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On stage and in the classroom, Mikhl Yashinsky is stoking the flame of the Yiddish revival
(New York Jewish Week) — In the Yiddish classes Mikhl Yashinsky teaches for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Workers Circle, he begins by asking students to explain why they decided to learn the language.
Often, a student will describe attending a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the smash hit from the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.
This is literally music to the ears of Yashinsky, who not only teaches conversational Yiddish, translates Yiddish literature and writes Yiddish plays and videos, but who also played a beggar and innkeeper in the latest run of “Fiddler” in Yiddish, which closed on Jan. 1.
“Many thousands of people have seen Yiddish ‘Fiddler’ by now and it’s had a real impact on them and how they see the language,” he told the New York Jewish Week. “It makes me happy that one thing feeds into another.”
The 32-year-old Chelsea resident is in some ways the future of Yiddish, at least of the secular, artistic and academic variety that is spoken and studied outside of the haredi Orthodox community, where it is often the first language. While some Yiddishists bristle at the notion that the language of Ashkenazi Eastern Europe is undergoing a “renaissance,” figures like Yashinsky are making sure the language continues to flourish in communities beyond the yeshiva.
”Mikhl has played a very big role in my Yiddish journey,” said Judith Liskin-Gasparro, a retired linguistics professor from the University of Iowa. Liskin-Gasparro had four grandparents who were native Yiddish speakers but who never spoke the language in front of her. She estimates that over the course of her career she’s watched 1,000 people teach a language class. After studying with Yashinsky remotely from Iowa City for five semesters, Liskin-Gasparro said: “I have rarely seen anybody as good as he is.” His YIVO course has been so popular that YIVO had to create a second section.
Liskin-Gasparro now describes herself as obsessed with the language. In November, she made the trek to New York to see Yashinsky perform in “Fiddler.” During her visit she joined about 15 people from Yashinsky’s YIVO class to meet her teacher in person.
Yashinsky, who grew up outside of Detroit, credits his late maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Elkin Weiss, with putting him on the path to becoming a Yiddishist. Weiss and her husband Rube were veterans of Yiddish theater, performing on stage and the radio. His grandmother also performed in English-language radio dramas, and her ability to do accents and characters earned her the nickname “The Woman of 1,000 Voices.” A radio ad in which Weiss imitated the Hungarian Jewish actress Zsa Zsa Gabor convinced customers of an Italian restaurant in the Detroit area that Zsa Zsa herself had done the commercial.
Talent ran in the family, sometimes in unexpected ways: Yashinsky’s uncle, David Weiss, was one-half of Was (Not Was), a major funk-rock band in the 1980s and ’90s. David’s partner, Don Was, is celebrating his 30th year as a record producer for The Rolling Stones.
Yashinsky studied modern European history and literature at Harvard, attended the Vilna Yiddish Language Institute and in 2015-16 worked as a fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass. In 2018, Yashinsky performed in the held-over runs of Yiddish “Fiddler “at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, then left New York for a steady gig teaching Yiddish at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He rejoined the musical when it was staged in 2019 at Stage 43, the largest off-Broadway theater in the city.
Joel Grey, the director of Yiddish “Fiddler,” wrote in an email: “Mikhl is one of the most resourceful and delightful actors I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. He has more ideas for a moment than most actors do in a lifetime.”
Jackie Hoffman, the comedian and Broadway veteran who played Yenta the matchmaker in earlier runs of Yiddish “Fiddler,” said Yashinsky “is a truly Yiddish soul. He’s like someone who could’ve crept out of the 19th century. It’s like Yiddish is in his blood.”
Mikhl Yashinsky, center in gray apron, played Mordkhe the Innkeeper in “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the smash hit from the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. (Jeremy Daniel)
Steven Skybell, who played Tevye in in the latest Yiddish “Fiddler,” attended Yashinsky’s classes for a few semesters, which enabled him to converse with Yashinsky in the mamaloshn (mother tongue) backstage.
