS legislation took effect July 1, 2017. MC-USA adopted its pro-BDS resolution five days later. Four days after that, Koontz, who had been hired by a Wichita magnet school as a math curriculum coach, received the new Kansas State form, certifying she was not boycotting Israel. She stated she could not sign, citing her MS-USA church belief. This set up the constitutional challenge.

When she filed here suit seeking religious protection, Koontz knew her actions were strictly political—not religious. Koontz had previously worked for three years with the Mennonite Central Committee in Egypt as a highly politicized anti-Israel Mennonite activist. Her own first-person statement explaining the lawsuit, published by her attorneys, the American Civil Liberties Union, on the ACLU website, declares, “It seems preposterous that my decision to participate in a political boycott should have any effect on my ability to work for the state of Kansas.” She self-describes her action as “political” four times in that declaration. Koontz’s suit was filed for a political goal—not a religious one.

The ACLU’s court filing in the case reinforces the political nature of the case, stating, “Every day, Ms. Koontz is being financially penalized for refusing to disavow her political boycott.” The court filing repeats the assertion, “Ms. Koontz is unable to sign the Certification because she is currently participating in a politically motivated boycott of consumer goods and services offered by Israeli companies and international companies operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

It is true the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld freedom of personal belief. But this case is not about belief, it is about actions. The Kansas law does not ask Koontz to disavow any beliefs, just not to take actions—to wit, a boycott—which will discriminate against Israeli Jews. Koontz will not boycott Israeli Arab institutions, only Jewish ones.

Furthermore, Koontz is not acting as an individual employee, but as an outside contractor. Every university guest lecturer, caterer, and plumber knows it is commonplace to sign mandatory contractor pledges not to discriminate against women, minorities, and other protected groups. A typical example is, the University of Kansas which for years has required, in paragraph 5 of its sub-contractor form, a pledge not to discriminate against at least eight classes of people, including on the basis of “national origin.” The KU pledge form cites two other pre-existing state anti-discrimination laws. Hence, an Israeli professor or an Israeli purveyor could not be boycotted due to national origin. Nor can a Mexican-American or African-American be singled out. Beliefs are untouched by such policies. But economic actions can be regulated.

NAACP v Claiborne Hardware, the very Supreme Court ruling cited in the third paragraph of the ACLU lawsuit, makes clear “this Court has recognized the strong governmental interest in certain forms of economic regulation, even though such regulation may have an incidental effect on rights of speech and association.”

Prior to enacting HB 2409, the Kansas Legislature received a statement from the State Department of Commerce averring, “In 2016, Kansas exported $56,681,800 in total commodities, while importing $83,650,853. It is in the best interest of Kansas to continue our strong trade relationship with Israel. Any company openly boycotting Israel and its products, is openly boycotting a Kansas trade partner and ally, an action Secretary Antonio Soave and the Department of Commerce feels provides enough merit to prevent as a state vendor … The implementation of what the BDS movement is attempting to achieve is the illegal discrimination on the basis of nationality.”

Bob Jones University vibrantly proved it could not shield its blatant discrimination against African-Americans by citing bizarre Biblical beliefs. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the IRS revocation of BJU’s tax exemption due to racial discrimination.

Moreover, as a Mennonite, Koontz knew she did not have to sue and seek an injunction. Kansas HR 2409 makes clear, even in its short form, “The Secretary of Administration has the authority to waive application of this prohibition if the Secretary determines the prohibition is not practicable.”

No group in America knows more about filing for government exemptions than Mennonites. During both World Wars, Mennonites comprised a large number of America’s conscientious objectors, exempted from combat. The exemption is still published by the dormant Select Service System.

Indeed, in a filing, the Kansas Attorney General confirmed the obvious to the court: “If plaintiff [Koontz] had requested a waiver, the Secretary would have granted it.”

But Koontz did not want to exercise her legal options to request religious exemption. She wanted a show trial and headlines.

