NCSEJ WEEKLY TOP 10 Washington, D.C. December 07, 2018

Anti-Semitism: ‘Climate Has Got Worse for in Europe,’ Says Rabbi Deutsche Welle, December 03, 2018 https://www.dw.com/en/anti-semitism-climate-has-got-worse-for-jews-in-europe-says-moscow-rabbi/a- 46531931

Anti-Semitism is spreading across Europe once again. Moscow's chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt told DW about the fears and hopes of Europe's Jewish communities and warned against radicalization in society.

Pinchas Goldschmidt: Although I speak about the future with confidence – I do so as a Jew, as a religious Jew and as a rabbi who is always optimistic about the future – one must certainly be concerned about recent changes in Europe. And one must recognize that many of the images that we have seen of late show that the climate has got worse for Jews in Europe.

Increasingly, many Jewish families are leaving their homes, or are at least considering it – for instance in France, Sweden or the United Kingdom. Do you see a trend?

The number of Jews living in several European countries has decreased dramatically of late. We are looking at a reduction of roughly 15 percent of Europe's overall Jewish population as a result of their leaving. But there are also trends in the other direction.

The Jewish community in Germany is the only one that is growing. That is encouraging even though the generally worsening climate tells a different story. But the answer to your question lies with individual governments. What are national governments in Europe willing to do to guarantee the safety of their Jewish communities?

In other words, you think European politicians are doing too little and have not taken the steps necessary to curb rising anti-Semitism?

Many politicians claim that a Europe without Jews is unimaginable, that it would no longer be Europe. But the protection of Jewish institutions such as synagogues, schools and community centers is something that individual governments must guarantee. If we think about anti-terrorism measures – such as those undertaken in France, Belgium or Denmark – then we can see that governments are taking responsibility.

And that is the reason the Conference of European Rabbis has taken the position that governments must also take on the same responsibility in protecting Jewish citizens. Until that happens, however, the Jewish community will remain unprotected.

On the other hand, anti-Semitism on social media sites has become increasingly prevalent. The discourse on those sites has become exceedingly crass and increasingly hateful. Laws must be passed and the political will to decisively counter the trend must be clearly expressed. Can one curb or fight anti-Semitism by putting up fences or stationing more police in front of Jewish institutions, or by increasing oversight of social media sites?

Those are indeed reasonable measures but not the only ones. Education is also extremely important, especially among young Europeans and among new immigrants – who must understand and accept European values. Education and integration play an integral role in that regard.

Do you think rising anti-Semitism in Europe is a result of immigration?

Not exclusively. When we talk about anti-Semitism today then, of course, we have to acknowledge that it has a lot to do with the Islamic radicalism that has claimed so many lives over the past 15 years. On the other hand, there is something that we could call "old" anti-Semitism. That exists not only in Europe but also in the US, as we witnessed with the terrible synagogue attack in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. I do not believe that the threat posed by right-wing radicalism is any less than that posed by Islamic terrorists.

Let’s look at Russia. You have lived there for several decades and have been the chief rabbi of Moscow since 1993. How is the situation for Russia's Jewish community?

Jews are welcome in Russia. Today, roughly half a million Jews live there in peace. And Jewish life in Moscow is burgeoning, as can be seen in the city's many Jewish institutions and more than 30 synagogues. You must realize, when I moved to Moscow in the 1980s there were only two synagogues.

Russia's Jewish community is growing because so many Jews from former Soviet republics, such as those in Central Asia, are immigrating. But there are also a great number of Jews leaving Russia as well. Nevertheless, they are doing so in much lower numbers than in the 1990s, when some 2 million Jews emigrated as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

And why are Jews leaving Russia today?

The main reasons Jews are leaving Russia today are the country's worsening economic situation, the fall of the ruble, international sanctions and Russia's increasing isolation on the world political stage. That trend is unsettling to us. Xenophobic tendencies are also growing within Russian society. We are very vocal about what that means for the Jewish community.

In eastern and southeastern Europe – say the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary or Romania – Jewish life and Jewish culture are flourishing despite the mass-exoduses that took place after World War II. There, too, an increase in anti-Semitism can be seen in politics and society at large. How do you view the situation there?

Read more: German teacher fights schoolyard anti-Semitism

When we speak about Eastern Europe we must recognize that there was never any attempt to come to grips with the past – unlike in Germany – neither after World War II nor after the fall of communism. Unfortunately, history is often ignored and the question of shared responsibility for the Holocaust suppressed. Still, there is also a blossoming of Jewish life there as well. But, yes, anti-Semitism in political campaigns is a recurring theme.

Since we are talking about Eastern Europe: I can remember that as a young Israeli rabbi in the communist era, I was sent to Romania by Israel's chief rabbi. I visited a man who was the biggest rabbinical presence in the entire Eastern bloc, Moses Rosen, to learn how a rabbi could, and should, operate in a communist dictatorship. That was a life lesson for me. Rabbi Rosen was a historical figure, he was the only eastern European Jewish spiritual leader who was able to actively maintain his congregation despite dictatorship and emigration.

Let's return to the present. What opportunity do you see for interfaith dialogue in light of growing polarization and populist discourse within society?

Dialogue is absolutely essential, not only on a religious level between Muslims, Jews and Christians but also with liberal atheists and agnostics. Today, the values that we established in Europe after World War II are increasingly being called into question. It is imperative that we continue to have dialogue in order to ensure that Europe remains a civilization, a union of diverse peoples and states.

