The War on Trump Is a War on Millions

LEE SMITH

Biden’s Justice Department views Trump as a traitor. It views Trump’s supporters the same way.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal CourtMICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES

Pilot of Titanic Submersible Was Married to Descendent of Jewish Couple Who Died Aboard The Ocean Liner

Shiryn Ghermezian

The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions to explore the wreckage of the sunken Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, dives in an undated photograph. Photo: OceanGate Expeditions/Handout via REUTERS

Stockton Rush, who piloted the OceanGate tourist submersible called Titan that went to explore the RMS Titanic shipwreck and went missing and then imploded, killing Rush and his four passengers, was married to a descendent of a Jewish couple who was among the wealthiest people to die aboard the ocean liner when it sank in 1912, The New York Times reported.

Rush, who was also the CEO and founder of OceanGate, was 61 when pronounced dead on Thursday by the US Coast Guard after his vessel was found in pieces at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean near the Titanic shipwreck this week. His wife, Wendy Rush, is the great-great granddaughter of the late retail giant Isidor Straus and his wife Ida. Isidor co-owned the Macy’s department store and was married to Ida for four decades.

One of Isidor and Ida’s daughters, Minnie, married Dr. Richard Weil in 1905 and their son, Richard Weil Jr., who was Wendy’s grandfather, later become president of Macy’s New York.

When the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in April 1912, the Straus’ reportedly chose to go down together, arm in arm, on the sinking ship, The New York Times explained. Survivors said Isidor refused to get on a lifeboat when women and children were still waiting to be rescued and Ida stayed with her husband, insisting that she would not leave him behind.

Isidor’s body was found at sea several weeks later while Ida’s was never recovered, according to The New York Times. Roughly 700 people survived the sinking of the Titanic out of the approximately 2,200 passengers and crew on board the ship, The Associated Press reported.

James Cameron, who directed Titanic, featured a fictional version of Isidor and Ida in his 1997 movie about the sinking ship by including a scene toward the end of the film that shows an older couple lying in bed and embracing each other as the waters rise around them on the ocean liner.

Wendy married Stockton in 1986 and in 2009, he founded OceanGate Inc., a private Washington-based company that provides crewed submersibles for commercial, research and military purposes. This was Titan’s third journey to the Titanic.

After the Titan was reported missing on Sunday night, an international rescue mission was launched immediately. There were additional concerns about the vessel’s passengers running out of their oxygen supply by Thursday morning.  Search efforts continued on Thursday for clues to explain what happened to the submersible after it imploded underwater, the AP reported. Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District, told the news outlet that the likelihood of finding or recovering remains was unknown.

Others who died aboard the Titan include British billionaire Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, prominent Pakistan businessman Dawood and his son. There were no survivors.

Netanjahu nazywa oświadczenie Ben-Gvira Evyatar „nie do przyjęcia”

JNS

Podczas wizyty w nieautoryzowanej placówce minister bezpieczeństwa narodowego Itamar Ben-Gvir wezwał Izraelczyków do „uciekania na wzgórza, osiedlenia się tam”.

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Premier Izraela Benjamin Netanjahu prowadzi posiedzenie gabinetu w Kancelarii Premiera w Jerozolimie, 12 lutego 2023 r. Zdjęcie: Amit Shabi/POOL.

Premier Izraela Benjamin Netanjahu zganił w niedzielę ministra bezpieczeństwa narodowego Itamara Ben-Gvira za zachęcanie Żydów do osiedlania się w nieautoryzowanej placówce Evyatar w Samarii. Setki izraelskich Żydów przybyło do placówki natychmiast po śmiertelnym ataku terrorystycznym w pobliżu Eli 20 czerwca.

Podczas wizyty w tym miejscu w piątek Ben-Gvir powiedział: „Uciekaj w góry, osiedl się tam, kochamy cię”. Placówka miała jego „pełne i całkowite poparcie”, powiedział, „ale chcę o wiele więcej od osady tutaj.

Tu powinno być pełne osadnictwo — nie tylko tutaj, ale na wszystkich wzgórzach wokół nas. W swoim przemówieniu na cotygodniowym posiedzeniu gabinetu w niedzielę Netanjahu powiedział:

„Wezwania do nielegalnego zawłaszczania ziemi i działania polegające na nielegalnym zawłaszczaniu ziemi są dla mnie nie do przyjęcia”.

