Uncategorized
How a Kentucky lawmaker’s friendship with a Jewish woman helped inspire her viral speech decrying anti-trans legislation
(JTA) — Pamela Stevenson, a Democratic state representative in Kentucky, was chatting recently with her friend Zahava Kurland about one of Kurland’s duties at her Orthodox synagogue: preparing the dead for burial.
“She was trying to explain to me certain things that had to be done,” Stevenson, who is also a Black Baptist minister, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. The seemingly esoteric topic was one of many the two women have discussed over more than a decade of weekly Friday-morning conversations — which cover anything from politics and friendship to faith and being one’s true self.
Stevenson said her conversations with Kurland have made her attuned to Jewish sensibilities. “She’s always listening for and giving me information” about Judaism and Jewish experiences, said Stevenson, who was first elected to the Kentucky legislature in 2020.
So Kurland was not surprised when, in a viral speech on Wednesday decrying her fellow lawmakers for signing off on a law that bans gender-affirming care for trans youth, Stevenson also centered antisemitism.
“First, you hated Black people,” Stevenson said, addressing the Republican lawmakers who voted for the legislation. “Then, you hated Jews. Now, you’re hating everybody. So the question is, when the only people left are you, will you hate yourself?”
Kurland said her friend is a listener and naturally empathetic, so she would be sensitive to how hatreds intersect.
“She’s truly well balanced,” said Kurland. “She truly cares about people.”
Stevenson says she looks forward to her Friday morning talks with Kurland. She said the conversations have helped give her a more expansive perspective on life, which drives her to fight bigotry.
“I really believe that I will never know as much as she knows,” Stevenson said. “But I can develop an appreciation for what it’s like and not use my view of the world as the only view of the world.”
What prompted Stevenson’s floor speech was the overwhelmingly Republican legislature’s override of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a law that bans a range of medical treatments and practices for trans youth. It outlaws doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment to youth; requires them to cease care if it has already begun; bans conversations in schools about gender identity or sexual orientation; bans school districts from allowing transgender students to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity; and allows teachers to refuse to use a child’s preferred pronouns.
The bill was introduced weeks after state Sen. Karen Berg’s trans son, Henry Berg-Brousseau, died by suicide. Berg, who is Jewish, said that referring to the anti-trans bill as a parents’ rights bill is an “absolutely despicable affront to me personally,” according to The Washington Post. Stevenson, who has appeared alongside Berg at rallies, called her “phenomenal” and said, “This is infinitely more personal for her.”
Stevenson said that she mentioned anti-Jewish hatred in her speech because she believes hatreds are mutually reinforcing, and she connects the anti-trans sentiment she sees with rising racism and antisemitism.
“If you have a model where you have to hate somebody to win, then you always have to have somebody to hate,” she said. “People say it was out of nowhere, but it’s really out of somewhere. We’ve gone through the cycles of the Native Americans, the Black folks have been hated for a long time, the disabled. Everybody is always on the bottom of that model. And in just recent years, it was the Muslims, then it was the immigrants, and then it was back around the Blacks again. And so because of this overflow of hate, there’s been an uptick in antisemitic actions.”
Stevenson said her mission is to make people cognizant of the roots of hatred. “People want to say that all the attacks against the Jewish temples and the Jewish people in recent times came out of nowhere,” she said, referring to reports of a spike in antisemitic attacks. “No, it did not. We just have chosen not to pay attention to what’s been said.”
Kurland, who is a member of Congregation Beth Jacob in Atlanta, and Stevenson, a retired Air Force Colonel and an attorney who is running to be Kentucky’s attorney general, met in 2006 when Stevenson was serving in the Air Force and Kurland was working as an accountant in Atlanta. They attended a three-day course with Landmark, the personal development program that presses participants to face uncomfortable truths about themselves.
“When we were closer-in logistically she came over very often for Shabbos meals,” Kurland said. “I often invite people for Shabbos meals and the holidays and I love explaining, you know, how Judaism gave more to the world than anything, anybody, any person. Torah, Judaism has given the world its whole structure for society.”
The Air Force started moving Stevenson around. “That’s when we started talking on the phone all the time, because we couldn’t get together,” Kurland said.
Stevenson is “a committed listener, someone who’s going to hear you and call you out on your stuff,” Kurland said. “It’s not a friendship where you massage each other’s egos. It’s a friendship where you hold each other to account for who you say you are.”
