Essays and viewpoints

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Groundhog Day is less than a month away and there’s a major change coming to the annual celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. That’s right, this year is not about whether Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow when he emerges from his burrow on Feb. 2, but rather will he be wearing a mask? Pray not, we don’t need six more weeks of the pandemic. There is actually something really exciting to look forward to in 2022 — likely sometime in June. That’s when, fingers crossed, the recently launched Webb Telescope is scheduled to begin transmitting its first images from 1 million miles out in space, providing us with a whole new perspective about our very existence.

The telescope was conceived in 1996 but cost overruns, redesigns and COVID-19 led to an eventual 25-year labor, without the benefit of an epidural.

It’s fascinating to follow the progress of the telescope in real time at www. jwst.nasa.gov, which includes distance traveled, miles left to final orbit, speed, temperatures and what the in-flight movie is.

The telescope is currently traveling at 3,190 mph, which in Earth terms means you could fly to Los Angeles in 43 minutes, still enough time for a passenger to get in a fight for not wearing a mask. That is if the flight isn’t already among the thousands of flights currently being canceled.

The James Webb Space Telescope website says the infrared telescope “will explore a wide range of science questions to help us understand the origins of the universe and our place in it. Seeking light from the first galaxies in the universe … directly observe a part of space and time never seen before … gaze into the epoch when the very first stars and galaxies formed, over 13.5 billion years ago.” To put in perspective just how long ago that really is, that’s 13,499,999,935 years longer than the Lions last won a championship.

In the hoopla over this marvel of technology, let’s not forget the accomplishments of Webb’s distinguished predecessor, the Hubble Telescope. While it’s still a functioning satellite, NASA was able to get the new Webb Telescope for just $10 billion as part of a federally sponsored Telescope Lease Pull Ahead Program.

For the last 32 years, Hubble has been transmitting breathtaking images of space but is positioned just a mere 340 miles above Earth. Can you imagine what we are in store for when Webb begins transmitting from a million miles away?

Hubble, though, will always have one major advantage over Webb, its accessible for service calls. The last one was in May 2009, when astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis docked on the telescope to perform upgrades during several spacewalks over nearly 13 days.

On the occasion of Hubble’s 25th anniversary in April 2019, I shared in the JN the transcript of the last communication between Hubble and the astronaut who performed the routine checkup on the telescope’s lenses. It read as follows:

Astronaut: “Hubble, do you see better through lens Number 1 or Number 2?”

Hubble: “2.”

Astronaut: “Number 2 or Number 3?”

Hubble: “Um, can you do that again?”

Astronaut: “Sure. 2 or 3?”

Hubble: “Gosh, they’re so close.”

Astronaut: “Number 2 or 3?”

Hubble: I’ll say 3. Wait, 2. No, sorry, 3.”

With the end of the Space Shuttle program, there are no scheduled flights to Hubble, but Jeff Bezos just announced that if Hubble — which is expected to need progressive lenses by the time it turns 50 — orders them through Amazon, he’ll deliver them aboard one of his Blue Origin rockets. Free if they

Contributing Writer sign up for Prime.

Arguably, one of the most fascinating capabilities of the Webb Telescope will be its ability to study planets outside our solar system, including conducting tests to determine if their atmospheres show any signs of life.

Unfortunately, the telescope won’t be able to go as far as determining intelligent life, which is a shame, since we here on Earth are experiencing an ever-growing shortage of it.

I’m hoping as you’re reading this NASA was successful in its initial attempt to begin deploying Webb’s mirror made up of 18 hexagonalshaped gold coated beryllium panels. The panels were folded to fit into the Ariane 5 rocket payload, which was the maximum allowed carry-on luggage.

According to NASA, the unfurling of Webb’s giant mirror is just one of 300 ways the telescope could fail.

Boy, can you imagine the angst NASA’s Webb team must be going through? I can. I’m just about ready to turn on and set up my new, just received Apple iPhone 13 … Houston, we have a problem.

Alan Muskovitz is a writer, voice-over/acting talent, speaker, and emcee. Visit his website at laughwithbigal.com,”Like” Al on Facebook and reach him at amuskovitz@thejewishnews.com.

Despite entering the third year of the global pandemic, it seems that 2022 is looking quite positive for Israel, albeit with some challenges. Over the last 12 months, Israeli tech IPOs, as well as mergers and acquisitions, jumped a massive 520% over the previous year, with an unprecedented value of $81.2 billion, compared to $15.4 billion in 2020. In addition, 2021 was a record year for funding of tech companies and startups, reaching $25 billion in investments. Analysts are identifying this massive growth partly as a result of the development of a new business culture.

Today, the maturing Israeli entrepreneur is aiming to build a strong local company and take it public, rather than developing technology and then selling it, which was the model of the last two decades. This massive growth will be challenged in the coming year by the current shortage of approximately 13,000 skilled workers in the tech sector.

