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How Jewish studies scholars navigated Jewish law and fire-code rules to save Hanukkah at their conference
(JTA) — The email landed like a batch of soggy latkes last week: Hanukkah candle-lighting would not be permitted at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies.
“We recognize the sacrifice many of you will make to attend the conference during the holiday of Chanukah. We apologize that the conference hotel will not allow us to light candles in a separate room, as we have done in the past,” the professional group for Jewish studies scholars said in a message to its members, of whom approximately 1,200 are expected at this week’s convening in Boston.
Thus began a MacGyver-like scramble by some of the country’s leading Jewish studies scholars to hack a Hanukkah solution that would comply with both halacha, Jewish law, and the Sheraton Boston’s interpretation of Massachusetts fire code.
At first, the scholarly group directed conference-goers to details about a Hanukkah celebration at a nearby synagogue where menorahs could be lit, at least on the first night of the holiday Sunday. But that was little consolation for those whose personal practice of Judaism is rooted in traditional Jew law — which says the Hanukkah menorah must be lit in the place one eats and sleeps.
Some conference attendees said they would rely on Jewish law’s provision for travelers, which says someone on the road can be considered as having fulfilled the commandment to ignite a Hanukkah light if his family at home does so. But not everyone at the conference has a family, and even some who do were unsatisfied with that option.
Electric menorahs offered another possibility. After all, such devices are frequently found in hotels and other public spaces, and they’re what Chabad, the Orthodox denomination, uses in its famous public Hanukkah celebrations, this year scheduled for more than 15,000 locations around the world. But not everyone owns one, and at any rate, the use of oil wicks or, in the last few centuries, wax candles that offer a similar experience is considered preferable, according to some interpreters of Jewish law.
On Facebook and over email, anger was expressed. Impractical suggestions for the conference to relocate were made. And fear mounted that some conference-goers would smuggle in contraband menorahs and light them in their hotel rooms.
“You can’t stop people from breaking the rules, and it’s certainly much less safe to have that than something being watched,” Joshua Shanes, a historian at the College of Charleston who was part of the behind-the-scenes scramble, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Finally, on Friday morning, with some scholars already Boston-bound, Laura Arnold Leibman, a professor at Reed College and a member of the AJS board, announced a solution.
“We were able to negotiate with the hotel what I am referring to as the ‘Kaplan-Shanes compr[om]ise’ this morning that should allow for a halachic solution to the candle lighting situation (see details below), and I was able to get a beautiful hanukkiah this morning from the Israel Bookstore in Brookline that will meet the fire code,” she wrote on Facebook, to plaudits from association members.
Under the plan, a single Hanukkah lamp can be lit, under supervision, at the hotel. But each candle must be contained within a glass enclosure with at least 2 inches of space above the flame — so Leibman bought glass votives used to hold yahrzeit memorial candles, as well as a massive menorah to which they could be affixed.
“This was the only Hanukkiah I could find in Brookline large enough to handle them [and] will clean them up before Sunday and glue them down for safety to the inserts,” Leibman wrote alongside pictures of the brass menorah on her hotel windowsill.
That solved the problem of the flames themselves. But what of the obligation to light, which under traditional Jewish law each household must fulfill individually?
Enter the “Kaplan” of the compromise: Lawrence Kaplan, a professor of Judaic and rabbinic philosophy at McGill University who is perhaps best known for compiling and editing the teachings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik of the philosophy of Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher.
Kaplan wrote on Facebook that he had consulted Rabbi Daniel Fridman, the rabbi of the Teaneck Jewish Center and the top rabbi at the Torah Academy of Bergen County, for a way to have a single conference-goer fulfill the mitzvah of lighting a Hanukkah lamp on behalf of others. He learned that a contribution of a penny (or more) could enable someone to buy into the mitzvah — so a bowl for coins will sit aside the jerry-rigged menorah.
“I really l appreciate the effort and expense to which you went,” Kaplan wrote on Liebman’s Facebook post. “It was easy for me to suggest the idea but it was you who transformed it into a reality.”
Now, the discussion has shifted to whether contributions in excess of a penny can be turned into donations to the Association for Jewish Studies — and what can be done to prevent such a snafu in the future. Next year’s conference in San Francisco starts after the holiday ends, and the 2024 conference will be online-only. But in 2025, the first day of the conference again corresponds with the first night of Hanukkah.
Shanes and Liebman both indicated that they expected the right to light candles to be written into the contract with any future conference host, marking a return to the old custom of having conference-goers light candles on their own schedule.
