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Arthur Szyk and The Modern Maccabees
Arthur Szyk. Trumpeldor’s Defense of Tel Hai. Lodz, 1936
On this Hanukkah, entering week 10 in the war with Hamas, can we not call the men and women of Israel—who fight for the right to Jewish survival—our “modern Maccabees?” Indeed, in the context of Arab terror attacks in the land of Israel in 1920 and again in 1936, Arthur Szyk created a master artwork of heroic Jews destined to be called The Modern Maccabees.
It was one year after the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws were enacted in Germany that Szyk, in Łódź, Poland, painted Trumpeldor’s Defense of Tel Hai. This illumination encouraged Jews in 1936 Palestine to defend themselves against Arab marauders in the same spirit and with the same courage and heroism as did the Jews of the Galilean Tel Hai settlement in 1920, led by the legendary Captain Joseph Trumpeldor. The timing of this painting was simultaneously directed toward the Jews of Germany and Poland, calling upon them to respond heroically toward the antisemitic mobs and chants in their respective countries. The artwork was to be renamed The Modern Maccabees a few years later.
Today, we know what those chants and actions of Arab terror groups of the 20s and 30s have morphed into–the Hamas massacre of 10/7. We know where the seeds of German nationalism of the 20s and 30s led—to the single most traumatic event in Jewish history. It hardly seems surprising then that the Mufti of Jerusalem and Adolph Hitler would adopt each other as friends, as comrades of evil, who had Jew hatred and mass murder as their shared goal. Hatred of Jews, antisemitism, and its physical assault on the integrity of Jewish lives, now as then, has re-invaded our planet. It has forcefully spread as an ancient, medieval, and modern disease throughout our global sphere among differing cultures, peoples and lands, united in common cause. Against this backdrop, Jews and their friends worldwide can look to the modern Israeli Maccabees of our day—the Israel Defense Forces—for inspiration to act Maccabean-like in their own way. By speaking out in defense of their actions and by lending larger than life financial support to organizations that do likewise we prevent ourselves from becoming merely bystanders to history rather than active participants in shaping it.
Arthur Szyk unveiling The Modern Maccabees in the office of the Committee for a Jewish Army. New York, July 1942.
By mid-July 1942, with more than one million of his people murdered by the Nazis, and two and one-half million Jews being starved to death in ghettos while millions more awaited the German extermination camps, Arthur Szyk reinforced his themes of Jewish self-defense and heroism by symbolically renaming his Trumpeldor piece The Modern Maccabees. It coincided with the mission of the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews (a group that advocated the formation of a Jewish fighting force recruited from refugees of Hitler Germany and young Jews from Palestine) who would fight beside the allies of America, the United Kingdom, and free Europe. In a broader sense, Szyk’s work of art also called upon these nations directly, led by America, his adopted home, to courageously sustain their mission in defeating the Axis of Evil and thereby rescue Jewish lives.
A single enlarged blowup of this painting, in black and white, was presented to the Committee for a Jewish Army and hung in its New York offices. To mark the occasion, Szyk unveiled his call-to-arms by lifting an American flag covering it. The artist-warrior understood the symbolism, the strength of the United States, and the role it could uniquely play in defeating the enemies of the Jewish people. Today its warships standing in the Mediterranean do not go unnoticed, shedding light on America’s military standing with Israel and its people amidst the sea of raging waters in the Middle East.
In the bottom center of Szyk’s painting, he has calligraphed the Hebrew words attributed to the first century sage, Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Surely, the soldiers of the IDF stand on the front lines of self-defense, but which nations and peoples will project moral clarity and physical strength in joining America to stand beside Israel in its fight? Who are the leaders and members of that committee today?
At this hour, the descendants of Szyk’s modern Maccabees, like those Maccabees of the first Hanukkah of old, are prepared to echo the dying words of Joseph Trumpedor: “It is good to die for our land.” To this we may well add: “It is good to live safely in our land.”
Irvin Ungar is the curator emeritus of The Arthur Szyk Society. His book, Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art, was a winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award.