Meet the Lonely Ukrainian Jew Fighting His Country’s New Fondness for Nazis By Sam Sokol Forward, December 02, 2018 https://forward.com/news/world/412248/meet-the-lonely-ukranian-jew-fighting-his-countrys-new- fondness-for-nazis/

Eduard Dolinsky went online about a year and a half ago and saw an image that shook him to his core. A large crowd, some in Nazi uniforms, was parading in the Ukranian city of L’viv to commemorate the establishment of a militia loyal to Hitler.

“Division Galicia - the heroes of Ukraine,” the marchers chanted as they walked.

As head of one of Ukraine’s leading Jewish advocacy groups, Dolinsky was livid at the idea of celebrating Nazi collaboration. For the same reason, he could try to do something about it.

“When the government, state and civil society start to promote these organizations as heroes and those who fought for Ukrainian independence and whitewash their participation in the Holocaust actively and aggressively, I decided that my obligation and duty was to speak out against this,” Dolinsky told The Forward. “This is a denial of basic moral sense.”

Today, Dolinsky, the 49-year-old director of the Ukranian Jewish Committee, is immersed in a campaign against the valorization of the SS as anti-Communist heroes.

“When I was a kid someone told me that I’m a Yid,” recalled Dolinsky in a recent interview with the Forward. “I came home and asked my mom what it meant. She told me that we are Jews and we are different, don’t pay attention. For a long time afterwards I was confused and ashamed that I’m different and not like other kids.”

Ukrainian Jews are about 0.1% of the country’s 44 million people.

The country, which sits on the Black Sea, is bordered by Russia on its east, Belarus to the north and various eastern European countries to its west. Its relationship with Russia has dominated its politics for hundreds of years; it was a member state of the Soviet Union, and since its dissolution, the two countries have experienced periods of cooperation, tension and even armed conflict. The current government has no diplomatic relations with Russia and is actively resisting its influence. That’s where the Nazis — and Dolinsky — come in.

The current anti-Russian government has enlisted history in its cause, and has embarked on an active campaign to suppress Communist symbols and to rehabilitate people and groups that fought against the Soviet Union — no matter what crimes they may have committed against the Jews. Born in 1969 to an active, if non-observant, Jewish family in the former Polish city of Lutsk in the country’s northwest, Dolinsky served two years in the Soviet Air Forces and was discharged shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While many Ukrainian Jews fled the country at that time, the pugnacious Dolinsky decided to stay. He said that he has been asked many times over the years, mostly by American Jews, about why he remained behind.

“First of all, you were born here, you were raised here, your son was born here, your parents are buried here, so all your heritage and legacy is here and this is the country of your language and your friends and family. You can play a role here. I can be much more effective in life and in my professional activities here than anywhere abroad,” he said. Dolinsky is married, and the father of a 25-year-old son who studied in Israel and works in finance in Ukraine.

It was during and just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when anything seemed possible, that he first became actively involved in efforts to rebuild his country’s moribund Jewish communal life, first serving in administrative roles in the newly established Jewish Foundation of Ukraine and the All- Ukrainian Jewish Congress before moving on to establish the Ukrainian Jewish Committee together with minor oligarch and lawmaker Oleksandr Feldman.

Dolinsky is known as a firebrand, willing to speak out harshly against perceived threats to the community even when others prefer a more conciliatory approach.

Asked if he finds inspiration in the example of former Anti-Defamation League leader Abe Foxman — an American crusader against anti-Semitism and bigotry more broadly — Dolinsky replied in the affirmative.

“I think yes,” Dolinsky told the Forward.

His high profile, bolstered by the use of social media and his close contacts with journalists, belies his small staff (only three full time employees and twenty volunteers spread across the country.) His posts on Facebook are often picked up and used as the basis of stories in outlets such as The Post and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He also collaborates with the ADL, American Jewish Committee and National Coalition Supporting Soviet Jewry.

Now, Dolinsky is taking aim at his government’s public awareness campaigns that praise organizations that collaborated with the Nazis and engaged in the widespread ethnic cleaning of Jews and Poles, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its militant offshoot, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

He faces a major obstacle, however, in Ukraine’s “Decommunization Laws,” which banned a slew of Communist — and some Nazi — symbols. The Decommunization Laws only list a limited number of Nazi symbols whose use is prohibited. That means by law, some are allowed, and that means Dolinsky’s quest is a bit quixotic.

He believes that the Galician Division’s symbols should be included in the ban because the unit was a part of the SS and its members “all made an oath to Hitler.” And even if their logo ends up being declared legally acceptable, he isn’t deterred. “First of all, I want to bring attention to the issue of Nazi collaborators and those who perpetrated the Holocaust,” he explained.

An avid reader who devours books on Jewish history, Dolinsky is one of a class of what can be called professional Jews, people whose entire Jewish identity is wrapped up in their work for the community. “It’s like an inseparable part of my life,” he said of his work. “It’s my whole life. I can’t even imagine myself outside of this. The work isn’t just work. The Jewish community isn’t about the work as a profession, it’s a passion that haunts all your life. It’s not about nine to six. It’s 24 hours, seven days a week.”

As a representative of the UJC, he makes frequent media appearances, taking to the airwaves to make arguments that strike at the core of Ukraine’s self-image.

In 2017 he publicly (and unsuccessfully) demanded that the local state prosecutor prosecute organizers of the SS march for their “malicious and demonstrative violation” of the law. Volodymyr Viatrovych, Dolinsky’s longtime nemesis and the official in charge of implementing Ukraine’s national memory policy, maintains that that the Galicia Division’s symbols are not legally problematic.

