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A children’s book about Shabbat was returned to a Florida district’s shelves after year-plus ‘review’
(JTA) – Mara Rockliff’s “Chik Chak Shabbat” has become a standard for Jewish children since its 2014 publication. The picture book intended for young readers tells a whimsical story about a group of diverse neighbors who help an observant Jewish woman make her cholent — a stew traditionally served on the Sabbath — when they realize she doesn’t feel well enough to cook it herself.
So why did a school district in Jacksonville, Florida, purchase copies of the book only to keep it from students for 15 months?
That’s what happened at Duval County Public Schools. The district initially ordered Rockliff’s book for its students in July 2021 as part of a larger diversity-themed collection of books called “Essential Voices,” which is offered to educators by Iowa-based educational company Perfection Learning.
The books were delivered last winter, but remained “under review” as of September, when the literary free-speech activist group PEN America published a report on banned books in the United States. PEN’s report alleged Duval County had “effectively banned” Roclkiff’s and other books.
One month later, the district released many of them, including “Chik Chak Shabbat,” to students. At least one book with Jewish themes, “The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher” by Jewish author Dana Alison Levy, remains “under review.”
“We retrieved 179 titles from the Essential Voices collection for further review at the district level,” Duval County Public Schools spokesperson Tracy Pierce told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an email this week. “Of those 179, we determined that 106 meet statutory guidelines and are useful toward our reading goals. Those were distributed to classrooms in October.”
School reading materials are under increasing scrutiny amid conservative parent groups’ pressure to remove material they define as “critical race theory” and “gender ideology.” In an increasing number of places, books about Jews have gotten caught in the dragnet, including at a Tennessee district that removed “Maus” from its curriculum earlier this year; a Texas district that briefly removed an adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; and a Missouri district that briefly removed history books about the Holocaust.
Florida in particular has become a major rallying spot for challenging material in public schools, with its Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential hopeful, signing the “Stop WOKE Act” earlier this year restricting how race and gender concepts are taught in schools. DeSantis-endorsed school board candidates who are so-called parental rights advocates — conservatives pushing for an end to “critical race theory” and materials dealing with gender and sexuality in the classroom — currently hold a majority on Duval County’s board. Elsewhere in the state, the picture book “The Purim Superhero,” which features gay Jewish parents, was removed from a Panhandle-area district in April amid a larger purge of books with LGBTQ+ and gender-identity themes.
Pierce defended the length of time the district took to review the material: “The district will always take the time necessary to make sure the resources we provide for our students are appropriate for each grade level and meet the requirements of state statute.”
The district said 47 titles from the collection were returned to Perfection Learning, while another 26 remain under review. Among those still under review is Levy’s “Family Fletcher,” about a multicultural family that celebrates Jewish holidays. The family has two dads.
The district said Levy’s book was under review “while we await guidance from the state.” Levy did not return a JTA request for comment.
Unlike “Maus,” “The Purim Superhero” and “Family Fletcher,” “Chik Chak Shabbat” does not mention the Holocaust, feature any LGBTQ+ characters or contain any imagery that could be construed as sexual. The book’s most defining characteristic is that it’s about Jews.
Indeed, the book’s depiction of observant Judaism has made it a frequent favorite of the Jewish Book Council and of PJ Library, the literary nonprofit that distributes free Jewish-themed books to children nationwide. The group has distributed a parents’ reading guide to the book, noting, “After reading this story, you and your child may be inspired to make cholent together.” PJ Library declined to comment to JTA for this story.
Rockliff did not return a JTA request for comment, but told the Forward last week, “I doubt that anybody at this school district found [“Chik Chak Shabbat”] objectionable, or even read it.” (The book’s illustrations are by Kyrsten Brooker.)
A customer service representative for Perfection Learning, the company that distributes the Essential Voices collection, promised to forward a request for comment to the company’s CEO, but no comment was provided to JTA.