“At least for this year,” Shanes said, “we’re all coming together. It’s a silver lining I suppose.”
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The post How Jewish studies scholars navigated Jewish law and fire-code rules to save Hanukkah at their conference appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Did Netanyahu ignore Oct. 7 warning? An independent inquiry could cost him re-election.
Israel’s election campaign effectively begins today, as political parties submit their list of candidates who will contest the Oct. 27 election. It is difficult to imagine a more politically explosive moment for the publication of a new investigation into the failures surrounding Oct. 7.
Today’s report in the Haaretz newspaper alleges that Benjamin Netanyahu received an extraordinary personal warning from UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed roughly a week and a half before the Hamas attack. According to the report, bin Zayed told Netanyahu during a 45-minute telephone conversation that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major operation against Israel that could cause bloodshed and destabilize the region.
Netanyahu reportedly replied that he believed Hamas was focused on the West Bank and assured the Emirati leader that Israel was prepared. The Haaretz report cites multiple senior foreign sources reportedly briefed on the conversation and an adviser to bin Zayed who was present for the call.
Even more consequentially, the investigation says Netanyahu did not pass this specific warning to the heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad or Israel Defense Forces. Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and former IDF chief Herzi Halevi, for their part, told Haaretz that they had not been informed of such a warning, while the UAE president did not respond to the news organization.
Haaretz traces the warning to an earlier chain of intelligence in which Sinwar himself had spoken ominously of an approaching “earthquake” – an enormous operation. That warning reached the Shin Bet on September 15 and produced high-level discussions in which Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned that Israel was moving toward confrontation.
Veteran journalist Shlomi Eldar, the co-author of the report, said bin Zayed concluded Israel had not heeded such signals – but Netanyahu “tried to convince bin Zayed that we are fine with Gaza.”
Netanyahu denies the central allegation completely. “There was no such warning,” his spokesman Topaz Luk said on Israel Radio. “I think this is another effort to distort the truth ahead of elections.”
The question of who is telling the truth leads directly to a democratic mechanism that has repeatedly been called upon at moments of national trauma throughout Israel’s history: a commission of inquiry.
That very mechanism was employed in response to the catastrophic failures surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Agranat Commission investigated the conduct of the military and government. State commissions of inquiry have likewise examined the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre and the killing of Arab citizens by police in October 2000.
Oct. 7 was the greatest security failure in Israel’s history, leaving more than 1,000 people dead, hundreds taken hostage, communities overrun and the country plunged into years of war.
Netanyahu has resisted all calls to establish an independent state commission – trying instead to set up an inquiry in which the opposition and coalition politicians would have equal say, guaranteeing any findings would be politicized. He has also attempted to deflect all blame onto the security establishment – making the issue a central one in the election campaign.
“You knew, you ignored it, you failed and you are guilty,” said opposition politician Yair Golan Tuesday, addressing his comments to Netanyahu. “We will set up a state inquiry that will expose the truth and those guilty will have to face justice .. for negligence that caused a massacre.”
Under the Commissions of Inquiry Law adopted in 1968, once the government establishes a state commission, its members are appointed by the president of the Supreme Court, and its chairman must be a serving or retired judge. The arrangement is intended to give the investigation independence from the political figures and institutions whose decisions it may ultimately have to judge.
And therein lies a rather extraordinary convergence. Netanyahu and his government have spent years attacking the legitimacy of precisely the institution entrusted by law with ensuring the independence of such an investigation: the Supreme Court. The campaign to weaken the judiciary that tore Israel apart before Oct. 7 has since provided a convenient argument against using the established mechanism for investigating Oct. 7 itself.
Netanyahu argues that a commission whose members are selected by the Supreme Court president cannot command broad public confidence. His opponents argue that a bespoke “political commission” may sound superficially balanced, but conclusions associated with coalition appointees would inevitably be dismissed by Netanyahu’s opponents as an attempt to protect him. Meanwhile findings associated with opposition appointees would be portrayed by his supporters as an attempt to destroy him. Israel would begin with two political camps choosing investigators and almost certainly end with two political camps accepting different versions of the truth.
The opposition has therefore refused to participate, arguing that the proposal would allow Netanyahu to influence the investigation of his own government. The stalemate has produced an outcome that is increasingly difficult to view as accidental: there is no agreed commission, no authoritative account of what happened and an ever-expanding vacuum in which every faction is free to construct its own version of Oct. 7.