Koontz is sincere in her activism. However, she has been duped, by revisionist Frankenhistory that pretends that the Jews have colonized Israel and that the indigenous people of Palestine are Arabs. In fact, history has known for more than a millennium that after the Romans evicted the Jews from Judea, the Arabs of Arabia, during the seventh century, invaded and conquered three continents, including Palestine— an exonymic name imposed by the Romans for the Philistines who were Greek Island invaders. Far from a violation of international law, the Jewish right to reclaim their land was specifically enshrined in Article II of the 1919 Eilat Agreement between the Zionist Organization and Emir Faisal on behalf of the Arab Nation in waiting, the San Remo Treaty Article 6 ratified by 52 countries, the League of Nations Mandate, the Treaty of Sèvres in Chapter 95 also signed by Arab representatives, the UN Charter’s Article 80, and many other instruments of international law.

If Koontz will return to any of the simple Mennonite churches in central Kansas, she can refresh her knowledge of history and the restoration of the Jews in Israel. She can read the one international law that predated the League of Nations, the Arab invasion, and even the Roman expulsion. She can refer to Leviticus 25:10 which commands the Israelites to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property.” No Hitler decree, Arab League boycott, BDS chant, MC-USA resolution, or ACLU lawsuit can erase those words from the churches of Kansas— or from its courtrooms.

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Edwin Black is the NYT bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust and Financing the Flames. Winner of the Moral Compass and Justice for All awards for his human rights work, Black has studied both boycotts and Mennonites for nearly half a century.

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Relationships: The Multiplying Effect

Two weeks ago, we looked eastward and saw 60,000 Polish nationalists, with hatred in their hearts, marching against Jews & Muslims. And here too, in America, we know both the Muslim and Jewish communities are being targeted in a different ways. Despite forces trying to pit us against one another, as we approach Thanksgiving this year, we are grateful for the wide variety of partnerships being built between Muslims and Jews. These partnerships, no matter how small, accumulate to create deep and meaningful relationships, which reinforce and strengthen our ability to show up for each other. This is why we are especially grateful right now to have a front row seat to the flourishing relationships created through the work we do at NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, an organization working for over a decade to build relationships between Muslims and Jews to  transform our communities through lasting partnership.

Over the past several years, the inquiry of one of our Change-Makers, Deanna Neil, afforded her and another one of our community members, Hadir Elsayed, the opportunity to build on extant relationships in a way that has impacted our individual communities, and gone on to impact our city beyond the border of our individual relationships.

Until this past spring, Deanna was the Director of Jewish Innovation, running a Sunday program at the Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center (SIJCC). As one of her final projects this past May, nearly 200 kids and their parents from Jewish and Muslim Sunday Schools held a book drive, and met to share an inter-communal, interfaith experience. The event came into being a few years ago, as a result of her NewGround Change-Maker experience. Tasked with doing a project as part of the Change-Maker program, Deanna turned to the resources closest at hand: A school of secular Jews and their families. The staff at NewGround were able to connect her with Hadir, the head of the Sunday School at the Islamic Center of Southern California.

Hadir, relatively new to Muslim/Jewish engagement, enjoyed the sessions shared session for adults, and it changed her perspective on so many levels– allowing her to see both the differences and the many commonalities. She, like the students and parents who participated, was surprised by the parallels in both of our faiths, languages and experiences. As only one example, both the Jewish and Muslim traditions help those less fortunate through what is called tzedakah in Judaism and sadaqah in Islam. “Supporting the needy is not an optional good deed, but an obligatory act, like breathing or drinking. Over the past two years, our communities have found learning from one another priceless.” Hadir’s experience brought to life for her and her community this often-quoted Quranic verse: “People! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. 49:13 Learning together makes us more conscious of the holiness in and around us.

In 2015, the launch year of the project, the Silverlake JCC community went to the Islamic Center of Southern California. Deanna had attended many NewGround meetings there, and was excited to share this connection with her community. She coordinated with Hadir, and together, they brought the entire SIJCC contingent to this, as yet, unfamiliar space.

