For a long time, Jews looking for representation in video games had to make do with the possible Jewishness of William Joseph Blazkowicz, the Nazi-hunting protagonist of the popular ‘90s video game series Wolfenstein.

A white, muscular, machine-gun-toting GI, with a lantern jaw and blue eyes, Blazkowicz didn’t exactly look the part. But his Polish ancestry, together with his enthusiasm for vanquishing Wehrmacht soldiers, left many Jews convinced. (Eventually, in 2017, Wolfenstein creator Tom Hall confirmed that the character’s mother was indeed a Polish Jew.)

Depictions of Jews in video games have, mercifully, improved in recent years, not least as the gaming industry has sought to reflect a wider range of identities and perspectives. The Shivah, published in 2006, told the story of a Manhattan rabbi caught up in a murder mystery. In 2020, The Last of Us, Part II introduced Dina, a Sephardi Jew with a fondness for apples and honey, while 2022’s Perfect Tides was an excellent coming-of-age story about a bashful 15-year-old New Yorker named Mara Whitefish. (Author and critic Josh Lambert described Perfect Tides as “the most compelling Jewish video game ever created.”)

To this growing roster of Jewish video games we can now add The Eternal Life of Goldman, the latest effort from independent game studio Weappy. Set to be released in full later this year, a demo version published last week received considerable praise online — and not just for its dazzling artwork and intuitive gameplay.

Rather, much of the intrigue and acclaim was because of the game’s improbable hero: a Jewish octogenarian with a yarmulke and a cane, the titular Mr. Goldman.

Although the demo is just the first 90 minutes of gameplay, it took me the better part of a day to get through. The game takes place on a vast archipelago populated by an array of menacing creatures — brilliantly brought to life by hand-drawn, 2D animations — and so death is ever present. For example, no sooner had I, as Goldman, arrived on the first of the game’s islands, than was I set upon by some kind of dragon-dinosaur hybrid. Goldman was promptly killed; he died with an arresting squeal. (The game’s sound effects are immense.)

It’s not clear why Goldman has opted to spend his presumably hard-earned retirement among volcanic ruins and thick underbrush. Palm Beach, this ain’t. Perhaps understandably, he isn’t so keen on the task at hand, which appears to be a rescue mission of sorts to retrieve a group of children known as “The Lost Ones,” though the demo ends before this is properly explained.

Still, Goldman is remarkably agile, with impressive powers of resurrection. The cane isn’t for walking, it turns out, so much as bouncing, thwacking and stabbing. It’s Goldman’s only companion as he faces down the beasts and monsters, most of which are lifted from a fable or myth. Besting the Minotaur, for instance, was the undoubted highpoint of a day’s gaming otherwise defined by my near-constant death.

Indeed, the game has a somewhat macabre feel. Even its framing device, a bedside conversation between a mother and daughter at a hospital, hints at a sinister plotline to come. (Ilya Yanovich, Weappy’s creative director, admitted as much in a recent interview.) In fact, the fairytales that the mother tells her ailing child seem to govern where Goldman ends up in the game. I was not the only reviewer for whom this called to mind the movie The Princess Bride — which, it’s worth noting, was written by one William Goldman.

This is just one among a host of Jewish, or Jewish-adjacent, references that cropped up in barely an hour-and-a-half of gameplay. There’s a faintly kabbalistic figure called Nissim Klein. Another character is named Hanoch. All three men — Goldman, Klein, Hanoch — periodically yell time-honored Yiddishisms like “Oy Vey!” and “Ach.” And at one point, we’re told about a group of giant clay statues “built by Nissim’s ancestors,” which feels more than a little Passover-coded.

Despite my difficulties progressing through the demo, then, the artwork, the Jewishness, the propulsive narrative energy, the main character’s cynicism, the simple left-to-right gameplay — it was all more than enough to sustain me.

Yet, at the risk of reading too much into a small slice of a much larger pie, it’s worth considering how Goldman communicates its Jewishness. For one thing, the game is, in at least one respect, the anti-Wolfenstein: While Blazkowicz’s Jewishness was merely gestured at, Goldman’s is unambiguous. And for another, Goldman places its Jewish protagonist in something other than a Jewish ceremony or ritual. (My apologies to the aforementioned The Shivah.) These are both salutary developments, the more so at a time of rising antisemitism, online and elsewhere.

