Between Satmer and Neturei Karta

This is a note I wanted to write for a long time. But after the tragedy of October 7th, both Satmer and Neturei Karta were mixed together in the fish bowl of anti-Zionism. Which at a certain extent they share, the difference being in the manifestation and the extent of the anti-Zionist take.

Both movements do share a common opinion about the state of Israel: Zionism is wrong, and the real return of Jews to the land of Israel should happen only when Moshiah will come. In the words of the late Satmer Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum - who was helped to escape Hungary during the war thanks to the efforts of a Zionist, Kasztner : ´even if the members ofthe Knesset were righteous and holy, it is a terrible and awful criminal iniquity to seize redemption and rule before the time has come´. Both Satmer and Neturei Karta may do mention lack of religiosity as a cause of the Shoah, but such outrageous statements are usually normal for the religious self-righteous.

But except those points of contact, the gap is only getting bigger and bigger. Among others, Satmer are a Hasidic group, while the Neturei Karta, founded in the 1930s by Amram Blau - whose late wife Ruth Blau was a very interesting character - , following the split with Agudah Yisrael is rather anti- and non-Hasidic.

Satmer, a Hasidic group originary from Satu-Mare/Szatmar/סאטמאר currently Romania, usually avoid political and ideological statement against the state of Israel. On the other hand, Neturei Karta, whose representatives wearing Palestinian shawls and carrying ridiculous billboards at pro-Hamas gatherings, are actively taking part in dismantling the state of Israel. Satmer is usually avoiding any kind of association with NK, and every normal human will do it. NK has a provocative history of being associated with PIJ or Hamas, and used to regularly receive money fromt the Palestinian Authority. Some of their representatives even visited Tehran in order to participate at an infamous Holocaust denial event. 

Hopefully, those distinctions will be helpful to properly associate ideological and ideatic patterns in relationship with certain anti-Zionist religious trends.

Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe

 

Time and again I am returning to midgrade novels because the age of such novels - 8 to 12 years - is formative for this kind of readership. It is the age when children are learning their ways through life, being faced with the adult world while still remaining anchored in the fantastic worls of the childhood.

For the Jewish - Orthodox segment, it is not easy to find such novels with girls characters. Devora Doresh mysteries are one of a kind - hopefully soon would be able to write an extensive review of the story - but I am still on the look for more characters relevant for the nowadays young Jewish Orthodox girls, their concerns and interests.

Last week, I had the chance to read Aviva vs. the Dybbuk, the debut novel by Mari Lowe. Actually, it was a delightful chance as the book is well written and paced, with an unfolding story touching upon an impressive amount of topics: parental loss, friendship, depression and other mental health issues, antisemitism, the power of community. It is a long list of topics, but it does reflect the random subjects anyone living in a Jewish community in the diaspora may face it. In addition to the specific Jewish layer, many of the topics are relevant for the gender/age categories of the book.

Aviva is a sixth grade girl, curious and with a fuzzy hair. Her mother, once a teacher, is now, after the ´accident´ - the event during which her father lost his life, that is explained to us only at the end of the story - is a mikvah attendant, rarely leaving the house. She is observing her mother at work, with a dybbuk as her only companion.

Either you are midgrade or not, it´s hard to put this book down. Aviva is in the middle of different situations - either as a main character or as a storyteller. The turns are impredictable, but the author uses the occurrences to add more details about the characters who are therefore evolving at the same time with the story. You feel that every single element comes along together in a perfect puzzle, at the end of a process both eventful and insightful.

Aviva vs. the Dybbuk has relatable characters and a well built story. It is recommended to any curious girl from a modern Orthodox background that loves to read and discover her world through characters speaking her language.

Rating: 5 stars

A Cold War Exodus by Shaul Kelner

From the early 1960s until beginning of the 1990s, the American public opinion mobilized in favor of the Jews living in the Soviet Union, requesting in various ways the authorities in Moscow to ´let them go´. Jews from the Soviet Union represented the noble cause of many politicians - Jewish or not - cultural and religious personalities, in the US and abroad. 