And while many Ukraine scholars are critical of Viatrovych’s glorification of Nazi collaborators, most say he’s right about what the Decommunization Laws do and do not prohibit.

Refusing to accept Viatrovych’s explanations, Dolinsky escalated their dispute, publicly calling on Ukraine’s national prosecutor to bring a lawsuit against Viatrovych himself for violating the law against Nazi glorification. It was not the first time the two had tangled.

Only weeks earlier, Dolinsky had written a caustic op-ed in The New York Times in which he accused the Ukrainians of “whitewashing” history and linked such revisionism to a growing “climate of anti- Semitism.” In response, Viatrovych took to Facebook to accuse Dolinsky of making up Ukrainian anti- Semitism and selling it “in the country and abroad to everyone who will pay for it,” calling him even worse than those who “made money by hiding Jews from Nazi persecution.”

Given their history and diametrically opposite points of view, it is unsurprising that Dolinsky would end up ratcheting up the conflict. While not suing Viatrovych himself, Dolinsky is backing a lawsuit against him alleging that Viatrovych, in his capacity as a civil servant, violated a Ukrainian law prohibiting him from publicly interpreting the law. There is a Ukrainian law prohibiting civil servants from issuing pronouncements on legal issues that are in the jurisdiction of the courts, and Dolinsky believes that by claiming the SS Galician Division’s symbols are legal, Viatrovych has broken that law.

Several Ukrainian Jewish groups, including the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, have expressed support for Dolinsky’s efforts, although privately some have expressed doubts about his harsh rhetoric and confrontational style.

“Some people think he’s too confrontational and uses intemperate language. The message gets lost,” he said one longtime observer of Ukrainian Jewry who spoke to the Forward on condition of anonymity.

But Dolinsky says that he is compelled to continue.

“When you say the guy who murdered a Jew is a hero, this is the second murder of Jews,” he said, explaining that whitewashing the legacy of those who slaughtered Jews is tantamount to killing them all over again.

80 Years after Kristallnacht, German President Lights Massive Hanukkah Menorah By Tobey Axelrod Times of Israel, December 03, 2018 https://www.timesofisrael.com/80-years-after-kristallnacht-german-president-lights-massive- hanukkah-menorah/

Eighty years after Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” in which Nazis terrorized Jews throughout the German Reich, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was lifted in a cherry picker crane alongside community Rabbi Yehudah Teichtal to kindle what is billed as Europe’s largest Hanukkah menorah, located at the iconic Brandenburg Gate.

Thanks to a misty rain, the first night of Hanukkah was especially sparkly in Berlin this year. Raindrops settled upon several hundred onlookers gathered for the 15th annual candle-lighting ceremony, refracting the lights of Berlin’s giant Christmas tree and the illuminated 18th-century monument, just east of where the Berlin Wall once loomed.

As Steinmeier and Teichtal lit the menorah, watching below from the cobblestoned plaza were Berlin Mayor Michael Müller; Bundestag member and vice president Petra Pau; Israel’s ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff; US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grennel; Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany; Gideon Joffe, the head of Berlin’s Jewish community; and numerous children and their parents, noshing on jelly donuts under umbrellas.

The very public display of support for the Jewish community occurred this year against the backdrop of rising concerns about anti-Semitism here in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

A recent CNN poll sampling 7,000 Europeans in seven countries found that 28 percent of those surveyed said they believed Jews have “too much influence” in business and finance, while 20% felt Jews had excessive influence in media and politics.

“Anti-Semitism is being expressed openly again, on the streets, in schoolyards, on the internet,” Steinmeier said in remarks to the crowd. “We must act decisively against it,” continued the German president.

Steinmeier further declared to the Jewish community that it was “a gift that we can reach out to join hands over the chasm of our history.”

Sunday’s Hanukkah event in Berlin was one of many celebrations serving as counterpoint to the recent 80th anniversary of the November 9 pogrom against Jews and their property in Nazi-era Germany. The Festival of Lights will also be marked this year in Germany’s capital at a ceremony for some 300 Holocaust survivors, sponsored by the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

The event at Brandenburg Gate was launched by Teichtal in 2003 and has become a fixture of the season, drawing Jews and non-Jews alike. This year, members of the Berlin Philharmonic performed, and the event was capped by a soundtrack of bouncy Hanukkah songs to which a circle of men and boys danced in the rain.

What better way to underscore “the triumph of light over darkness than the president of Germany lighting the first Hanukkah candle,” Teichtal, president and director of Chabad Lubavitch Berlin, told The Times of Israel at a pre-lighting reception hosted by Ambassador Grennel and his partner Matt Lahey at the US Embassy, overlooking the Brandenburg Gate. Teichtal’s thoughts were echoed by young Chabad emissary Hillel Levinson, 21, who handed out Hanukkah kits to passersby at Sunday’s event.

“It’s amazing to see a hanukkiah [Hanukkah menorah] in the place where Hitler spoke about annihilating the Jewish nation, and to see that all the people are coming despite the weather,” said Levinson, who was born in the United States and moved with his parents to Kharkov, Ukraine. He held one box with candles and a menorah in his hand, one had another tucked under his arm.

“I came to help light up Berlin,” said his colleague Mendel Brandwine, 20, whose father is a ritual slaughterer in Iowa. “It’s a real revenge against Hitler,” said Brandwine, whose great-great grandmother died in the Holocaust. He said he would hand out enough Hanukkah kits “to have every Jew covered.”

