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‘Stop Cop City’ activists infuse Jewish rituals into their protest against Atlanta’s planned police training center
(JTA) — As the sun set on Feb. 5, signaling the start of Tu Bishvat, a group of Jews carried shovels into the South River Forest southeast of downtown Atlanta.
In the day’s declining light, they planted saplings — seven paw paws, three fig and two peach — to honor the holiday, Judaism’s “new year of the trees.” They recited the Shehechiyanu prayer, and a rabbi led them in singing “Tzadik Katamar”: “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon,” from Psalm 92.
The traditional holiday observance doubled as a protest against “Cop City,” the name that self-described “forest defenders” have given the city of Atlanta’s plan to build a $90 million, 85-acre police and fire training center on 300-plus acres that it owns just over the city line in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Two years into protests against the plans, a “week of action” that began over the weekend swelled the protesters’ ranks and brought an even greater police presence to the site of the planned training center. On Sunday night, a group of activists broke from a nonviolent protest, burning police vehicles and, police said, throwing rocks at officers. Dozens of people were arrested.
The violent turn throws into question other plans for the week, which include a Purim celebration on Monday night and a Shabbat service on Friday, the latest Jewish milestones in nearly two years of controversy and confrontation.
“They’re living Jewish values more legitimately, more sincerely than some of the biggest institutions,” said Rabbi Mike Rothbaum of Atlanta’s Reconstructionist Congregation Bet Haverim, of the Jewish protesters. Rothbaum attended the Tu Bishvat event and is scheduled to lead this week’s Shabbat service; he was speaking before the weekend’s events.
Comparing their worship to a mishkan, the portable sanctuary that the Israelites carried in the desert, Rothbaum said of the protesters, “They go to shul at ‘Cop City.’”
A sukkah constructed in October 2023 at the “Cop City” protest site in the Atlanta forest was destroyed in a police raid in December. (Courtesy of Jewish Bird Watcher Union)
Until about 200 years ago, South River Forest was home to the Muscogee (Creek) tribe, who called it Weelaunee — “brown water,” the name painted on protest banners strung between trees. White settlers drove out the Muscogee, and the land later became a slave plantation, a Civil War battlefield and a city prison farm. Portions have been a police firing range and used for explosives disposal, and it has also been the site of illegal dumping.
In April 2021, Atlanta announced plans to build a police training facility in the forest. Opponents immediately launched a protest. They oppose the redirection of natural resources to the police and want the forest maintained as a natural sanctuary.
After two years as a primarily local issue, national and international attention spiked on Jan. 18, when a protester camped in the woods was killed during what police called a “clearing operation.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Manuel Paez Teran fired a handgun, wounding a Georgia State Police trooper, then was killed by return fire. An independent autopsy reported that the 26-year-old known as “Tortuguita” was struck by at least 13 rounds. An Atlanta police vehicle was torched in a subsequent protest downtown. Charges against more than a dozen of those arrested include violating the state’s domestic terrorism statute.
Across Intrenchment Creek from the city property is a DeKalb County park that bears the waterway’s name and is the subject of an associated protest. Much of the “Stop Cop City” activity has taken place in the 136-acre Intrenchment Creek Park. Legal challenges are pending against a land swap in which the county gave 40 acres to the now-former owner of a film studio, whose crews leveled trees and tore up a paved path until a judge issued a stop work order.
Conservation groups and community organizations in the surrounding majority Black neighborhoods fear that any development will degrade the tree canopy in Atlanta — which calls itself the “city in the forest” — and exacerbate flooding in low-lying areas.
The larger, decentralized protest movement includes a number of Jews, most in their 20s and 30s, who have made their stand by holding Jewish rituals in the forest, some under the banner of the “Jewish Bird Watcher Union.” They have held Shabbat services, performed the Tashlich ritual on Rosh Hashanah, slept in a sukkah during Sukkot, lit Hanukkah candles, and planted trees on Tu Bishvat. Prayer books were adapted for Shabbat and the High Holidays, with illustrations by the Jewish artist Ezra Rose.