Israel’s Energy Minister Karine Elharrar has announced that 2022 will be the year of renewable energy. Her ministry will be setting up, for the first time, a department with funds of $320 million that will invest in a national plan for researching and developing clean energy. As a result, the Minister said, “gas can wait,” and will halt the search for natural gas off the Mediterranean coast to pursue and optimize renewable energy projects.

The last decade has seen young Israeli families discovering that home ownership is almost unattainable. Housing prices have been rising continually, and 2021 witnessed the highest rise in a decade, at 10.3%. According to the Alrov Institute for Real Estate, an average Israeli couple would both need to work 27 years to buy a standard four-room apartment. The good news is the Bennett government has recently developed a four-year plan from 2022 to increase the supply of housing and ultimately reduce prices, with the aim to narrow the gap between supply and demand by 2025.

I hoped we would not be writing about COVID-19 by now, but here we are in that familiar scenario. Israel is

currently closed to tourism while waiting to see what the new Omicron variant has in store for us. The good news: Israeli biotech company Bonus BioGroup has developed a cell therapy for treatment of severe cases of COVID. The recent trial had a 94% success rate, with 47 or the 50 patients surviving conditions of life-threatening respiratory distress. Naomi Miller Although closed off to the world, the Israeli economy is open and vibrant and COVID rates remain low. We hope 2022 will be the year of renewed tourism and that we will see you here soon.

Naomi Miller is Director of Israel Partnerships at the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator and Israel Representative and Missions Director for the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit.

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As we mark the oneyear anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, some in our country question the health of our democracy. Can we be sure that people will accept the results of the 2022 midterm elections? Will we see more political violence? A recent poll conducted by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland revealed that about one-third of Americans agree with the statement “violence against the government can at times be justified.” Clearly some dangerous lines have been crossed, and our institutions have responded weakly. The health of American democracy seems threatened.

My mother’s German cousins remembered listening to the radio as the new Chancellor greeted the nation. They thought, “Germany is a refined and sophisticated nation; how many weeks will that buffoon last in power?”

My mother’s German cousins got out of Germany in time, or I never would have heard them reminisce about that night.

Should we be concerned that the same thing could happen here, in America?

I sent that question to an assortment of historians, political thinkers, activists and rabbis. Here are the responses I received, edited for brevity and sorted from most reassuring to most unsettling.

Contributing Writer

Dov Zakheim has held many posts in a distinguished career as military, political and economic adviser, among them Undersecretary of Defense in the second Bush Administration. He is also an Orthodox rabbi who has written extensively on the political challenges faced by biblical figures. His response:

“You ask a troubling question, but I think upon consideration you will see that the situation is nowhere near as dire as some may think.

“To begin with, it makes little sense to compare the U.S. and Germany. Germany had a legacy of virulent antisemitism reaching back to the First Crusades.

“On the other hand, the United States was founded as a democracy where Jews, at least officially, had a rightful place — witness Washington’s letter to the Jewish community of Newport.

“Surely there is antisemitism. It will never go away. But does the government — at any level — support it? Clearly not.

“I happen to believe that God blessed this country like no other. You may not share that belief.

“But American democracy is not in danger — mildly threatened, perhaps, but not more than in the past. “Nor are Jews in danger.”

Yitz Greenberg, rabbi, author, activist, theologian and historian, currently senior scholar in residence at the nondenominational Yeshivat Hadar, responded: “The United States is not so fragile a democracy as to be drawing the 1930s German analogies at this time. If, God forbid, the democracy collapsed (highly unlikely), there is Israel now, with instant access for any Jew in the world who is threatened (unlike the 1930s).

“It is not time to panic.”

Howard Lupovitch, associate professor of history at Wayne State University and head of the Cohn/Haddow Center for Judaic Studies, wrote: “In my mind, there are two red lines. The first is between violent versus non-violent manifestations of antisemitism — not so much the frequency or intensity but whether we are still protected by law enforcement and government. In other words … when is it no longer possible for us to call on or rely on the police for protection?

“The second is the point where what has hitherto been largely polemical antisemitism becomes more systemic, as in anti-Jewish laws, which we have not seen since the Johnson-Reed Act nearly a century ago.

“I do not in any way dimmish the surge of antisemitism especially during the last five or six years — symptomatic more than anything else of a former president who, for personal gain, advocated violence and peddled hate, outrage and fear; and was aided by the false urgency of the 24-hour news cycle and social media. “All of the concerns about Dov those undermining democ-Zakheim racy by gaming the system notwithstanding, democracy prevailed in the last two elections. Things may look different after November 2024 or January 2025, but, for now, the guard rails are still there. “In short, I am — and we must be — ever vigilant, but it not (yet) time to panic.”

