Wonder Women. Righteous White People. Amazing Kids. Forget J.D. Vance. Israeli version of Jan 6th. New Human Rights Watch report documents Israeli apartheid
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN NEWSLETTER #107 APRIL 26, 2021
Remember the old pop song "You gotta accen-tuate the positive, E-lim-inate the negative, Latch on to the affirmative, Don't mess with Mister-in-between." I thought of Johnny Mercer's lyrics when I started curating this issue with the intention of filling it solely with great people and upbeat items. However, as often seems the case, a few un-ignorable "deplorables" pushed to the fore along with some cultural and contemporary reminders of "isms" that need to be called out. Let's open with the good stuff:
WONDER WOMEN
* National: "President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress tomorrow night won't look or sound much like those his predecessors gave, and not just because pandemic precautions mean he'll speak to a much emptier House chamber...," writes Olivier Knox in WashPost's Daily 202 newsletter, "but also because for the first time in U.S. history the two people seated directly behind him will be women — Vice President Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
* Local: Gale Brewer (above), Manhattan Borough President, now running for her former City Council seat on the Upper West Side knows the issues facing our community, knows how government works, and will insure that no one gets left behind as we recover from the pandemic. Donate any amount here to join "Broadway & Beyond for Brewer" Thurs, 5/13, 7 pm
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg Remembered in the Columbia Law Review by Kathleen Peratis (above) who summons warm memories of her mentor, colleague, and friend, the Notorious RBG.
* Hosted by Labor Arts and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, the Clara Lemlich Awards celebrate women in their 80s and 90s and 100s whose work has made lasting positive change. Meet two remarkable 2020 winners, Madeline Anderson (above, right) trailblazing filmmaker, first black woman to produce and direct a TV documentary ("Integration Report One" 1960) first black woman to produce and direct a syndicated TV series ("Infinity Factory," 1977) and first black employee at NY's public TV station, WNET; and (left) my sister Brandeis alum, Arlene Goldsmith, longtime director of New Alternatives for Children, which opens doors for children with special health care needs. Meet 2021 honorees 5/10, 6-6:30 PM ET.
* I've been impressed with lawyer Robin Fleischner's impassioned representation of clients with reproductive issues such as infertility, adoption, surrogacy, and egg, sperm, and embryo donation. Here she fields questions about how LGBTQ families establish legal parentage of their children.
AMAZING KIDS
* I've never seen an adult ice skater whose grace, skill & wit exceed that of the young Russian whirlwind, Arseny Fedotov. Watch him, at age 8, skating to Rossini's "Marriage of Figaro."
* Sky Brown, 11, aims to be youngest competitor in the Olympics. Watch this awesome skateboard Wondergirl and know that her goal is to "go to unprivileged places and teach kids to skate."
* 21 minutes of awesomely talented kids. Watch the kick-ass little girl in the pink tutu land a foot on the face of her someday-maybe attacker then do it again. Though we can't all be as quick and deft, every girl should learn basic self-defense and gain confidence in her strength and autonomy.
* I guarantee you'll want to connect with a kid -- or your own inner baby -- when you watch this this magical video. Louis Armstrong singing! "Hello Brother!" in the background drives home the point.
RACISM & ANTISEMITISM
* I used to recommend J.D. Vance's memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," but I ditched his bandwagon after encountering the "barely concealed fascist rhetoric" in his call for restrictions on voting rights and the repression of dissent to benefit a nationalist agenda for America.
* Similarly, if you don't watch Fox you may have missed Tucker Carlson's thinly-veiled racist rant to justify voter suppression and defend "white replacement theory."
* Gary Ferdman & Myriam Miedzian argue In the current Tikkun magazine that "It's Time to Honor the 'Righteous Among Whites'" (the way Jews honor the Righteous Among Gentiles --such as white Jews Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who died along with James Cheney, an African American (above in photo held by MLK,Jr.) . How do you respond to this provocative proposal? Is it a constructive effort toward coalition-building & social justice ally-ship? Or an attempt by whites to steal the spotlight from heroes of color & the BLM movement?
* Jewish institutions vandalized 3rd time in a week. Saturday night, windows were broken at four synagogues in Riverdale, a largely Jewish section of The Bronx. “An attack on any synagogue is an attack on all synagogues, all Jewish institutions, and all houses of worship,” read a mass email sent yesterday by the Riverdale Jewish Community Partnership, an umbrella neighborhood group. “We will stand strong against hate and will continue to celebrate being Jewish, engage in our personal, institutional and communal activities and support one another." -- JTA report.
* The new book, “Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen" by Menachem Rosensaft contains his spare but soul-searing verse about agony and rebirth. Michael Berenbaum writes in the Jewish Journal : "... what is wonderful in Rosensaft’s writing is that he fights intensely for Jewish rights — but not exclusively. He defends the uniqueness of the Holocaust, not to place it on the mountain top as the Olympus of suffering and evil, but to use it as a spiritual push to be sensitive to all suffering and all evil. The concluding poem of the book was written after the past summer and speaks to the extinguished life of George Floyd."