But Goldman is a stereotype, too, albeit a largely inoffensive one. He’s a cantankerous older Jew with a hunch and a limp whose dialogue, in the demo at least, mostly consists of kvetching and confusion.

Now, is it amusing to see Goldman bouncing through the forest, battling mythical beasts and natural disasters, all while expectorating constantly? Certainly. Is the incongruity the point? Maybe. Still, it feels like a missed opportunity that Weappy selected a somewhat backward-facing protagonist as its vehicle for Jewishness — especially as Jewish identity becomes increasingly variegated with each passing generation.

The Eternal Life of Goldman is a valuable affirmation of a particular flavor of Jewishness, sure, and given the stir that the demo generated online, it doubtless will do very well. I can’t help but feel, however, that a less played-out protagonist might have compelled Yanovich — who is Jewish — to include some fresher, more interesting modes of Jewish cultural and ethnic expression.

After all, we’re more than yiddish and yarmulkes.

The post The minotaur-slaying, dragon-battling hero of this video game is an old Jewish guy with back problems and an attitude appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — The arson in December at Beth Israel Congregation didn’t just damage the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. It also threw into disarray the operations of a Jewish nonprofit that aims to serve the entire American South.

The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life is housed at the opposite end of the Beth Israel building from the library where the fire started. Most of its activities take place off site, in the small Jewish communities scattered across the region, and much of its archives had been digitized before the fire.

Still, the arson attack struck an institution that, since its founding in 2000, has linked far-flung congregations across the South and imbued generations of Jewish leaders with an appreciation for Jewish life in a region where community is often small, deeply rooted and hard-won.

“This is sort of the hub of where things happen, so we’re still assessing what is truly lost, what can be repaired, what can’t be,” Michele Schipper, the organization’s CEO, said ahead of the synagogue’s first Shabbat since the attack.

Even as the institute embarks on the long road of repairing its brick-and-mortar headquarters, its core mission of connecting and sustaining Jewish communities across the South remains unchanged.

“It will be important for my communities this winter and spring to be with me, to hear from me about what’s going on,” said Rabbi Salem Pearce, who is officially ISJL’s director of spirituality but unofficially “the traveling rabbi of the South.” She roves from her home in Durham, North Carolina, across 70 congregations throughout a 13-state region that extends from Texas to Florida.

Following the arson attack, Pearce said she believed the communities she serves had taken the attack personally because “they identify strongly, both with the ISJL and with the idea of being vulnerable being a small Jewish community in the South.”

“I always want to ground what I do in Torah and in Jewish tradition, and I think that both of those things have a lot to say about the power of community and resilience and being together and survival,” said Pearce.

For years, the institute also placed early-career Jewish educators in Southern communities through its flagship fellowship program. The program ended in 2022, but the network of dozens of former fellows scattered across the country say their work supporting Jewish life in the South left lasting impressions on their own Jewish identities.

Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, an ISJL fellow from 2013 to 2015, was attending a gathering of clergy from the Jewish Renewal movement in Boulder, Colorado, when he first heard the news of the arson.

“I felt in my body like a deep pain, and I immediately flashed to the incredible experiences I had as part of that synagogue community,” said Rofeberg.

He wasn’t the only one at the conference to feel that way. “I was with people that had a shared connection to the space and who I had met through this incredible community, and I thought all that was helpful,” he said. “So it was heartbreaking, and it was meaningful to see in that space a couple hundred people looking to be supportive of this community.”

Molly Levy, ISJL’s director of education, said one of the reasons why the institute shifted away from the fellowship program was that the communities were so strong that they needed more than temporary fellows could provide.

“They’ve all used the curriculum, they’re very familiar with it, and they want to do things that are more experiential, and looking at making their schools fit the students that they have today, as well as having these big conversations around antisemitism, around safety, making sure that their students feel safe,” Levy said.

The communities in the network also bond with each other. For Beth Israel Congregation’s first Shabbat service following the arson attack, the congregation used a Torah borrowed from Temple B’nai Israel, located about 90 miles southeast along Route 49.

“We’re just down the road in Hattiesburg. So people immediately wanted to know, OK, how can we help?” said Rabbi Debra Kassoff of Temple B’nai Israel, who became the ISJL’s first director of rabbinic services in 2003.