Marc Kruman, professor of history at Wayne State University and founder/director of the Center for the Study Marc of Citizenship, Kruman writes, “I agree that our democracy is in danger. For those of us who are deeply committed to democracy, this is a deeply concerning moment.

“Black and Brown people are more likely to take the hit first in this country. You can see that in the tendency to minimize the power of Black people through redistricting. I don’t see that as crystalizing in a focus on Jews yet.

“Talk about a fraudulent election, endlessly repeat-

— GUY STERN

ed even before the 2020 election, has weakened democracy. Sixty percent of Republicans, according to polls, do not believe that Biden was elected in 2020. That shows the power of a lie, delivered by a trusted source and repeated endlessly by a segment of the news media.

“Should we see the expansion of antisemitism after the elections of 2022 and 2024 (an official celebration of an act of antisemitic violence?), then it may be time to make an assessment. I would first want to see if the country’s democratic institutions hold.”

holds a Ph.D. in psychology, founded the Program for Holocaust Survivors and Families at Jewish Senior Life and serves as its director. He writes: “Are we approaching a 1930s model of Germany now? Some survivors that I know believe we are. They see the handwriting on the wall; they see the rise of the radical right taking over as being similar to the rise of Nazism. Many of the second generation want to make sure that their family’s passports are up to date, just in case. The Jews in Europe were, for the most

part, trapped. “It’s complicated: Many love the former president and think nothing of a risk. Or they see the risk coming from the Left. They see America as becoming a lawless, Socialist country. They are on guard. “If we see more and more violence and the unraveling of our democratic institutions and a civil war-type scenario, we will see increasing movement of people thinking of leaving.” Guy Stern is a decorated member of the secret Ritchie Boys World War II military intelligence interrogation team. His recent memoir is titled Invisible Ink, and his response focused on the options people have. “Obviously, the individual circumstances of Charles Silow the would-be emigrant are one of the additional factors. Has he/she been able to decide on the country of refuge and is bound by the restrictions laid down by that nation? “I would like to add an anecdote, describing the difficulty. An elderly Jew is ready to emigrate and goes to a travel agency to book passage. He points to a country on a globe of the agent’s desk. The agent tells the old Jew: ‘No, that country does not accept

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Along-simmering conflict between CAIR, the MuslimAmerican civil rights organization, and the Anti-Defamation League has now reached the boiling point: A Bay Area CAIR leader dismissed the ADL and groups like it as “polite Zionists” who could not be trusted as allies. ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, fired back, calling her comments “textbook vile, antisemitic, conspiracy-laden garbage.”

It would be a mistake to see this as a mere spat between two organizations. It reflects what could be an alarming turning point in Jewish-Muslim relations in America, and a symptom of how polarization can undermine civil society. All of us who care about what Muslims and Jews could do together should take note and work to repair the damage that is being done.

In late November, Zahra Billoo — CAIR’s San Francisco director — delivered a blistering address at the conference of American Muslims for Palestine. First, Billoo drew a straight line between support for Israel and a wide array of American social ills, including the killing by police of innocent Black and Brown Americans. Those charges play on tropes that have become commonplace in far-left criticism of Israel and the IsraelAmerica relationship.

But Billoo went much further, directing her listeners

JTA.org to be cautious about “polite Zionists” — naming Jewish federations, “Zionist” synagogues and Hillel chapters whose civil society world she said masks an Islamophobic agenda. Similarly, American Muslims for Palestine had just published a report that neatly divides the Jewish community between those to avoid — including the organizations listed above, as well as my organization and others — and those it was “safe” to work with. Both AMP and Billoo placed Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow as the only Jewish organizations on the “good” list.

For those of us familiar with interfaith work, this separation of “good” and “bad” groups is a familiar and pernicious rhetorical and political strategy. It happens to American Muslims all the time, especially since 9/11, when others who are suspicious of them and their motives demand they pass litmus tests. Such tests are understandable: It is hard to engage with “the other,” so we often try to understand others through the prism of our own commitments and categories. Interfaith engagement, meanwhile, can be a strategy for building political power. And when the goal is to amass power, it is not surprising that groups would instrumentalize “the other” toward that end.

Doing so is very, very dangerous. To divide American Jews this way — between the vast majority of American Jews who identify with Israel and are thus characterized as dangerous and duplicitous, and the small dissident minority who are “kosher” — has two major problems. The first is that Jews, no less than anyone else, should have the right to narrate the complexities of our own identities. We American Jews do overwhelmingly support Israel in one way or another, and most of us are comfortable with identifying as Zionist. Yet we exhibit enormous diversity concerning what those attachments mean to us and how they obligate us.

