The WJW Podcast: A Conversation With Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Strong Supporter of Israel in Congress (3/14/24)

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has represented his hometown of the Bronx and New York’s 15th Congressional District since taking office in 2021. Prior to that, Torres served in the New York City Council from 2014-2020. He is a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Torres’ strong support of Israel has garnered praise from throughout the Jewish community and he was one of the featured speakers at the March for Israel in Washington, D.C., in November. His public statements, op-eds and speeches about the need to stand with Israel have earned widespread acclaim from many in the pro-Israel and Jewish communities.

On the WJW Podcast, Torres spoke about his staunch support of Israel, the importance of combating antisemitism, the current state of the U.S.-Israel relationship and the danger posed by the social media platform TikTok.

The WJW Podcast: A Conversation With Dr. Clarence Jones, a Civil Rights Leader Dedicated to Black-Jewish Relations (3/7/24)

Dr. Clarence Jones is a longtime leader in the fight against hate who has been a staunch advocate for civil rights throughout his professional career. He served as legal counsel, strategic advisor and speechwriter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from 1960 until Dr. King’s assassination on April 4, 1968. Jones wrote the first seven paragraphs of the iconic “I Have A Dream” speech that King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, as part of the March on Washington.

Jones has worked to carry on King’s legacy for social justice and equality, and he’s served as a lawyer, civil rights leader and business executive in the entertainment field.

He currently serves as chairman of the Spill the Honey Foundation, an organization dedicated to Black-Jewish relations that works to inspire action against racism and antisemitism through art and education.

An author of several books, Jones also founded the Dr. Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy and serves as the founding director emeritus of the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco.

Jones was recently featured in a Super Bowl ad by Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism which focused on antisemitism and the fact that hate thrives on the silence of others.

On the WJW Podcast, Jones discussed his relationship with King, the important role that the Jewish community played in the civil rights movement and the speech given by Rabbi Joachim Prinz during the March on Washington in 1963, just before King got up and declared, “I have a dream.” Jones also talked about antisemitism, Israel, the current state of the Black-Jewish relationship and his appearance in the ad that aired during Super Bowl 58.

‘He Was Just a Good Boy’: Silver Spring Native Remembers Her Son Who Was Killed in Gaza

The following is an article that I wrote, which appeared in the February 29, 2024, edition of the Washington Jewish Week:

Courtesy of Varda Morell

When IDF Staff Sgt. Maoz Morell succumbed to the wounds that he sustained on Feb. 15 while fighting in Gaza, the stinging loss was felt by Jews worldwide. People all over mourned the death of the 22-year-old Morell on Feb. 19, but his tragic death had a particularly significant impact on the Silver Spring community.

Varda Morell (née Linzer), Maoz’s mother, grew up in the Silver Spring Jewish community, attending Hebrew Academy for elementary school before going to the Yeshiva of Greater Washington for high school. She spent a year at Stern College for Women in lieu of her 12th-grade year, after which she went to a seminary in Israel for a gap year. Varda went on March of the Living, which took her to Poland and then to Israel. It was an impactful trip for her, as her grandparents were killed in the Holocaust and her mother and aunt were hidden during World War II.

“That’s when it hit me and I realized that for a Jew to really be safe in this world and to feel connected, he or she needs to be living in Israel,” she said. 

Varda decided that she really wanted to be in Israel, and she resolved then to make Israel her home. Thinking back to her move to Israel, Varda quoted her late mother. “When we believe something, when we really believe it in the core of our being, even if everyone else doesn’t, we need to do it.”

It was during her second year in Israel that she met Eitan Morell, and they got married eight months later. Varda, who is an English teacher, lives with her family in Talmon. She and Eitan had six children — five boys, with Maoz being the fourth.

Courtesy of Varda Morell

“Maoz was killed as a hero fighting our enemies … because of people like him, going and doing what they need to be doing, they’re making sure that something like what happened with the Nazis will never be able to happen again,” she said.

“In his day-to-day life, he was a regular kid and he’s a big role model because of that. But as a soldier he really was, from what we’re being told, a real hero and fearless. His last moments were spent saving lives and helping all of his fellow soldiers who were wounded.” Varda said it’s almost as if he had this sense that “when it’s the right thing to do, you do it, and you don’t worry about yourself, you don’t worry about what’s going to happen to you.”