Digital fliers advertising Jewish activities during a “week of action” by protesters opposing Atlanta’s planned police training facility. (Shared on social media)
Most of the Jewish events have been held in Intrenchment Creek Park. At the entrance, signs attached to a crumpled gazebo denounce the “film site” property owner. Improvised memorials and slabs of stone bearing spray-painted slogans dot the parking lot. To frustrate machinery drivers, some trails were blocked by barricades formed from downed trees, discarded tires and anything else handy.
The day before Tu Bishvat, three of the young Jewish activists met with a reporter, in an unheated community center a short drive from the forest. Expressing concern about their personal security, given the heated atmosphere around the issue, they spoke on condition that they be identified only by their first names and that their photographs not appear.
Cam, 24, is a labor union activist who grew up in Atlanta, attending Conservative and Reform congregations. Ray, 24, is a software engineer and Georgia Tech graduate, who grew up attending a Reform synagogue in Maryland. Ruth, in her late 20s, works in “regenerative landscaping” and moved to Atlanta with her Israeli family as a child. All said they feel disconnected from the mainstream Jewish community in Atlanta, religiously, politically and ideologically.
“Mainstream Judaism has completely lost touch with the radical history and radical tradition of the Jews,” Ruth said. “The things I like about Judaism, I want to live them in real life.”
She added, “When Sukkot came around and we built a sukkah in the forest, this is the closest I’ve been to relating to the story of traveling, of being in the desert and sleeping under the canopy.”
A makeshift memorial for environmental activist Manuel Paez Teran, who was allegedly killed by law enforcement during a raid to clear the construction site of a police training facility that activists have nicknamed “Cop City” near Atlanta, Georgia, as seen Feb. 6, 2023. (Cheney Orr/AFP via Getty Images)
Upwards of 50 to 60 Jews have participated in the forest-based worship, and hundreds of people have streamed into the “living room” section of the woods. “I don’t know if they’re all gathering for Shabbat or not but they all gathered around with us and listened to us sing prayers and light candles,” Ray said.
Rothbaum said he admired what he saw the Jewish protesters doing. “Whatever your opinion of the activists at ‘Cop City,’ you have to admire their commitment,” he said, adding, “These kids are reacting to the assimilation of a great heritage of meaning and justice.”
The sukkah survived for two months past the end of Sukkot, until a Dec. 13 police raid against encampments on both sides of Intrenchment Creek. A photo posted on Twitter showed the dismantled poles and torn sheets. The disappearance of the large menorah from the Intrenchment Creek parking lot after Hanukkah was blamed on crews working for the film site owner.
May the candle lights of Khanukah ignite the flames of rebellion. @defendATLforest pic.twitter.com/kdh6mqhMHY
— Fayer – פֿײַער (@FayerAtlanta) December 22, 2022
The morning after Tu Bishvat, city and county SWAT teams, along with state police, were deployed as construction equipment was brought into the police training center site. Two weeks later, at a Shabbat dinner in the forest following the Jan. 18 raid, attendees recited a Mourner’s Kaddish for Manuel Paez Teran and sang the traditional prayer “Oseh Shalom Bimromav” — “They who make peace in their high places.”
The Jewish activists see parallels between their activism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what’s happening in their local forest.
“Anti-Zionism was a major part of what brought us together in the first place, even before the forest movement,” said Cam, who said he saw the two issues as “related struggles.” Opposing Israel is “a big part of what leads us to feel alienated from most mainstream Jewish communities and the inability to be accepted there, and the necessity of forming our own.”
Ruth participated in activism on behalf of Palestinians while visiting family in Israel last summer. “I was hearing and seeing old ancient olive orchards that were destroyed, burned or cut by settlers in order to disempower Palestinians from living there,” she said. “It made me really feel, like, defend the forest everywhere.”
Atlanta officials say they do not plan to defile the forest and argue that the city’s police training facilities are inadequate. The planned complex would serve the police and fire departments, the 911 call center and K-9 units. It would include a shooting range, a “mock city” (with a gas station, motel, home and nightclub) and a “burn building.” The remainder of the land will be developed for recreational use, officials say.
“This is Atlanta and we know forests. This facility will not be built over a forest,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said at a January news conference. “The training center will sit on land that has long been cleared of hardwood trees through previous uses of this site decades ago.”
Activists accuse the city and county of a lack of transparency throughout the process. In a February interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dickens conceded that the city could have done a better job selling the project. “We didn’t do that. And because we didn’t do that it started getting painted by anybody that had a brush,” he told the newspaper.
