Monthly Archives: February 2022

CORFU, Greece The door of the Scuola Greca synagogue on the island of Corfu is painted emerald green with two Stars of David in the middle. When you push it open, the hallway leads to a low-ceilinged space where painful memories rest between the bricks: portraits of the islands Jewish Holocaust survivors adorn the walls.

By Yannick Pasquet

The interior of the Scuola Greca synagogue on Corfu.

One photograph is of Rebecca Aaron, sitting on a large armchair with a patched armrest, in a blue gown whose sleeve does not quite cover the faded ink on her arm from her time in Auschwitz. Aaron was the last of some 50 Holocaust survivors who returned to Corfu after the war; the islands daily newspaper, Enimerosi Greek for Information said her 2018 death concluded the most tragic chapter of Corfus modern history.

Two thousand Jews lived here before the Holocaust today there are only 60 of us left, Zinos Vellelis, a former clothing-shop owner and former president of the tiny community, told me at the beginning of our long interview. I got married here in 1993, he said, referring to the Scuola Greca synagogue. Since then, only three weddings were held.

I am a French journalist who has worked for the past 20 years in Germany and Greece. Ive spent many summers on Corfu, a jewel on the Ionian Sea with green olive trees, cobblestone streets and about 100,000 residents that is the setting for the British TV series, The Durrells in Corfu. After walking past the synagogue many times, I wandered inside one day in 2015, shortly after the terror attack that killed four people in a kosher supermarket in Paris.

Inside, I found an old man, who shared his fear of starting over. He told me how nearly all of the islands Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust. When you live in Berlin like I do, you are obsessed with the history of the Holocaust, so I set out to understand the history of this small community.

It turns out that Jews have lived here among the Greek Orthodox Christians for more than 800 years. During the Venetian period, between 1386 and 1797, Romaniote Jews those who spoke Greek lived in a ghetto alongside Jews who had been expelled from Spain or Italy. To this day, inhabitants of Corfu refer to the neighborhood as Evraki or Ovraki, which mean Jewish in, respectively, mainstream Greek and the dialect spoken on the island.

Scoula Greca, which was built in the 17th century, is made of yellow stucco and Venetian in style, with the sanctuary on the second floor. It is the only one of the ghettos four synagogues that has survived time. Next to it are the overgrown ruins of the Talmud Torah, which was damaged by bombs during World War II.

There are no rabbis on the island anymore. One from Athens comes for the high holidays and Passover, or to officiate at any major event. We cannot provide a synagogue service on Saturday, Vellelis said.

Vellelis, 68, paged through a book detailing the history of the Jews of Thessaloniki, a port city on the other side of the country that was sometimes called the Jerusalem of the Balkans. There were 56,000 Jews there before World War II; 1,950 after. Here in Corfu, the book says, 2,000 were deported to concentration camps, 187 survived.

Vellelis, himself the son of two of those survivors, recited the wretched figures in a sorrowful tone. On my mothers side, nine people were deported and only two survived, he told me. On my fathers side, nine people were also deported and three came back.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington estimates that Greece lost at least 81% of its 60,000-70,000 Jews during the Holocaust, most of them exterminated at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Germans occupied Corfu in September 1943. On June 9, 1944 only four months before the Nazi withdrawal from Greece all islands Jewish inhabitants were systematically ordered to meet in the Kato Platia, the main square of the old town, before being taken to the old Venetian fortress nearby.

The German historian Diana Siebert, in a book on Corfus history, says that about 1,800 Jewish men, women and children were transported on three boats to Athens between June 11 and 15. From Athens, they were taken by train to Auschwitz.

Some unknown number of Corfus Jews escaped this fate by being hidden by non-Jewish villagers on the island.

The French director Claude Lanzmann devoted a part of his 1985 documentary Shoah to the tragedy of the Jews of Corfu. Among those interviewed were Rebecca Aarons husband, Armando, who was also a longtime leader of the community before his death in 1988.