While the kids learned with each other and made kits for the homeless, the adults also gathered, and the takeaways were profoundly simple – “Yes, there are differences, but you’re just like us. You’re parents in a secular American world, trying to connect to community and build religious identity for your kids at a relatively progressive institution.” In the second year, this past spring, the SIJCC hosted, and the experience was just as moving. Deanna and Hadir were amazed at the success of the program and how touched people were – just to be brought into an unfamiliar space, yet be made to feel safe and build relationships.

There is a verse in the Quran that instructs people of faith to hold constructive discussions with the people of the book *(Jews among them) weaving ideas together as if in a braid, creating a conversation and a relationship that is stronger and based on respect. “And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best, 29:46 Concluding that even when there are significant differences, we must focus on our common commitment to the values outlined in our traditions. The idea of using our resources to strengthen our own community, and the broader community in which we find ourselves, is clearly a value held by both our traditions.

Deanna and Hadir built a relationship out of their pre-existing relationship with NewGround. Together they reached out to their communities, helping to form new relationships, which are now invested in institutionalizing their work as conveners. Their project now serves to inspire similar projects between other institutions.

Although Deanna is moving on from her position, one of her greatest joys is knowing this experience will carry on after she’s gone. The project is now a staple of the year – expected by both Sunday Schools. The communities were so excited and only want more. The Jewish students will grow up and be able to say they’ve been to Muslim prayer space, or they’ve met a Jew. They asked questions they were afraid to ask anywhere else. And the same, of course, is true for the Muslim students.  They know that together, they have addressed issue that impact people in the City of Los Angeles outside of either of our communities.

There is a saying in the Mishnah: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.”  It is not each individual’s contribution alone that makes the difference.  It is the accumulation of each act — and the multiplying effects of the relationships between these actors — that moves us toward change. Whatever your resources and relationships, it is time for each of us, with gratitude and purpose, to get to work.

NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change empowers Jewish and Muslim change-makers with the skills, resources, and relationships needed to improve Muslim-Jewish relations and strengthen cooperation on issues of shared concern. Through a professional fellowship, high school leadership council and innovative public programming, NewGround impacts a broad political and religious spectrum of Muslims, Jews and the institutions. http://mjnewground.org/

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Aziza Hasan, Executive Director of NewGround, has extensive experience in program management and coalition building. Aziza’s work has been featured in several outlets including Yahoo News, Public Radio’s “Speaking of Faith” with Krista Tippett, and the LA Times, among others. Aziza currently serves on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Interfaith Advisory Council.

Andrea Hodos is currently the Program Co-Director at NewGround, where she facilitates the High School Leadership Council and the adult Changemaker cohorts. She is also the Director of Sinai & Sunna: Women Covering, Uncovering and Recovering, a performance-based community venture harnessing the power of theater to move the Muslim and Jewish communities—literally and figuratively.

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How Do You Say ‘Wishbone’ in Hebrew?

If an American holiday falls on the Jewish calendar, does it make a sound? That’s a question we American immigrants ask ourselves annually with the coming of Thanksgiving.

Ahh, Thanksgiving. That special holiday, rich with delicious foods unknown to most of humankind, commemorating a story that none of us over here can seem to remember. As an expat living in Israel, on no other day do I feel more American. No longer am I the Jewish kid in the public school cafeteria, trying to explain why my people eat a roll substitute made of “matza farfel”. In November, I become the American immigrant who defends the practice of adding marshmallows to yams (and pumpkin spice to coffee).

And why wouldn’t you? What is Thanksgiving, if not a day to stuff your face in the presence of loved ones? That’s a question I get every year from my Israeli friends.

Yossi: “Ehhh, Benji, so waht eez Tenksgeeving?”

Me: “So the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock…..and they met an Indian named Squanto….although he wasn’t from India….and then they had a big feast with the Indians….and at some point, umm….I think they…kinda killed them all through genocide and disease….(long pause)….hey, who wants cranberry sauce?!

(Under my breath) “I really need to look this up before next year.”

Anyway, who has time to explain? There’s a meal to prepare! At least for those Americans who step up to embark on a wild goose turkey chase through Israeli supermarkets. As Dorothy told Toto, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore. At this time of year, the immigrants come out of the woodwork seeking community and shopping tips.

