A 100-year-old Auschwitz survivor showed up to a Black Lives Matter protest in Chicago on June 6, telling protestors “They’re all sons of bitches… You should see what they did to my brother,” holding up her arm to display her camp tattoo. Seven days earlier, a young Jewish woman died in Columbus, Ohio, after taking part in BLM protests. Initial reports suggest that she was tear-gassed by police which could have triggered a respiratory condition.
I just received my copy of the “100 Years” magazine produced by The Chronicle and it made for some very interesting reading – especially for some of us alta kockers.
The June 11th Chronicle published four views regarding the Black Lives Matter movement.
Bob Cutler is irritated with Jewish agencies supporting Black Lives Matter. He declared that “Our country provides opportunities and justice if they chose to take advantage of it.” He also wrote that “No amount of money or programs are going to solve today’s societal problems.”
A lifetime of anti-Semitism and my journey toward embracing Judaism
By David Garfield / Guest Columnist
I’ll never forget the first time I realized I was different. It was in second grade one morning when a classmate asked me for no apparent reason: “Are you a Jew?”
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.