The district did not broadly communicate that most of the Essential Voices books had been released to students. Last week, apparently under the impression that none of the books had yet been released, several authors (including Jewish writer Ami Polonsky, author of the trans-themed young adult novel “Gracefully Grayson”) spoke out against the review policy at a school board meeting and signed an open letter circulated by PEN America and We Need Diverse Books.
Other Jewish-themed books in the collection include Ruth Behar’s “Lucky Broken Girl,” a coming-of-age autobiographical novel about a Cuban Jewish girl who experiences a car accident while adapting to her new life in New York; that book was also returned to Duval County students in October, Pierce said.
“As an author and a cultural anthropologist, I think young readers should have the freedom to read widely about the human condition to develop empathy and compassion and tolerance,” Behar, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan who also signed the petition circulated by PEN America and We Need Diverse Books, told JTA. She added that she has not heard of any schools or individuals objecting to the book’s content.
The Essential Voices collection also includes a book by Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o; an entry from the “Berenstain Bears” series; books about Abraham Lincoln and Jackie Robinson; and a book supporting interfaith dialogue called “Celebrating Different Beliefs.”
The district’s reasoning for its review process was insufficient in the eyes of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, an activist group in the state that pushes for increased student access to books. The group has filed Freedom Of Information Act requests in an effort to get the district to disclose its reasoning for reviewing the books.
“We argue there was never a reason to remove the entire collection of books,” the group’s founders told JTA. “No one in the community complained about what their child was reading in their K-5 classroom.
“If there were only a few titles of concern because they were popping up on challenge lists in the state, they could have reduced the amount of time needed to complete a thorough review by reviewing only those titles while the entire collection remained in the classrooms. Instead, they pulled the entire collection and questioned the professional expertise of those that created it.”
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4 arrested after protesters set off smoke bombs at Paris performance of Israel Philharmonic
Four people were arrested by French police late Thursday after protesters set off smoke bombs during a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Paris.
Spectators who bought tickets attempted three disruptions during the concert on Thursday night, twice with smoke bombs, according to the Philharmonie de Paris. The protesters also clashed with other people in the audience and musicians briefly left the stage. Once the protesters were evacuated, the concert resumed.
Video from the auditorium showed a chaotic scene, with smoke and flames causing some in the audience to scatter and attendees throwing punches at each other without any obvious immediate intervention.
Criticism had mounted ahead of the performance, with pro-Palestinian activists calling for its cancellation. CGT-Spectacle Union, which represents workers in the performing arts, said in October that the Philharmonie de Paris should not hold the concert without “reminding the public of the extremely serious accusations weighing on the leaders of that country [Israel] or the nature of the crime committed in Gaza.”
The Philharmonie de Paris said it “strongly condemns and deplores” the disruptions. “Nothing can justify such actions,” the group said in a statement on Friday. “Whatever one’s opinions may be, it is completely unacceptable to threaten the safety of the public, staff and artists.”
It added that security around the concert had already been “considerably reinforced” in conjunction with French police.
The concert was conducted by Lahav Shani with Hungarian-born pianist Sir András Schiff. Shani was scheduled to lead a program in Belgium with the Munich Philharmonic that was canceled by the Flanders Festival Ghent in September. The festival cited a lack of “sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.”
Schiff, an outspoken critic of Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban and other far-right movements in Europe, announced earlier this year that he would boycott performing in the United States because of President Donald Trump’s “unbelievable bullying” of other nations. He is an artist-in-residence at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
French ministers quickly rebuked Thursday’s events. “I strongly condemn the disruptions that occurred at the philharmonie during the concert of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra,” tweeted Culture Minister Rachida Dati, who had earlier welcomed the touring group to France in an indirect rebuttal of the employees union. “Violence has no place in a concert hall. The freedom of programming and creation is a fundamental right of our Republic!”
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñeza also said on X that “nothing can justify” the actions of the protesters.
But Manon Aubry, a member of the far-left party France Unbowed, refused to condemn the disruptions in a TV interview.
“The general secretary of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra himself acknowledges that he is ‘Israel’s cultural ambassador to the world,’” Aubry said in a post sharing the clip. “Culture must not serve to promote a genocidal state, and that is the same reason why Russia had been excluded from Eurovision.”