The mayor’s words have not deterred activists, whose goal is nothing less than cancellation of the project.
“They have destroyed a lot of the beauty already,” Cam said. “They have created this place of desolation and death and destruction, and that is in opposition to our task as Jews to create a world of beauty and joy and holiness. By coming to this place and planting trees, we are reclaiming it, making a place of peace and joy.”
Rabbi Mike Rothbaum, seen here in Massachusetts in 2017, is an Atlanta rabbi who has participated in “Cop City” protests. (Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The local Jewish protesters have lately gotten a boost from a progressive Jewish organization based in Philadelphia. The Shalom Center launched in the 1980s to oppose nuclear proliferation and now focused largely on climate justice.
“Our sacred text is called ‘The Tree of Life,’” wrote the center’s founder, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and national organizer Rabbi Nate DeGroot in a Feb. 28 letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that noted Jewish law’s prohibition on uprooting trees. “We pray that the trees of the Weelaunee Forest remain trees that support the flourishing of sacred life for generations to come.”
Rothbaum said he was inspired by the young Jewish activists. “They are reminding us of the Jewish values that come to us through Torah, through the rabbinic writings, that are timeless,” he said. “They are reminding us of what we’re supposed to be. And we owe them a debt of gratitude.”
Ruth had a message for Atlanta’s Jewish congregations and communal organizations, most of which have not engaged publicly on the issue: “I would invite them to join us, to put their Jewish values into action,” she said. “Everything we’re doing here is really Jewish.”
—
The post ‘Stop Cop City’ activists infuse Jewish rituals into their protest against Atlanta’s planned police training center appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Sex, drugs and Torah scrolls: At the Psychedelicatessen, visitors receive a powerful dose of art
Hypothetically, if someone you had every reason to like and trust told you that if you went up one flight of stairs, you would “probably see things you never expected to see, ever,” how would you react? A sane individual might feel curiosity or skepticism, tempered with a dose of fear.
However, if you are anything like the crowd that gathered at YIVO for the opening of kosher-pop-art-visionary Steve Marcus’ new exhibit, “Psychedelicatessen: A Powerful Dose of Art,” the answer is simple: you’d get your tuchus upstairs, and fast.
In the gallery, the dose of art was as powerful as the exhibit title (and exhibit director Eddy Portnoy) had warned. The walls had gone groovy with technicolor mashups of Judaica and LSD, Flower Power and Maimonides. Strange shiducchim were being made in that room: There was a yad, a ritual Torah pointer, flashing a peace-sign instead of a pointer finger; a drawing of the “Power to the People” fist wrapped in tefillin; a wall of famous-rabbi-themed blotter art; a poster for “The Grateful Reb” in which a skeptical-looking Hasid in a tye-dye shirt (presumably the Grateful Reb himself) stood in front of a colorful mandala. It was like walking through a Hasidic hippie’s hallucinations.
As it turns out, Steve Marcus is neither entirely a hippie nor entirely a Hasid, though he has had brushes with both worlds. Marcus was born in the Summer of Love, 1969, just a year after the original Psychedelicatessen, an East Village headshop, got busted by narcs. Marcus spent his childhood — maybe even his life — surfing the afterwaves of the 1960s. He read MAD Magazine and Cracked. He gorged himself on Looney Tunes. As a teenager, he dug into Comix, the underground world of illustration concerned with hippie preoccupations like sex and drugs. As for Judaism?
“About a year after my bar mitzvah, I took a long sabbatical,” Marcus told me. It was the day after the opening, and we were sitting on a bench in the empty gallery. Marcus was jittering his knees up and down like he’d had too many Astro Pops.
He grew up Masorti, attending shul with his parents on Saturday morning and then booking it to the Yankee game that same afternoon to eat non-kosher hot dogs with his dad. But when Marcus was in his late thirties, his father died of a heart attack on Rosh Hashanah at the age of 66. “He was blown out like a candle,” Marcus said. “It kind of rang my bell.” He decided to say kaddish for his father three times a day for almost 11 months. It was during this period that he started grooving with the ultra-Orthodox.
“The only people showing up to shul three times a day are hardcore,” he said. He had noticed some of his Haredi compatriates studying Torah. When he asked how much it would cost to study there for a semester, “they were like, ‘You want to learn? You just come!’” For the past 17 years, at least three hours a day, Marcus has done exactly that.