Into that vacuum has flowed something far more disturbing than an ordinary argument over political responsibility. Netanyahu has worked relentlessly to shift responsibility toward the intelligence chiefs, the generals and especially the Shin Bet. Around him has grown an increasingly elaborate conspiracy theory that Oct. 7 may have involved something more sinister than incompetence and catastrophic misjudgment: an internal betrayal designed to damage Netanyahu politically.
What the Haaretz report provides is another powerful indication of how much remains unresolved, along with a potentially devastating explanation for Netanyahu’s determination to keep the established investigative mechanism from examining it. If the report is substantially correct — if Netanyahu personally received another serious warning before Oct. 7, misunderstood its significance, failed to circulate it to the security chiefs and then spent years attempting to redirect responsibility toward those same institutions — his resistance to a genuinely independent inquiry is clearly a political calculation..
“It’s like a knife in the stomach,” said Merav Svirsky, whose parents were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hardest hit on Oct. 7, and whose brother was kidnapped and killed in Gaza. “My father and mother could have been alive. My brother would not have been kidnapped and would be alive. And while others resigned, Netanyahu clings to his seat.”
The post Did Netanyahu ignore Oct. 7 warning? An independent inquiry could cost him re-election. appeared first on The Forward.
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Tidbits: New German textbooks about the Jewish religion
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:
צום ערשטן מאָל זינט דעם חורבן האָבן די דײַטשישע עפֿנטלעכע שולן באַקומען לערנביכער געווידמעט דער ייִדישער רעליגיע, כּדי די לערערס זאָלן קענען זיי ניצן ווי אַ טייל פֿונעם קוריקולום.
די סעריע פֿון אַכט בענד, „דעת הדורות“ (דאָס וויסן פֿון די דורות), וועט לערנען תּלמידים צווישן 10 און 16 יאָר אַלט אויף דײַטש וועגן דער תּורה, דעם תּנך, די תּפֿילות, ייִדישער עטיק, הלכה, יום־טובֿים, דעם ייִדישן לעבנס־ציקל און דער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
דער ערשטער באַנד, וואָס קאָנצענטרירט זיך אויף דער תּורה, וועט מען אָנהייבן ניצן אינעם נײַעם שוליאָר.
די ביכער, וואָס זענען צונויפֿגעשטעלט געוואָרן דורכן „צענטראַל-ראַט פֿון די ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד“ בשותּפֿות מיטן „ערנסט קלעט פֿאַרלאַג“, ווערן געצילעוועט סײַ אויף פּריוואַטע ייִדישע שולן סײַ אויף מלוכישע שולן איבער גאַנץ דײַטשלאַנד.
דער ציל איז צו באַקענען די תּלמידים מיט דער ייִדישער רעליגיע און טראַדיציעס אין אַ צײַט וואָס עס וואַקסט דער אַנטיסעמיטיזם איבערן לאַנד.
ביז איצט האָבן די לערער פֿון רעליגיעזע ייִדישע לימודים נישט געהאַט קיין מאָדערנע לערנביכער וועגן יהדות אין הסכּם מיטן קוריקולום, אַזוי ווי ס׳האָבן געהאַט די לערער פֿון קריסטלעכע רעליגיעזע לימודים. צוליב דעם בלויז האָבן די לערער פֿון דער ייִדישער רעליגיע געמוזט אַליין צונויפֿשטעלן אַרבעט־בויגנס און אַנדערע מאַטעריאַלן, וואָס זיי האָבן איבערגעזעצט פֿון אַנדערע שפּראַכן.
אין אַ מעלדונג האָט שילה ערלבוים, די אָנפֿירערין פֿונעם אָפּטייל פֿון פּאָליטיק און רעליגיע בײַם ייִדישן צענטראַל־ראַט, געזאָגט: „מיר האָבן טאַקע געדאַרפֿט אַ סיסטעמאַטישן לערן־רעסורס, וואָס באַזאָרגט די קינדער נישט בלויז מיט לערן־מאַטעריאַל, אָבער מוטיקט זיי זיך אַקטיוו צו באַטייליקן,“ האָט זי געזאָגט.
„דורך ׳דעת הדורות׳ קענען זיי לייזן בילדער־רעטענישן; זיך דערוויסן וועגן די געשעענישן פֿון משה רבינוס לעבן דורך אַ ווערפֿל־שפּיל, אָדער אויספּרוּוון זייער וויסן פֿון ייִדישע טערמינען דורך דער מאָבילקע אָדער אַ „גיכענטפֿער קאָד“ (QR code),“ האָט ערלבוים געזאָגט.
