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Welcome to Farmer’s Market
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Janet Singer Applefield discusses her upcoming Holocaust Memoir with Laura Kessler. As a child survivor, she discusses her journey of resilience through several names and identities before being reunited with her father and beginning a new life. One of the lessons we can learn from Janet and other Holocaust survivors is how to be resilient after trauma and successfully transform our identities for a new chapter of Jewish survival and healing after the unimaginable loss of 10/7.
Official site: janetapplefield.com
Facebook: facebook.com/janet.applefield
Instagram: instagram.com/janetapplefield/
Amazon book preorder: https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Janet-Finding-Myself-Holocaust/dp/B0CQPRRDLG/
Janet Singer Applefield is a child survivor of the Holocaust, author, and notable speaker. She earned her Master of Social Work at Boston University and practiced as a clinical social worker in the court system with perpetrators of hate crimes in the Greater Boston area for 30+ years. Janet speaks openly about her experiences with thousands of people each year through regular speaking engagements. In 2021, she was invited to tell her story before the Massachusetts State Legislature, on the occasion of the passage Bill H.692, an act mandating statewide genocide education in all middle and secondary schools. Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust will be released on May 7, 2024 and available at bookstores and online retailers.
When Janet first arrived in the U.S. in 1947, her father insisted that she relay to him everything she could remember since they were separated in August of 1942, so that he could capture it in writing. During his life, they never spoke about their collective torture. She discovered the seven hand script pages in 1984 in a box of yellowed papers, translated the document, and it became a blueprint for her self-discovery. Janet learned of those who saved her during the war and she was able to meet her rescuers in person that same year. They are now recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” at Yad Vashem in Israel.
At 88 years old, Janet continues to be an avid reader and international traveler. She has three children and five grandchildren and lives south of Boston, MA.
Study Guide Questions for Teachers:
- Did Janet’s story affect you? Describe how.
- What does Janet mean when she says that her Aryan features probably saved her life?
- The Nazis disseminated messages of hatred toward Jews. What were some of the messages they used to fuel antisemitism?
- Why might someone hate someone else merely because they are different from themselves?
- What does the term “legacy” mean to you?
- Write a letter to Gustawa. Tell her if there are any ways in which you identify with her.
- Gustawa, her father, and other Jews who returned to Nowy Targ at the end of the war met with danger even though the war was over. How do you explain this?
- How was Gustawa changed by her experiences during and after the war? How have trauma and tragic loss influenced Janet’s identity? How have your own circumstances shaped your character?
- Why do you think Gustawa was asked to take a new name when she arrived to register for elementary school?
- What does it mean to be resilient? Describe two examples of resilience from Janet’s story, and share a time when you had to recover quickly from challenges in your own life.
- Think about the freedoms and security you enjoy. How would you feel if they were taken away from you?
- In Janet’s story, why do you think some people chose to look away from injustice while others chose to stand up and make a difference even though it meant risking their own lives? What factors influenced their choices?
- Janet wrote that the choices we make can have a ripple effect. What is one thing you can do to make a positive difference?
Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust
Launching May 7, 2024
Available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
janetapplefield.com
Facebook: janetapplefield
Instagram: @janetapplefield
Thane Rosenbaum addresses the shocking Jonathan Glazer scandal at the Oscars in the latest episode of What Others Won’t Say.
With Senior Political & Cultural Analyst Thane Rosenbaum
Thane’s Monologue:
And the Oscar for Jewish self-hatred goes to … more about that later.
Long before anyone had ever seen Holocaust movies like “Schindler’s List,” “The Pianist,” and “Sophie’s Choice,” an iconic American funnyman, director, writer and sight-gag specialist, Jerry Lewis, back in 1972, directed the film, “The Day the Clown Cried.”
Don’t remember seeing it? Well, that’s because it was never released, and to this day, the whereabouts of the original print remains a mystery. The film was instantly deemed unwatchable.
It was about a washed-up circus clown, interned in Auschwitz, who leads the children to the gas chambers. 1972 was a mere 27 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Everything about the film violated the moral and aesthetic principles of art. It dared to reimagine the death camps, factories of mass murder, where the systematic extermination, and then cremation, of two out of every three Jews of Europe was largely achieved.
A clown misleading the children to their deaths? Even Lewis never wanted anyone to see the movie. He was mortified by it. The producers blamed him, but they, too, understood that audiences were not ready for such a grotesque cinematic spectacle.