Chabad’s special mission to Germany

The influx of Chabad emissaries to the city is entirely intentional, explained Teichtal at Sunday’s intimate embassy ceremony. Teichtal came to Berlin with his wife, Leah, in 1996, a few years after the death of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson in New York. The rebbehad urged emissaries to go to Germany; the first to do so were Rabbi Yisroel Diskin and his wife, Chana, in 1988, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“It was a wish of the rebbe that Germany should not be ignored,” said Teichtal.

Today, there are 20 Chabad congregations around the country, and each had at least one Hanukkah menorah, according to Teichtal. Publicly advertising the miracle around the world is in keeping with the rebbe’s wish to spread the word about the holiday – and Judaism in general. In Berlin alone there are 25 public menorahs this year, placed strategically around the city, with signs declaring that “Chabad wishes you a joyous Hanukkah.”

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were about 25,000 Jews in Germany, most of them survivors from Eastern Europe, and their descendants. After the unification of East and West Germany, there was an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union. Today, officially there are about 100,000 members, but if one includes those unaffiliated with congregations, the number more than doubles.

Case in point is Berlin, where there are some 10,000 registered members of the community who attend Reform, Masorti, Sephardic, Renewal and traditional congregations. Unofficially, there may be three times as many Jews here, as it is impossible to estimate exactly how many unaffiliated Jews – including Israelis – are living in the capital.

While waiting for the ceremony to begin at the Brandenburg Gate, Berliner Hella Schapiro said she was especially proud of her grandson Moshe, age 12, who had interviewed German President Steinmeier for the newspaper at the Jüdische Traditionsschule (Jewish Traditional School) of Chabad Lubavitch Berlin.

Moshe was one of several pupils who took the stage Sunday to explain the Jewish holiday to anyone who might not be familiar with it. And that would be many, in this mostly Protestant city of about 4 million.

The idea of sharing the holiday of miracles with others prompted Gideon Joffe, head of Berlin’s official Jewish community, to think big: “You have to be an incorrigible optimist,” Joffe told the crowd. Noting that there are more than 50 Muslim countries in the world, he quipped: “How long will it be before they all have Hanukkah menorahs like this? I suggest we will all live to see it.”

Jobbik Party Member Resigns Leadership Positions after Recording Surfaces of anti-Semitic Act JTA, December 02, 2018 https://www.jta.org/2018/12/02/news-opinion/jobbik-party-member-resigns-leadership-positions- recording-surfaces-anti-semitic-act

A leader of the extremist Jobbik Party in Hungary resigned his leadership positions following the release of a recording of an admission of an anti-Semitic act.

Jobbik deputy group leader and parliamentary notary Istvan Szavay resigned his positions on Thursday, Hungary Today reported, though he will remain a member of Parliament. Szavay is heard on the recording admitting to verbally and physically assaulting a Jewish woman, though he claims she started it.

“She was yelling, ‘Nazis are stinking here,’ and I just knocked her out, dirty Jew, pakk, just like this,” he said on the recording.

He said he did not actually physically harm the woman.

Jobbik is a xenophobic movement that the World Jewish Congress has termed “an extremist party promoting hate.” It is Hungary’s second-largest party with 26 out of 199 seats in parliament.

Survivors and Soldiers: Revolutionary Technology Preserves Living Testimony of Soviet Jewish Experience of Holocaust and WWII Benzinga, December 04, 2018 https://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/18/12/r12795699/survivors-and-soldiers-revolutionary- technology-preserves-living-testi