The Israel Philharmonic recently held multiple concerts in New York City, where protests outside did not interfere with the performances. Earlier this year, protesters shouted pro-Palestinian slogans multiple times during a performance in San Francisco, but the performance continued and there was no violence.
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Kanye says he wants to ‘make amends’ with Jews, meets with Orthodox celebrity rabbi
(JTA) — After years of virulent antisemitic comments, the American rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, told an Orthodox rabbi on Tuesday in New York that he was ready to “make amends” for his actions.
“I feel really blessed to be able to sit here with you today and just take accountability,” Ye told Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto in a video posted on social media.
Pinto is an Israeli rabbi who serves as the chief rabbi of Morocco. He has previously counseled celebrities including Lebron James and was jailed in Israel in 2016 for bribery.
Ye first appeared to distance himself from his antisemitic record, which included a song praising Hitler and several tirades on X that included a 2022 vow to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE,” in May when he declared on social media that he was “done with antisemitism.”
Since then, the incendiary rapper has been relatively quiet on social media. During his meeting with Pinto, he appeared to cast blame for his actions on his struggle with bipolar disorder.
“I was dealing with some various issues, dealing with bipolar also, so it would take the ideas I had and taking them to an extreme where I would forget about the protection of the people around me or and myself,” Ye said as the two men held hands.
Explaining his experience with bipolar disorder to the rabbi, Ye said it was like someone “left your kid at the house and your kid went and messed up the kitchen,” adding that it was his responsibility to “go clean up the kitchen.”
“It’s a big deal for me as a man to come and take accountability for all the things that I’ve said, and I really just appreciate you embracing me with open arms and allowing me to make amends,” Ye said. “And this is the beginning and the first steps, and the first brick by brick to build back the strong walls.”
Following Ye’s appeal, Pinto responded through a translator, who told Ye, “The Jews live on this way of if someone did something wrong, you can regret and fix it,” adding, “From now on, strong things and good things, you are a very good man.”
The two men then stood from their chairs and hugged.
“A person is not defined by his mistakes, but by the way he chooses to correct them. This is the true strength of man: The ability to return, to learn, and to build bridges of love and peace,” wrote Pinto in a post on Instagram of the interaction.
Two hours before Ye reposted the meeting with Pinto on his X account, he posted an advertisement for a planned concert this January in Mexico City. The post was his first since making an identical announcement in September.
The post Kanye says he wants to ‘make amends’ with Jews, meets with Orthodox celebrity rabbi appeared first on The Forward.
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Kazakhstan set to join Abraham Accords as Trump seeks to reinvigorate initiative
(JTA) — Kazakhstan is expected to announce Thursday that it will join the Abraham Accords during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s White House meeting with President Donald Trump, Axios and other media outlets reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
The move is reportedly aimed at reinvigorating the framework established during Trump’s first term linking Israel with Arab and Muslim-majority states after momentum stalled during the Gaza war.
While the step would expand the accords on paper, it won’t establish new ties: Israel and Kazakhstan have maintained full diplomatic and economic relations since 1992.
Tokayev is in Washington with four other Central Asian leaders as the United States courts a region long influenced by Russia and increasingly engaged by China.
Trump has sought to grow the accords to include Saudi Arabia, though Riyadh continues to condition normalization on a credible path to Palestinian statehood. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is slated to visit Washington later this month.
Kazakhstan served as a haven for Soviet Jews during the Holocaust. Today, its Jewish community of an estimated 2,500 is small, decentralized and largely led by Chabad. During unrest in 2022, synagogues temporarily shut their doors as the community tried to steer clear of politics and waited out the violence.
A Jewish comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen, thrust the country into pop culture prominence in 2006 with the release of his mockumentary “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” The movie portrayed the country as backward and antisemitic and spurred a backlash from the government. Later, as the movie contributed to a tourism boost, the government embraced its association with Borat.
The post Kazakhstan set to join Abraham Accords as Trump seeks to reinvigorate initiative appeared first on The Forward.