Uncategorized
We’re visiting Auschwitz because the fight against antisemitism didn’t end with liberation
(JTA) — Today, we will visit Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We will represent the United States and honor the lives of 6 million Jews and millions of others murdered. While at Auschwitz, we will also express gratitude to the survivors and speak of the lessons learned in that era of terror.
As we reflect on history, we know that the bigotry that fueled the Holocaust did not end when the camps were liberated. Antisemitism may be considered one of the oldest forms of hatred, but its insidious impact and its deep dangers are not relegated to the past.
Antisemitism is increasing at home and abroad. Hatred of Jewish people simply for being Jews is real and rising. We can only stop this scourge if governments and community leaders declare it unacceptable and inconsistent with our values.
With that in mind, we will convene community leaders in Poland to discuss efforts underway to combat antisemitism. Then, we will travel to Berlin, where we will meet with foreign government officials, who are also dedicated to turning the tide of hate. Our goal is to deepen our relationships with European partners — in and out of government — to combat the rise in antisemitism.
We can learn from each other and share our best practices. We can lead through our shared values of equality, diversity, and human rights. This moment calls on us to take action, together, based on these values.
It’s too often that we hear stories about attacks on Jewish communities. We see vandalism, threats, and violent, hateful rhetoric. People used to be afraid to say the ugly epithets and lies out loud. Now they are literally screaming them.
Related: Explore Emhoff and Lipstadt’s entire itinerary for their Poland and Germany trip
In 2018, a horrific antisemitic assault stole the lives of 11 innocent people at the Tree of Life synagogue. In 2019, a gunman opened fire at California’s Chabad of Poway, killing one and wounding three more people in an attack motivated by antisemitism. And just last year, in Los Angeles, we saw antisemitic banners hung over a freeway.
Heinous and senseless acts of violence bring pain to the Jewish community. We’re heard from parents who are worried about sending their children to preschool at their Jewish community center because they fear for their safety. They must explain to their children why the synagogue they attend has an armed guard at the entrance while the church across the street has none.
In December, we both attended a roundtable at the White House convening Jewish leaders in the United States. We spoke about the impact antisemitism is having on their communities including issues of safety, education, and accountability. Under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, we have increased funding for physical security of nonprofits and synagogues, and appointed leaders to focus on hate crimes and track and fight antisemitism.
Through a whole-of-government approach, the Biden-Harris Administration is crafting a broad-based national plan to address antisemitism. The first mandate of the interagency is to create a U.S. National Action Plan on Antisemitism.
But we know there is more work to be done. We each need to do our part to educate those around us and instill knowledge in the next generation of leaders to help fight antisemitism. We cannot and will not allow this to be normalized and politicized. We all have a responsibility to speak out and make clear that antisemitism is wrong, just like every other prejudice. We must all condemn antisemites as dangerous and also call out those who don’t. In the face of evil, there is no neutrality. Standing silent is not an option. Indeed, silence is what allows vile oppressors to thrive and this malicious virus of hate to grow.
It is time — yet again — for us to replace the silence, of the past and present, with a chorus of voices making antisemitism a relic and this horrific hatred a thing of the past.
—
The post We’re visiting Auschwitz because the fight against antisemitism didn’t end with liberation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
The gift Tom Stoppard gave to me — and to all who adore him
In 2022, during a reporting trip to London, I had tea with a source who confessed to me that her mother’s central interest was the work of Tom Stoppard. It was more than an interest, really: “He was the main thing in her life,” she said.
There are artists you admire, and then there are artists you flat-out adore. Particularly cerebral types, like Stoppard, risk falling into the first category: They may generate great thoughts, but those great thoughts have a great chance of leaving you cold. That wasn’t the case for Stoppard, who died Saturday at 88, and was a thinker worth adoring. His best work achieved a rare balance: Audiences left his most affecting plays with both a fresh perspective on the world, and a feeling of great warmth toward it.
I felt that myself, after seeing a much-heralded revival of Stoppard’s Travesties on Broadway in 2018. It’s quite a highbrow play, about the brief intersection, in Switzerland during World War I, of the lives and work of James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara, founder of Dadaism. It made me laugh until I cried. And the gloss Stoppard bestowed on this obscure episode of history followed me out of the theater, giving a brief sheen to everything and everyone I saw. I felt as though I floated back to Brooklyn, and as if the Q train might be full of personalities I’d never guess were important until years afterward.
Much of Stoppard’s work revolved around the question of what it really means to live an important life — one that is not just full, but has some kind of identifiable impact on others. The main character of Travesties isn’t Joyce, Lenin or Tzara; he’s an endearingly self-satisfied British diplomat, Henry Carr, who briefly found himself in the same circles as those luminaries. As the play opens, decades later, he’s trying to conjure up a memoir about his time in the presence of the greats, with the implication that he deserves to be considered among their ranks.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the play that made Stoppard into a star at age 29, the two title characters grapple with their inability to in any way change the course of a narrative — that of Hamlet — that they know will lead to their deaths. In Shakespeare in Love, the film that won Stoppard an Oscar in 1998, he and his coauthor Marc Norman imagined the king of English playwrights as a young man full of talent but still struggling toward greatness, in need of an overwhelming emotional shock to propel him into complete ownership of his gifts.