Yashinsky’s mother in Michigan, who did not grow up speaking Yiddish, has attended all five semesters via Zoom. Debra Yashinsky, who said she can’t begin to count the number of times she’s seen Yiddish “Fiddler,” used her maiden name in the Zoom interface for the first two semesters.
“Mikhl once asked me, ‘Mom, are you taking the class to learn Yiddish or do you just enjoy seeing me teach?’” she recalled. “I didn’t know the right answer. The truth is I love seeing his punim [face] for an hour and a half and kvelling [being proud] while I watch him teach.”
In addition to teaching and acting, translation has been a big part of Yashinsky’s devotion to the language (and need to earn a living).
He has a deadline looming at the end of January for his translation of the memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, the Polish-Jewish actress considered the “mother of Yiddish theater.” He’s been working on the project for a few years and could often be found backstage at “Fiddler” translating a couple of sentences at a time between scenes.
Yashinsky has also been translating short stories by the Nobelist Isaac Bashevis Singer for a forthcoming anthology of the author’s early works. He describes them as “little gems” Singer wrote when he was a young writer that have never been translated into English. Yashinsky said he has translated three or four of the short stories so far.
Yashinsky is also a playwright whose Yiddish play, “Vos Flist Durkhn Oder” (“Blessing of the New Moon”), was performed at the Lower East Side Play Festival last summer. One of six plays chosen from more than 100 submissions, it was the only non-English play in the festival. The one-act play, set in a Lower East Side yeshiva in 1912, deals with the tradition of pranks that take place during the month in which Purim falls.
His full-length play “Di Psure Loyt Chaim” (“The Gospel According to Chaim”) will get a public reading this winter at the New Yiddish Rep in Manhattan. The play is based on the true story of Henry Einspruch, a Baltimore Jew who in the 1940s found Jesus and translated the New Testament into Yiddish for the purpose of converting his fellow Jews. Yashinsky said no Yiddish publisher would help Einspruch in his quest.
“I just thought that this was a very curious bit of history,” said the playwright. “It was really insidious in some ways. He was trying to convert Holocaust survivors in some cases. He would preach outside synagogues on Shabbos mornings.”
Yashinsky will be working on a Yiddish musical in 2023, thanks to a LABA Fellowship for Jewish artists. He plans to write the musical in collaboration with Mamaliga, a klezmer band based in Brooklyn and Boston. Yashinsky said he may write something about the underworld of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
Another bright spot on the horizon: On Jan. 26 he’ll make his Carnegie Hall début, singing in a concert titled “We Are Here: Songs from the Holocaust,” which will feature Broadway stars Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera and Shoshana Bean. Yashinsky will perform “Zog nit keynmol” (“Never Say”), the anthem of the Vilna partisans.
And somehow Yashinsky will make time to produce more videos for the Workers Circle #YiddishAlive series on YouTube. Among the 11 videos he’s done so far are a Yiddish rendition of Tom Lehrer’s song “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” and a music video shot in Michigan to celebrate the strawberry harvest. That video featured “Trúskafke-vals” (“Strawberry Waltz”), a Yiddish song he wrote, as well as a strawberry cake baked by his mother.
He also produces humorous Yiddish music videos, including one based on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ demented, spooky classic, “I Put A Spell On You.” In his version, Yashinsky performs in drag as Bobe Yakhne, a sorceress he played in Folksbiene’s 2017 revival of the classic Yiddish operetta “The Sorceress.”
“This art form continues,” he said of Yiddish theater. “It’s a tradition that hasn’t evaporated and it’s nice to feel that I’m part of the continuity.”
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The post On stage and in the classroom, Mikhl Yashinsky is stoking the flame of the Yiddish revival appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Barney Frank’s final warning on Israel: ‘America’s effort should be to support the opposition to Netanyahu’
(JTA) — Barney Frank, for years the progressive conscience of his party who died on Tuesday night, had one last piece of advice for Democrats as he entered hospice care earlier this month: Repudiate litmus tests – except for Israel.
The United States should cut off weapons sales to Israel as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not relieve Palestinian suffering, Frank told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this month, using his imminent death to state bluntly what he believed other Democrats could not.
