The convert to Orthodox Judaism told JNS about his new album, as well as the pressing need for better black and Jewish-American relations.
Dave Gordon
(JNS)
Antisemites projected “Glory to our martyrs” on George Washington University’s Gelman Library, some five blocks from the White House, on Oct. 24. Six weeks later, some worried that a Chabad GW-sponsored, pre-Chanukah Nissim Black concert at Kogan Plaza, adjacent to the library, would be canceled on Dec. 5.
“Not only did we not get shut down, there were so many different black students that came to this show,” Black, an American-Israeli rapper, told JNS. “They are eating latkes and having sufganiyot.” (The Jewish delicacies refer to potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts.)
Chabad GW lit a menorah on the same site where the antisemitic message had been projected, which afforded some 350 attendees a symbol of light overcoming darkness, according to the 37-year-old, a black convert who identifies as Chassidic.
One attendee—a non-Jewish black man with dreadlocks—approached Black at the concert and told him that the rapper’s message inspired him on a rough day. He gave Black a hug, the rapper recalled.
“That is what we are supposed to be doing with our music and what we could do with our music,” Black told JNS.
He thinks that more can be done to improve relations between black and Jewish Americans, especially amid rising Jew-hatred. He told JNS that relations between the two communities started to sour well before Hamas terrorists attacked Israel nearly four months ago and before Kanye West (“Ye”) increasingly issued antisemitic statements.
“A lot of this started to happen with the riots after George Floyd and the world going back to the Dark Ages three years ago,” Black told JNS. (A white Minneapolis police officer was convicted of murdering Floyd, 46, a black man, on May 25, 2000.)
“On Oct. 7, so many light bulbs went off for me. How do we get back to this place of where we were allies?” Black told JNS. He noted that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish lawyer Jack Greenberg and Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who spoke immediately before Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington, marched with King.
Why, Black asked JNS, isn’t an under-represented voice like his, as a black Jewish artist, so absent from news reports on Israel?
“I’ve seen Fox, CNN, the media, and I have not seen so many black Jews speaking. How come nobody has reached out to me and the community?” he said. “If that’s not an ace card against ‘white colonialism,’ I don’t know what is.”
Academic affectation
When he thinks about the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania who testified in a Dec. 5 House hearing that it would not necessarily violate their policies to call for the genocide of Jews, Black was struck by the double standard.
“If the same thing was being called for towards the genocide of black people, how well would that have gone over with the school?” he said. “There is no doubt about it.”
Not enough is being done to counter the blood libels that are proliferating to smear Jews and Israel, he added.
“To think that we are people who would even support or want the deaths of thousands of innocent people—that doesn’t even compute,” he said of Jews and Israel. “We understand that people die in war. But us as a whole, we are painted to be monsters. This is the opposite of what the Jewish people represent. That’s one of the things that needs to be projected more.”
Straight outta Seattle
Born in 1986 in Seattle, Damian Jamohl Black followed in the footsteps of his parents, who were hip-hop performers.
At the age of 13, he recorded his first song with a producer who went by the name “Vitamin D.” At the time, Black thought being surrounded by drugs, gangs and violence, in addition to police raids, was normal. When he was 19, his mother died from an overdose of pain medication.
Then under the name “D Black,” he released the album “The Cause and Effect” in 2007. Two years later, he released “Ali’yah” and began to receive wider attention both from fans and in the industry. The album performed well and was well-reviewed, and Black started getting invitations to perform at major music festivals.
After a religious journey that took him to other faith traditions, Black had a spiritual awakening and underwent an Orthodox Jewish conversion. He changed his name to Nissim (“miracles” in Hebrew), replacing his earlier musical themes of guns, drugs and violence with faith, identity and perseverance. He and his family live in Jerusalem.
“I started to realize, over the years, my responsibility to the world, and I think it came from understanding the Jewish responsibility to the world,” he told JNS. “As a Jew, we are called to be a light unto the nations.”
At press time, Black’s 2020 hit “Mothaland Bounce” had more than 5.2 million views on YouTube.