יאָזעף שוסטער, דער פּרעזידענט פֿונעם ייִדישן צענטראַל־ראַט, האַלט אַז די לערנביכער זענען אַ וויכטיקער אויפֿטו. „אַ דאַנק דעם פּראָיעקט וועט די ייִדישע רעליגיעזע בילדונג איצט זײַן גלײַך מיט די קריסטלעכע רעליגיעזע לימודים,“ האָט ער געזאָגט.
צו לייענען וועגן דעם אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To read about this in English click here.
The post Tidbits: New German textbooks about the Jewish religion appeared first on The Forward.
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Far-right win in German regional race sends shockwaves through Europe
(JTA) —
A victory for Germany’s far-right party in an eastern federal state has reverberated across the globe, exposing the widening rifts between alarmed centrist leaders and insurgent nationalist movements in Europe.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in an election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, crushing the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, which held 17.2% support, according to preliminary figures.
The AfD is now heading toward 39 seats in Saxony-Anhalt’s 83-seat state parliament. It’s expected to fall 3 seats short of an outright majority, leaving open the question of whether it can form Germany’s first far-right state government since World War II. The party has proposed a sweeping nationalist agenda that includes deporting immigrants, defunding “anti-German art” and teaching children less about the country’s Nazi past.
Merz told reporters in Berlin on Monday he was “deeply shocked” and “unsettled” by the results, which he said rippled through the rest of the country and the world. He added that it was impossible for Germany to “go back to business as usual” after so many voters in Saxony-Anhalt chose a party that “questions the democratic institutions in our country.”
The results dealt the CDU its “most severe defeat” in decades, conceded Merz, who leads the party once headed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merz said that he was searching for answers to “why far-right populism and far-right extremism was able to rise in such a rapid manner,” suggesting that his party may have underestimated the “fears of our population” amid economic crises and rapid technological change. He said that minorities in Saxony-Anhalt would be particularly vulnerable under an AfD government, but noted that the state would still have obligations to follow federal law, including regarding immigration policy.
Merz also directed his message to the rest of Europe, saying that Germany had a “special responsibility because of its history” to keep its political order “deeply anchored in Europe.”
Despite the scale of the CDU’s defeat in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz ruled out stepping down, saying, “Giving up is not an option.”
Though Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s smallest regions, home to some 1.7 million voters, its election results quickly sent shockwaves through other European countries whose leaders, like Merz, are fighting to fend off far-right, anti-immigrant parties in national elections next year.
French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad called the AfD’s regional win a “grave moment in Europe” and said that “nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution.”
“We cannot forget our history,” said Haddad, an ally of centrist President Emmanuel Macron. “That is the meaning of the choices made by France and Germany.”
France’s government faces its own fears of a right-wing populist wave. Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Rally, has dwarfed all other candidates in polls heading into France’s presidential election in 2027, when term limits force Macron to step down.
Across the Channel, British Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds said in an interview on Times Radio that the U.K.’s Labour government “will not be reaching out to a right-wing populist party.” She added that she put the AfD in “the same political bracket” as Reform UK, the far-right party that surged in local elections earlier this year.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also condemned the AfD’s victory. The far-right party has alarmed Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor, with its pro-Russia stance, as it seeks to halt Germany’s military aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
“In Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany,” said Tusk.
Meanwhile, the AfD was cheered by nationalist, anti-immigration party leaders in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, all of whom have sought to capitalize on economic and social grievances similar to those that contributed to the AfD’s victory Sunday.
Santiago Abascal, the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party, called the result “a great hope for Germany and for Europe.”
André Ventura, the founder of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, said that “the Germans too are opening their eyes against illegal and uncontrolled immigration, corruption, and the capture of our freedom and identity.”
And in the Netherlands, the AfD received a “Congratulations” from the far-right Party for Freedom’s leader, Geert Wilders.
While President Donald Trump has yet to officially respond to the Saxony-Anhalt election, he posted a screenshot of the results without comment on his Truth Social account Sunday night.
Trump’s post was shared by Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy and businessman, who said the AfD scored a “historic win” that would “put migration under control.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire and former Trump adviser who campaigned for the AfD last year, gave his support to the national party leader Alice Weidel on X, which he owns, writing “Well done” in German.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate in Saxony-Anhalt who hopes to become the state premier, responded by praising Musk.
“Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time — including here in Germany,” he wrote.
The post Far-right win in German regional race sends shockwaves through Europe appeared first on The Forward.