“It was a true selfless act, him being killed for the rest of us,” she said.

Aside from his exploits as a soldier over the past two years, Varda described her son, who was a member of an elite paratroopers unit, as “really an average kid.”

“He had a very hard time expressing himself in speech and in writing. He had learning disabilities — he did not have an easy time in school.”

Although Maoz received remedial academic services, Varda said, “What’s so incredible about him is that he had this drive for things that were important to him.” She recalled that when Maoz was in middle school, he knew that he wanted to get into a good high school, so he worked extremely hard to achieve his goal, which included sitting with his mother on the couch every night to improve his English reading skills and seeking out help from others to help him be successful.

Courtesy of Varda Morell

Varda spoke about the fact that even though Maoz’s bar mitzvah parsha was one of the longest in the Torah and he had a difficult time reading, he committed himself to learning it with his father so he could read the entire Torah portion on his big day.

“If something was hard for him, he just asked for help,” she said. “He was able to say, ‘I’m not perfect and I need help and I’m going to ask for help.’”

“I think he could be a hero to kids with learning disabilities and to kids who maybe give up a little more easily than they should,” she added.

In recognition of Maoz’s learning challenges and his determination to overcome them, Varda’s brother, Rabbi Dov Linzer, who serves as president and Rosh HaYeshiva at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, established a fund in his nephew’s memory at the school to provide funding for training and support services for rabbinical students with learning differences.

Noting that this is “such an appropriate way to honor Maoz’s memory,” Rabbi Linzer said, “It is also a matter that is deeply personal for me.” He spoke about his two adult sons, both of whom are on the autism spectrum and have learning differences, and how he and his wife “struggled mightily to find them a place within a shul and within a Jewish school.”

Courtesy of Varda Morell

“We wound up sending them to a private, secular school because we could not find proper support in the Jewish schools that worked for our kids,” noting that they are both doing very well now, with one in college and one in graduate school. “They have only come this far because of the amazing support services that they received … and their unbelievable determination and hard work. Just like Maoz.”

“While we [Yeshivat Chovevei Torah] have provided support services on an ad-hoc basis for students with learning differences, we never had funds specifically allocated for it and we were beginning to realize that there was a good deal more that we could be doing,” Rabbi Linzer said. “When during this horrible week, people connected to the yeshiva reached out to me to ask how they could help and what they could do in Maoz’s memory, I realized that setting up a fund in his memory to provide funding for support services for our rabbinical students with learning differences would be such a powerful way to honor his memory and for us to do more fully what we needed to be doing and what was central to our ethos and values.”

Varda recalled that when Maoz was in 12th grade, he came home one day and told his father that he was about to finish learning all six books of the Mishnah, the written recording of the Oral Law. When Eitan asked Maoz how he was able to do that, he responded that in ninth grade he figured out that if he learned several chapters of the Mishnah each day, he would finish it all by the end of 12th grade. “And that’s what he did,” Varda said.

Courtesy of Varda Morell

Varda said that Maoz’s friends in the army talked about how he always had a copy of “Mesillat Yesharim” (The Path of the Just) in the front pocket of his uniform and how he was constantly working on improving his personal character traits. After the members of Maoz’s unit would go on a long hike, they would all sit down, exhausted, and put their heads down, Varda said. Yet, Maoz would pick his head up, take out his “Mesillat Yesharim” and start learning it.

From when the fighting began on Oct. 7 until he came home wounded, Maoz was only able to come home once for two days. During the first seven weeks when he was in Gaza, Varda and Eitan only spoke to Maoz once. They also got one 11-second-long WhatsApp voice message from Maoz. “And basically, it says in Hebrew, ‘Hi, Mommy, I’m fine. OK, I updated you,’” Varda said, laughing at the memory.

“Maoz was like the most popular boy, and he affected so many people,” Varda said. “When we were in the hospital for five days and we knew there was no hope, but he was hanging on, every single friend that he affected came to the hospital, like hundreds of friends came to say goodbye to him.”