The internationally acclaimed artist is set to release an 18-track album, “Glory,” this spring. He told JNS that the new album will be an ode to God through soulful melodies, captivating lyrics and powerful production. Single titles include “Scream,” “Speed Dial,” “Better” and “Ayeh.”
“It’s really centered around faith and elevation,” he told JNS, describing the new music as “big black soul, black gospel, mixed with some very high energy pop-rock-type feel.”
Shalom Arush, a Breslov Chassidic rabbi in Israel, and other friends have encouraged Black to globalize his message rather than sticking to a Jewish niche. And so, he has heeded the call.
“I didn’t inherit an idea, or space, where I think my goal is to sit only in this quiet place and not influence or inspire the world,” he told JNS. “From the time I was a kid, this is what God has called me to do.”
“I feel like we all have a purpose, a reason why we are here,” he added. “My story, I hope, will show other people that sometimes you have to open yourself up into knowing what you don’t know.”
Episode 9
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In the latest episode of Israel Right Now, Lauren Isaacs takes us to Atlit near Haifa to explore Havat Ashanti (Shanti Farm), a special rescue sanctuary where animals are rehabilitated from war and abuse.
Learn how to donate or volunteer at Shanti Farm, and catch more of Lauren on BIPACT News.
Lauren Isaacs is a Canadian-Israeli who made Aliyah at the age of 23. Lauren has worked in the Israel advocacy field for many years as a public speaker and Zionist activist for Hasbara Fellowships and Herut Canada, and is now a licensed Israeli tour guide. She currently lives in Jerusalem and loves traveling all over the Holy Land! Her tourism website is www.israelwithlauren.com
A 16-year-old alleges that his New Jersey high school retaliated against him after he reported antisemitic threats.
David Swindle
(JNS)
A Jewish student alleges that administrators at his Cherry Hill, N.J. public high school retaliated against him after he reported multiple instances of antisemitic bullying and threats.
Levi Bolotina, 16, and his family have appealed his suspension from Cherry Hill High School East, which U.S. News & World Report ranks No. 1,651 in its national high school rankings, No. 77 in New Jersey and No. 41 in the metropolitan Philadelphia area.
Bolotina told JNS that a group of fellow students, clad in keffiyehs, threatened him on Oct. 12 at around 8:30 a.m. “They planned on attacking me because I had been posting videos of them wearing the garment, and the videos went viral,” he said. “I reported this to the school.”
School administrators put Bolotina in a room for two hours, he told JNS. He further alleges that while he was confined, Dennis Perry and Aaron Edwards—principal and assistant principal, respectively—“antagonized me, saying: ‘You have made yourself a target for people inside the school as well as people outside the district.’” (JNS sought comment from Perry and did not hear back.)
When released, Bolotina says the same group of students that had threatened him followed him to the cafeteria.
“Almost a minute after I sat down, [these] students had cornered me around my lunch table, making sort of an intimidating barrier. They started to threaten me to my face. Honestly, I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying to me because I was now in fight-or-flight mode,” he told JNS, adding that he felt “intimidated and in danger.”
His friends pulled him away while two others placed themselves between him and the other group. “My friends that made the barrier were now receiving jabs from the attackers,” he said. “I was escorted to yet another room … where the principal told me I had brought this upon myself. I was kicked out for the day and later suspended for a week on the grounds of incitement.”
Since those incidents, Bolotina told JNS that he has been threatened in school bathrooms and that he is unaware of any action taken against the menacing students.
‘Make Jewish students feel safe’
Bolotina also shared with JNS a statement he made during a Dec. 19 closed session of the Cherry Hill Public Schools Board of Education.
After Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, students “showed up wearing Palestinian keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags” and yelling “free Palestine” at Jewish students at the school, he told the board.
He added that he met with Perry and “implored him to take action, to make Jewish students feel safe.” To date, says the teen, he has seen no action taken.
To prove how his antisemitic classmates had acted, Bolotina filmed two videos of different groups of students and uploaded them to social media, he told the board.