Powiedział, że takie oświadczenia i działania „podważają prawo i porządek w Judei i Samarii i muszą się natychmiast skończyć.

Nie tylko nie poprzemy takich działań, ale nasz rząd podejmie zdecydowane działania przeciwko nim”. Daleko od wzmocnienia przedsiębiorstwa osadniczego, takie wezwania i działania w rzeczywistości mu szkodzą, kontynuował. „Mówię to jako ktoś, kto podwoił osadnictwo w Judei i Samarii, pomimo wielkiej i bezprecedensowej presji międzynarodowej, aby przeprowadzić wycofania, których nie przeprowadziłem i nie przeprowadzę” – powiedział.

Właściwą odpowiedzią na terroryzm jest „zwalczanie terrorystów” i „jednoczesne pogłębianie naszych korzeni w naszym kraju” – dodał.

Powiedział, że Izrael podejmuje zdecydowane działania w obu przypadkach. „Likwidujemy terrorystów w rekordowych ilościach, a także budujemy w naszym kraju na wielką skalę według zatwierdzonych planów budowlanych. Podkreślam: zatwierdzony”.

W odpowiedzi Ben-Gvir napisał na Twitterze: „Doceniam i kocham premiera, ale problem naszych rządów nie zaczyna się od osadników w Judei i Samarii, ale od pobłażliwości wobec [Druzów] uczestników zamieszek na Wzgórzach Golan i braku ścisłego egzekwowania prawa w Rahat [miasto Beduinów na Negewie].

Jestem przeciw selektywnemu egzekwowaniu. „Prawicowy rząd musi zrealizować swoją wizję: osiedlenie się na terytoriach Judei i Samarii, wraz z zerową tolerancją dla tych, którzy grożą, że jeśli nie spełnimy ich próśb, wybuchnie wojna. Izraelowi nie wolno skapitulować”.

Minister bezpieczeństwa narodowego Itamar Ben-Gvir przemawia podczas wizyty w Evyatar, 23 czerwca 2023 r. Źródło: Twitter. 

The Talmud on a Desert Island

Jeremy Rosen

A page of Talmud. Photo: Chajm Guski/Wikimedia

One of the longest-running radio program series on the BBC is “Desert Island Discs.” It began in the year of my birth, 1942, and is still running. On the show, a very wide range of people are asked to imagine that they are shipwrecked on a desert island, and have to choose and talk about their favorite pieces of music and a favorite book to take with them. It is usually both entertaining and instructive, and I often thought about what my choices would be. But I found the process very frustrating. At least in music, there are so many different genres. And literature? Only one book?

My world was and is a multi-track world. Both in literature and music (let alone philosophy) I have very different interests and experiences. This wasn’t a challenge for me alone. Many people have been brought up in dual cultures, and are much richer for it. But I developed a profound dislike for the whole issue of having to choose favorites — politicians, leaders, rabbis, colors, sounds, books, etc

Who was the greatest anything? The greatest Jew? The greatest American? The greatest Briton? The greatest tap dancer, fisherman, clown, or crook? Take music. If classical, would one want to pick just one of the great classical composers? Or at the other end of the spectrum, jazz or pop music? Even when it comes to colors, there are several I like.

But to play the BBC’s game, I would choose the Talmud. And that might be a brilliant choice for a desert island because it is so vast. There is no other book I know of that contains so much.

The Talmud is an amazing encyclopedia of Jewish law, lore, theology, mysticism, history, magic, superstition, intellectual gymnastics, casuistic argument, fantasy, and spirituality. For a thousand years, when Jews were excluded from Christian academia, the whole of Jewish intellectual endeavor focused on studying, memorizing, explaining, resolving, and living within the intellectual chambers of the Talmud. It stretches one’s imagination and challenges one’s intellect far more than any academic text I have encountered at the very best of universities.

As a teenager, my father introduced me to one of the greatest Jewish books of the last century, Ephraim E. Urbach’s “The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs.” It was written in Hebrew and then translated into English. It describes the personalities and the ideas of the sages who contributed to the Talmud.

As a lecturer, I am often asked what the best way to enter the world of Talmud is. The ideal is to find a teacher who can guide you gently into its mysteries and challenges. But failing that, or going to a yeshivah, I recently came across another translation from Hebrew into English, also called “ The Sages” by Benny Lau, published in five volumes by Maggid Books. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend buying all of the five volumes, but you can buy just the first one, and then if you enjoy it, go on to the rest. It is less academic than Urbach, more popular, and an easier read. It takes you through the development of the Talmud and is a great place to start.