There are the 19th-century Russian revolutionaries of the ambitious trilogy The Coast of Utopia; the intellectuals seeking to redefine the world and its history in Arcadia; the striving academics of The Hard Problem; the newly emancipated Viennese Jews of Leopoldstadt, the play Stoppard wrote that most profoundly invoked his heritage. Over and over, variations of the same question emerge. What does it mean to live completely and well, as an individual and a member of society?
“If there is any meaning in any of it” — “it” being the brutal course of history, its neverending cycles of destruction — “it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities,” Joyce declares in Travesties. Later, Carr echoes him — a surprise, as the two hold very little respect for one another. When told that the only relevant function of art is “social criticism,” he protests.
“A great deal of what we call art,” he says, “has no such function, and yet in some way it gratifies a hunger that is common to princes and peasants.”
Not everyone wants to be an artist, and, as Carr reflects at the end of Travesties, it’s a sure thing that not everyone can be. But in the wake of Stoppard’s death, I’ve found myself thinking about the mother of my one-time source, so enraptured by what Stoppard created that her own child saw his work as the most profound passion of her life.
It’s easy to say that kind of effect made Stoppard’s life important. But the quieter story, I think, is that it made that devoted fan’s life important, too. Because she loved Stoppard, she saw herself as more firmly secured in her own existence; she saw herself as having a purpose and place.
To help someone experience their own significance — to gratify the common hunger that afflicts us all — is a great gift. And Stoppard gave it to many, including to me.
The post The gift Tom Stoppard gave to me — and to all who adore him appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Iran to Boycott World Cup Draw Over Visa Restrictions
Soccer Football – World Cup Playoff Tournament and European Playoff draws – FIFA Headquarters, Zurich, Switzerland- November 20, 2025 The original FIFA World Cup trophy is kept on display during the draws. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Iran intends to boycott next week’s World Cup draw due to the limited number of visas allocated to the country’s football federation.
According to the Tehran Times, the United States issued visas to only four members of Iran‘s delegation, with requests for three additional visas denied, including one for Iranian Football Federation (FFIRI) President Mehdi Taj.
“We have informed FIFA that the decisions taken are unrelated to sport and that the members of the Iranian delegation will not participate in the World Cup draw,” FFIRI spokesman Mehdi Alavi said on Friday, per the report.
Alavi said the federation has been in contact with FIFA in an effort to resolve the situation.
The World Cup draw will take place on Dec. 5 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
The expanded 48-team World Cup is being hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19, 2026. Matches will be played at 16 venues, including three in Mexico and two in Canada.
The draw will sort the teams into 12 groups of four. The top two teams from each group and the eight best third-place teams will advance to the knockout stage.
Iran has secured a spot in its fourth consecutive World Cup and seventh appearance overall.
Uncategorized
Dublin to Rename Chaim Herzog Park in a Move Slammed as Attempt to Erase Jewish History
Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington
i24 News – Citing the Gaza war, Dublin city council voted to rename a park honoring Israel’s sixth president, the Irish-born Chaim Herzog, in further manifestation of anti-Israel sentiment in the country.
While a new name is yet to be chosen, reports cite efforts by pro-Palestinian activists to change it to the “Free Palestine Park.”
Former Irish justice minister Alan Shatter harshly criticized the vote, charging that “Dublin City Council has now gone full on Nazi & a committee of the Council has determined it should erase Jewish/Irish history. Herzog Park in Rathgar is named after Chaim Herzog, Israel’s 6th President, brought up in Dublin by his father, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, a friend of Eamon De Valera, who was Chief Rabbi of Ireland & Israel’s first Chief Rabbi… Some councillors want the Park renamed ‘Free Palestine Park.”
The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland issued a statement regarding the renaming of Herzog Park.
“It sends a hurtful and isolating message to a small minority community that has contributed to Ireland for centuries. We call on Dublin City Councillors to reject this motion. The removal of the Herzog name from this park would be widely understood as an attempt to erase our Irish Jewish history.”
A virtuoso diplomat and an intellectual giant, Herzog had served in a variety of roles throughout his storied career, including a memorable stint as the ambassador to the United Nations, where in 1975 he delivered a speech condemning the Soviet-engineered resolution to brand Zionism as a form of racism. The address is now regarded as a classic, along with the oration from the same session by the US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar slammed the decision, saying that Ireland’s “antisemitic and anti-Israel obsession is sickening.”