They each speak with outrage at the lawmakers who, they feel, would breach the relationship between a parent and a child.
“As a mother, how dare you interfere with one of the most intimate relationships?” Stevenson said two weeks ago during debate on the bill, addressing Rep. Jennifer Decker, a Republican who was its lead sponsor. “We have no right to interfere in the parental rights.”
Kurland agrees. “These are all decisions to be made between a child and his parents or her parents and their doctor,” she said. “It has no place for the government to have anything to do with anything.”
And both Kurland and Stevenson say religion is a key part of their identities.
“Judaism is the center part of my life,” said Kurland. “It’s what I am, it’s who I am, it’s what I’m about. And as a Jew, you cannot sit by and let another one of God’s human beings [be excluded]. I mean, when we honor other people, we are doing God’s work. We are honoring God. When we cut people out, then we’re not “
Stevenson likewise calls herself “a woman of faith.”
“I believe what is required, in almost every faith that I know of, is to love one another and take care of the people around us,” she said.
—
The post How a Kentucky lawmaker’s friendship with a Jewish woman helped inspire her viral speech decrying anti-trans legislation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
‘Heil’ Mary? New Atlanta Falcons logo inspires Nazi comparisons
If there was something off about the logo the Atlanta Falcons unveiled on social media Wednesday, whoever runs their accounts did, uh, not see it.
Behind the black falcon graphic that began appearing on the football team’s helmets in the 1960s was a new background — a flag of red, tan, black and white vertical stripes. To thousands of people who responded to the logo, it looked distinctly German — in a 1930s kind of way.
“The Atlanta Falcons are preparing to invade Poland,” one fan wrote.
A day after its posting, the new profile picture had unleashed a deluge of Nazi memes in the 4,000-plus replies on X. One picture swapped in the logo for Nazi flags in the background of a historical photo of a Hitler rally. Another edited the Falcon claw to look like a Nazi salute.
Others depicted Hitler in a Falcons cap, references to Inglourious Basterds and the Battle of the Bulge and a World War II joke invoking a blown lead in Super Bowl LI.
“Falcons were up 28-3 at Dunkirk,” that tweet read.
The Falcons’ snafu enters a small but growing catalogue of Reich-coded brand mixups. Who can forget the German national soccer team’s ‘44’ soccer jerseys? There was also the swastika-emblazoned Hallmark gift wrap; the accidental Hitler mugs; and (for my money) the worst of the bunch, Zara’s concentration camp uniform shirt.
All of those have been addressed; so far, the Falcons’ has not. We’ve reached out to them for comment.
The post ‘Heil’ Mary? New Atlanta Falcons logo inspires Nazi comparisons appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Netanyahu’s Torah exemption pledge highlights election stakes
Sometimes a statement can contain multitudes, or at least provide a crystallizing moment in an election campaign. So it was when Benjamin Netanyahu, while criticizing the detention of about 40 Haredi draft evaders by military police at Ben-Gurion Airport this week, declared in a radio interview: “We need to protect the world of the Torah … But whoever doesn’t study must serve in the military.”
Netanyahu was effectively saying that yeshiva study should continue to be, as it has been under an informal arrangement, a free pass out of military service – and he went on to repeat a pledge to turn this into law. It is a position opposed by the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
The statement came amid such a calamitous two-week stretch for Netanyahu’s campaign leading up to the Oct. 27 election that it has some people joking that agents of the opposition might have infiltrated Likud headquarters and taken charge.
In a tragicomic episode, one of Netanyahu’s chief propagandists called leading opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot – a former military chief who is of Moroccan Jewish background – a “monkey” who is under the control of Ashkenazi elites.
Yinon Magal, who has described himself as a vessel for Netanyahu’s messaging, made the comments on Channel 14, the pro-Netanyahu propaganda TV channel where he is the leading host. He later filmed himself explaining that the simian reference, in Israel’s mafia parlance, merely refers to a junior criminal who is a puppet of more heavyweight mafiosi. His clarification did little to stem the tide of criticism.
As Netanyahu awkwardly tried to distance himself, he also charged that opposition figures had used racist slurs, referring to a recent podcast interview with businesswoman Galia Albin in which she said his supporters are Mizrahis who plan to vote for him mindlessly.