“It’s what the Democrats should be doing, it’s what America should be doing, and it should be what the Democrats are advocating, is giving an ultimatum that [Netanyahu] either changes things substantially in Gaza and the West Bank, or we cut off any aid,” the onetime congressional powerhouse said in a May 8 phone call from his home in Ogunquit, Maine.
“I’ve been talking about the importance of repudiating positions from the left and from the far left, but the Israel one is almost 180 degrees” different, he said. “It’s the one area where we are not doing enough in terms of making our position clear.”
Jewish lawmakers criticizing Netanyahu’s Israel was extraordinary a decade or so ago but has become commonplace. Frank’s plea, however, came from a lawmaker who grew up in a Zionist household and who was throughout a decades-long career in the U.S. House of Representatives solidly pro-Israel, albeit with occasional deviations from the pro-Israel lobby’s orthodoxy.
In one of his final interviews, he acknowledged being heartbroken by Israel under Netanyahu, recalling his family’s support for the struggle to shuck off the British mandate and create a Jewish state.
“We had a ‘boycott Britain’ bumper sticker on our car,” he said. His older sister, Anne Lewis, brought the family into the Zionist fold after a summer at a Habonim camp. “During my congressional career, I was very supportive, emotionally as well as politically and for a while earlier in this century, I volunteered and traveled at the request of Hillel to a couple of college campuses to defend Judaism and Israel.”
That would be hard to do in the current moment, he said. “I guess I held on longer than I should have to, ‘Well, we can work with them, etc’,” he said. “But it’s become clear to me, particularly due to what they’re allowing to happen in the West Bank, that it is important morally and politically to repudiate the policy of supporting Israel’s military activity.”
From the home he shared with his husband in Ogunquit, Frank in his final days took calls from the media well ahead of the scheduled publication of his book, “The Hard Path to Unity.”
He freely admitted he was doing a virtual publicity tour because his survival until the September launch date was unlikely. He knew he was leveraging his decline to be heard, and he didn’t mind that at all.
“Frankly, if I weren’t dying, people wouldn’t be paying as much attention,” Frank told The New York Times earlier this month.
His message in many of those conversations: Don’t make or break viable Democratic candidates on issues like transgender rights or Medicare for all.
“The key to liberal democracy being able to come back is to get rid of the perception, that we have allowed to grow, that the entire Democratic Party is committed to a series of very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable,” he told the Times.
Asked at the outset of his interview with JTA if that advice extends to the pressure from some of the Democratic base on candidates to pledge to cut assistance to Israel, he offered a vigorous “almost the opposite” because of his conviction that the party should be more vocal in its opposition to the current Israeli government.
Frank was a fighter during his congressional career from 1981 to 2013. The leadership made him the lead antagonist to Newt Gingrich during Gingrich’s consequential speakership in the 1990s. Frank ascended to the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee at a key time, during the late 2000s financial crisis. He coauthored the last major banking reform bill, 2010’s Dodd-Frank.
He was a progressive lion, championing the battles against income inequality and for civil rights. He came out in 1987 as gay, the first sitting member of Congress to do so. He had a reputation as a curmudgeon, once silencing a Holocaust survivor for exceeding his time in congressional testimony.
Frank believed that incremental moves are more likely to bring about change than full-on advocacy for far-reaching changes. He had noted in interviews that the same-sex marriage he enjoyed with his husband came about because of a slow roll of change in LGBTQ rights, including ones he championed, like allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
The onetime leading progressive endorsed moderates in this year’s elections, backing AIPAC-supported U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate primary. In his own state’s Senate race, he also backed Gov. Janet Collins, who recently ceded the primary to Graham Platner, an ascendant figure on the party’s left.
Frank believed anti-Israel orthodoxies could be as damaging as the far-left orthodoxies he decried. He remained appalled at voters disgruntled with the Biden administration’s pro-Israel policies who stayed away from the polls or even voted for President Donald Trump, and he used their example as one of two to illustrate why purity tests backfire. (The other is voters who faulted President Joe Biden for not doing enough to address climate change.)