Since turning to Talmud, Marcus has kept his art kosher. He obeys halachic stipulations such as not drawing the moon or the sun (or naked ladies, for that matter). He says halacha does not limit his work, but makes its reach more expansive, allowing Jews of every religious stripe to enjoy his art. But other halachic rules rankled him at first, most of all the Hasidic man uniform. Marcus looks like a countercultural Tevye. He is grizzled and bearded, and wears a baseball cap as religiously as other Jewish men wear yarmulkes. On the night of the gallery opening, he was wearing a camo jacket.
Earlier in his religious journey, he consulted a famous rabbi about his fashion troubles: “I said, ‘This white shirt, black suit, black hat thing? I don’t think it’s gonna happen … Is this a problem?’” The Rabbi in question replied with an interesting analogy. “‘You need to think of the halacha like a box,’” he said. Just because some people were crowding in one corner of the box didn’t mean that that was the only place in the box to stand.
“Sometimes, unfortunately the world, especially the Jewish world, wants to put everybody in a box,” Marcus said. “I think it’s hard to put people in a box.”
Marcus plants his eye-popping, mindbending art in familiar cultural boxes — pop art, Judaica, Flower Power counterculture — and then, before you get too comfortable, he explodes them with something unexpected. He showed me a piece called “Daf Yomi Agin!”, a yeshiva-bokher take on Robert Crumb’s famous ’70s poster “Stoned Agin!”, a six-panel depiction of a guy melting into blitzed-out goop. Except in Marcus’ version, the man is a Hasid turning aqueous at the thought of restarting the Daf Yomi, a seven-and-a-half-year cycle in which you read one of the 2,771 pages of the Talmud each day.
“They have an expression in yeshiva called ‘breaking your teeth,’ right? Which is when you’re trying so hard to understand something that they break their teeth over it,” Marcus said. “To me, it’s more like melting my brain than breaking my teeth, so that’s why it’s like this slow progression to a complete meltdown.” He has done the Daf twice already. One time, he said, he even went to the yeshiva in Lublin where the Daf Yomi began. He said his presence shattered the minds of the Hasidim. “I showed up, and it’s like I look like the hair in the matzo ball soup or something. They were like, ‘How do you know about such a place?!’”
A lot of Marcus’ stories start like this: Two dudes of different walks of life collide. First they are baffled; then they are bros. The phrase “Hey, man” makes frequent appearances. Marcus told me stories about his Zuni friends out in New Mexico who invited him to a secretive winter solstice holiday called Shalako in which the Zuni build a new house and feast on a dish that’s “almost like a cholent made of mutton.” He talked about meeting author Ken Kesey (whose grandson, Caleb Kesey, printed the rabbinic blotter art), and painting his Jeep with a phoenix rising against a psychedelic background. He told a story about a World War II vet named “Buzzy Katz” he used to hang out with who taught him how to cut onions. Marcus seems down to hang with the whole world.
“I’m one of those people that feels at home wherever I am,” he said. “I put on a backpack. I get into a truck or whatever and I fly over to another place.”
The post Sex, drugs and Torah scrolls: At the Psychedelicatessen, visitors receive a powerful dose of art appeared first on The Forward.
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What sort of Yiddish do today’s Yiddishists speak?
פֿון לייזער בורקאָ
ווען מע וואָלט הײַנט געשטעלט די שאלה, „וואָס פֿאַר אַ ייִדיש רעדן די ייִדישיסטן?“ וואָלט אַ לץ מסתּמא געענטפֿערט: הײַנט רעדן זיי ענגליש. אָבער לאָמיר נישט מאַכן קיין חכמות און טראַכטן נאָר וועגן יענע ייִדישיסטן, וואָס רעדן ייִדיש טאַקע — אַזעלכע וואָס שרײַבן און לייענען אַרטיקלען אין „פֿאָרווערטס“, למשל. ווי אַזוי רעדן מיר?