The overwhelming majority of Jews in the world see the emergence of a Jewish state as something that changes the meaning of being Jewish, and see ourselves attached to that story in one way or another. Our interfaith friends need to approach this aspect of Jewish identity with curiosity, rather than dismissing it out of hand through a predetermination of what Judaism is “supposed to be.”

Secondly, this caricature of American Jews and our commitments strips us of the capacity to build relationships with our Muslim friends and neighbors — relationships that could be rooted in compassion and could even lead to us

KENNETH LU/FLICKR COMMONS

interrogating our own commitments. Urging American Muslims to write off the majority of American Jews as enemies from the start is to foreclose any possibility of serious interfaith work and undermines relationships that could be politically valuable for American Muslims. The strategy is as counterproductive as it is dehumanizing.

I am not primarily concerned with CAIR, but rather hope that this kind of thinking does not become normative in Muslim spaces (which at present, I do not believe it has). I am grateful to know Muslim leaders, like my friend and colleague Imam Abdullah Antepli, who are speaking out to rebuke CAIR, AMP and their leaders for misrepresenting American Islam, and instead are trying to forge new paths forward. After all, the best critiques of any group or movement comes from leaders inside their own communities.

This has been the approach of our Muslim Leadership Initiative program at the Shalom Hartman Institute since it began: to invite Muslim leaders into the internal conversation of the Jewish people, and especially our debates about Israel and Zionism. Resilient relationships are built through trust and character witnessing rather than through demarcating red lines at the outset.

What I fear most, however, is how we as a Jewish community act in a moment like this. Some of my ire is reserved for the Jewish organizations named by AMP and the Billoo speech as “good” Jews and who are relishing the designation. I mean, sure: Everyone wants to be liked, and I understand the political logic of using external allies to help fight battles inside your community. Allies are allies, I suppose, but these groups are welcoming endorsements from those who are actively and dangerously delegitimizing the majority of world Jewry. In doing so, these “good” Jews are giving aid to an antisemitic stratagem.

I desperately hope the mainstream Jewish community — those of us named as the bad Jews — will not allow the focus on CAIR and its failings to thwart the work we absolutely must continue doing to build stronger and more resilient intergroup relationships. This is how polarization works: Extremists exploit fear to create divisions, and then they reap the returns when the massive middle is scared away from the important work of seeking common ground.

I appreciate that organizations like the ADL need to confront CAIR in a moment like this and call out the antisemitism, but I would hate to see this incident undermine years of patient work — by the ADL and many other organizations — in reckoning with the past and building trust. It would be catastrophic if positive Muslim-Jewish engagement in America were to be sabotaged by individuals and organizations unable to imagine alternatives to acrimony.

There is so much work to be done. Muslim-Jewish relations took on extra political significance with the rise of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred since the 2016 election. The Israel-Palestine conflict continues to be exploited not just by marginal Jews and Muslims but by other Americans, including in Congress, to divide us. This is especially sad and ironic since America could genuinely be one of the few places on Earth where Jews and Muslims might forge an extraordinary bond. Even in Israel-Palestine, a future for peace and justice for all its inhabitants will need to be built by Jews and Muslims together.

If, like me, you are a member of the Jewish community alarmed by the CAIR story, don’t let it undermine your efforts in realizing such a future. Let their leaders navigate their own leadership failures, and let’s not make it harder for them by drowning them out. Instead, let’s lead our communities, and ask: What can we do to strengthen the relationship with American Muslims?

Yehuda Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and host of the Identity/Crisis podcast. emigrants.’ The Jew points to one after another country, but always gets a similar answer. Finally, he turns to the agent and says: ‘Could you please show me a different globe?’

“Of course, one has to distinguish between the past and now. In hindsight, it is easy to judge and say that most Jews waited too long to get out of Nazi Germany. And this is human nature — to wait and see and think, ‘This can’t happen here.’ It can happen everywhere at all times, as we can see.”

Corinne Stavish, professor at Lawrence Technological University and director of Technical and Professional Communication, writes: “My worry for this country’s future is not for my family; it’s for the country to which all four of my grandparents fled and kissed the ground upon arrival. I yearn for ‘The New Corinne Stavish Colossus,’ but it’s gone. “We have lackluster legislative leadership, corrupt corporations, eroding education and mawkish media. It is time to go because we who have the history of affecting change realize that what we thought had changed didn’t. It is ‘the unkindest cut of all.’”

Louis Finkelman is a professor at Lawrence Tech and a rabbi at Congregation Or Chadash in Oak Park.

BRIAN GREEN, WIKIPEDIA

We plant a boyml, two or three It’s Rosh Hashanah of the tree. Un then mir vartn quite a bit Until mir hobn a frucht to eat. Dos iz Tu b’Shevat for you and me.

boyml: little tree Un: and Mir vartn: we wait Mir hobn: we have frucht: fruit Dos iz: it is

By Rachel Kapen