There is a message in all of this. Currently both in the Diaspora and Israel, there is a flow of negative articles attacking the Haredi world’s preoccupation with full-time Talmud study and the absence of secular studies in many yeshivas. When you realize the breadth of the subject matter covered when one studies Talmud you realize how intellectually challenging the subjects are, what a range of mental disciplines they require, and how intensive the concentration and mental acuity required are to make sense of, let alone master, the subject matter.

I have come across highly successful non-Jewish people in commerce, finance, and the professions who have told me how many brilliant minds they have encountered thanks to the Talmudic training that enabled them to excel. Even if they came to their profession or areas of expertise with a Talmudic rather than a secular foundation, they were still able to succeed because of the intensiveness of yeshiva methodology.

But there is another aspect to the issue where I side with the critics. One has to differentiate between those who have good abstract brains that are sharpened by Talmudic debate, and maybe the majority who sadly lack either intellectual capacity, motivation, or simply interest in the casuistic aspect of Talmudic studies.

I understand the mentality that believes that the only response to the decimation of Haredi life in the Holocaust requires the rebuilding and restocking of Torah scholarship. But the crisis is now over. The Haredi world is strong, confident, and dynamic, even triumphalist. It is time to add different curricula to suit different minds. And at last, one sees a few hopeful signs that they are beginning to address this problem.

There are current campaigns in the US and Israel to demean Haredi education and impose unwanted changes. Successful Talmudic education, far from being in any way inferior to the secular world, is as demanding and requires discipline and effort as much as most secular education models. Anyone who wants to understand Judaism seriously, not just superficially or in a simplistic or deracinated form, has to come to terms in one way or another with the Talmud. And this is a good place to start.

The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.

Boston Museum Gets Ownership of Nazi-Looted Painting as Part of Settlement With Heirs of Jewish Art Dealers

Shiryn Ghermezian

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: Suicasmo via Wikimedia Commons

An oil-on-panel painting by Dutch artist Adriaen van Ostade that was looted by the Nazis and set to be displayed in Adolf Hitler’s museum will now have a permanent home at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) as the result of an agreement reached with the museum’s patrons and the heirs of two Jewish art dealers, the MFA announced last week.

Conversing in a Tavern from 1671 was part of the inventory of a gallery in Paris run by Jewish art dealer Paul Graupe in the early 20th century. In 1939, Graupe fled Nazi-occupied France to avoid persecution but before leaving he asked his business partner Arthur Goldschmidt, who was also Jewish, to try and save the gallery’s collection, including Conversing in a Tavern, by shipping it out of the country. Goldschmidt instead sold the painting in February 1941 to Karl Haberstock, an art dealer working for Hitler, before he himself left the country and immigrated to the US.

Haberstock sold Conversing in a Tavern in April 1941 to Hitler’s art adviser and curator, Hans Posse. The painting was set to be included in the art museum Hitler planned to build in Linz, Austria, that would be called Führermuseum. However, the Allied forces recovered the painting after the end of World War II and it was sent to France for restitution, according to the MFA.

“The painting was not claimed by the end of the 1940s, and as a result the French state auctioned it in 1951,” the MFA explained. “It changed hands several times on the European art market before Susan and Matthew Weatherbie bought it, unaware of its Nazi-era history, in 1992. It is one of 28 Dutch and Flemish paintings the Weatherbies pledged to the MFA in 2017.”

As part of the new agreement reached last week, the heirs of Goldschmidt and Graupe will receive an undisclosed cash payment for Conversing in a Tavern, according to Artnet News. In return, the MFA will retain ownership of the painting and it will be donated to the museum “at a future date” by the Weatherbies, the museum said, adding that the “just and fair resolution” is consistent with the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.

“We are happy that these longstanding ownership issues have been resolved so amicably, and we are delighted to display Customers Conversing in a Tavern at the MFA so that it can be shared with the public,” the Weatherbies said in released statement.

Artnet News reported that according to provenance research, Goldschmidt claimed he was forced to sell the Van Ostade artwork and other paintings, and it is believed that Graupe never knew that the work was given to the Nazis. Graupe died in Germany in 1953 and Goldschmidt in Switzerland in 1960.

Customers Conversing has been installed in the MFA’s wing of Dutch and Flemish galleries and is displayed alongside other works by Van Ostade.