“I think that’s the message here, that in order to make a difference and to affect people and to be a special person, you don’t have to be outstanding in something specific. You just have to make sure to be nice to people, to work on your middot [character development], and when there’s something important to you, to set a goal that you can handle and get there.”

Courtesy of Varda Morell

“The fact that we had this very incredibly challenging time in the hospital allowed us to kind of come to terms with what was happening,” Varda said, noting that her family came to Maoz’s funeral on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem “in a different place than a lot of people do,” referring to other families whose loved ones fell in battle and they found out about it by a knock at the door and then have a funeral just a few hours later.

“I’m most thankful to Hashem [God] for during those days in the hospital, giving me the right words to say to my children,” Varda said.

“He was just quiet — he really wasn’t a talker,” Varda said, describing her son. “He was just a good boy.”

The WJW Podcast: A Conversation With Natan Sharansky, Former Refusenik and International Champion of Human Rights (2/22/24)

Natan Sharansky, an internationally renowned champion of human rights, served as a key figure in the efforts of Soviet Jews to earn the right to move to Israel. He was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in a Soviet prison, including solitary confinement and hard labor. Before the verdict was announced, Sharansky famously proclaimed in the courtroom, “To the court I have nothing to say; to my wife and the Jewish people I say, ‘Next Year in Jerusalem.’”

After serving as a political prisoner for nine years, Sharansky was released in 1986 after a vigorous advocacy campaign led by his wife, Avital, and they emigrated to Israel.

In addition to his efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Sharansky became a leader in Israeli society, serving in four consecutive Israeli governments and eventually serving as chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The author of several books and the recipient of several notable awards, including the Israel Prize, the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Sharansky became chair of The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy in 2019.

On the WJW Podcast, Sharansky discussed his experience as a political prisoner in light of the current plight of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas and the importance of advocacy on behalf of the hostages. Sharansky also shared his thoughts on people making aliyah and immigrating to Israel and talked about combating antisemitism amid the drastic rise in Jew-hatred that we’re seeing on a global scale.

Amid Surge in Antisemitism, US Education Secretary Discusses Efforts to Combat Anti-Jewish Hate

The following is an article that I wrote, which appeared in the February 15, 2024, edition of the Washington Jewish Week:

As antisemitism increases to frightening levels across the nation, much of the focus is on the anti-Jewish hatred that has become prevalent on college campuses and in elementary and secondary schools around the United States.

Against that backdrop, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona held a briefing on Feb. 6, which was attended by several media outlets, including the Washington Jewish Week, where he addressed the issue of antisemitism and Islamophobia in the education arena.

Noting that he approaches this issue not only as secretary of education but also as a father of a high schooler and a college student, Cardona said he thinks about “the responsibility we have to ensure a safe learning environment for all students, and the role that we have as educators and education leaders to make sure that we’re standing up for our students and their right to learn in a safe environment.”

Citing his visits to different schools, Cardona spoke about how the students’ words had a profound impact on him, stating that students communicated to him “that antisemitism in some parts of our country has become normalized.”

U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Photo credit: wikimedia.org: U.S. Department of
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

Cardona recounted an interaction he had with a Jewish student at Towson University, who told him about an incident where he was walking to class and took a different route because he was afraid he would be harassed and saw a swastika drawn on a wall. Cardona said the student told him, “I was happy I went that way because that’s no big deal,” referring to the swastika. Cardona recalled saying, “what do you mean it’s no big deal,” noting that even that student was normalizing seeing a swastika on campus. “That really bothered me because no child, no student should ever feel that they’re going to a learning environment where people are openly spewing hate and creating an environment where they don’t feel safe walking through their campuses.”

“At the Department of Education this became an all-hands-on-deck moment. After the terrorist attacks, we really recognized that we had to step up,” Cardona said as he discussed his department’s response to the events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath. According to Cardona, the education department worked on “building capacity and helping college presidents, helping K-12 leaders understand what their role is and what their legal responsibility is, and giving them tools on how to make sure that they’re providing safe learning environments.”

In addition to making information available on its website, Cardona said his department also held a webinar about Title VI that was attended by over 1,000 people on what to do and what resources are available. “I also fought to make sure that we have funding that we need to make sure that our Office for Civil Rights has the tools that they need,” he said, referring to the office that enforces Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which serves to protect students from discrimination.