Thanks to a new partnership between USCShoah Foundation and Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), the experiences of Russian-speaking Jews during the Holocaust and World War II will be documented for the first time in USC Shoah Foundation's award-winning "Dimensions in Testimony" program – a groundbreaking form of experiencing history that uses natural language software to enable audiences to interact with the recorded image of the survivor in a natural and conversational way. The pioneering Dimensions in Testimony program integrates advanced recording techniques to create three-dimensional projections of survivors, which are capable of talking about their experiences during the Holocaust and answering questions in real time. Over time, the projection of the survivor "learns" from these interactions and the relevancy rate and speed of their responses improve, creating a progressively more life-like interaction. The result is a first-hand survivor's account that will remain, even after the last living survivors are gone, able to bear witness to history for future generations. "For me, as a son and grandson of Holocaust survivors, this unique project holds an immense personal importance," said Mikhail Fridman, co-founder of GPG. "It is an opportunity to preserve for posterity not only the horrifying tragedy of Soviet Jewry in the Holocaust – which remains even to this day one of the less known aspects of the 'Final Solution' – but also to give voice to those valiant Jewish warriors, partisans and ghetto fighters who did their part to bring about the victory over Nazism." This effort was initiated by GPG, which is committed to ensuring that Jewish culture, heritage and values are preserved in Russian-speaking Jewish communities worldwide. Given the importance of Holocaust education for young people today and in the future, GPG aims to disseminate knowledge about the tragedy of Soviet Jewry during the Shoah and the heroism of the Jewish fighters against the Nazism to a wider audience. USC Shoah Foundation and GPG will collaborate to identify two individuals from the former Soviet Union — a Holocaust survivor and a Red Army veteran – to add their testimonies to the Dimensions in Testimony project. So far, 19 survivors have been interviewed for the program, but now these two will provide the first Russian-language narrative and for the first time in the program's history focus on the memories of the Holocaust in the territories of the former Soviet Union. Ilia Salita, president and CEO of GPG, said that the collaboration between the two organizations was an important step in remembering a vital piece of history. "For Genesis Philanthropy Group, this partnership with USC Shoah Foundation is a logical next step in our long-term commitment to preservation of the memory of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union and the stories of the Soviet Jews who fought the Nazis," Salita said. "This effort is especially important now, when the world is experiencing a rise of violent anti-Semitism around the world. The cutting-edge technology, which is employed to create these interactive testimonies, will make them accessible and relatable to younger generations, to those, who, as the time passes, will not have the opportunity to meet living survivors of the Holocaust." Prior to World War II, 3 million Jews lived within the boundaries of the former Soviet Union, of which one-half were murdered in the Holocaust and more than half a million fought in the Red Army. As the last generation of survivors ages, we are rapidly losing the first-hand accounts that have been so vital to public understanding of the Shoah. By adding the accounts of Russian-speaking Jews for the first time to the Dimensions in Testimony program, these two newest additions will ensure that voices bearing witness to the often under recognized Holocaust of Russian and Eastern European Jewry and the experience of the Jewish fighters will live on for generations to come. "Dimensions in Testimony in Russian will change the landscape of Holocaust remembrance and education, bringing whole generations and new communities closer to history through technology," said Stephen Smith, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation. "In the West, we often hear survivor stories from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which have largely defined the experience of the Holocaust to the English-speaking world. The stories of Holocaust victims and survivors within the former Soviet Union are essential for all audiences to better understand the history and ramifications of this mass atrocity." About Genesis Philanthropy Group Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG) is a global foundation, co-founded by Mikhail Fridman, an international businessman, investor and philanthropist, and his business partners. GPG primarily, but not exclusively, focuses its philanthropic support on developing and enhancing Jewish identity among Russian-speaking Jews worldwide. To learn more, visit www.GPG.org. About USC Shoah Foundation USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education develops empathy, understanding and respect through testimony, using its Visual History Archive of more than 55,000 video testimonies, award-winning IWitness education program, and the Center for Advanced Genocide Research. USC Shoah Foundation's interactive programming, research and materials are accessed in museums and universities, cited by government leaders and NGOs, and taught in classrooms around the world. Now in its third decade, USC Shoah Foundation reaches millions of people on six continents from its home at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. About Dimensions in Testimony Dimensions in Testimony is an initiative by USC Shoah Foundation to record and display testimony in a way that will preserve the dialogue between Holocaust survivors and learners far into the future. Collaborating within the project are Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, with technology by USC Institute for Creative Technologies, and concept by Conscience Display. Funding for Dimensions in Testimony was provided in part by Pears Foundation, Louis. F. Smith, Melinda Goldrich and Andrea Cayton/Goldrich Family Foundation in honor of Jona Goldrich, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and Genesis Philanthropy Group (R.A.). Other partners include CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center. X-Ray Vision on Russian Jewry By Ted Merwin New York Jewish Week, December 04, 2018 https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/x-ray-vision-on-russian-jewry/

They called it “jazz on bones.” In Soviet-era Russia, Western music was explicitly forbidden, and in order to listen, say, to the Beatles or to the work of the Jewish singer/songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky, music was recorded on X-ray films by cutting them in circles and burning a cigarette hole in the center. These X-ray recordings are a central metaphor in a new Off-Broadway play, “The Russian and the Jew,” written by Liba Vaynberg and Emily Louise Perkins. Inspired by Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” it comes on the heels of the debut of a new musical adaptation of the same novel in London, and just a year after the closing of Dave Malloy’s hit Broadway musical “Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812,” inspired by Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” The new work was sponsored by grants from COJECO (Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations) and the Genesis Philanthropy Group.

Directed by Inés Braun, “The Russian and the Jew” centers on the close friendship between two young female doctors in the small town of Brest in Belarus. Lena (Vaynberg) is Jewish; Katya (Perkins) is not. Like the title character in Tolstoy’s novel, Lena is a married woman who has an affair, in this case with a man named Adler (Jordan Bellow). Katya, who is divorced, falls for a Jewish man named Levin (Terrell Wheeler), a railroad supervisor who tells anti-Semitic jokes to his colleagues to convince them that he is not Jewish. Lena and Katya, despite the differences in their backgrounds, bond over listening secretly to Radio Liberty, as well as to bootleg recordings (made on X-ray films) of the Beatles and Vysotsky.

But as anti-Semitism spikes throughout the Soviet Union, and as Lena attempts to get a visa to emigrate to America, Lena and Katya’s relationship turns out to be more fraught than either of them had realized. Russian fairy tales, including the tale of the witch named Baba Yaga (a staple of Yiddish folklore), as well as one about a frog princess, are interwoven into the play in ways that mirror the main action of the drama.

In an interview, Vaynberg told The Jewish Week that the two-hour play is based on her own upbringing; her father was a railroad engineer in Russia and her mother is a physician. The first member of her family to be born in this country, Vaynberg grew up in Los Angeles; her bat mitzvah, which was presided over by a Chabad rabbi, took place in the community room of a local theater. Although the play tackles serious issues, Vaynberg called it “lush, romantic and sexy — not didactic.”

Vaynberg explained that just as Anna Karenina was constrained in her behavior by Russian attitudes toward women, the Jews in her play suffer because of their ethnicity, despite the fact that the practice of Jewish religion — and all religion — was outlawed by the Communist regime.

She summed up the play as being about how “personal relationships reflect political realities.” The play is set among a group of Jewish dissidents in the wake of the Six-Day War in Israel, when a surge of pride among Russian Jews (as among other Jews worldwide) has led many of them to want to return to Jewish learning and practice; some are studying Hebrew and having Passover seders — none of which can be done openly without fear of anti-Semitic reprisals from both the government and from non-Jewish “comrades.”