Less than a week ago, a Holocaust film received an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. It depicted life directly outside of Aushwitz—the blithely desensitized, normalized life of the camp’s commandant. How did this high-ranking Nazi and his family manage to live so closely to the barbaric, so obtuse to the atrocious, so casually unaffected by what was taking place on the other side of their garden?
The idea of the film is not really all that original. “Sophie’s Choice” covered the same blood-soaked ground and ashen skies.
But what was unexpected on Oscar night was the acceptance speech of the film’s director. Having made a film that explored the extreme consequences of moral failure, he created his own, informing a global audience: “We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”
Yeah, he was referring to Israel and its war in Gaza. He was comparing Israel’s war of self-defense to the Nazi genocide of Jews; and Hamas’ citizen army of human shields to six million Jewish victims. He wanted the world to know that he wasn’t at all like the Jews in Israel who kill Palestinians. He was morally superior to them, and wanted the Hollywood elite to know that he can and should be invited to glamorous parties because he had just renounced his Jewishness.
The Jews of Europe didn’t launch rockets at Germany for 20 years. Jews never beheaded German babies or burned them alive. They didn’t gang rape and mutilate German teenage girls. They weren’t terrorists. They were truly innocent civilians.
Ironically, this film director made a movie about monsters, and then somehow misidentified what modern monsters look like. It was his people who had hijacked the Holocaust for their own murderous ends.
He could have told the audience: “It’s happening again. And we promised Never Again. To my people. Return the hostages!”
Instead, the director exposed himself as a clown.
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At its core is a simple message: Jews don’t belong anywhere. At least not on earth.
Matthew Schultz
(Jewish Journal via JNS)
At a protest in London, scrawled on a small piece of cardboard and written with fewer words than a haiku, a masterpiece of antisemitism was lifted on high.
“The only place you’re indigenous to is Jahannam!”
Turn it and turn it, as Ben Bag-Bag said of the Torah, for everything is in it. The idea that Jews belong in “Jahannam,” or “hell” in Arabic, is part of the venerable tradition of religious antisemitism, whether Christian or Islamist, while the reference to indigeneity is a nod to left-wing university-style antisemitism.
At its core is a simple message: Jews don’t belong anywhere. At least not on earth.
And since we don’t have a natural, authentic connection to any place in particular, it’s perfectly justified to try and expel us from every place in general. Before the Holocaust, it was common for German Jews to be told to go back to where they came from. Today, after being slaughtered in Europe and chased out of the Middle East and Africa, we are still being told to go back to where we came from, but now they say it was Europe all along.
Like the myth of the Wandering Jew, who was cursed for taunting Jesus on the cross, our foot can find no rest as we drag ourselves over the horizon. We are conceived of as unwanted guests at best, dangerous infiltrators at worst.
Just as we have no true home, so too we have no true culture or history. Just last May, in a speech to the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asserted that there never was a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
“They dug under al-Aqsa…they dug everywhere, and they could not find anything,” he said. “They lie and lie, just like Goebbels.”
In this reimagined ancient Levant scrubbed clean of Jews, Jesus is recast as a Palestinian. Even Tel Aviv—the first Hebrew city—is given a fabricated Palestinian pedigree. In a video uploaded to YouTube by “The Ask Project,” a young Palestinian woman is asked if she believes Jews have a right to live anywhere in the land. She shakes her head.
“What about Tel Aviv?” the interviewer asks.
“There is no Tel Aviv,” she responds with a laugh. “It’s Tel Arabiya.”
Most virulent of all is the charge that Israeli cuisine is stolen from Palestinians—a claim which has gained major traction among American leftists because of its consonance with Western ideas about cultural appropriation.
Hence, Israeli restaurants in the United States have been targeted by protesters not only for their ties to Israel, but also for being culture thieves. In one widely shared video, a woman tears down an Israeli flag from a New York restaurant called “Hummus Kitchen” while shouting that hummus “isn’t even Israeli.”
“There is no such thing as Israeli cuisine,” writes one user on X. “It’s all stolen/appropriated from Palestine/Egypt/Lebanon/
Note that these countries are all places where Jews have lived for centuries. If Jews don’t live there today, it’s because they were aggressively expelled from those regions. Many of them resettled in Israel, and naturally they took their recipes with them. Had this X user done his research, he would have realized this.