Even if the unthinkable were to happen and you weren’t to find cranberries, life would go on, right? As long as you have a turkey, which is its own adventure. Since Israelis don’t buy whole turkeys, you have to make a special request to the supermarket or butcher (a week in advance to be safe) and ask them not to cut it. You might pay three or four hundred shekels (make sure you’re seated before converting that to dollars) AND you might even discover that your Israeli oven doesn’t fit a big bird. Hey, nobody said life was easy.

No oleh (someone who makes aliyah) remains 100% American so it’s fitting that we put our own Israeli twist on the day. Since Thanksgiving is a normal Thursday here, its proximity to the weekend means we all just push it back a day and celebrate Friday night. Voila…Shabgiving! If it’s your custom, you can begin with the traditional Sabbath prayers or if you’re the creative type, you can make up your own, like “hamotzi stuffing min ha’turkey”. (Note: To this date, no one has ever actually done this.)

Actually, Thanksgiving dinner would be more fun if we ran it like Passover Seder. You want pumpkin pie? Go find it.

A Shabbat meal is always nice but let’s not lose focus: tonight is about the traditional holidays foods: turkey, stuffing, green beans, pumpkin pie, and more. Which brings us back to the yams, marshmallows, and bending over backwards to explain to the locals why a country with such expensive health care would ever eat them together.

And speaking of the locals: just as our Israeli friends open their doors to us for holiday meals, it’s only fitting that we do the same and welcome them to our feast. Keep in mind that they’ll be confused and bewildered by our bizarre food combinations. So why waste them on their unappreciative palettes? Give them some oatmeal and a taco shell and they won’t know the difference. “This is our traditional food, Sivan, which our forefathers have eaten for thousands of years. Now turn to page 45 and lead us in the bracha over the 4th cup of gravy.”

Jokes aside, it’s a great time. So maybe we don’t have the Macy’s Day parade, the Cowboys before 11 PM, or the proverbial crazy uncle who you only see once a year and argue politics with. This country is tiny, you can see him every weekend if you want (or send him daily texts through the family WhatsApp group).

What we do have is a few hours of camaraderie, community, and a chance to remember the traditions of where we came from and how delicious it tastes. And just remember: no matter how many carbs you ingest, you’ll burn them off running around town for cranberries.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This column originally appeared in Dallas Jewish Monthly. 

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Letters to the Editor: Demographics, Israeli Supreme Court, Salvador Litvak and Marcus Freed

Demographic Study Would Aid Stories on L.A. Jews

As a former Angeleno and current doctoral candidate studying the American Jewish community, I read with disappointment the framing for the story “Building Boom: Is Jewish L.A. Defying National Demographic Trends?” (Nov. 17). I celebrate that a number of schools and synagogues, including my family’s, are growing, but the article does not tell the full story — the fact of the matter is, it can’t, as no one knows the full story of L.A. Jewry. It has been two decades since the last demographic study, the only way to systematically understand what is happening within the Jewish community of greater Los Angeles. A lot has changed since 1997 — for starters, I’m no longer in fifth grade at the VBS Day School.

In the absence of recent data, it may seem all well and good to focus on national Jewish trends as identified by the Pew Survey in 2013, but I’m sure every Angeleno will agree: L.A. is not like the rest of the country. In the absence of up-to-date estimates of the population, geographic distribution, migration habits, ritual practice, organizational involvement and more, communal institutions are left reacting to perceived trends, rather than planning ahead for growth, stabilization or even decline. Would it not be to the community’s benefit to know the relative proportion of 20-something Jews on the Westside who are Orthodox; young families in the Valley interested in Jewish summer camp; or senior citizens in Santa Monica who need social support? It’s only with a local demographic study that questions like these can be answered, so the truly important one can be asked: How can local Jewish organizations help community members lead meaningful Jewish lives?

Matt Brookner, Brandeis University, Somerville, MA (formerly from Tarzana)

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Debating the Israeli Supreme Court

I enjoyed the dueling stories by Shmuel Rosner and Caroline Glick on the Israeli Supreme Court. While posed as a debate, the two authors agree that the court suffers from ideological activism and has outsized power in the absence of a written constitution.