BLACK LIVES MATTER
by Menachem Rosensaft
of course Black lives matter
and if we want
us
any of us
to remember
Jewish lives extinguished at Auschwitz
Bosniak lives at Srebrenica
Tutsi lives in Butare
Serbian lives at Jasenovac
Armenian lives at Musa Dagh
Fur lives in Darfur
Rohingya lives in Myanmar
then we must now all shout
that Black lives matter
until no child of God ever again dies gasping
“I can’t breathe”
FILM & VIDEO
* I loved how the mind-blowing film, "My Octopus Teacher," winner of this year's Best Documentary Award, was described in The New Yorker: "Over the course of a year, a South African naturalist, Craig Foster, becomes fascinated by and (let’s just say it) emotionally involved with a small octopus. We observe the vicissitudes of her life and moments of contact with Foster, who explains his experience in interview segments that have the candor of a therapy session." Without Foster anthropomorphizing the octopus, we witness & appreciate her smarts. Neil deGrasse Tyson notes, “... that our measures of animal intelligence are often tests for what we do best, rather than tests for what they do best.” The Times' review elaborates on that view.
* "Colette," which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short, is about a 90-year-old former member of the French resistance during WWII -- an unsentimental poet of sorrow who enters Germany for the first time 75 years later to visit the concentration camp where her brother was murdered. Watch doc here if you can tolerate several insensitive 5-second commercial interruptions from The Guardian.
* Just watched a 2017 movie, *The Zookeeper's Wife," (starring Jessica Chastain) about Antonina Zabinski and her husband Jan, gentiles who, over the course of WWII, hid more than 300 Polish Jews in the basement of their residence in the Warsaw Zoo which Nazi bombing had nearly emptied of Antonia's beautiful & beloved animals. Once the German soldiers went off duty, & before the escapees were smuggled to safety, each new group of Jews was welcomed by Antonina out of their hiding place & into her living room for tea, cake & piano music Those scenes will shred your heartstrings and testify to the power of human caring to repair shattered lives & dignity. (Watch for tiny Shira "Shtisel" Haas in an unforgettable breakthrough role.)
JEWS & CULTURE
* "Jews in Music" an uplifting video produced by The Genesis Foundation, offers healing balm to the pain rightfully evoked by movies about the Holocaust. We survived the Third Reich. The question is how to survive and squelch the Naziism of now.
* Ethiopian-Israeli rapper and singer Orit Tashoma (above) is one of the recipients of the first round of grants from New Israel Fund's "Essential Arts" Fund. Another is Chen Alon, (see CFP item below) whose day job is director of the "Legislative Holot Theater: Performing Refugees in Israel," a mixed group of African asylum seekers and Israeli allies. Watch video of the NIF grantees introducing each other and the project.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
* Last week, Israel experienced its own version of America's marauding right wing mobs of Jan 6th. "We're burning Arabs today," shouted Jewish supremacists in Jerusalem's latest explosion of hate. And the response of Israeli law enforcement left a lot to be desired. "Ahead of the march, far-right activists called for violence and urged others to arm themselves in social media posts. Some of the message groups' administrators included Otzma Yehudit lawmaker [Knesset Member] Itamar Ben-Gvir. In one message group, a member wrote: "If one of the attackers isn't hanged, this won't end," while in another group a member wrote: "We're burning Arabs today, the Molotov cocktails are already in the trunk."-- Haaretz
Tzedaka box, circa 1950s
* It's not just the Israeli government that's been driving Palestinians off their land. It's also the Jewish National Fund (makers of the little tin blue-and-white charity boxes of my youth) which was founded in 1901 to acquire and develop land in pre-state Israel for Jewish use but has operated unofficially, acquiring land in the West Bank for years by using a subsidiary. This February, for the first time, it set in motion an intiative to formalize such acquisitions which drew fierce criticism from progressive Jewish groups in the Diaspora. Now some JNF board members have demanded that it stop buying land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories because its constitution only authorizes purchase of land in sovereign Israeli territory.
* 300,000 viewers around the world watched the emotionally scorching yet spiritually uplifting Joint Israeli/Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony co-sponsored by the Bereaved Parents Circle and Combatants for Peace (cofounders Sulaiman Khatib and Chen Alon, above). Click here to see the Memorial event. Click here to see the documentary, "Disturbing The Peace," which tells the story of the founding of CFP by former Palestinian militants & IDF soldiers who've abandoned violence in favor of peaceful coexistence and a negotiated solution to the conflict.
* I delayed posting this issue until today because I've been awaiting release of the new (sure-to-be radioactive) Human Rights Watch report, "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities & The Crimes of Apartheid & Persecution." Many of the facts and abuses described in the HRW report have been known for years by Jews and others. I, for one, have long been ashamed of what the Jewish State has done in the name of my people -- the inexcusably oppressive Occupation and the degradation & dehumanization of another people. HRW's urgent call for action must be taken seriously. Here's an excerpt from their news release;
"Abusive Israeli Policies Constitute Crimes of Apartheid, Persecution, Crimes Against Humanity Should Trigger Action to End Repression of Palestinians
"(Jerusalem, April 27, 2021) – Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem."
"The 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory."
Note to my fellow & sister Jews, including liberal Zionists: At minimum, please read the first 29 pages of the HRW Report. We owe it to our tikkun heritage to inform ourselves. We can't say we didn't know.
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