Further, because only about 4,000 exit visas were granted to Jews in the late 1960s — the flood of Russian emigres to both the United States and Israel gathered steam in the 1970s, with a quarter- million Jews leaving during that decade — Russian Jews were caught in a no-win situation in terms of their lives and careers.

Braun, who was born in Argentina and raised as a Catholic (although she has Lithuanian Jewish ancestors on her father’s side), views the characters in the play as suffering the “torment of carrying empty lives” while living under a totalitarian government. “They weren’t allowed to have a religion at all,” she noted. “Lenin was God.”

Erin Capistrano is the dramaturg for “The Russian and the Jew.” Her interpretation of the play is that it is a kind of palimpsest — a layering of elements in which what has ostensibly been erased still shows through. The Jewish characters, she explained, “are forced to keep elements of their identity secret and not advertise who they really are. But traces still remain.”

She and Braun decided to make this manifest through having scenes overlap and by having props and scenic elements that are used in one scene make another appearance, in a different form, in another. For example, a wind-up record player turns up later as a mill that a fairy tale character uses to grind flour. Using X-ray films to record music, she added, is a way of “reusing and repurposing, but also creating something that is entirely new.”

In similar fashion, the Jewish characters “create what they can with what they were given,” taking elements of their identity and trying to refashion them into new ways of being and relating to one another. Yet, to use another metaphor, they are confronted with non-Jewish characters whom Capistrano compared to Russian nesting dolls whose deep-seated anti-Semitism is always there, if you look deep enough.

But metaphor and symbolism, Capistrano observed, go only so far. As the actors rehearsed the play, current events, from the refugee crisis at the Mexican border to the massacre of Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, made the play’s relevance seem more literal. As Capistrano wrote in a program note, “news stories of families ripped apart by draconian immigration policies and asylum seekers being met at the border with tear gas and rubber bullets added unanticipated layers to the stories we were telling.”

Joint Celebrations in US of Polish, Israeli National Anniversaries Radio Poland, December 04, 2018 http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/395450,Joint-celebrations-in-US-of-Polish-Israeli-national- anniversaries

The gathering on Monday was an initiative by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, and Polish ambassador Piotr Wilczek.

Both Wilczek and Dermer said there were strong cultural, historical and social ties between Poland and Israel, Poland’s PAP news agency reported.

"Poland values her Jewish community, and her doors are always open to our Jewish friends," Wilczek was quoted as saying by the Polish embassy in the US on Twitter.

Poland this year marks a century since its return to the map of Europe after more than 120 years of partitions and foreign rule.

Before Monday’s reception, Wilczek and Dermer took part in ceremonies at the US Congress in tribute to former President George H.W. Bush.

George H.W. Bush was US president from 1989 to 1993. He died late on Friday, aged 94.

Hundreds of Holocaust Survivors Speak up about Anti-Semitism at Global Hanukkah Event By Carol Kuruvilla Huffington Post, December 04, 2018 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/international-holocaust-survivors-night- 2018_us_5c06f5e1e4b0680a7ec9d41f

Holocaust survivors gathered in four cities around the world on Tuesday to mark the third night of Hanukkah ― and to speak up about the horrors of anti-Semitism.

Menorah-lighting ceremonies brought hundreds of survivors together in Berlin, Jerusalem, Moscow and South Orange, New Jersey. It’s a sight that is becoming increasingly rare, as the survivors advance in age.

Roman Kent, an 89-year-old Polish-born Jew who survived three Nazi-run concentration camps, told a gathering of more than 100 survivors at South Orange’s Oheb Shalom Congregation that he hoped their presence would serve as a “beacon to future generations.”

Kent said that for years his “horrific memories” of the Holocaust made it difficult for him to celebrate Jewish holidays and tradition. Now he thinks there are many similarities between the story of Hanukkah and the stories of Holocaust survivors.

“Both are instances of the few surviving oppression by the many, the mighty persecuting the powerless and, ultimately, the light banishing the darkness as a symbol of Jewish survival,” Kent said in his speech. “Everyone here today is a testimony to this.”

The second annual International Holocaust Survivors Night was organized by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based organization that helps survivors negotiate compensation claims. In Berlin, about 400 survivors gathered at a Jewish community center to light the menorah and eat dinner together, according to the Claims Conference. Dozens of survivors and relatives gathered at a community center in Moscow, The Associated Press reported, marking the first year this event took place in Russia. In Jerusalem, more than 250 survivors participated in a celebration at the Western Wall.

Shlomo Gur, vice president of the organization’s Israel branch, told the AP that reports of rising anti- Semitism in Europe have given the event an increased sense of urgency.

“We need to make sure more and more people remember,” Gewirtz said. “This event gives us hope — it’s an expression of overcoming the tragedy, bringing people from darkness into light.”

Anti-Semitism has also been on the rise in the U.S., where the Anti-Defamation League has recorded a recent spike in reports of vandalism and cemetery desecration.

Hanna Keselman, an 87-year-old survivor who spoke at the New Jersey event, told HuffPost that she felt it was important for people to listen to stories about the Holocaust because “anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head all over again.”

“It’s frightening, having gone through this before, even though I was a child,” Keselman said. “It’s something I didn’t want to live through again.”

Keselman was born in Germany in 1930 but spent a large portion of her childhood moving around Europe, separated from her parents, in order to escape Nazi persecution. Her mother survived the war, but her father died in the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. Keselman and her mother immigrated to the U.S. in 1947.