In October 1963, wrote professor Shaul Kelner in his forthcoming A Cold War Exodus. How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, the members of a synagogue club in Cleveland, Ohio, established a Committee on Soviet Anti-Semitism. This will be the first American organization dedicated to aiding Soviet Jews. In addition to the efforts of the state of Israel herself to offer a smooth passage through Nativ and other initiatives more or less public, a whole network of organisations and movements operated in the US on behalf of them, both from the right and from the left.

What the book extensively analyses is the extent of the network and the strategies, including by tracing the specific alliances between some of those organisations with stake holders and non-Jewish organisations and initiatives. ´For a generation, this social movement shaped Jewish Amerians´ civic and religious culture´, mentions Kelner and his efforts are aimed at revealing important aspects for the general history of social and cultural movements during the Cold War.

Kelner´s book is an important contribution that tries to extract the lessons learned of the mobilization on behalf of the Soviet Jews in the US for the overall history of social movements. It uses fine anthropological and sociological approaches and sources of very diverse nature. A recommended book for historians of the Cold War as well as researchers in the field of Soviet Jewish studies.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Jewish Stories in Germany: Gewässer im Ziplock by Dana Vowinckel

In Germany, as anywhere in the intellectual (-related) world, there are many people repeating ad nauseam the same old tropes on topics of general interest, only for the sake of getting public attention, but there are also quiet, more intellectually productive and creative individuals whose achievements may be shadowed due to the noise of those with not too much to say. Nevertheless it is intellectually refreshing to discover books and authors not necessarily asked to express their opinion on almost everything, always delivering the same battle lines, but still writing and creating their works.

Thus, I was more than delighted to spend some days listening to the audio version of the debut novel by Dana Vowinckel, Gewässer im Ziplock. The book was published last August and as for now, is only available in German.

The action of the book has Germany in the background but the characters are not German. Margarita, 15yo, is born in Hannover, in an American-Israeli family. Her father is religious, a cantor in a synagogue in Berlin, while his mother, American by birth and a linguist, abandoned her as she was a little child, unable to cope with life in Germany. This summer, after a stay with her grandparents in Chicago, she is sent to spent some time in Israel with her mother. During a short time, during the summer vacations, Margarita is going through conflictual events and emotional challenges, not only getting to know her mother and secrets from her past that may dramatically change her perception of identity, but also is getting a different grasp of the world around - her first sexual encounter, body perception, starting to understand relationships (through her parents and grandparents interactions).

The book is intense and so are some of the characters - Margarita and her mother, Masha, in particular, and the women characters in general. The women characters do have an attitude and issues to deal with in the society or the family. Men, however, do lack a certain consistency and they are mostly hard to understand - especially Avi, Margarita´s father, both in emotional and religious terms.

My favorite character was definitely Margarita, assigned a clear voice and attitude. Her growing up experience within such a short amount of time sounds natural and relatable. The snippets of Jewish life building up the environment of the story fit naturally into the story.

Gewässer im Ziplock is definitely representing a different way of writing literature about Jewish life in Germany, in German. I hope to be able to discover this year more such individual literary voices, with definitely a lot to say within the Jewish literary stage.

Rating: 4 stars

The Things with the Fetish

Imagine you have a family member that comes to your house. It´s kind of picky, as he/she -gender really does not have any relevance here - and already had some bad experience him/herself - with life, relationships and his/her own family. He/She doesn´t like your house, doesn´t like you, and even if you may be the other person in the world, he/she will not care a dime about you because the idea is to keep playing the role of the outsider no matter what and when.

The story of Jewish community in German after the war and particularly in the last three decades is complex and complicated, both in terms of human resources and conflicts, halachic challenges, perceptions and membership. For everyone coming from Israel or the USA, the difference is huge, but I suppose a Jew from Germany will feel the same about communities and traditions in the USA or France. 

Most of the people who are members of the community in Germany, do want to earn their life, have a place for the holidays, educate their children in the Jewish tradition, celebrate a Bar/Bat Mitzvah and eventually be guaranteed a place in a Jewish cemetery. Not everyone has plenty of time to play the star and conceptualize their identity. 

One of the things I always find impressive when I moved to Germany was to hear the stories of Jews coming from the Soviet Union. People who went to prison because they wanted to learn Yiddish, people who were harassed because they were Jews, no matter how high the personal status they reached. People who insisted to remain Jews no matter the challenges of being a Jew. There are not too many former communist countries whose Jews are so proud of their identity.