Then came leaked comments (made last year) by Haredi Rabbi Dov Lando, leading spiritual leader of the Netanyahu-allied United Torah Judaism party – proclaiming that Zionism had brought disasters upon the Jewish people, that life under Arab rule would have been preferable and that religious Zionist soldiers were being killed because their rabbis taught them “distorted Torah.” Once again, outrage boiled over, and received mostly silence from the Likud.
Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of Netanyahu might have qualified as good news – but the U.S. president seemed to connect a Bibi reelection to a renewed assault against Iran. That rests on the dubious assumption that Israelis are eager for another few weeks (or more) in bomb shelters.
A punctuation mark arrived a few days later with reports, albeit unverified, that Netanyahu actually had planned to attack Iran earlier this month but was blocked by Trump. Many expected that scenario, which would have been interpreted as a gambit to delay, by dint of national emergency, an election in which he’s badly trailing in credible polls.
Polling is not available on every such twist and turn of the campaign, but decades of studying Israel and a nose to the ground tell me none of this is popular. And there is no question that most Israelis want to end the draft evasion by Haredim. Recent polls put support for that at 85 percent, which essentially means all non-Haredim.
The issue, as I have said before, is easily the most effective axe for the opposition to grind – because the current situation with the Haredim is utterly untenable.
Tens of thousands of Haredi men of military age remain outside the draft system, while soldiers and reservists from other communities carry an increasingly intolerable burden that has ,in many cases, reached hundreds of days a year.
Whether all those registered as yeshiva students genuinely study – a central question for some people – should be beside the point. Why should Torah study confer a privilege unavailable to Israelis studying physics, medicine, engineering or law? Why should one form of education exempt citizens from defending the country while every other form does not?
The consequences of the Haredi parties’ extortion extend far beyond the army. Israel has created an incentive system in which prolonged religious study preserves military exemptions, public subsidies and a way of life often characterized by economic dependence. Many Haredi educational institutions reject the core curriculum essential for participation in a modern workforce, even as the state helps finance them.
This is an extraordinary arrangement for a country whose security depends on its economic strength, and whose economic strength depends on scientific education, technological innovation and a highly skilled workforce.
Demography makes the issue existential. Haredim already account for roughly one-sixth of Israel’s population, and their exceptionally high birth rates – almost seven children per family on average – mean their share will continue to skyrocket. Unless patterns of education, employment and military participation change dramatically, Israel faces the prospect of an ever-smaller proportion of its citizens supporting and defending an ever-larger population.
The danger is compounded by the mobility of the people on whom Israel’s prosperity depends. Engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and physicians have opportunities elsewhere. If enough conclude that the country’s trajectory has become irreversible, the resulting brain drain could be catastrophic.
Earlier this year, my friend Rabbi Hershel Grossman arranged for me to meet senior rabbis associated with the Mir and Hebron yeshivot. They were gracious and pleasant, but strikingly candid about their opposition to compulsory core education, military service and ordinary employment whenever these conflicted with Torah study. More troubling was their confidence that demographic change would eventually give their community decisive political power.
The necessary alternative is a comprehensive overhaul of the incentives governing Haredi education, military service and employment. Every child should receive a core curriculum. Young adults should perform military or meaningful national service, with appropriate accommodations for religious observance. Public funding should encourage economic participation rather than prolonged dependence.
Opposition parties promise various versions of such plans. None of this will be easy, and it will not be accomplished by dialogue alone. But the alternative is a version of national suicide. There is no question that – alongside accountability for Oct. 7 and the demand for an independent state commission of inquiry – the future of Haredi military service, education and economic participation belongs at the center of this election.
So why would Netanyahu effectively say that studying Torah should entitle an able-bodied young man to exemption from military service?
There are several possible explanations for this – and the rest of the parade of seeming political misjudgments.
One might be a calculated strategy of mobilizing the base through fear and resentment rather than persuading the center. This might be useful in various scenarios involving a messy outcome of the election.
The others might be overpowering hubris, a toxic contempt for the public or the myriad other pathologies that often accompany too long a time in power.
The post Netanyahu’s Torah exemption pledge highlights election stakes appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Tidbits: A publishing firm for Jewish writers excluded by mainstream publishers
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
אין ניו־יאָרק איז די וואָך געגרינדט געוואָרן אַ פֿאַרלאַג פֿאַר ייִדישע און ישׂראלדיקע שרײַבער וואָס זאָרגן זיך, אַז זייער אָפּשטאַם אָדער מיינונגען קאָנען שטערן צום פּובליקירן זייערע ביכער.