“People who voted against [Kamala] Harris because they thought the administration had been too supportive of Israel achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted,” Frank said, referring to the former vice president who faced Trump in 2024. “She would have begun by now to have cut back substantially on aid to Israel.”
He made clear in his interview that he rejected the extremes of Israel criticism emerging among Democrats, including accusations it has committed genocide in the war Hamas launched in 2023, and the argument that it should not exist as a Jewish state.
“Genocide is trying to wipe out the whole people,” he said. “The Holocaust was killing every Jew. Israel is not trying to kill every Palestinian. What they’re doing – I do not think its genocide, but it’s certainly unacceptable, morally and very damaging, politically.”
But he argued that in order to effectively confront the anti-Israel left in the party, Democrats must address what he says is the main enabler of its rise: Netanyahu and his policies.
“Netanyahu has been their enabler,” he said of prominent anti-Israel Democrats, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate primary candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
Frank was especially exercised by attacks by some settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, attacks he said are enabled by Netanyahu and his coalition partnership with far-right patrons of the extremist settlers.
“My recommendation to Democrats would be to say, if Netanyahu does not reverse the harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank and substantially cut back on the military attacks, America should announce that we are no longer going to supply him with arms or be otherwise supportive,” he said.
“We’ve now gone to the point where supporting Israel has become unpopular, and that’s all Netanyahu’s doing,” Frank said. “No question that what he’s done is legitimize opposition to the whole notion of Israel, beyond disagreement with the specific actions.”
He sympathized with Jewish voters who feel alienated by Democrats and who could never bring themselves to vote for Trump (whom he reviled — he told reporters that his one regret is that he will not live to see Trump implode.) But he said the way forward is to cut off Netanyahu.
“I understand the dilemma people face if the choice is supporting Israel and everything that Netanyahu is doing and repudiating that,” he said. “We should make it clear that the right position here is to support Israel’s right to exist, but to be unwilling to facilitate what they’re doing militarily and to give them an ultimatum.”
Frank said the United States should actively support Netanyahu’s opposition as a means of leverage. He cited as an example the campaign he helped lead for the release of the spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard.
Frank spearheaded congressional pressure on President Barack Obama in 2010 mostly because he believed Pollard’s sentence was unjust. But he also thought that it would serve as an incentive to Netanyahu to cooperate more closely with the Obama administration on other issues. (The Obama administration engineered Pollard’s parole in 2015 and he now lives in Israel.)
Instead, Netanyahu became even more confrontational and moved further to the right. Now, Frank said, he would dangle the prospect of Pollard’s release before the Israeli electorate as a means of ousting Netanyahu.
“I now think America’s effort should be to support the opposition to Netanyahu,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Barney Frank’s final warning on Israel: ‘America’s effort should be to support the opposition to Netanyahu’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jews used to conjure spirits and snakes in Belarusian
דעם 26סטן מײַ עפֿנט זיך אין ייִוואָ די אויסשטעלונג „ייִדן זענען מאַגיע‟ וועגן דעם ייִדישן אָקולטיזם. נישט לאַנג צוריק האָב איך אָנגעזאַמלט אַן אייגענעם מין ווירטועלע „אויסשטעלונג‟ פֿאַר זיך אַליין אויף דער דאָזיקער טעמע און אַנטדעקט עפּעס גאַנץ חידושדיקס: רײַכע אוצרות שפּרוכן און מאַגישע רעצעפּטן אויף רײַסיש (ווײַסרוסיש), פֿאַרשריבן מיטן ייִדישן אַלף־בית. עטלעכע פּראָפֿעסיאָנעלע מומחים אין ייִדישע און סלאַווישע פֿאָלק־טראַדיציעס האָבן מיר געזאָגט, אַז דאָס איז אַן עכטע וויסנשאַפֿטלעכע אַנטדעקונג.