Keselman said that she felt “terribly frightened” after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, which left 11 people dead and is believed to be the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in American history.

“It was bad enough to be insulted and to have people marching and screaming against the Jews,” Keselman said, referring to last year’s white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. “[The shooting] was absolutely taking another step that should never have happened.”

Keselman said she thinks Holocaust survivors should continue to speak up as long as they can ― but worries that it may be too late already.

“I don’t know what the future will bring,” she said. “Our children and grandchildren will have to live through these frightening times.”

World Jewish Congress Welcomes EU Declaration against Anti-Semitism Jerusalem Post, December 06, 2018 https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/World-Jewish-Congress-welcomes-EU-declaration-against- -573639

The World Jewish Congress praised the European Union's adoption of a declaration condemning antisemitism and calling on European member states to protect Jewish communities and citizens, according to a Thursday statement to the press.

“I strongly welcome the decision by the Council of the European Union to adopt this important declaration on the fight against antisemitism and the protection of Jewish communities," the organization's President Ronald S. Lauder said.

"Just days after polling revealed that antisemitism continues to haunt Europe, and with the memory of the Holocaust fading, this declaration is a clear recognition by the governments of all EU Member States that serious action, both politically and practically, is needed to deal with the clear and specific challenges posed by this ancient hatred," Lauder added. "We look forward to continuing to engage with both the EU institutions and the governments of the EU Member States to inform this serious work going forward."

In the Middle East, Russia Is Back By Liz Sly Washington Post, December 05, 2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-the-middle-east-russia-is-back/2018/12/04/e899df30-aaf1- 11e8-9a7d-cd30504ff902_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.22a072894d70

Among the presidents, prime ministers, kings and princes who have visited Moscow over the past year to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin are some of the United States’ closest allies, who once might have been expected to devote their travel time to Washington.

There’s a new power rising in the Middle East, and it needs to be wooed.

Three decades after the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States emerged as the undisputed superpower in the Middle East and North Africa, a resurgent Russia is back. Under the personal direction of Putin, Russia is stepping into the vacuum left by the disengagement of the Obama administration and the unpredictability of the Trump one to challenge the United States’ dominant role in the region.

Russian oilmen, arms dealers and financiers have been fanning out across the region, striking billions of dollars’ worth of deals, reviving old relationships and forging new ones from Libya to the Persian Gulf.

At the center of it all is Putin, whose strongman image resonates with the region’s authoritarian rulers at a time when doubts are growing about Washington’s commitment to the Middle East.

Russia’s 2015 military intervention in Syria has given Putin perhaps the single biggest boost, burnishing his credentials as a decisive and effective leader who delivers what he set out to achieve: the survival of President Bashar al-Assad.

It also positioned Putin at the nexus of the Middle East’s overlapping conflicts, leveraging Russia’s influence far beyond Syria’s borders to include all the countries with a stake in the outcome of the war — foes such as Israel and Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. As a result, he has frequently been on the phone with U.S. allies such as Turkey and Israel — nearly three dozen times with the leaders of those two countries just in the past year.

Apart from Syria, Russia has shown little inclination to wade into most of the region’s myriad conflicts, such as the Yemen war, the Arab-Israeli peace process and the dispute between Qatar and its neighbors. But Putin has welcomed anyone who wants to visit, making Moscow a must-stop destination for leaders with a problem to solve. “Putin is effectively working as the psychoanalyst of the region,” said Malik Dahlan, a Saudi who is a professor of international law and public policy at Queen Mary University of London. “The Russians are happy to hear all sides, and anyone who wants to speak, they’re happy to listen.”

The U.S.-allied leaders who have traveled to Moscow this year include Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, who gave President Trump a lavish welcome in Riyadh last year but then chose Moscow over Washington for his first and so far only official overseas visit — the first visit ever by a Saudi monarch to Russia.

The emir of Qatar unexpectedly flew to Moscow to meet with Putin on the eve of his visit to Washington in April, earning a rebuke from the Trump administration. The crown prince of Abu Dhabi, a close U.S. ally, declined an invitation to Washington this spring, diplomats say. But he traveled to Moscow in June, his seventh trip in five years, signing a “strategic partnership” agreement with Putin.

Most recently, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi in October made his fourth visit to Moscow — compared with one to Washington — and also signed a strategic-partnership agreement with Putin in the Russian resort town of Sochi, marking a significant shift of a U.S. ally toward Russia.

The meetings are providing Putin with new levers of influence just when the United States is drawing down forces in the Middle East, in part to counter Russian and Chinese expansion elsewhere. His hearty greeting at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman illustrated the personal rapport Putin is establishing with regional leaders.

Those visits are also translating at times into substantive policy. An agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to cut oil production, resulting from King Salman’s Moscow visit last year, has given Russia new weight in world energy markets. The joint announcement Monday that the two countries would further cut production reflects an emerging partnership that has the potential to rival the clout of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

When not hosting visitors, Putin is often on the telephone, usually sorting out problems relating to Syria but, in the process, cultivating close relationships with some of the United States’ dearest friends.

Israel’s Prime Minister , who called Trump a “true friend” of Israel, has spoken 11 times on the phone with Putin over the past year and only three times with Trump, according to a tally of the calls reported on Putin’s and Netanyahu’s websites. Netanyahu has visited Moscow four times in the past year. He has visited Washington twice since Trump became president.