During her stint as the ISJL’s resident rabbi, Kassoff traveled across the region to offer rabbinic services to congregations.

“It was an honor, it was fascinating and overwhelming,” said Kassoff. “When I first came here I felt really embraced, people seemed excited to have me, and were glad that I was wanting to be there and be a part of this kind of corner of the American Jewish landscape that is so often overlooked.

In the wake of the attack, rabbis from several Southern congregations quickly voiced their dismay and solidarity with the institute.

Rabbi Jeremy Simons, a former director of the rabbinic department at the ISJL and incoming rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, recalled his time in Jackson in a post on Facebook and appealed to his followers to donate to the synagogue’s recovery fund.

“While I have plenty of fond memories in that building and in that library, there are so many who call Beth Israel their spiritual home and are feeling a pain neither you or I will ever know (God willing),” wrote Simmons. “I know you don’t have to have spent time in that building, or even know of its existence, to be shaken by this news. I try to remind myself they can destroy our buildings, but they can never destroy our faith. If anything it will only strengthen it.”

Rabbi Raina Siroty of Temple Beth-El in Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote in a post on Facebook that the ISJL had “connected and strengthened Jewish communities from Texas to the Florida Panhandle,” adding that “Southern Jewish communities are woven deeply into the fabric of their cities. They deserve to worship without fear.”

Rabbi Jason Holtz of Temple Kehillat Chaim in Roswell, Georgia, wrote in another post that he had attended the ISJL’s conference within a few weeks of moving to Georgia.

“I remember leaving with a sense of enthusiasm but also amazement at the wonderful people that provide such resources and leadership for Jewish communities all over the South,” he wrote. “When people think of Jewish life, places like Jackson probably don’t immediately come to mind. But Jews all over the South, my congregation included, have benefited so much from the tireless and dedicated people who call Jackson home.”

Schipper said many past fellows and staff of the ISJL had also shared messages of support.

“There’s such powerful messages that they are sharing and remembrances of their time here in Jackson and at Beth Israel, because for many, this was their first non-parent home synagogue,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed in the best possible way of the outpouring of support from the local community to the Jewish community worldwide. It really makes me proud to be Jewish.”

Rofeberg said his two years at the ISJL, which included hosting a “Purim-gras,” or a Mardi Gras-Purim combo at a Louisiana synagogue, were “pivotal” in setting him on a path to seek rabbinic ordination.

“I think I went down thinking I was doing this grand service as somebody who had learned in college about Judaism,” said Rofeberg. “And I really quickly learned how wrong that was, and how so many of these communities I was visiting and the community I was living in had way more to teach me than I had to teach them.”

Megan Roberts Koller, an ISJL fellow from 2007 to 2009 who grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, said her time with the institute deepened her own understanding of her identity as a Jew in the South.

“I think being in an environment with lots of different types of people helped me realize how special the Southern Jewish experience was,” she said. “It was interesting to be part of something so new and something so different.”

Roberts Koller recalled the fellows going on trips to the Neshoba County Fair and local blues concerts to experience a “slice of life” of Mississippi.

“Especially over the summers, when we were traveling less and we were onboarding new people, there was quite a push to have us experience that authentic Mississippi summer and help people feel both out of their comfort zone and comfortable in Mississippi,” she said.

While Roberts Koller, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, no longer works in Jewish communal life, she said her experiences at the ISJL had inspired her to continue pursuing Jewish involvement in her own community.

“The experience of working for the Institute of Southern Jewish life and seeing congregational life all across the South and cities large and small, I think, really made an impact and made it a priority to be part of a congregation here in Nashville,” she said.

In recent years, Levy said the ISJL had created a “catalogue” of lessons about Jewish pride and information on teaching students about antisemitism.

Currently, the ISJL’s antisemitism curriculum begins in the eighth grade, but Levy said she was working on starting antisemitism education in the earlier grades.

“When I go into a community, I usually meet with the teens, and will usually have conversations on being the only Jewish kid in your school or being a small population of Jewish kids in your school,” said Levy. “When I ask, ‘Have you heard something antisemitic, or have you had an incident in your school?’ It’s very rare when someone doesn’t raise their hand.”