מע ווייסט, אַז אויף רײַסיש האָט מען געשריבן מיט דרײַ פֿאַרשיידענע אַלפֿאַבעטן: די קירילישע, לאַטײַנישע און אויך די אַראַבישע, וואָס איז געווען פֿאַרשפּרייט בײַ די ווײַסרוסיש־רעדנדיקע טאָטערן. אַחוץ ריין מוסולמענישע טעקסטן, טרעפֿן זיך בײַ זיי אַ סך מיסטישע סגולות, וווּ פּסוקים פֿונעם קאָראַן ווערן צונויפֿגעוועבט מיט סלאַווישע שפּרוכן.
קיינער האָט אָבער ביז הײַנט נישט געוווּסט, אַז בײַ ייִדן איז פֿאַראַן אַן ענלעכע אַלטע און צעצווײַגטע טראַדיציע צו שרײַבן רײַסישע סגולות מיט ייִדישע אותיות. שוין 16 אַזעלכע כּתבֿ־ידן פֿונעם 18טן און 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָב איך אָנגעזאַמלט און איך בין זיכער, אַז דאָס איז בלויז דער אָנהייב פֿון אַ נײַ געביט אין דער ייִדישער און סלאַווישער לינגוויסטיק, פֿאָלקלאָריסטיק און געשיכטע. אין איין פֿאַל קלינגט די שפּראַך ווי אוקראַיִניש און נאָר טיילווײַז ווי רײַסיש; אָנגעשריבן האָט מען יענעם כּתבֿ־יד אין בריסק, ווײַסרוסלאַנד; עס קאָן זײַן אַן איבערגאַנג־דיאַלעקט.
אין 1921 האָט דער ייִדישער און ווײַסרוסישער שרײַבער און היסטאָריקער זמיטראָק ביאַדוליאַ (אמתער נאָמען – שמואל פּלאַווניק) אָנגעשריבן אַ קורצן אַרטיקל וועגן אַ ריזיקן כּתבֿ־יד, וווּ צווישן סגולות אויף לשון־קודש און ייִדיש טרעפֿט זיך אויך רײַסיש. צום באַדויערן, איז יענער מאַנוסקריפּט פֿאַרלוירן געוואָרן, און די פֿאָרשער האָבן במשך פֿון איבער 100 יאָר געמיינט, אַז דאָס איז, אפֿשר, געווען בלויז אַן איינציקער אויסנאַם־מוסטער פֿון ייִדיש־רײַסיש.
לאָמיר אַרײַנקוקן אין צוויי כּתבֿ־ידן, וועלכע זענען מיר אויסגעפֿאַלן צו טרעפֿן צו ערשט. איינער איז נומער EE.011.037 פֿון וויליאַם גראָסעס קאָלעקציע. פֿון אַ ריזיקן מאַנוסקריפּט זענען פֿאַרבליבן בלויז 14 זײַטלעך; 5 זענען אויף רײַסיש.
איין סגולה איז ממש אַ וווּנדער. ס׳איז אַ שפּרוך קעגן אַ ביס פֿון אַ גיפֿטיקער שלאַנג – „עקרבֿ‟, אַן עקדיש, וואָס אינעם ווײַסרוסישן פֿאָלקלאָר מיינט אַ שלאַנג; קיין עקדישן זענען אין ווײַסרוסלאַנד נישטאָ. עס שטייט אַזוי: צופֿרי, אַנטקעגן דעם קאַיאָר, דאַרף מען זיך נײַן מאָל בוקן אויף די קני און זאָגן „אויטשע נאַש‟ („אונדזער פֿאָטער‟, Lord’s Prayer אויף רײַסיש), ווײַל „דאָס איז זייער תּפֿילה‟ („כּי היא תּפֿילתם‟)! דערנאָך גייט מען אַרום דעם געביסענעם מיט אַ מעסער און שפּרעכט אָפּ די שלאַנגען. כ׳זעץ איבער אויף ייִדיש: „איינער איז אַ גאָלדענער, דער אַנדערער אַ זילבערנער, און דער דריטער – מיט הונדערט ציינער. ס׳צי זיי אַוועק‟.