לויט אַ סטאַטיסטיק פֿונעם מחבר מעג קין, איז בײַ די הויפּט־פֿאַרלאַגן, צווישן 2023 און 2024, געפֿאַלן מיט 76% די צאָל בעלעטריסטישע ביכער, וואָס דערמאָנען ייִדן, ייִדישקייט אָדער ישׂראל.
„הײַלײַן פּאָבלישינג סטודיאָ“, וואָס האָט דעביוטיִרט אין ענגלאַנד מיט אַ חודש צוריק, האָט געעפֿנט אַן אַמעריקאַנער צווײַג אין מאַנהעטן בײַ „פּאָרט סאַיִד“, דעם רעסטאָראַן פֿונעם וועלטבאַרימטן קוכער איל שני (עיאַל שאַני).
„הײַלײַן“ איז לאַנצירט געוואָרן דורך ניל בלער, דעם לאַנגיאָריקן ליטעראַרישן אַגענט פֿון דזשיי קיי ראָלינגס — דער שרײַבערין פֿון די האַרי־פּאָטער ביכער.
„איך האָב שוין פֿון לאַנג באַמערקט, אַז אַ צאָל שרײַבער קענען נישט געפֿינען קיין פֿאַרלאַג,“ האָט בלער געזאָגט. „נישט צוליב דער קוואַליטעט פֿון זייער שרײַבן אָדער אַ דוחק פֿון אָריגינעלע געדאַנקען, נאָר ווײַל זייער וועלטבאַנעם שטימט נישט מיטן קוקווינקל פֿון די פֿאַרלאַגן — אָדער אפֿשר ווײַל זייער משפּחה־נאָמען איז אַ ייִדישער אָדער ישׂראלדיקער.“
די פּראָבלעם, זאָגט ער, איז געוואָרן נאָך ערגער נאָך די טעראָריסטישע אַטאַקן פֿונעם זיבעטן אָקטאָבער, האָט בלער געזאָגט. ער האָט למשל דערמאָנט די שוועריקייטן בײַם געפֿינען אַ הויפּטשטראָמיקן בריטישן פֿאַרלאַג פֿאַר אַ בוך פֿון אלי שרבי (עלי שאַראַבי) וועגן זײַנע איבערלעבונגען ווי אַן ערובֿניק אין עזה — נישט געקוקט אויף דעם וואָס אין אַמעריקע האָט מען שוין געהאַט פֿאַרקויפֿט הונדערטער טויזנטער עקזעמפּלאַרן דערפֿון. צום סוף האָט זײַן בוך אַרויסגעגעבן אַ קליינער בריטישער פֿאַרלאַג, „סוויפֿט בוקס“.
„הײַלײַן“ וועט באַשטיין פֿון צוויי אימפּרעזומס: „אָדעסאַ עדישאָנס“ און „אַנטידאָט בוקס“. „אָדעסאַ עדישאָנס“, אָנגעפֿירט פֿונעם רעדאַקטאָר דזשעקי קלײַן, וועט דרוקן ייִדישע און ישׂראלדיקע בעלעטריסטיק און פֿאַקטפּראָזע אויף טעמעס פֿאַרבונדן מיט דער ייִדישער געשיכטע, אַנטיסעמיטיזם, פֿילאָסאָפֿיע, עסן און קולטור.
„אַנטידאָט בוקס“ וועט דרוקן פֿאַקטפּראָזע מיט אַ שייכות צו טעכנאָלאָגיע, עטיק, דעמאָקראַטיע, אידענטיטעט און מאַכט.
קלײַן האָט געזאָגט, אַז מע וועט אויך באַטראַכטן מאַנוסקריפּטן פֿון אַראַביש־ישׂראלדיקע און נישט־ייִדישע שרײַבער, וואָס זייער אַרבעט פֿאַרנעמט זיך מיט דער ייִדישער קולטור, געשיכטע אָדער געדאַנקען.
צו לייענען וועגן דעם אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To read about this in English click here.
The post Tidbits: A publishing firm for Jewish writers excluded by mainstream publishers appeared first on The Forward.