It’s unclear whether Putin and Netanyahu’s rapport will survive building tensions between Israel and Iran in Syria and also Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has expanded its influence. They have spoken only once since the downing of a Russian plane in Syria in September, which Moscow blamed on Israel. But phone calls between Putin and Netanyahu at the time played a part in tamping down the worst of the animosity, diplomats say.

Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally and NATO partner with a centuries-old history of rivalry with Russia, has been drifting deeper into Moscow’s orbit of influence as their cooperation in Syria expands and relations with the United States have become strained.

According to a count of their interactions, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the past year has spoken 20 times on the phone with Putin and seven times with Trump. Erdogan’s decision to purchase Russia’s advanced S-400 missile system, which Moscow says will be delivered next year, offers one example of how their burgeoning relationship could challenge the cohesion of NATO. Russia has also been warming up to Lebanon and Iraq, both U.S. allies and recipients of U.S. military aid. In Iraq, Moscow has completed arms deals with the government, invested in a strategically significant oil pipeline linking the Iraqi region of Kurdistan to Turkey and opened an intelligence- sharing center with the Iraqi military in Baghdad, signaling its return to a country lost as an ally after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein.

Lebanon came under intense U.S. pressure earlier this year to rebuff a $1 billion arms deal offered by Russia that would have ended a decades-old U.S. and Western monopoly on supplying aid to the Lebanese army, according to a Lebanese government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject. Late last month, however, Prime Minister Saad Hariri accepted a donation of “millions of Kalashnikov bullets” from Russia, which will be given to the internal security forces, his office said.

Putin recognizes that many of the Middle East’s problems cannot easily be solved, Russian officials say. Becoming too deeply entangled in the region’s disputes might expose the limits of Russian capabilities, which they acknowledge lag far behind those of the United States.

“The Russians understand their limits very well. I don’t think Russia wants to replace America everywhere, and it would be very costly,” said Yury Barmin of the Russian International Affairs Council. He sees much that is ad hoc and opportunistic in Russia’s pursuit of influence.

To the extent that Russia has a military strategy for the region, he said, it is focused on the Mediterranean. Russia has secured long-term basing rights for its forces in Syria, including an expanded naval base at Tartus, giving Russia its strongest presence ever in the Mediterranean.

Moscow has also been extending its reach into Egypt, a U.S. ally since the 1970s. After the Obama administration suspended some arms sales to Egypt in 2014 over human rights abuses, Russia stepped in to sell fighter jets and attack helicopters. That has been followed by a deal giving Russia the right to use Egyptian military bases and a commitment to hold regular joint military exercises.

In neighboring Libya, another former Soviet ally, Russian military officials have established a close relationship with the Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter while signing oil deals with the U.N.-backed Libyan government, potentially positioning Moscow to play a role in any future peace settlement among Libya’s warring parties.

“Very generally, the Mediterranean has been of strategic importance to Russia for a long time,” Barmin said. “Russia sees that region as a crucial area for hard power, for countering NATO.”

Elsewhere, Russia’s role has largely focused on business deals, which serve the dual purpose of compensating for the impact of U.S. and European sanctions on Russia and cementing its role as a regional influencer, said Carole Nakhle, an energy expert at Britain’s Surrey University. Russian companies have signed billions of dollars’ worth of deals in oil and gas ventures in markets as diverse as Saudi Arabia, the region’s mega-producer of oil, and Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the newest and smallest oil producers. Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom has contracts to build nuclear reactors in five Middle Eastern countries, giving Moscow a long-term foothold in their infrastructure and transportation networks.

This is not a return to the era of the Cold War, in which Moscow and Washington competed for the loyalties of regional powers and Middle Eastern countries had to choose sides, analysts say. Even with Russia’s extended commitment in Syria, its presence in the region is “nowhere near as robust” as it was during the Cold War, when Russia maintained thousands of troops in Egypt as well as Syria, said Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution. The United States maintains about 45,000 troops in the Middle East, according to the Heritage Foundation, mostly on bases in Persian Gulf countries, including Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. A total of about 60,000 Russian troops have served in Syria at some point in the past three years, according to figures published by the Defense Ministry. Though that is a higher number than what Russia had previously acknowledged, the troops serve rotations and the total number at any given time is thought to be far smaller.

Russia has boasted of a surge in regional sales of its weapons, newly tried and tested on the Syrian battlefield. But this increase is part of the overall growth in the region’s purchases of arms, and the United States is also seeing a big increase in exports to the Middle East, said Ben Moores, who tracks Russian weapons sales for the IHS Markit defense consultancy.

Russia has nearly doubled its weapons exports to the region over the past five years, with $24 billion worth of orders due to be fulfilled over the next decade, Moores said. By comparison, U.S. sales have increased by almost as much, and U.S. firms have booked more than $81 billion in deliveries due over the equivalent period.

In an October address to a forum of regional leaders in Bahrain, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought to dispel the notion that the United States was disengaging from the region and that Russia could step in to replace it.

“I make clear Russia’s presence in the region cannot replace the long-standing, enduring and transparent U.S. commitment to the Middle East,” he said, adding later, “We are going to continue to stay committed here, and in no way are we walking away from this.”

Yet even as the United States maintains a vast economic, military and technological advantage over Russia, increasingly it is Russia that is seen as the go-to power for a region consumed by crises and unsure of Washington’s reliability, said Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

“Russia has managed to create the perception in the Middle East that it is more powerful, more capable and more relevant than the United States,” he said. “It’s not how much power you have. It’s how you use it. The United States has all these troops and bases, and Russia has a fraction of that. But Russia uses its power more effectively.”