די לינגוויסטקע עמאַ ברעסלאָו האָט לעצטנס פֿאַרטיידיקט איר דיסערטאַציע דווקא אויף דער טעמע. זי האָט אינטערוויויִרט דרײַסיק ייִדיש־רעדער, אַ טייל פֿון זיי — אויף דער ייִדיש־וואָך פֿון יוגנטרוף — ספּעציעל פֿון ניו־יאָרק, באָסטאָן און מאָנטרעאָל. דערבײַ האָט זי אַנטדעקט עטלעכע וויכטיקע און אינטערעסאַנטע פֿאַקטן.
איין פֿראַגע פֿון דער דיסערטאַציע איז, ווי אַזוי מע זאָל אונדז רופֿן. ווען ברעסלאָו האָט געפֿרעגט די מענטשן, אויב זיי רופֿן זיך „ייִדישיסטן“, האָבן מערסטע געזאָגט — ניין. דאָס איז אַליין אינטערעסאַנט, פֿאַר וואָס די ווערטער „ייִדישיזם“ און „ייִדישיסט“ קלינגען הײַנט עפּעס אַלטפֿרענקיש און מע וויל נישט הייסן אַזוי. ברעסלאָו האָט נישט געפֿונען קיין בעסערן נאָמען, רופֿט זי אונדז „די מיעוט־קאָנטעקסט־ייִדיש־קהילה“ (minority-context Yiddish community). אין דער דאָזיקער קאַטעגאָריע נעמט ברעסלאָו אויך אַרײַן געוועזענע חסידים, וואָס קומען אַ מאָל אויך אויף די ייִדישיסטישע אונטערנעמונגען.
איך אַליין פֿאַרשטיי נישט, פֿאַר וואָס מע שעמט זיך מיטן נאָמען „ייִדישיסט“. ערשטנס, וועלן די חסידים און פֿרומע ייִדן אונדז ווײַטער רופֿן „ייִדישיסטן“, ווי אַזוי מיר זאָלן זיך נישט רופֿן. אַזוי הייסן מיר אין זייער ייִדיש און אַזוי וועט עס בלײַבן. עס איז פֿאָרט בעסער ווי די אַלטערנאַטיווע נעמען (כּופֿר, אַפּיקורס אאַז״וו).
אַ צווייטער סורפּריז פֿון דער דיסערטאַציע איז די פֿאַרשידנקייט פֿון דעם ייִדיש, וואָס ייִדישיסטן רעדן. אַ דרויסנדיקער, אַ סטודענט, וואָלט אפֿשר געמיינט, אַז אַלע ייִדישיסטן רעדן דאָס זעלביקע כּלל־ייִדיש. דאָס איז אָבער אַ טעות: אַ סך ייִדישיסטן רעדן אויך פּויליש ייִדיש אָדער אוקראַיִניש ייִדיש אָדער געמישטע דיאַלעקטן. אַ סך ניצן אויך אַ מאָל פֿאַרשידענע וואָקאַלן אין די זעלביקע ווערטער; למשל, מע זאָגט אַ מאָל gut און אַ מאָל git, אָדער אַ מאָל zogn און אַ מאָל zugn.
ווען ברעסלאָו האָט געפֿרעגט מענטשן זייער מיינונג וועגן כּלל־ייִדיש, וואָס מע לערנט אין די קורסן, האָט זי באַקומען אַ סך נעגאַטיווע ענטפֿערס. באמת האָט קיינער נישט געענטפֿערט פּאָזיטיוו, כאָטש אַ טייל האָבן געזאָגט, אַז כּלל־ייִדיש קען זײַן ניצלעך בײַם אויסלערנען זיך די שפּראַך. אַ טייל אינטערוויויִרטע האָבן געזאָגט מאָדנע זאַכן וועגן כּלל־ייִדיש; למשל, אַז „קיינער רעדט דאָס נישט“ — כאָטש זיי האָבן דאָרט פֿאַרבראַכט מיט אַנדערע ייִדישיסטן, וואָס רעדן יאָ כּלל־ייִדיש, און מיט קינדער, וואָס רעדן עס ווי אַן אײַנגעבוירענע שפּראַך! בקיצור, עס איז פֿאַראַן עפּעס אַ געפֿיל, אַז כּלל־ייִדיש איז נישט „עכט“, ווײַל אַזוי ווייניק מענטשן רעדן עס פֿון דער היים.