But what both miss is the underlying reason for the court’s current misalignment with Israeli society: the judicial nomination process. Whereas in the United States, the executive branch nominates a candidate and the legislature confirms — ensuring democratic input — in Israel, an independent “judicial selections committee” is responsible for nomination and confirmation. The nine-member committee operates in secret, and while composed of members from all three branches, a majority is unelected and therefore unaccountable to the Israeli public. In fact, the largest bloc on the committee is the Supreme Court justices themselves, allowing the court to essentially self-select its composition, refining its ideological uniformity with each successive iteration.

While we in the U.S. view checks and balances among the branches as a vital democratic feature, Israel has chosen a “hermetic seal” between the branches to ensure a judiciary independent of politics. While a noble sentiment, it essentially cuts off the court from its contemporary society, rendering it less and less relevant — and more and more controversial — to the citizenry. Indeed, in order to be saved, the system must be changed.

Jordan Reimer, Los Angeles

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Israel and Ancient Claims to Its Land

Professor Judea Pearl conceded too much to the neo-Philistines, who suddenly discovered in 1967 that they, not we, are “Palestinian” (“The Balfour Declaration at 100 and How It Redefined Indigenous People,” Nov. 10.)

First the disclaimer: I hold that those Arabs who stayed in Israel in 1948 earned their Israeli citizenship. They and their descendants richly deserve it.

That said, they are not “equally indigenous.” We have been present in the land of Israel since before recorded history, millennia ago. That is why the Arabs were calling it the “Abode of the Jew” when they first invaded it in 632 C.E. True, most of us were exiled for many centuries, but there was always some Jewish presence. The Arab population, too, dwindled as they destroyed the very soil until it would no longer support them. Most current Arab settlers descended from infiltrators attracted by the new prosperity created by the Zionists.

Louis Richter, Reseda

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Torah Portion About Sarah and the Handmaid

Well, that parsha was fun (“Vayera,” Nov. 3).

To David Sacks and Rabbi Ephraim Pelcovits: A Jewish child would say “Enough with the tests. I get too many of them in school.”

To Rabbi Ilana Berenbaum Grinblat: Older son, upon viewing his brother when the latter was brought home from the hospital, with the source explained as “Mommy’s belly:” “Put it back.” So sometimes there’s no “anymore” about it.

To Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky: The concentric circle model also applies to how one reveals himself to others. There is a core revealed to no one. The innermost circle can be, but need not be, one or more family members. It can be one or more friends. And so forth.

Finally, to Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh: My late father-in-law’s approach to life was very simple: “Whatever I have is the best.” No matter the example, “mine is the best.” Thus, he didn’t worry about competition, and the women you speak of might do well to consider something similar. I might add that it took a while for him to apply his philosophy to his two sons-in-law.

Steve Meyers via email

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From Facebook …

Salvador Litvak Column

There is clearly a distinction between young people who make immature decisions whose ramifications are beyond their scope of experience and serial pedophiles/sexual deviants (“I Shot a Sex Offender,” Nov. 17). The stigma of being convicted of a sexual offense seems to have no pyramid of seriousness, and often the term becomes dissolved into an ambiguous term that simply translates to “sicko” or “pervert.” There are literally ex-prostitutes who are registered sex offenders for prostitution too close to a school or playground (even when no children are present). Studies have shown that the wide-stroke brush of “sex offender” for minor offenses is detrimental to the public at large, places tremendous strain on law enforcement, and has not proven to reduce recidivism. Hearing the words “sex offender” places a stereotypical image in the listener’s mind of a sex predator, when the vast majority of those who commit sexual offenses are not registered offenders. I think the videographer’s open-mindedness is in good faith, and that there is much to learn from his efforts.

Brandon Moore

This is why there needs to be clearly defined parameters as to who is and who isn’t a pedophile. Those who engage in pedophilia are highly recidivist in nature. Extensive studies have shown they cannot be weaned out of it. So, this article would suggest that while he might have engaged in what is considered a sexual offense, it wasn’t pedophilia. The idea that G-d forgives the truly penitent, so we should as well … runs against what we believe — that G-d only forgives, once those we’ve transgressed against, forgive.