ווי באַלד דער אומבאַקאַנטער סגולות־זאַמלער פֿונעם 19טן יאָרהונדערט איז געווען אַ ליטוואַק, שרײַבט ער אי אויף ייִדיש, אי אויף סלאַוויש, מיט אַ געדיכטן ליטווישן אַקצענט, אויסמישנדיק „ס‟ מיט „ש‟, „צ‟ מיט „טש‟ און „אוי‟ מיט „איי‟. די באַקאַנטע קריסטלעכע תּפֿילה איז בײַ אים אויסגעלייגט „אייצא נאַס”. די אַנדערע אַנטדעקטע כּתבֿ־ידן האָבן דעם זעלבן ליטוואַקישן אויסלייג.
אינעם באַקאַנטן מדרש „פּרק שירה‟ ווערט דערציילט, ווי אַזוי אַלע באַשעפֿענישן דאַוונען צום אייבערשטן מיט פֿאַרשיידענע תּנ״כישע פּסוקים. בפֿרט פּאָפּולער איז דער דאָזיקער מדרש בײַ פֿרויען; מיט אים הייבט זיך אָן שחרית אינעם באַקאַנטן ווילנער סידור „קרבן מנחה‟ מיט עבֿרי־טײַטש. ווען מע בלעטערט די אַלטע רײַסיש־ייִדישע סגולה־ספֿרים, ווערט אָבער קלאָר, אַז לויט דער פֿאָלק־טראַדיציע איז די נאַטירלעכע שפּראַך פֿון וועלדער און ווילדער נאַטור דווקא רײַסיש. אויב אַזוי, ווענדט מען זיך צו די שלאַנגען דווקא מיט אַ באַוווּסט ניט־ייִדיש געבעט!
ווײַטער, אין אַן אַנדער שפּרוך, ווערט דערקלערט, וווּ עס וווינט די שלאַנגען־מלכּה, „זמיייִצאַ־צאַריצאַ‟: „אין אַ וויסט פֿעלד שטייט אַ גאָלדענער באַרנבוים, אויף יענעם באַרנבוים איז אַ גאָלדן נעסטעלע, און אין יענעם נעסטעלע איז די שלענגעלע־מלכּהלה‟.
די שלאַנגישע מלכּות צי בת־מלכּות הייסן אין די אַנטדעקטע כּתבֿ־ידן קאַראַפּעיאַ, סאַכאַוועיאַ, מאַרינאַ, קאַטערינאַ און אַרינאַ. אָפֿט באַווײַזן זיי זיך ווי קאַסאָקע (קרום־אויגיקע) מיידלעך, וואָס זיצן אין עפּעס אַ פֿאַרוואָרפֿן אָרט. אינעם סלאַווישן פֿאָלקלאָר (און נישט נאָר סלאַווישן) רופֿן קאַסאָקע מיידלעך אַרויס אַסאָציאַציעס מיט שלאַנגען, עין־הרע, וכּדומה.
נאָך איין וווּנדערלעכער אוצר איז דער כּתבֿ־יד נומער 1226 פֿונעם בר־אילן־אוניווערסיטעט. דאָרט פֿאַרנעמט רײַסיש כּמעט אַ טוץ זײַטלעך. צו געפֿינען אַ פֿאַרבלאָנדזשעטן מענטש, שטייט דאָרט געשריבן, דאַרף מען אויסבאַקן נײַן בולקעס, גיין שטילערהייט צו אַן אויסגעוואָרצלטן בוים, בוקן זיך 27 מאָל, אָפּגעבן די בולקעס דעם וואַלד־רוח און בעטן אים אומצוקערן דעם פֿאַרלאָזטן. אײַ, קלינגט עס דאָך ווי אַן עבֿודה־זרה? ווײַזט אויס, האָבן ייִדן געמיינט, אַז ווי באַלד דער גײַסט איז בלויז דער בעל־הבית איבערן וואַלד, נישט קיין עכטער אָפּגאָט, איז אַזאַ ריטואַל סתּם דרך־ארץ פֿאַר אים.