When asked about some of the Title VI cases that have been filed with the department’s Office of Civil Rights, Cardona declined to discuss the specifics, instead speaking generally about the process and his department’s role. “We need to start with the students feeling safe on campus – that’s the starting point,” he said.

Addressing the fact that school administrators are dealing with some students who are saying “this is antisemitism” while other students are saying “these are my free speech rights,” which makes an already difficult situation more complex, Cardona said school leaders “want to do what’s right.”

“I’ve heard from presidents who have told me that at the staff level they have work to do to make sure that the working environment is one that’s conducive to teaching students how to communicate what they want to communicate, have freedom of speech, while not crossing the line and making an unsafe learning environment,” he said. “There are presidents that have shared with me the need to increase the level of professional development around the resources that are available around Title VI. I think ultimately, they’re sharing that it is challenging because there’s a lot of emotion and that they want to do what’s right. And they want to make sure students feel safe, but also balance the ability for students to disagree, even if that makes people feel uncomfortable.”

When Cardona was asked whether a student saying or writing “from the river to the sea” creates a hostile environment and serves as a call to genocide, he didn’t directly answer the question, speaking instead in a general sense about school leaders’ needs to act.

“Any calls for genocide is something that we should be very clear is not tolerable,” Cardona said. “That to me is a very clear line for the leader to call out calls for genocide and make it very clear to condemn those statements and address it, not only with the student or students that said that, but with the student who felt that they’re being the subject of that.”

University presidents testifying before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses in Dec. 2023. Photo credit: wikimedia.org: 2023 Congress Hearing on Antisemitism

When pressed on the “from the river to the sea” issue, which was noted could mean different things to different people, Cardona again demurred. “We investigate each case and it’s difficult for me to make a statement here about that. If students are feeling unsafe with that, it’s a responsibility of leadership.”

Citing the increased number of students across the U.S. who are feeling unsafe on campus, the Washington Jewish Week asked Cardona if he believes the average college student has a good understanding of the technical aspects of making a complaint to either their university or the education department’s Office of Civil Rights if they endure what they perceive to be intimidation or threatening rhetoric.

Noting that students may have a trusted adult they can turn to at their university if they’re feeling uncomfortable or threatened and that adult should know how to guide the student accordingly, Cardona acknowledged that the average student likely doesn’t know what the Office of Civil Rights does.

“Unfortunately, that information sometimes gets learned after something happens that they have to then respond. But it is the responsibility of the school to have an infrastructure where they’re communicating with students,” he said.

“After Oct. 7, with the rise in antisemitism that we saw in this country, I believe any college leader should have used that as an opportunity to make sure their leaders, their deans, their student support services, were more visible and communicating more directly and proactively with students. If you feel a certain way, you can call this number or you can text here or you can come visit this student support services center to get that message out. I do believe that has increased … I think ultimately, part of it is giving them a platform to communicate and to express how they feel, but also communicating with them what options they have if they’re feeling threatened or under attack,” he added.

While Cardona acknowledged there has been a spike in antisemitism since Oct. 7, he pointed out that “it was bad before Oct. 7.”

In addition to a rise in antisemitism, Cardona noted that there has also been a rise in Islamophobia and said, “we want to make sure that Title VI expectations exist for all students.”

“If you look at the resources that we put out there, the guidance that we put out there, it has been helpful. It has created better learning environments for students. It has helped build capacity in K-12 institutions, higher ed institutions. It’s given school leaders an opportunity to learn from school leaders’ successes and triumphs, but also challenges. So, I do believe it has happened. And to be honest with you, as an educator, as a father, it helped where I believe it counts – preventive maintenance – making sure that we have safe environments, because the tools are out there. Making sure that leaders know who they can call on, who’s going to pick up the phone at the Department of Education to provide support. I do believe that has made a difference and has helped create safer learning environments.”

Cardona said his department has seen an “elevated” number of cases since Oct. 7 and has opened 60 shared ancestry investigations over the past four months (compared to 27 investigations opened by the previous administration), which include claims of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

When asked if he believes that anti-Zionism is antisemitic, Cardona said “I believe antisemitism can include anti-Zionist statements … we take that into account when looking at cases.”