Looking ahead, Schipper said the institute’s focus will be on building on a firm foundation, not just in its physical space but in the messages it delivers across the South.

“If you look at our curriculum, it already had information on how to be a proud Jew,” said Schipper. “So I think, can we strengthen that message? Can we let people know a little bit more about what we are doing, so that they’re well aware that this organization is providing support to these communities in so many ways.”

For Levy, the aftermath of the attack has underscored the strength of the organization’s broad spanning community.

“It’s only shown us how incredibly powerful our network and how incredibly important these connections are, just because of all of the outpouring of love and support that’s come from our other ISJL communities and how much they want to support Beth Israel,” she said. “It’s been really hard and really sad and really challenging, and we were incredibly ready to activate our network and activate the support that we needed to give.”

Schipper said she could see an upside to the bleak circumstances that brought national attention to her work this year.

“This is not how I would love more publicity,” she said, referring to the arson. “But if somebody else learns about who we are and what we do and goes, ‘Oh my gosh, my cousin’s in Kentucky, and they could really use your resources,’ then great.”

The post Arson at Jackson synagogue jolts Institute of Southern Jewish Life, but its mission persists appeared first on The Forward.

I first met Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. in 1979, not long after I joined the staff of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA). Rev. Jackson was an early friend of the organization, which was founded in 1964 by Rabbi Robert Marx out of the Civil Rights Movement to combat poverty, racism and antisemitism. Jackson and Marx met when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. moved to Chicago with the goal of bringing the Civil Rights Movement north.

Rev. Jackson was an aide to Dr. King. He subsequently founded Operation Breadbasket, later renamed Rainbow PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). JCUA’s early work in Chicago was focused on building partnerships throughout Chicago with groups predominantly in the Black and Latinx communities and among the most oppressed in Chicago. Since those early years, Rainbow PUSH and JCUA have worked together, organizing communities and building coalitions, tackling rampant racism in housing, schools, businesses and the police, all while working to try to end political corruption, ensure voting rights, and explicitly envision a just city and world.

My introduction to Rev. Jackson came at a shaky time for the Black and Jewish coalition. As minorities in America, the Black and Jewish communities, having experienced systemic discrimination, had forged common ground during hard-fought campaigns for civil rights, winning new rights and protections for all minorities with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Our communities’ bond is often remembered and personified by the courageous work of three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, Black and Jewish, who tragically were murdered by the KKK while traveling together to work on behalf of voting rights.

By 1979, however, breaches in the communities’ relationship were visible and tensions had emerged. Some in the Jewish community were angry that Rev. Jackson had met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Meanwhile, in Chicago, leaders and residents from the Black community were angered by conditions facing Black families newly arrived to the south and west sides of Chicago following the exodus of Jewish families from these same communities. Some of the new Black residents were particularly incensed by former Jewish residents who retained control as landlords, shop owners and political bosses.

With all this as a backdrop, Milt Cohen, then JCUA’s Executive Director, and Rev. Jackson convened a meeting in our then-tiny offices, inviting leaders from both communities to air their grievances, find common ground, and renew the alliance. Jackson and Cohen sought to identify joint actions for local social justice issues where there remained strong agreement.

A press conference followed the meeting, where we announced our plan to strengthen Chicago’s Black and Jewish coalition and jointly tackle inequities involving schools and housing. I was in awe, overwhelmed by Rev. Jackson’s powerful presence. Even though I was the youngest person at the press conference, both Milt and Rev. Jackson pushed me forward to speak. This was just the first of many occasions when Rev. Jackson would encourage my participation, leadership, visibility, and partnership.

After that first up-close experience almost 50 years ago, I enjoyed many opportunities to answer Rev. Jackson’s invitations as he exhorted me to speak, participate in programs, and join him and PUSH in actions. In engaging me, he was also consciously choosing to include JCUA and bring a Chicago Jewish presence to the work.

I spoke at PUSH’s weekly Saturday forums and served as a panelist on Rev. Jackson’s Upfront cable show. With JCUA members and diverse coalitions from across Chicago’s communities, we marched through the streets of Chicago and Washington D.C. We joined Rev. Jackson when he took on the corrupt Chicago political machine, then led by Mayor Jane Byrne, and as he launched a raucous and successful boycott of Chicagofest, the Mayor’s favorite lakefront festival, and lucrative gift to her political cronies.

