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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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Australia’s Jewish community is defined by Holocaust survivors, Yiddishkeit, and immigrants
An attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday killed 15 people and left Jewish communities reeling worldwide. The violence has also drawn attention to the resilience of Australia’s distinctive Jewish community, shaped by the world’s largest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside Israel, a growing Yiddish revival scene, and a large number of South African Jewish immigrants.
Demographics and culture
About 117,000 Jews live in Australia, according to 2021 Census figures adjusted for likely undercounting. The community is largely urban, with 84% living in either Melbourne or Sydney.
Just over half of Australian Jews were born in the country. Among those born overseas, the largest immigrant groups come from South Africa and Israel.
Religious practice within the community is diverse, with roughly 4% identifying as Haredi, 18% as Modern Orthodox, 33% as traditional or Conservative, 11% as Reform, and 21% as secular. In other respects, the community is uniquely cohesive: About half of children attend Jewish day schools — the highest rate for Jewish day school attendance outside of Israel.
In recent years, the revival of Yiddish language and culture in Australia has drawn significant attention, with young people who view it as a “language of protest” leading the charge. Yiddish is a required daily subject at Melbourne’s Sholem Aleichem College, a secular day school with roots in the Jewish Labor Bund. The annual Australian “Sof-Vokh Oystralye” retreat immerses attendees in 48 hours of speaking Yiddish exclusively, while Kadimah, a Jewish cultural center and library in Melbourne, stages plays in the language.
Being in the Southern Hemisphere, Australians celebrate Hanukkah during their summer, taking pride in being among the first in the world to light the holiday candles due to their early time zone.
A destination for refugees
The Australian Jewish population nearly tripled in size from 1938 to 1961. The influx was driven by Holocaust survivors, Hungarian refugees who arrived after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and British Jews who migrated under the “Ten Pound Poms” program, which allowed them to move to Australia for just 10 pounds.
In the aftermath of World War II, Australia accepted Holocaust survivors who were living in displaced persons camps, at a time when many countries either refused to take them or imposed strict quotas — including the United States.
Not only was Australia one of the few countries willing to accept survivors, it was also just about as far from Europe geographically as one could get, offering a sense of safety in its isolation.
Yet the acceptance of Jewish refugees was at times begrudging. Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell sold large-scale immigration in the aftermath of World War II not as a humanitarian concern, but under the slogan “populate or perish,” reflecting the need for population growth to boost the economy and enhance national security.
Calwell also covertly introduced bureaucratic measures to limit the number of Jewish Holocaust survivors allowed to enter Australia, including restricting the number of Jewish survivors permitted on ships leaving Europe to a quarter of all passengers.
But Calwell’s efforts to limit Jewish immigration ultimately fell short. In the aftermath of the war, roughly 27,000 Holocaust survivors settled in Australia. As of 2023, about 2,500 of those survivors were still living.
One of those survivors, Alexander Kleytman, who immigrated to Australia from Ukraine, was killed in Sunday’s attack at Bondi Beach while protecting his wife.
Australia’s relationship with Israel
Relations between Israel and Australia have been increasingly strained in the past year. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had been sharply critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, calling Israel’s “excuses and explanations” for blocking aid to Gaza “an outrage.”
Tensions further escalated in September, when Australia was one of about 150 countries that moved to recognize a Palestinian state. In response, Israel revoked the visas of Australian representatives to the Palestinian Authority.
Yet Australia and Israel have historically been strong allies. Australia’s first external affairs minister, Herbert Vere “Doc” Evatt, played a key role in the United Nations partition plan for Palestine and the creation of the Jewish state.
In 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first incumbent Israeli leader to visit Australia, and former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had said he was considering recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. But that position was reversed in 2022 after Albanese, a member of the Labor Party, took office.
Relations deteriorated further after an arson attack on a historic synagogue in Melbourne in December. Netanyahu sharply criticized Australia’s government, saying, “It is impossible to separate the reprehensible arson attack from the federal government’s extreme anti-Israeli position.”
Following the attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, Netanyahu doubled down, saying he had warned Albanese that “your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” Albanese rejected any link between the two, arguing that support for a two-state solution is a widely held position.
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Australia welcomed my family’s Holocaust survivors — and Bondi Beach soon became a symbol of renewal for me
Like so many Jewish Americans whose families immigrated prior to World War II, I grew up believing that none of my family had survived the Holocaust. When I would ask my older relatives, they would shrug. Only my grandfather shared anything about our relatives: He remembered how his parents would receive letters from Lithuania in the late 1930s and early 1940s, until one day they stopped coming.
As far as I knew, we were the only ones left. That is, until my uncle got a strange phone call from an elderly man who spoke with a hybrid German/Australian accent.
My uncle was skeptical; the person on the other end of the line claimed to be a cousin from the Australian branch of the Carvin family, despite the fact that my great-grandfather Max had invented the surname only after reaching the United States in the early 1900s.
The mysterious Australian said he was visiting Boston and asked if he wanted to meet. My uncle declined and ended the call, assuming it was a hoax or a scam.