“Senior school officials began to blame me for the growing discord at school, both to my face and publicly [if not by name],” he told the board. “I was being scapegoated by school officials, rather than them taking responsibility for their lack of leadership.”
He further alleged to the board that Edwards, the assistant principal, took him into his office to protect him from physical threats. Perry then “stormed in” and blamed him for the events, Bolotina alleged.
“He said, ‘Levi, if you post any more videos, you’re out of here,’” he told the board.
“So I agreed not to post any more videos,” the teen stated.
He told the board: “Incredibly, my attackers were suspended for less days. The principal told me I had brought this upon myself. I was kicked out for the day and later suspended for a week on the grounds of incitement.” (He didn’t say how long the others were suspended or how he knew what their punishment was.)
“Would the district tolerate such hate against any other minority?” he asked the board.
After Bolotina’s suspension, Muslim students told him in a school bathroom that “it’s not safe for Jews here,” Bolotina told the board.
“We can only conclude that Jew-hatred is tolerated by Cherry Hill Schools,” Bolotina said to them. “That Jews are second-class citizens here.”
He added that the students who threatened him weren’t suspended and that witnesses to the threats in the bathroom, whose names he provided to the Cherry Hill Police Department, reported that police officers never questioned them. (Thomas Leone, a lieutenant and investigative unit commander, said that the department cannot comment on juvenile investigations and referred questions to the school and education board.)
Bolotina added that Perry turned down an opinion article he wrote for his journalism class about the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. The principal told him that he would have to include both sides of the issue in an op-ed, Bolotina alleged.
The Cherry Hill area includes a population of about 11,000 Jews with seven synagogues and 11 kosher restaurants.
The Breakthrough Climate Solutions Prize is said to be the largest incentive prize in the history of the Jewish state.
(JNS)
During a ceremony in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, JNF-Canada, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund and Startup Nation Central awarded their $1 million Breakthrough Climate Solutions Prize (CSP) to three Israeli projects seeking to solve the issue of global warming.
The award, said to be the largest incentive prize in the history of the Jewish state, is an initiative designed to “encourage and support groundbreaking research and development for climate solutions which will minimize greenhouse gas emissions,” the organizations said.
The award winners included Profs. Shanny Barath and Yechezkel Kashin from the Technion–Israel Institute for their CyanoCementation project, Prof. Brian Rosen from Tel Aviv University for his research into green ammonia as a clean fuel source, and Prof. Menny Shalom from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, who developed rechargeable Zinc Air Batteries.
Dr. Doron Markel, KKL-JNF’s chief scientist, oversaw the award’s selection process, which was led by top academic experts in relevant fields.
The winners “have the potential to significantly impact the reduction of carbon concentration in the atmosphere, either by enhancing the shift to renewable energies—hence reducing greenhouse gas emissions—or by carbon fixation, either through natural process or artificial one,” Markel said.
“Over the past few months, we received tens of submissions from Israel’s top research institutions that vied to be recognized by The Breakthrough Climate Solutions Prize presented by JNF-Canada in collaboration with our partners – KKL-JNF and Start-Up Nation Central,” stated Jeff Hart, the executive chair of the Climate Solutions Prize.
“Once again, we have been inspired by the vision and ingenuity of the Israeli scientific community and the remarkable innovations in various Climate Tech fields, and we congratulate our three winners for their exceptional vision,” Hart added.
According to Startup Nation Central, there are more than 850 climate change startups in Israel, allowing the nation to contribute to the global conversation on climate action.
Image: Climate-change partnership. Credit: Pixabay.
Professor Avinoam Patt said this is “a critical moment in history where serious scholarship and education can make a difference.”
(JNS)
New York University launched a brand-new Center for the Study of Antisemitism in November after receiving two $1 million gifts, the most recent one anonymously. Now it has named professor Avinoam Patt as its director.
He has also been named the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies in NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.
Patt said that he was grateful for the opportunity and “humbled by the trust President Mills and NYU have placed in me to serve as inaugural director. I look forward to working with colleagues at NYU and beyond to begin this vital project in order to expand the impact that we can make locally, nationally, and indeed, globally.”
