HEADLINES | 6
SPECIAL SECTION | B1
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY ON WHEELS
SENIOR PULLOUT You're never too old for camp, retired rabbis conference and Scottsdale lawyer wins Native American award.
Professor Rosalind Kabrhel spoke about “From Prison to Promise: Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration” on Jan. 9.
1948
YEARS
2023
$1.50
FEBRUARY 3, 2023 | SHEVAT 12, 5783 | VOLUME 75, NUMBER 10
When it comes to unity, are local Jews talking about the same thing? SHANNON LEVITT | STAFF WRITER
D
ozens of hands shot up last Tuesday night the moment Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz opened the floor to audience questions. In person and on Zoom, roughly 100 people attended Valley Beit Midrash’s (VBM) panel “Can the Phoenix/Scottsdale Community be United?” With so many raised hands, Yanklowitz resorted to asking for a rapid-fire round of questions before he had to cut them off, allowing the panelists a brief chance to answer before making a final statement. By that point, the panel — charged with talking about what divides Jews and what, if anything, can be done — had lasted nearly two hours, but it was clear that people had more to say. Three decades after the famed English Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks called the notion of Jewish unity “deceptively simple” and suggested the idea was more “a myth, perhaps, rather than a reality,” in his book “One People? Tradition, Modernity, and Jewish Unity,” the possibility of unifying Jews still draws a crowd. Between those who attended the event and the people who have since watched the recording on VBM’s YouTube and other social media channels, Jews are expressing a hunger to hear more on this topic, which was VBM’s main goal. In 1993, Sacks wrote specifically about schisms in Judaism brought on by modernity, between Reform and Orthodox, religious and secular, Israel and the Diaspora. Yanklowitz, VBM’s president and dean, suggested
Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff talks with ASU Hillel students about antisemitism SHANNON LEVITT | STAFF WRITER
D
ouglas Emhoff, the Second Gentleman of the United States, made a brief visit to the offices of Hillel Jewish Student Center at Arizona State University to speak directly to college students about antisemitism on Thursday, Jan. 18. Emhoff joined 10 students, Hillel at ASU Executive Director Debbie Yunker Kail and Hillel at ASU Assistant Director Taylor Silverman, for a 50-minute round table discussion, during which Emhoff invited students to share their personal experiences and how the current climate around antisemitism is impacting them as leaders. ASU senior and Hillel at ASU Student President Zachary Bell was impressed by Emhoff ’s ability to listen to each student’s experience and refer back to what they related when he offered his own comments. “He made it clear that he heard and respected the experiences of
Second Gentleman Douglass Emhoff poses with Hillel at Arizona State University students and Executive Director Debbie Yunker Kail and Assistant Director Taylor Silverman. COURTESY OF HILLEL AT ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
everyone in the room,” Bell told Jewish News. Bell said several students told Emhoff about how they sometimes feel unwelcome in certain studentled multicultural coalitions and initiatives. Emhoff told them it wasn’t the first time he’d heard
similar stories and didn’t think it would be the last. “It was clear that this is an issue he’s passionate about and that he will take concrete steps to make the global climate better,” Bell said. Yunker Kail learned of the visit through an email sent to her by a SEE EMHOFF PAGE 3
Get the popcorn ready The Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival returns, offering three films in person this year. See page 20. COURTESY OF GREATER PHOENIX JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
SEE UNITY, PAGE 2
KEEP YOUR EYE ON jewishaz.com
NATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
ISRAEL
Ohio is investigating a Nazi homeschooling network that celebrates Hitler
Pop artist paints ‘Simpsons’ characters as Holocaust victims outside Milan Holocaust memorial
In Jerusalem neighborhoods bound together by terror, anger and trepidation about what comes next