While much of the focus of the meeting was on universities, Cardona also spoke about what middle school and high school students are experiencing.

“What I heard from younger students is ‘I have to hide who I am so that I don’t have to deal with what is being said or what is being done,’” he said. “They might hide the sticker of the Israeli flag on their computer, or they might tuck in the Star of David, where before they didn’t … As an educational leader, I’m very concerned when students can’t be who they are unapologetically because of the conditions on campus. That to me is an unsafe learning environment … From the younger students, that’s what I hear – that it’s easier just to hide. But to me, that’s very alarming that students feel like they have to disassociate with who they are in order to learn in a safe environment.”

In response to a question from the Washington Jewish Week whether university leaders are doing enough to address antisemitism and to create a safe space for their students on campus, Cardona responded that he thinks “more can be done,” noting that we’ve “seen some college leaders who have done really well” and “some who haven’t done well.”

“I believe what we saw highlighted soon after Oct. 7 is what happens when we’re not in front of it in some cases … I still think we can continue to do more, not only to promote safe learning environments, but to also make sure students feel comfortable in their own skin. That they don’t have to change who they are, that they don’t have to hide their identity.”

The WJW Podcast: A Conversation With Moshe Lavi, Relative of an Israeli Hostage (2/15/24)

Moshe Lavi, a former captain in the Israel Defense Forces, is the brother-in-law of Omri Miran. On Oct. 7, Omri was at home in Kibbutz Nachal Oz in southern Israel with his wife, Lishay, who is Moshe’s sister, and his two young daughters, when Hamas terrorists overran the kibbutz and entered their home. Omri was taken hostage by Hamas, and now, four months later, he remains in captivity.

Ever since that day, Moshe has been a strong and outspoken advocate not just for his brother-in-law, Omri, but for all the hostages that were kidnapped by Hamas.

On the WJW Podcast, Moshe discussed the events of Oct. 7 and what took place in his family’s home, as well as how his sister is coping with her two small children while her husband, their father, remains in captivity. Moshe also talked about the importance of his advocacy efforts on behalf of Omri and the other hostages and how those efforts are making a difference in the ongoing quest to bring the hostages home safely and swiftly.

‘Israel is focus of today’s Jews-hatreds’

The following is an article that I wrote, which appeared in the February 8, 2024, edition of the Washington Jewish Week:

In this month’s installment of “Remember When,” we look back at our coverage from Feb. 19-25, 1976, which included an article by Shlomo Avineri titled ‘Israel is focus of today’s Jew-hatreds’ in which he examined “contemporary forms of anti-Semitism.”

Avineri, who was born in Poland in 1933 and immigrated to pre-state Israel with his family in 1939, was a leading Israeli political scientist and a longtime professor at Hebrew University. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin appointed Avineri as director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry in 1975, a position he held until Prime Minister Menachem Begin came to power in 1977.

“Today, the Diaspora Jew is not, as such, the target of anti-Jewish criticism; it is a criticism of Israel – its very existence, its legitimacy, its policies, its links of Diaspora Jews to it – which are the main targets of this new wave of attacks on the Jewish people. The sad irony is obvious, and the natural tendency is to deny or belittle the significance of this phenomenon. Yet, it cannot be escaped that it is Israel, and especially its post-1967 successes and post-1973 agonies, that appear to have granted a new appearance of legitimacy to a criticism of Jews; and if this criticism starts with Israel, it sometimes very quickly reverts to some of the traditional anti-Semitic patterns.”

Forty-eight years later, Avineri’s words seem almost prophetic. Today we are witnessing the same sort of “phenomenon” that he described. We see people marching in the streets, waving Palestinian and Hamas flags, yelling “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and decrying the state of Israel. The heated anti-Israel demonstrations and the rhetoric being used are ostensibly meant to criticize Israel, yet they very easily cross over to antisemitism. Jews are being collectively blamed for what they call Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza, despite the fact that Israel was the target of a savage attack on Oct. 7 that resulted in Israel having to defend itself and its people yet again from terrorists intent on destroying the Jewish state. As Avineri said, if the criticism starts with Israel, “it sometimes very quickly reverts to some of the traditional anti-Semitic patterns.”