The media mob surrounding the George Floyd tragedy
I find it distasteful and offensive that the JCRB|AJC and the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City took it upon themselves to participate in the “media mob” regarding the George Floyd tragedy.
By Rabbi Arthur Nemitoff / Guest Columnist
I don’t know what it is like...not being able to breathe.
And I don’t know what it is like to be black.
And I don’t know what rage and pain feel like when each and every day people who look just like me are harassed and harmed and murdered...and it continues.
By Mary Greenberg / Guest Columnist
Even in the 1960s, we bought few groceries in the supermarket. Fresh food was brought to us. The peddler drove into the alleyway without even calling out to announce his arrival. Mostly women, but an occasional kid like me, emerged from apartment buildings, bounded down the open stairways, and lined up in single file behind the truck. The peddler proceeded to shout out the offerings of fruits and vegetables that crowded the open double doors. Fresh produce came by a short route from farms to our tables. We had a continuing relationship to nature as its bounties were brought basically to our doorsteps.
Stand up to Jew hatred
I grew up in Kansas City and on my trips to friends in various cities in different states, I always wore a skullcap. Strangers would look at me as if I had horns under my cap. These people probably had never met an Orthodox Jew, or any Jew, so they gave me those disapproving looks. Please note my parents were Orthodox before the Shoah, but not afterward. As I grew up I was influenced by my rabbis and Synagogue Youth Organization (SYO), which merged with NCSY in 1958. My parents were very supportive.
I enjoyed Rabbi Levin’s remembrance of architect Mel Solomon in last week’s Chronicle. The beautiful shul he designed for Beth Torah lives on as a testament to Mel, who was a real mensch, devoted Kansas Citian and a great guy to be around. The photograph of his smiling face that accompanied the story said it all.
During these unprecedented and incredibly difficult times, please allow me to take a pause from the day to day news that now seems to be a part of the new “normal”, the new everyday life. Permit me, just for a moment, to shift the conversation away from the uncertainty that we all feel today, as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Instead, I would like to share with you, on Israel’s Independence Day, a personal enlightenment that I experienced just two years ago, when my family and I celebrated our first Yom Ha’atzmaut in the United States.
Since the spread of COVID-19, we have seen an explosion of creativity in the Jewish world so that we can connect with each other, connect with Torah, and connect with the Jewish people. Much of this has focused on Zoom, Facebook and other computer-based technologies. This time, though, can also be an opportunity to focus on physical Jewish connection that can be home-based rather than synagogue-based. After all, a synagogue is called a “beit kenesset” — a “home of assembly”; a Jewish school is a “beit midrash” — a home of study. Now, we have the opportunity to turn our family homes into a beit kenesset (synagogue) and a beit midrash (house of study). Below are a few suggestions of home-based rituals that can add new energy to your home-based Jewish life.
Often, I write about the uniqueness of the Holocaust and how it is completely different from other genocides. There are those who believe that the only way to preserve the memory of the Holocaust is by making it a universal lesson regarding the traumas and tribulations other peoples and nations have suffered.
Several years ago, a comedy album appeared by the title “When You’re in Love, the Whole World is Jewish.” Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg’s letter in your April 23 issue, in which he attempts to find specific Jewish meaning in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” represents the sort of thinking referred to ironically in the title of the album.
The Tuesday morning before the first seder cars, a pick-up truck and volunteers waited outside of Torah Learning Center for meals to be brought out in huge boxes. All were in masks and gloves, waiting to load the meals that would soon be delivered by volunteers to people all over the greater KC area (some even outside the area).