My cousins, though, were curious. One of them began calling hotels across Boston asking for a Mr. Carvin until she tracked down the Australian. His name was Leo, and he graciously renewed his offer to meet for lunch.
When she arrived at the restaurant, she saw a man who looked much like her father, but older. And he was holding an envelope of letters written on my great-grandfather’s stationery from his home outside of Boston.
Over the course of an afternoon, my cousin learned more about my family history than any of us had uncovered in decades. Leo explained that his mother was one of my great-grandfather Max’s sisters, making Max his uncle. She and Max had continued to correspond during the interwar period; when the Nazis annexed Austria, her young adult children, including Leo, fled to Italy. Coming to the U.S. was no longer as straightforward as it had been for so many European Jews a few decades earlier, but Max tried to arrange visas for them. He suggested they begin using the surname Carvin rather than his sister’s married name, hoping it might increase the chances of obtaining visas.
It made no difference. Despite all of Europe being on the precipice of another world war, the United States would not take them in. But Australia would.
Leo and one of his brothers arrived in Freemantle, Western Australia in October 1938. To honor Max’s efforts to help them escape from Europe, they legally adopted the surname Carvin soon after their arrival. Eventually they found their way to Sydney, where they and their descendants would thrive.
In the years since Leo Carvin made that phone call to my uncle, we’ve gotten to know our Australian branch. They’ve traveled the east coast of the U.S. visiting my family multiple times; two of them crashed my wedding in Baltimore.
I’ve also visited them in Sydney on three occasions, and on each trip, we’ve repeated the same ritual: having drinks overlooking Bondi Beach at a clubhouse founded by Australian veterans of World War II’s North Africa campaign.
It would be wrong to say Bondi is unlike any other beach I’ve been to; in fact, it’s one of several beaches nestled in coves along the southeastern shore of Sydney, all equally inviting and picturesque. But Bondi is the one I will always think of as our family beach in Australia, and the veterans’ clubhouse as our local pub. It’s a place where I got to rediscover my family in a way that all too many Jewish Americans will never get to do, reuniting with the descendants of relatives who escaped the horrors of the Holocaust and found refuge in a new home.
My great-grandfather, an old-school Bundist, probably would have described our family’s immigration to Boston as doikayt, the Yiddish word for “hereness” that celebrates the diversity of the Jewish diaspora and our ability to thrive wherever we end up, often against difficult odds. I can’t help but think of doikayt whenever I think of Bondi Beach and the country that welcomed my extended family when other countries would not. It symbolizes more than just survival – it symbolizes renewal, prosperity, and resilience.
Bondi Beach may be 9,800 miles away from my current home — effectively on the opposite side of the world — but it will also be here for me. It’s become my home away from home, and a place for joyful reunions that defy all odds. And it would never have been possible if Australia had not opened its arms to my extended family.
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Sydney Opera House lit by giant menorah as vigils for Bondi Beach victims take place across Australia
(JTA) — The Sydney Opera House was illuminated by a large menorah Monday night, a solemn tribute to the 15 lives lost the previous day in an antisemitic terror attack that rocked Australia’s Jewish community.
The projected menorah, displayed on the iconic opera house’s largest sail, was called for by the premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns.
“Lighting the Opera House is a simple but powerful gesture: a message to the world that we cherish our Jewish community, that we honour their courage, and that we stand with them in solidarity and love,” Minns said in a statement. “Tonight, those candles are a symbol of resilience and a reminder that even in darkness, we choose to stand with one another.”
The light of the menorah was one of several acts of remembrance that sprung up across Australia on Monday, a day after two terrorists opened fire on a ChabadHanukkah event on Bondi Beach, killing 15 and injuring at least 40.
In an interview with the Australian broadcaster ABC on Monday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the two gunmen “weren’t part of a wider cell,” and had “engaged in this act of antisemitism, driven by ideology.”
Hundreds of bouquets were placed around a large menorah in front of the Bondi Pavilion on Monday, where more than 1,000 people gathered for a vigil, according to ABC.
“Yesterday was a tragic event, which words cannot explain,” Rabbi Yossi Shuchat told those gathered as he lit two candles to mark the second night of Hanukkah. “Lightness will always persevere; darkness cannot continue where there is light.”
At the vigil, a Jewish activist, Michelle Berkon, was removed by police for wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf that has become a symbol of anti-Israel protest, according to The Australian.
In Sydney’s Hyde Park, hundreds also gathered for an interfaith ceremony where speeches were given by First Nation community members and spokespeople from the Jewish Council of Australia and the Australian Imams Council.
“So many in our Jewish community have received messages of love from leaders in different faith communities, from Palestinian friends and friends around this country, and in so doing, we are now learning we are all just flesh and blood, and we are all also the light,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins from the Emmanuel Synagogue in Woollahra, according to ABC.
The Caulfield Shule, a synagogue in a suburb of Melbourne that serves a large Jewish community, was also packed to capacity by 2,000 people on Monday.
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