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Pro-Israel Stalwart Ritchie Torres Hints at Run for New York Governor
US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org – Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Israel’s staunchest defenders in Congress, hinted at a run for higher office on Friday by taking aim at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The Bronx Democrat said that like U.S. President Joe Biden, Hochul could be on the path to electoral defeat.
“Kathy Hochul is the new Joe Biden,” Torres wrote. “She may be in denial about the depth of her vulnerabilities as a Democratic nominee. A Democratic incumbent who is less popular in New York than Donald Trump is in grave danger of losing to a Republican in 2026–an outcome not seen in 30 years.”
“Waiting until it’s too late gave us a Republican President in 2024 and could give us a Republican governor in 2026,” he added. “Let’s avoid repeating history and avoid sleepwalking toward impending disaster and defeat.”
Torres in recent days has said that there is a “crisis of governance” in New York State and New York City.
“I think part of the story of the election is an indictment of misgovernance in New York state and New York City,” Torres said in an interview on Monday with Spectrum News NY1. “With few exceptions, nowhere was there a greater swing toward Donald Trump than in New York, which was a vote of no confidence in the leadership of New York state.”
U.S. President Joe Biden carried more than 60% of the vote in New York state in 2020, but in November, Trump narrowed that lead, with Harris winning just 56% of the vote to Trump’s 44%.
The largest swing of any county in New York towards Trump occurred in Torres’s Bronx county, driven by the massive shift towards Republicans among Latino voters.
A poll in September showed that Hochul had just a 34% job approval rating, and in 2022 she defeated then-congressman Lee Zeldin by just 6 percentage points, the worst performance by a Democrat in a statewide race in two decades.
Since taking his seat in Congress in 2021, Torres, 36, has been widely lauded by the Jewish community for his vocal efforts to combat Jew-hatred and his support for Israel in the House.
“I see my freedom as a Black Latino from the Bronx as inextricably bound to the freedom of the Jewish people,” Torres told pro-Israel rally-goers after he was awarded the Jewish Federations of North America’s Courageous Leadership Award earlier this month.
Though Torres has not directly criticized New York City Mayor Eric Adams by name in the way that he has called out Hochul, Torres could also make a run for Gracie Mansion in the 2025 election as Adams fights federal bribery charges.
A spokesman for Torres told JNS that “the congressman has yet to make a final decision regarding his future” as to whether he planned to announce a run for mayor or governor.
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Mossad Looking Into Disappearance of Chabad Official in Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
i24 News – A member of a Jewish mission in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been missing since Wednesday, fueling reports he could have been kidnapped or murdered by Iran-linked operatives, according to Israeli media.
According to the Walla News website, the Mossad and UAE intelligence services are looking into the the suspicious disappearance of a Chabad official in Abu Dhabi.
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ICC Warrants Are Binding, EU Cannot Pick and Choose, EU’s Borrell Says
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
European Union governments cannot pick and choose whether to execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against two Israeli leaders and a Hamas commander, the EU’s foreign policy chief said on Saturday.
The ICC issued the warrants on Thursday against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged crimes against humanity.
All EU member states are signatories to the ICC’s founding treaty, called the Rome Statute.
Several EU states have said they will meet their commitments under the statute if needed, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has invited Netanyahu to visit his country, assuring him he would face no risks if he did so.
“The states that signed the Rome convention are obliged to implement the decision of the court. It’s not optional,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, said during a visit to Cyprus for a workshop of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.
Those same obligations were also binding on countries aspiring to join the EU, he said.
“It would be very funny that the newcomers have an obligation that current members don’t fulfil,” he told Reuters.
The United States rejected the ICC’s decision and Israel said the ICC move was antisemitic.
“Every time someone disagrees with the policy of one Israeli government – (they are) being accused of antisemitism,” said Borrell, whose term as EU foreign policy chief ends this month. “I have the right to criticize the decisions of the Israeli government, be it Mr. Netanyahu or someone else, without being accused of antisemitism. This is not acceptable. That’s enough.”
In their decision, the ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”.
The warrant for Masri lists charges of mass killings during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Israel says it has killed Masri.
The post ICC Warrants Are Binding, EU Cannot Pick and Choose, EU’s Borrell Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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