He has written or edited multiple books on antisemitism and the Holocaust, including Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust; We Are Here: New Approaches to the Study of Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany; and Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust.
NYU has seen its share of antisemitic activities and rhetoric.
Just days after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, Ryna Workman issued a statement as president of the Student Bar Association at New York University School of Law expressing “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination.”
“Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life,” wrote Workman. “This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary.”
Jewish Trauma & Mental Health, Part 1:
The Macro-Gaslighting of Global Jewry After 10/7
As Jewish TV Channel launches Part I of our Jewish Trauma & Mental Health Series, Laura Kessler sits down with 9/11 veteran trauma expert and Kesher Shalom co-founder Malka Shaw, LCSW to discuss the ongoing global mental health crisis affecting the Jewish community in Israel and the diaspora.
Kesher Shalom has trained thousands of professionals to manage the epic proportion of Jewish trauma since the Hamas massacre, and offers CEU credits to psychotherapists of all faiths who want to better understand the Jewish trauma experience, both historically and after 10/7 specifically.
DARVO, macro-gaslighting and collective scapegoating are discussed on a clinical and sociological level with a psychotherapist who is an expert among experts in the field of trauma, including Jewish trauma. Resources are provided with guided meditations for stress and worry.
Malka Shaw is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the State of New Jersey, New York, and Florida. She has been in the field of mental health for over 25 years. As an expert on trauma, her private practice works with individuals and couples while specializing in women’s issues such as maternal wellness, anxiety, depression, trauma recovery, EMDR and support during life transitions.
Malka’s journey as a trauma therapist began working with NYANA’s domestic violence program, and then the front lines of 9/11, working with the Red Cross and FEMA during the ensuing weeks after the tragic event, helping to clinically debrief the police, firefighters, and the essential workers. She then went on to become an essential critical debriefer for many other large scale traumatic incidents.
In response to the events of October 7th and the ongoing situation, Malka Shaw, LCSW and Stacey Shapiro, LCSW, co-founded the Kesher Shalom Project, which seeks to foster healing, resilience, and understanding within the diverse Jewish community and beyond through education around mental health, support, and advocacy.
Obtain a free copy of the 15 Easy Habits that Support Your Mental Health checklist, and free access to the audio guide: Guided Meditations for Stress and Worry.
https://www.keshershalom.com/newsletter
Thane Rosenbaum reacts to the brazenly hypocritical genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice in the latest episode of What Others Won’t Say.
With Senior Political & Cultural Analyst Thane Rosenbaum
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We welcome Community Volunteers, Interns, Sponsors and Donors of all ages and levels of contribution who want to join the fight against antisemitism and Anti-Zionism.
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If a school’s leadership cannot bring themselves to genuinely condemn terrorism without context, then they lack a basic requirement for their jobs.
Moshe Phillips
(JNS)
The fact that Ivy League administrators have allowed anti-Israel extremism to infest their campuses has been widely condemned. There have also been news reports of anti-Semitic violence committed by pro-Hamas radicals at college campuses, and even in public schools. However, at the same time, very little information is being revealed about the lies being told about Israel at America’s elite private primary and secondary schools.
A prime example of the types of issues Jewish students at private schools are facing would have to include the William Penn Charter School (PC) in Philadelphia. PC is not just any elite school. In many ways, it is the elite school. Founded in 1689, it is the world’s oldest Quaker school and the nation’s fifth-oldest elementary school. Despite being Quaker, it has a large Jewish student body.
From its very first communication three days after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel to their school community, PC engaged in blatant obfuscation and both-sides-ism. “War is never justified” and moral equivalency messages received an immediate backlash and condemnation from many Jewish students and parents. The result was that the very next day, on Oct. 11, PC followed up their first, failed memo with an attempt to acknowledge their wrongheaded approach. “We are writing to acknowledge that the message we sent yesterday related to the terrorist attacks in Israel this weekend did not articulate Penn Charter’s position … we heard that our Jewish families feel unheard and unseen; we heard that our message failed to condemn evil and suggested a moral equivalency … Penn Charter unequivocally condemns all terrorism. The heinous acts committed by the terrorist group Hamas … are an outrage, and we are personally heartbroken … .” It was quickly apparent that the apology was simply an attempt to stifle criticism and not a sign that real care would be taken to call out anti-Zionism and terrorism for the evils that they are.