By attacking those humble people whose stories are worth so many good novels, someone is just following a pathway of those extremists this person is assuming she left to become herself. It´s so convenient to be an outsider in this country, talk about ´fetish´ while being oneself part of the system allowing only those funny individual people to take the floor. Claiming cancelled membership in a community does not promote you to an expert and even the less a judge in all things related to a community whose ´deep knowledge´ was acquired from newspapers or encounters in the bar around the corner. 

Playing the role of the outsider for purely personal branding reasons may work for a while, but repeating over and over again, on a highly pitched indignant voice the same empty sentences learned by heart to an audience paying you to play this role is aimed to fail. It does not take too long to figure out the intellectual kitsch. 

 

Sledgehammer

 

Some ideas need time and right circumstances to happen. Sometimes it happens independently of individual people as it took enough time for the idea to grow and for the diplomatic discussions to advance to make it happens.

The Abraham Accords, definitely, haven´t start with Pres. Trump administration. In order to achieve such a historical peace between the State of Israel and some Arab/Muslim countries, it took time to create the momentum. Discussions and negotiations, steps forward and meetings behind the close doors were ongoing long before Covid. For instance, at least 10 years ago, in Dubai there were Bar Mitzva celebrations organised and a small Jewish - mostly American - community was discretely burgeoning. 

Sledgehammer. How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East by former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman accounts about the final steps of the process, when he, together with Jared Kuchner and Jason Greenblatt sealed off the signing of the Accords. It is also the testimony of the ambiance in the Middle East and Israel during Trump administration.

Friedman used to be involved in various legal cases for the Trump family, a Cohen, with strong connections with Israel. In general, for important embassy positions, US administration - and not only -usually nominates people close to the winner at the White House therefore Friedman´s presence was normal in the logic of things of American bureaucracy. Definitely, an ambassador is not alone and his everyday activity was facing sometimes opposition on behalf of the State Department diplomats. However, no matter what, some of the decisions took during Trump administration, often leaked to the press in advance for various non-diplomatic reasons, were still in force nowadays. The embassy remains in Jerusalem and there is no rebuke of the Golan Heights administration by Israel. 

A businessman rarely have time for the byzantine intricacies of diplomacy, but this is what is needed in times of crisis to take a decision and move things forward. I am not sure that there would have been any other administration opposed to the courageous steps took by the Abraham Accords - the current Biden administration, for instance, supports the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel - but what is important is the alignment of political will and circumstances that made it happen. 

As the ongoing events in the region already show, we are far from getting the real clarity in this respect, but good things take time to happen.

Amb. Deborah Lipstadt: ´Never Seen Anything Like That´

In times of incertainty, one needs clarity. The surge of antisemitism in the campus and streets of US and European capital cities has no precendent and the implications are going far beyond the Israel versus Palestinians conflicts: it threatens the democracy, stability and national security of every state where such events are taking place.

US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Amb. Deborah Lipstadt firmly outlined today in an online media briefing that media nowadays has the responsibility to tell what is going on, while carefully checking the sources and naming the things as they are. Although freedom of speech and of reunion should be allowed, attacking Jews is antisemitism. 

No context or explanations about the causes of the incidents do dilute the gravity of the situation. The right to peacefully protest does not allow anyone to break the law. ´(...) when you see people chanting or hear peiople chanting kill the Jews or calling for a violent Intifada, for saying gas the Jews, for when they harass Jewish protesters (...) That´s not support for the rights of the Palestinian people. That´s antisemitism, pure and simple´, mentioned Lipstadt. A historian and author on the topic of antisemitism, she said that the wave of current antisemitic surge is unprecedent: ´never seen anything like that´. Current antisemitism is ´ubiquitous´, originating from the left and from the right, from Muslims and Christians as well.

Lipstadt visited in the last weeks many European capital cities, among which Rome and Berlin, and outlined that there are discussions also with representatives of the European Union in order to create a ´worldwide strategy´, ´globally happening´ to combat antisemitism. When Jews, citizens of those countries are threatened, the state has the responsibility to protect them, a ´vulnerable population´ that needs state protection.