די „מיעוט־קאָנטעקסט־ייִדיש־קהילה“ באַשטייט פֿון עטלעכע גרופּעס: מענטשן, וואָס רעדן גוט ייִדיש פֿון דער היים (native speakers); מענטשן, וואָס האָבן געהערט די שפּראַך קינדווײַז, אָבער רעדן נישט אַזוי גוט (heritage speakers); סטודענטן און אַזעלכע וואָס האָבן זיך אויסגעלערנט די שפּראַך; און אויך געוועזענע חסידים, וואָס לעבן הײַנט אין דער „פֿרײַער“ וועלט. יעדע גרופּע רעדט אַוודאי אַנדערש, אָבער צווישן זיי זענען פֿאַראַן אינטערעסאַנטע פּונקטן צו פֿאַרגלײַכן.
די געוועזענע חסידים רעדן חסידיש ייִדיש, וואָס די לינגוויסטן האָבן שוין גוט אויסגעפֿאָרשט. די סטודענטן רעדן געוויינטלעך אַ סאָרט כּלל־ייִדיש, וואָס זיי האָבן זיך אויסגעלערנט פֿון זייערע לערערס. אַ סך ייִדישיסטן רעדן מיט אַ געוויסער השפּעה פֿון ענגליש — וואָס איז נישט קיין חידוש, אַזוי ווי די חסידים רעדן אויך אַזוי. מע זעט אין די טראַנסקריבירטע ציטאַטן אינטערעסאַנטע בײַשפּילן פֿון „בײַטן פֿון קאָד“ (code-switching) — ווען מע גייט אַריבער פֿון איין שפּראַך אויף אַ צווייטער, אַהין און צוריק, אין מיטן שמועס. אַ צאָל ייִנגערע ייִדישיסטן ניצן דאָס וואָרט like אין זייער ייִדיש, פּונקט ווי אויף ענגליש.
אַן אַנדער ענין, וואָס ברעסלאָו פֿאָרשט, איז די אויסשפּראַך פֿונעם קלאַנג ריש /r/. אין די אַלטע דיאַלעקטן זענען געווען צוויי הויפּט־סאָרטן ריש: דער גאָרגלדיקער אָדער אוּוווּלאַרער ריש (uvular R), ווי אויף פֿראַנצויזיש אָדער עבֿרית; און דער צינגלדיקער אָדער אַפּיקאַלער ריש (apical R), ווי אויף רוסיש אָדער שפּאַניש. ייִדישיסטן ניצן ווײַטער די צוויי סאָרטן ריש, ווי אויך דעם ענגלישן סאָרט ריש (retroflex R) — נישט געקוקט אויפֿן שווערן חרם, וואָס אוריאל ווײַנרײַך האָט אַרויפֿגעלייגט אויפֿן ענגליש ריש אין זײַן לערנבוך, „קאַלעדזש־ייִדיש“.
די גראַמאַטיק בײַ ייִדישיסטן איז אויך כּדאַי צו פֿאָרשן, ווי מע זעט אין די ציטאַטן. כאָטש אַ סך ייִדישיסטן האָבן אין די קורסן זיך מערסטנס געלערנט די כּלל־ייִדישע גראַמאַטיק, זעט מען אָפֿט, אַז מע רעדט נישט אַזוי. דאָס דאַרף אפֿשר נישט זײַן קיין חידוש, ווײַל אין די אַלטע דיאַלעקטן האָט מען אויך אָפֿט גערעדט אַנדערש ווי אין די ביכער. דערפֿאַר דאַרף מען נישט קומען מיט טענות צו די חסידים, וואָס זיי האָבן „קאַליע געמאַכט“ די גראַמאַטיק — ווײַל די גראַמאַטיק איז שוין געווען „קאַליע“ פֿון פֿריִער, און בײַ די ייִדישיסטן איז זי אויך גענוג „קאַליע“, אַחוץ געציילטע מומחים.