אַ סך אַנדערע רײַסיש־ייִדישע סגולות האָבן צו טאָן מיט מכשפֿות, וועלף און בערן, פֿערד און בהמות, עין־הרעס, קינדער־קראַנקייטן, וכּדומה – בקיצור, מיט טיפּישע פּויערישע און דאָרפֿישע ענינים. גאָר וויכטיק איז צו באַמערקן, אַז אַ סך נוסחאָות חזרן זיך איבער במשך פֿון דורות אין עטלעכע זאַמלונגען, הגם זייער גראַמאַטיק איז צומאָל גרײַזיק, בפֿרט וואָס שייך די קאָמפּליצירטע סלאַווישע בייגפֿאַלן. דאָס ווײַזט קלאָר, אַז זיי שפּיגלען אָפּ אַ רײַכע אינערלעכע ייִדישע טראַדיציע, נישט סתּם איבערגעשריבן וואָרט נאָך וואָרט בײַ די קריסטלעכע שכנים.
איבעריק צו זאָגן, אַז ס׳רובֿ קמיעות און סגולות אין אַזעלכע זאַמלונגען זענען פֿאַרשריבן אויף לשון־קודש און אַראַמיש. נישט זעלטן זענען זיי אָבער אויך פֿאַרבונדן מיט דער סלאַווישער פֿאָלק־מאַגיע. די גאָר רײַכע טראַדיציע פֿון ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע סגולות איז אויך ווייניק באַקאַנט און פֿאָדערט אַ סך ווײַטערדיקע פֿאָרשונגען.
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Anti-Israel Republican Thomas Massie ousted from Congress as Trump endorsee wins primary
(JTA) — The only Republican to refrain from supporting Israel in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack will exit Congress following a decisive primary loss on Tuesday.
Rep. Thomas Massie, who has represented Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since 2013, lost to Ed Gallrein, an endorsee of President Donald Trump who drew support from pro-Israel PACs.
Massie conceded the election on Tuesday night — but not without a dig at Gallrein’s purported relationship to Israel.
“I would’ve come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv,” he said in his concession speech.
With almost all ballots counted on Tuesday night, Gallrein had drawn 55% of the votes.
The result means that Massie, the most anti-Israel Republican in Congress and the only Republican to vote at times with far-left Democrats on measures opposing Israel, will leave Congress at the end of the year.
The Republican Jewish Coalition, which long opposed Massie, congratulated Gallrein in an extensive statement that cast the primary as a referendum on the Republican Party’s recent divide over Israel. The party is increasingly split between acolytes of Trump and those who believe Trump has been too accommodating to Israel.
“Kentucky Republicans sent an unmistakable message: there is no place in the Republican Party for those who turn their back on the MAGA agenda,” said CEO Matt Brooks.
He added, “We know that Ed Gallrein, a 5th-generation Kentucky farmer, decorated Navy SEAL, and true MAGA patriot, will serve with honor and distinction, as he has his entire career.”
Brooks criticized both Massie’s record in Congress and his behavior as a candidate, saying, “Notably, Massie’s conduct throughout this campaign — trafficking in antisemitism and bottom-of-the-barrel nativism at a time when Jew-hatred is on the rise — was wildly unacceptable and outrageous from an elected member of Congress.”
A widely condemned pro-Massie campaign ad last week claimed that a Gallrein win would bring “trans woke madness” to Kentucky at the behest of billionaire Jewish Republican donor Paul Singer. The ad placed a rainbow Star of David next to a photo of Singer’s head.
The ad came amid a blitz that watchdogs say made the race the most expensive congressional contest in U.S. history, with an estimated $32.6 million spent according to the advertising tracking firm AdImpact. That includes $5 million from a PAC affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition and a reported $2.6 million from PACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby.
Massie’s record in Congress has placed him far outside the Republican mainstream. In October 2023, he voted with the progressive “Squad” against a resolution expressing support for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack. The next month, he was the only member of Congress from either party to vote “no” on a resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist. Last year, Massie called for ending all U.S. military aid to Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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