Similarly, had our protester done her research, she would have learned that “Jahannam” is an Arabization of a Hebrew word found in the Torah. “Gei-Hinnom” originally referred to an area in Jerusalem. Today it is a beautiful place just outside the Old City, and for a single year I had the great privilege of seeing it each day when I looked out of my bedroom window.
In the ancient world, it wasn’t so scenic. It was a place of ill-repute. “Gei-Hinnom” thus became a watchword for all that was bad in the world, and by the time Jesus was preaching, the word had come to signify a supernatural netherworld instead of a bad neighborhood. This concept of hell was then adopted by Islam as “Jahannam.”
There is thus a profound irony in our protester’s sign. The very words she uses to try and sever the Jewish connection with the land conceal an etymological link to our ancient presence in Jerusalem. In her effort to call us thieves, she utilizes an Islamic concept which turns out to be derived from the Torah.
This isn’t so unusual. Those most eager to erase Jewish history are those who have been most profoundly shaped by it. For most of history, it was primarily Christians who—having built their religion and society on Hebraic foundations—scorned and abused Jews, claiming the Holy Land as their own and dubbing themselves the new children of Israel. Today these ideas are pushed by Palestinian leadership and activists.
Which is to say that the erasure of Jewish history, culture and connection to the land is best understood as an act of projection.
Hence those whose mosque sits on the site of an ancient Jewish Temple accuse the Jews of being foreign colonizers with no historical connection to the land.
Those whose sacred book is filled with stories and ideas taken directly from the Hebrew Bible accuse the Jews of stealing their falafel.
Increasingly, this campaign of erasure is winning hearts and minds in America and Europe. They believe that Jews have no culture, no history, and most importantly, no place where we belong.
Nowhere except “Jahannam.”
Luckily for us, we know where that really is.
Jerusalem.
Aka Zion.
Originally published by The Jewish Journal.
Image: View of a rope bridge crossing from the Ben Hinnom valley to Mount Zion, in the Old city of Jerusalem, on July 30, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.
Elijah teaches us a lesson for every generation, including our own.
RABBI YOSSY GOLDMAN
Rabbi Yossy Goldman is Life Rabbi Emeritus of Sydenham Shul in Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association. He is the author of From Where I Stand, on the weekly Torah readings, available from Ktav.com and Amazon.
This week we will have the unusual opportunity of marking the leap day of Feb. 29. But Jews, who are characteristically generous, don’t have just a leap day. We have a whole extra month.
With a full 13th month of Adar II, the Haftarah read in shul this week will be a well-known biblical story from the First Book of Kings, which is not usually read in an ordinary calendar year. It is the famous story of Elijah the prophet, and his fight against the idolatrous King Ahab and his heathen wife Queen Jezebel, who actively promoted paganism in the Holy Land and had many of the Hebrew prophets put to death.
The Israelites were wavering between the worship of Baal and the worship of the true God of Israel. Elijah decides that dramatic action is needed to bring his people back from idolatry and confusion to monotheism and faith in the one God. He challenges Ahab to a duel, not with Colt .45s, but with prayer.
The 450 prophets of the idol Baal and Elijah—the one prophet of the one God of Israel—ascended Mount Carmel. Each side was to prepare an animal offering on an altar and pray to their deity. The one whose offering would be consumed by a fire from heaven would have proven the authenticity of their God.
“Give us two bulls and let them [the prophets of Baal] choose one bull for themselves and cut it up and place it on the wood, but fire they shall not put; and I will prepare one bull, and I will put it on the wood, and fire will I not place. And you will call out in the name of your deity, and I will call out in the name of the Lord, and it shall be that the one who will answer with fire, he is the true God.” (First Kings 18:20-39)
The prophets of Baal agreed to the challenge and many thousands gathered on the mountain to watch the dramatic showdown. This would be the final faceoff to determine who was the one true God.
The prophets of Baal went first. Naturally, their prayers and entreaties went unanswered. Elijah even taunted them: “Perhaps your god is sleeping or on a journey. Pray more loudly, perhaps he doesn’t hear you.” Of course, despite all their prayers, incantations and shenanigans, there was no reply from above.
As evening approached, Elijah took center stage. He built an altar, placed the animal upon it, poured water all around the altar and offered a short but powerful prayer: “Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. Let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant, and at Your word have I done all these things. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, and this people shall know that You are the Lord God.”
As Elijah finished his prayer, a fire descended from heaven and consumed his offering: “And all the people saw and fell on their faces, and they said, “The Lord is God, the Lord is God.”