Batsheva Gladstone

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Back and Forth Column

I actually agree with both of them (“Reform. Orthodox. Let’s Talk.” Reform Rabbi Sarah Bassin and Orthodox Rabbi Ari Schwarzberg, Nov. 10) — but the Orthodox rabbi was correct when he said “Many would applaud others’ activism and philanthropic work while claiming that our resources must be allocated to the sustainability and future of our own community.” In our own synagogue, we have seen the numbers of millennials dwindling and are not seeing the growth necessary to exist in the near future.

Sherri Chapman

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Help for Marcus Freed

Thank you Jewish Journal for covering this story and helping to support Marcus J. Freed! (“A Community Rallies to Help Beloved Teacher,” Nov. 17.)

Audrey Jacobs

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The Power of Story

Jews always say that words create worlds.

I thought of this as I listened to Jewish-Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon speak at the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium in Miami last week.

Language is immensely important for Halfon. His grandfather — whose story Halfon tells in his novel “The Polish Boxer” — was taken to a concentration camp in 1939, and later to Block 11 to be shot. While there, he began to say Kaddish for his family and for himself, believing he would soon die. A man next to him recognized his Lodz accent. This man, a Polish boxer, was from the same town.

The boxer made it his business to train Halfon’s grandfather in the art of surviving the camp. But it wasn’t boxing that was the nature of this training. It was language. The boxer, whose skills made him a valuable entertainer in the camps — exempting him from being killed — trained him in what to say and what not to say. He trained with words, rather than fists.

Language, knowing when and when not to speak, saved Halfon’s grandfather’s life.

After the war, Halfon’s grandfather moved to Guatemala. And although Polish — his mother tongue and the language spoken between him and the boxer — essentially prevented his death, he stopped speaking it. “The Polish betrayed us,” he said.

He also said nothing about the camps until one day, when Halfon asked him about it. He spoke for six hours, his stories excavated and unearthed through language. There were “60 years of dust on his memories,” Halfon said.

For Halfon, an engineer, his grandfather’s story was a portal into Judaism, which he had pushed away. Halfon found that writing about his grandfather’s experience brought him unexpectedly closer to Judaism. It became the “entryway” to access his family story.

Halfon’s parents saw his resistance to Judaism as rebellion, but for Halfon it was about not wanting to claim what had been simply handed to him, passed down through generations, painted onto his genetic makeup. “If I wanted it back, it had to be by choice,” he said. “I had to find it on my own.”

“I’m working my way back through story, through my grandfathers. They are guiding me back slowly to that part of me I’ve been pushing away for so long. The only thing I’m interested in is story,” he said.

But story is all there is. That is what it means to be Jewish — to carry the stories of our mothers and fathers along with us, to protect and propel them into the future. Story and language are critical not just to our identity, but also to our survival.

“Still,” continued Halfon, “I’m resisting Judaism. … I push it away, but I look for it at the same time.”

To push and pull simultaneously — it’s an impulse passed down from biblical patriarchs and matriarchs who were pushed and pulled in different directions, whose internal struggles were no less intense than wars waged on battlefields.

As much as Halfon admits to being pushed away from Judaism, it is story that pulls him back and language that keeps him tethered to his identity. Story is always evolving. “My grandfather’s story keeps growing as I grow,” he said.

“My grandfathers are guiding me back slowly to that part of me I’ve been pushing away for so long. The only thing I’m interested in is story.” — Eduard Halfon

And isn’t this the way of Torah and the layers of commentary surrounding it? The Mishnah and later the Gemara prove our understanding that there’s more to every story. Halfon’s admission that each time he approaches his grandfather’s story he discovers more is the Jewish way of seeing story, of turning it and turning it to find everything within it.

Another scholar, David Patterson, recalled a midrash on Joseph, in which Pharaoh says: “I will see if you have wisdom, if you know the 70 languages of the nations.” It was knowing all these languages plus one more that saved Joseph’s life — while Pharaoh didn’t know Hebrew, Joseph did.