We spoke of the dangers of Reaganomics that threatened the elimination of schoolchildren’s lunches, we got out the vote and elected Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black and progressive Mayor. We spoke out against the Trump administration and MAGA’S attacks against hard fought and won civil and human rights.

Rev. Jackson magnetically built alliances across faith, race and ethnicity. Untiringly, brilliantly, he literally changed the face, policies and politics of Chicago, the nation and the world. He sought to overturn injustices, shatter obstacles to change and non-violently revolutionize the social order. He galvanized millions to act. He commanded every room. His astute in-depth analyses turned meetings into classrooms and calls to action.

By 1984, Rev. Jackson was a leading national and global figure. Barack Obama said that Jackson’s two presidential runs in 1984 and 1988 laid the groundwork for his own election. At the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, as part of the Harold Washington Favorite Son delegation, we listened carefully as Rev. Jackson delivered his convention speech, one that resonated so powerfully that it would become known as the “Peace Speech.” He regaled, quieted, then inspired thunderous roars from the room.

“Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow — red, yellow, brown, black and white, and we’re all precious in God’s sight,” Rev. Jackson said. “America is not like a blanket, one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt, many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.”

Rev. Jackson’s speech was among the most profound, insightful and powerful addresses I had ever heard. He offered an extraordinary vision, calling upon our better selves to rise to the occasion and illuminating the roads we could take together. Inspired by his outreach and challenge, I was deeply moved. I was grateful for the opportunity to express my choice and to stand with our delegation to vote for Rev. Jesse Jackson for president.

As Rev. Jackson became a global celebrity, a position he used strategically and effectively to wield exceptional influence and carry out extraordinary actions such as negotiating the freedom of political prisoners around the world; he exhibited warmth and kindness to strangers and the powerless. He famously made the children of local neighbors feel seen and appreciated; he listened to their stories and took them to baseball games.

When I brought Yingxi, one of my students who was visiting from Mainland China, to Rainbow PUSH, Rev. Jackson noticed her and warmly welcomed her. He invited her into his office, took time to get to know her and to listen, responded thoughtfully to her questions. Yingxi has told me that, to this day, she still treasures the time she spent with him. On so many occasions, I saw the light in his eyes, from afar and up close, as he greeted young people and old, engaging them, ensuring they were seen. I felt that same connection even as I was just one of many thousands of activists who crossed his path.

In March 2021, Rev. Jackson’s and my friend, Rabbi Robert Marx passed away. I asked Rev. Jackson to speak at a memorial, even though I was aware that this would not be easy, as he was already showing signs of the Parkinson’s-like illness that made his once booming, eloquent voice more difficult to hear. However, he enthusiastically accepted the invitation, and shared heartfelt memories at the service. “We have always been together. I love him so much. I miss him already,” he said of Marx.

In recent years, I grew increasingly fond of Rev. Jackson as he never stopped fighting for justice and acting with compassion. Even as he found it difficult to speak, he kept drawing all of us in.

A few years ago, Rev. Jackson asked me to bring a busload of people to the annual reenactment of the march in Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He didn’t give me much time to get a bus together, but I was able to get a carload of religious and community leaders, including an imam and a Baptist minister. We sat in the Brown Chapel AME Church, where services were reenacted, and we protested, prayed and sang before we marched together across the bridge. Rev. Jackson led, pulling me upfront to join him. With the diverse crowd from across the country, we marched, all astutely aware that the job is not yet finished.

Rev. Jackson grew from a student with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to a global leader, gaining followers while infuriating leaders and the status quo. But he could not be ignored, would not be ignored. He was somebody, and made sure you knew you were somebody, too.

While movement leaders have courageously fought and sacrificed over the years, many in time moved to the background. Rev. Jackson, on the other hand, passionately, powerfully, brilliantly and strategically, stayed the course. Even in his last weeks, he persevered from his wheelchair, determined to remain a force, to continue the fight and , famously, to Keep Hope Alive.

I have much to be grateful for in reflecting on the life and work of Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. including the friendship he extended, his outsized impact on our lives, on our communities, our country, and, given his legacy, into the future.

I already miss him.

The post Why I already miss Rev. Jesse Jackson appeared first on The Forward.