It is with these very words that, to this day, we conclude the sacred Neilah prayer at the end of every Yom Kippur.
This is a powerful, inspirational story. Just as it demonstrated to the Jews of that generation that the one God alone is worthy of our worship, so does its stirring message speak to us today.
But I am not here to marvel at God’s miracles. To God, miracles are nothing special, just an everyday routine matter. To me, the bigger and more moving miracle is how one mortal man of flesh and blood stood up to the most powerful ruler in the land. Ahab was the king and had an army at his beck and call. Elijah was one lone voice in the wilderness. He had been persecuted, was on the run and almost all his righteous compatriots had been murdered by the king and queen’s forces. Still, he spoke truth to power.
It would have been so much simpler and easier for Elijah to change his tune and go along with the popular thinking of the time. No doubt there were plenty of Jews who must have told him, “Don’t be such a fanatic. Why are you so rigid and inflexible? So what if they dabble a bit with Baal? Everyone is doing it these days. If you cooperate with the king, you may even become the chief prophet of the land!”
But Elijah remained faithful to his beliefs and stuck to his principles. In the end, his prayer was answered, the miracle happened, and he was able to inspire and turn his entire nation back to God.
So, to my mind, bigger than a fire coming down from heaven is the miracle of Elijah’s faith, fortitude, strength of character and courage of his convictions.
Today, the prophets of Baal are gone without a trace, but Elijah—Eliyahu Hanavi—has gone down in history as one of the greatest prophets of all time. He continues to be remembered at every bris and Pesach seder around the world, down through the generations. One dissenting opinion, one man of principle who took the long hard road, lives on forever.
Falsehood may be fashionable, but truth is timeless. Lies, like any fad, soon go out of fashion, but truth is eternal. Compromising principles for popularity works in the short term, but soon leaves us emptyhanded and chastened.
Elijah teaches us a lesson for every generation, including our own. No wonder we are told that Elijah will be the precursor to the ultimate Messenger of Peace who will herald the Messianic Age. He is the harbinger of Moshiach. Ultimately, principled living will bring peace much sooner than pandering to the whims of the moment, as popular as they may be.
We have seen the success of peace through strength. We also need peace through truth.
Image: “The Prophets of Baal Are Slaughtered” by Gustave Doré, 1866. Source: Wikimedia
There are more than 850 climate change startups in the country.
An initiative that encourages innovation to address the global climate crisis has awarded $1.3 million to Israeli tech startups, in the latest boost for the Start-Up Nation.
The funding offered by the Climate Solutions Prize Organization with the Tel Aviv-based Startup Nation Central was bestowed to Israeli early-stage startups developing innovative climate tech technologies.
“Channeling Israel’s ingenuity to tackle one of the biggest challenges of our times, the Climate Solutions Prize …aims to be a catalyst for climate tech innovation in both breakthrough research and the startup ecosystem,” said Jeff Hart, executive chair of the Climate Solutions Prize.
“It is vital that we mobilize and inspire the best efforts and best minds so that we can proudly leave a better world for future generations to come,” Hart continued.
The winners include BaTTeRi, which operates in the Electric Vehicle (EV) charging industry; Electriq, which works with hydrogen powder for auxiliary power applications and long-term storage; Envomed, which specializes in sustainable on-site waste treatment; Filo Systems, a data compression innovator; Nemo Nanomaterials, which provides industrially scalable nanotechnology solutions; TIGI, which provides turn-key renewable heat solutions to large heat users; and Biotic, which provides fully bio-based, fully biodegradable polymers (bioplastic) manufacturing processes.
“As a recognized leader in developing advanced solutions to global challenges, Israel is extremely well-positioned to take a central role in battling climate change and bringing solutions to the biggest shared challenge of our times,” said Startup Nation Central CEO Avi Hasson.
The Startup Track prizes include the premier flagship equity investment of $1 million from Capital Nature as well as a roadshow to Singapore from Temasek Foundation, an investment and incubation process with ESIL, and engagements with corporate business units from Continental, E.ON, Italgas and Takeda.
The news comes one month after a separate $1 million climate prize was awarded to three Israeli research projects seeking to solve global warming.
There are more than 850 climate change startups in Israel, according to Startup Nation Central, putting the nation among the global leaders in innovations on climate action.
Image: Israelis attend a rally calling for action against the climate change, at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, Dec. 20, 2020. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90.
