In defense of Jewish circumcision

by Dennis Prager for JewishJournal

This past week, I was in Miami for the bris (or brit), the Jewish ritual circumcision, of my grandson. It’s a good time to offer a defense of the Jews’ most ancient ritual.

According to various reports, there are Jews — and not only Jews who have forsaken their Jewish identity — who oppose circumcising their sons. They are still a minority, but they are vocal and, I suspect, growing.

Their primary arguments are that circumcisions, whether for religious or medical reasons, are unnecessary; that they are a form of mutilation; and that the act inflicts serious pain on the 8-day-old for no good reason.

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In Germany, a Turkish Muslim educates immigrants not to hate Jews

Aycan Demirel’s nonprofit Kiga fights rising national prejudices by teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in classrooms

BY MIRIAM DAGAN for The Times of Israel

BERLIN — Dervis Hizarci is a practicing Muslim, a German citizen of Turkish origin, and a guide in Berlin’s Jewish Museum. His services aren’t available to just anyone: Hizarci’s job is to guide teenagers from the surrounding Kreuzberg neighborhood, one of Berlin’s main migrant districts. Today, his visitors are a class of mostly Muslim students from a nearby high school.

Hizarci begins the tour with a question: How long does German-Jewish history span? For reference, he adds that Turkish-German history is about 50 years old. A student volunteers: 350 years? Hizarci tells them the answer: 2,000 years.

Next, he talks about another number: six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. To give the students a sense of scale, he adds that today there are around three million people of Turkish origin living in Germany. The teens seem surprised and moved.

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Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army

How WWII changed the way America thought about deli

By Ted Merwin for Tablet Magazine

The entrance of the United States into World War II in December 1941 ultimately transformed the relationship of many Jews to their religion. Obliged to eat Army rations, Jewish soldiers found it almost impossible to keep kosher on a regular basis. In G.I. Jews, Deborah Dash Moore’s book about Jews in the Army, Moore discusses the ways in which many Jewish soldiers, especially those raised in kosher homes, were compelled to modify their eating patterns in order to survive on army rations. “Eating ham for Uncle Sam” became, Moore has found, a patriotic act of self-sacrifice. But not all servicemen were obliged to subsist on nonkosher food; the practice soon developed of sending hard salamis, which keep for a long time without refrigeration, to sons who were serving abroad. For the most part, however, Jews learned that they could do without familiar foods and still maintain their Jewish identity.

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Whatever Happened to Gut Yontif? Why Jews Started Saying Ḥag Same'aḥ

The history of holiday greetings.

Philologos, for Mosaic

The eight days of Sukkot (seven in Israel) are, like those of Passover, of two kinds. The first, second, seventh, and eighth days of the holiday (the first and seventh in Israel) resemble the Sabbath in their festive meals with kiddush, the blessing over wine; their additional prayer service of Musaf; and their restrictions on work, travel, commerce, and other things. In Hebrew, they are known as yamim tovim, literally, “good days,” the singular of which is yom tov. The intermediate four days (five in Israel) lack these elements and are called ḥol ha-mo’ed, “the non-sacred part [ḥol] of the festive [literally, “appointed”] time [ha-mo’ed].”

Which raises the question: when two traditionally minded Jews meet on a yom tov of Sukkot or Passover, and then again on ḥol ha-mo’ed, do they exchange the same holiday greeting on both occasions, or two different ones?

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Check out Jvillage’s High Holiday+    page.

Ukrainian Jews demand protection for Holocaust sites

From JPost.com

Babi Yar has been vandalized six times since the beginning of the year, most recently on the sixteenth, when unknown assailants piled tires around a memorial menorah and lit them on fire.

Ukrainian Jewish leaders on Tuesday demanded that their government protect Holocaust sites throughout the country, during a pre-Yom Kippur ceremony memorializing the more than 33,000 Jews killed at Kiev’s Babi Yar ravine.

Babi Yar has been vandalized six times since the beginning of the year, most recently on September 16, when unidentified persons piled tires around a memorial menorah and lit them on fire.

While the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents was low in Ukraine in 2013 compared to Western Europe, anti-Semitic vandalism spiked in the Eastern European nation last year, according to the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.

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The High Holidays are upon us, check out our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

Kapparot ritual allowed in New York

(JTA) — The Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot can proceed in New York, a state Supreme Court judge ruled.

Justice Debra James ruled Monday in Manhattan that there was not enough evidence to prove that the ritual is a public nuisance, the New York Post reported. The decision was in response to a lawsuit filed in July by The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos.

Kapparot involves swinging a live chicken over one’s head three times and reciting a prayer to cast sins to the bird. The chicken is then slaughtered and donated to the poor. In recent years, money has replaced the chicken in the rite for many Jewish groups.

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The High Holidays are upon us, check out our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

How Moishe House is helping turn social lives into Jewish life

by Aron Chilewich for Jewish Journal

 “Are you all from Moishe House?” Ben Zauzmer asked as he approached a circle of about 15 young adults, all in their early to mid-20s, who were eating sandwiches on the lawn of the Silver Lake Recreation Center on a recent Saturday morning. They were, so he joined the group, appearing a bit nervous doing so.

Andrew Cohen, 23, immediately and warmly introduced himself, and asked how Zauzmer had heard about the “Shabbat Picnic in the Park” event.

“My sister was a resident of the Moishe House in Washington, D.C., and since I just moved to L.A., she suggested I check it out,” Zauzmer said, adding he had recently graduated from college and has a job doing data analytics for the Dodgers.

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