More than a month after the failed apology and lack of personal response from the administration to Jewish parents, Penn Charter’s administration realized that due to the rising tension on campus, it had to turn to outside assistance to help educate staff and students. And so it selected a highly partisan organization called Interfaith Philadelphia.
Interfaith has a history of employing radicals, as well as closely partnering with organizations with long anti-Israel records. One of its top staffers was previously a leader of the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). Critics of CAIR have long accused it of maintaining close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Another Interfaith Philadelphia staffer received her education at the Women’s Islamic Theological Seminary (Jami’at al-Zahra) in Qum, Iran.
It is also worth noting that notorious Israel-hater Marc Lamont Hill has had a close relationship with PC.
Immediately preceding the start of Chanukah, Interfaith Philadelphia sent two presenters to PC to speak: one said he “identified” as a Muslim, who spoke about Islamophobia; and the other said she “identified” as a Jew.
The assembly with Interfaith Philadelphia at PC was a mandatory program for Upper School students. Similar to the lack of morality displayed by University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill in front of Congress on Dec. 5, the Interfaith Philadelphia presenters reportedly refused to condemn the Hamas attackers and their atrocities. The presenters also reportedly stated that the widely condemned protests in front of a kosher-certified restaurant in Philadelphia called Goldie was deserved because the owner is Israeli and contributes financially to the Israel Defense Forces.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, visited the restaurant in the immediate aftermath of the protest and stated: “People have a right to peacefully protest a difference of policy in the Middle East or in Israel. They don’t have a right to come and protest a restaurant simply because it’s owned by a Jew and hold that Jew responsible for Israeli policy. That is the definition of antisemitism.” Both of Pennsylvania’s senators—Bob Casey and John Fetterman—also condemned the protests.
About the chant “From the River to the Sea: Palestine will be Free,” the Interfaith Philadelphia presenters told the students and staff that the rallying cry is actually simply a call for freedom. Marc Lamont Hill has similarly defended his use of the chant.
What makes all of this worse is that the PC administration in an official communication after the shameful program congratulated themselves for working to “educate” students and staff.
We know that PC learned nothing because of a memo issued by school administrators after the Interfaith Philadelphia-led assembly. The memo claimed that the presenters—the ones who refused to condemn the Oct. 7 attacks—“modeled how to engage in respectful, honest and constructive discourse on complex and challenging topics despite having different perspectives.”
There are no “perspectives” when it comes to facts, just like with Magill’s congressional testimony that there is no “context” when it comes to calling for the genocide of Jews. It is a cornerstone of American education that facts matter. But PC’s administrators seem to think that there is something “complex” about the Hamas attacks. There is nothing “challenging” about teaching American youth about terrorism: It is wrong, always. The Hamas attacks were evil, unprovoked and wrong. When one confronts evil, not only is there no need to be “respectful”; what is needed is truth and morality. If a school’s leadership cannot bring themselves to genuinely condemn terrorism without context, then they lack a basic and mandatory requirement for their jobs. If the school cannot bring itself to replace leadership like this, it has no reason to run.
In its war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel is engaged in self-defense for its very existence. Israel has both the moral right and the duty to engage in self-defense. America’s Founding Fathers always considered self-defense a virtue. Right in Philadelphia, where PC is located, the Constitution was written with the words “provide for the common defense” in its very first sentence. Would the leadership of PC have Israel lay down its guns and allow Hamas to commit worse attacks in the future? On Nov. 30, Yahya Sinwar, a senior leader of Hamas, said that “the leaders of the occupation should know, Oct. 7 was just a rehearsal.”
For American educators, the choice is clear: Support one side or the other. In 2023, far too many educators earned failing grades. This year, they will have the opportunity to get back on the right track and course-correct. Let’s hope that they do just that.
Image: The William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