And it occurs to me: Maybe story is a language, and maybe Jews have known this all along. Yes, I think to myself, story will save us.

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Monica Osborne is a writer and scholar of Jewish literature and culture. Her book, “The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma,” will be published in December.

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The Beauty of Yes

When you have a child with significant disabilities, you get used to hearing “no.”

From nationally recognized speech therapists who say, “Sorry, my cutting-edge techniques won’t work for your son,” after you have schlepped the family halfway across the country to work with them, to Jewish educators who will open their classrooms to some “higher-functioning” students with special needs but not to those who need one-to-one assistance. Not to mention navigating the world of special education in the public school system in which you need to become an expert on the governing federal laws in order to get the services to which your child is entitled.

Such was the case with Birthright. Although I have worked on and off as a Jewish community professional for many years, I never imagined that our son, Danny, now 23, would be able to go on Birthright — the program providing free Israel trips to adults between 18 and 26 — in spite of the fact that he would be the perfect candidate in many ways.

He grew up watching kids’ musical videos in Hebrew, understands a lot of Hebrew, attends Shabbat services weekly at a Conservative synagogue and has visited Israel with our family. He loves Israeli dances and enjoys flying on planes.  He has probably watched the documentary “Hava Nagila” more than anyone else in the world, and his older sister spent a Masa-sponsored gap year in Israel, speaks Hebrew fluently and has staffed two Birthright trips.

In my former position at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, I sat in on many meetings with Birthright staff members and always enjoyed hearing all of their post-trip stories and adventures. But I couldn’t imagine a Birthright trip that would be able to accommodate Danny, who has limited mobility, not to mention a complicated medication regimen. The 10-day Birthright trips are known for their fast-paced, grueling schedules, including intensive physical activities and moving from hotel to hotel.

How could Danny ever participate in a trip like that?

Then in September, I received an email from the national Conservative-affiliated Camp Ramah Tikvah network. It was announcing the first-ever Birthright Israel: Amazing Israel-Ramah Tikvah trip for young adults ages 18-29 with disabilities. Ramah has organized previous Israel trips for Tikvah program participants and alumni, but this would be the first one being offered in collaboration with the international Birthright program, which has brought more than 600,000 young Jews to Israel since 1999.

The trip starts on Dec. 18 and will include classic Birthright Israel activities such as visiting Masada (by cable car) and Yad Vashem and spending Shabbat in Jerusalem, while also adding programming geared specifically for these participants, such as meeting Israeli soldiers with special needs.

Thanks to Elana Naftalin-Kelman, Tikvah director at Camp Ramah in California in Ojai, Danny has been an overnight summer camper there for the past nine years, always accompanied by a personal aide to help him with such everyday activities as dressing, eating and showering. Danny loves his time at camp, and we also love our “time off” from family caregiving. Last summer, Danny was able to gain vocational experience doing his favorite activity — being a DJ at the side of the pool, which also is his favorite place in camp.

I never imagined that our son, Danny, would be able to go on Birthright.

Elana helped me connect with Howard Blas, National Ramah Tikvah Network director, who is coordinating and leading the trip in partnership with Amazing Israel, the Birthright tour provider. Howard has led many trips to Israel with young adults with disabilities and fully understands the need to adjust the trip’s pace and intensity.

During our Skype call with him, Howard was very welcoming and open to the idea of having our personal aide from camp accompany Danny on this trip. He told us, “While we will all learn a lot from the explanations of our very experienced tour educator, Doron, each person will experience Israel differently. The trip takes each participant’s unique needs and learning style into consideration. We will experience Israel through all of our senses — riding a jeep in the Golan Heights, floating in the Dead Sea, planting trees, making chocolate and T-shirts, touching the Kotel and lots of singing, dancing and eating delicious Israeli foods!”

The word “yes” has never sounded so good.

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Michelle K. Wolf is a special needs parent activist and nonprofit professional. She is the founding executive director of the Jewish Los Angeles Special Needs Trust. Visit her Jews and Special Needs blog at http://ift.tt/2tOEx1m.

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