ברעסלאָו האָט אַנטדעקט וויכטיקע זאַכן, וואָס יעדע איז ווערט, מע זאָל זי ווײַטער אויספֿאָרשן: די אידענטיטעט פֿון די ייִדישיסטן, וואָס ווילן אַזוי נישט הייסן; די פֿאַרשידנקייט פֿונעם ייִדישיסטישן ייִדיש, וואָס איז לאַוו־דווקא כּלל־ייִדיש; זייער אויסשפּראַך און גראַמאַטיק, וואָס זענען נישט אַזוי ווי מע וואָלט זיך געריכט. די קליינע וועלט פֿון ייִדישיסטן באַשטייט באמת פֿון פֿאַרשידענע גרופּעס, וואָס יעדע האָט אַ ביסל אַן אַנדער כאַראַקטער און יעדע רעדט אַנדערש. ווי גייט דאָס ווערטל: צוויי ייִדן — דרײַ מיינונגען.
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Being a soccer superstar couldn’t save him from the Nazis
For the past 20 years, the German Soccer Federation has awarded the Julius Hirsch Prize for organizations combating racism. This year, the recipients included an 11th-grade class that created an educational tool for anti-discrimination events, a children’s soccer league based in a disadvantaged area and a club originally founded in a refugee center.
Now, graphic novelist Julian Voloj has decided that it’s time for people to learn Hirsch’s story.
In 1911, Hirsch became the first Jewish player to serve on the German national team. He was the first player to score four goals in a single game, and he played for several soccer clubs that won the German football championship. Hirsch also was a decorated war veteran in WWI. Nevertheless, Hirsch was not spared from being a victim of the Holocaust.
“He was first seen as a hero and then seen as evil that needed to be destroyed,” Voloj said.
Voloj’s previous graphic novels have included an anthology of diverse Jewish voices and a story about the first Jewish congregation in America. He learned about Hirsch when he was working with Bayern Munich on a novel, completed in 2020, that explored the life of Oskar Rohr, another Jewish soccer player, who helped lead Bayern Munich to a 1932 championship.
With the help of a grant from the German soccer federation, Voloj is planning to complete Hirsch’s novel, “Juller,” in three years. He is working with an Israeli artist, Avi Blyer, to illustrate his work.
Voloj told me that, prior to the second World War, Hirsch was one of many Jewish German soccer players. “Soccer was an academic sport,” he said. Popular within universities, soccer emphasized values like teamwork and brotherhood, which stood in stark contrast to “the Nazi ideal” of manliness, which praised individual displays of strength and talent. In Austria-Hungary, many Jews became pioneers of the sport, including Hirsch’s teammate Gottfried Fuchs, who set a world record of 10 goals in a single soccer match. Unlike Hirsch, Fuchs survived the Holocaust by immigrating to Canada; he never returned to Germany.
For Voloj, the biggest struggle in writing about Hirsch comes with illuminating his personal life, rather than solely celebrating his accomplishments. “I know a lot about the statistics, but I don’t know so much about Julius Hirsch, the human being,” he told me.
He plans to start by depicting the religion and culture Hirsch was a part of — which he says might be the first time for non-Jewish readers to learn about these traditions. Voloj told me how he plans to recreate Hirsch’s Jewish wedding: showcasing the Chuppah and the smashing of the glass. In the scene, a rabbi will discuss its symbolism — a reminder of the fragility of life and the destruction of the Temple.
Tragically, though, this moment will be followed by one later in life, in which Hirsch divorced his non-Jewish wife as the German climate became increasingly dangerous for Jews. Hirsch hoped this would spare his children from persecution, but it was no use: Both of Hirsch’s children were sent to concentration camps. They ultimately survived, though, and Hirsch’s son later worked with a historian, Werner Skretny, to publish a biography of Hirsch.
A grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Voloj says he doesn’t want to focus overwhelmingly on Hirsch’s death, but instead to honor the life he led. However, it was still important for him to represent the antisemitic reality that Hirsch lived in; in the last part of the book, Voloj said, he will discuss how “the people who celebrated him basically abandoned him.”
Voloj says he believes that exploring Hirsch’s story is especially important today, when soccer is more diverse than ever and the German soccer team has become inclusive of many ethnic minorities. However, prejudice has also increased in many ways.
Voloj told me he sees “a lot of parallels in the experience” between the hatred that Jewish players faced under Nazi rule and what many Muslim players are experiencing today. However, he also said that many lessons could be taken from Hirsch’s early experiences when few fans cared that he was Jewish.
“There is something we can learn about the acceptance of the German Jewish players back then on the national team,” Voloj said. From his work, he hopes that readers can learn both from Germany’s dark past and also “overcome misconceptions about Jewish identity.”
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