We arrived in Auschwitz on 29 June, Armando Aaron testified in the film. Most of us were gassed during the night. According to the archives at Auschwitz, 446 men and 175 women, slightly more than a third of the total, instead were sent to the camps for forced labor.

At the end of the war, Vellelis told me, most of the survivors from Corfu went to Israel. Among them were his own father, he explained, but British soldiers at the Haifa port turned the boat back, and about 50 survivors from Corfu returned home.

My father was married to my mothers sister, but she died in Auschwitz, Vellelis noted. He remarried my mother after that.

The main person responsible for the deportation of Corfus Jews was Anton Burger, who managed to escape justice after the war. He was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Peoples Court in what is now the Czech Republic, but escaped from detention before the scheduled execution. He was arrested again and escaped again and survived under false identities until his death in 1991.

Many of the Jews in Corfu today are children of survivors, said Lino Sousi, 73, a retired civil engineer and another former chairman of the Jewish community. My mother was sent to Auschwitz with 35 members of her family. Only she and her three sisters survived.

Sousi said his mother never spoke about her Holocaust experience. My aunt told us about her ordeal, but we didnt ask many questions, he said. Children and all those innocent people were murdered. Why? I still look for answers until this day without any luck.

For the thousands of tourists who visit each summer, the history of Corfus Jews remains largely unknown.

To keep the memory alive of those who survived the Nazi occupation, Vellelis has for decades kept the striped prisoners shirt his father wore in Auschwitz hung on the wall of his clothing shop in the former ghetto, just a few yards from Corfus synagogue.

The striped shirt became a conversation starter with tourists from all over the world, said Vellelis, who retired in 2019 after 50 years running the shop. It was one of those things that allowed me to share a common history with Jewish tourists from Brazil, Australia and everywhere else.

Not far from the store and the synagogue, there is a small memorial in a sunny square in the old town, where Corfus Jews were deported to their deaths. The bronze statue was placed in 2001 and shows a frightened couple with their son and a baby in his mothers arms, all nude.

Never again for any nation, it reads.

By Yannick Pasquet

A memorial to the Corfu Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.

There are a few other subtle reminders of the islands Jewish history for those who care to look as they walk through the alleys decorated with large flower pots on windowsills and colorful clothing hanging outside to dry. Albert Cohen Street honors the Swiss writer who was born on the island in 1895. There is also the street of the Jewish victims of Nazism, a narrow lane off the towns main pedestrian walkway that connects to the old ghetto.

The islands 60 current Jewish residents remain close to one another and try to keep the Jewish spirit alive in the heart of this intimate island, even as the younger generation leaves Corfu to study abroad.

And its not only the islands relative handful of Jews who are holding onto the communitys history.

Inside another tiny clothing shop, a few steps from the synagogue, Giorgos Agiotatos keeps boxes of old photographs behind the cash register of his shop.

These photos portray moments of childhood, adolescence, celebrations, house parties, and memories of a time when the Jewish community was much larger. One of the faded images shows Velleliss parents in the 1960s, at a summer party.

I grew up with Holocaust survivors and their children, Agiotatos told me when I visited. They are my friends and family and their agony is mine as well.

He keeps two Israeli flags in the shop as well, one by the box of the photos, the other behind it on a shelf. They are daily reminders that Corfu is a part of Jewish history.

Yannick Pasquet is a journalist for the Agence France-Presse (AFP) who lives mainly in Berlin and has spent many summers on the island of Corfu.

Originally posted here:

How the few Jews left on the Greek island of Corfu hold onto their history - Forward

You may have seen friends posting on social media with what seems like a secret code. A series of numbers followed by gray, yellow, and green boxes. They are part of a game called Wordle which has become an internet sensation over the past few weeks. The internet based game gives players six chances to guess a five letter word, giving clues after each attempt letting the player know if a letter and its placement in the word are correct. Every player gets the same word and resets every 24 hours meaning that you can only play it once a day and spoilers (and sometimes even hints) are strongly discouraged. There are conversations across platforms about strategies and which word to use first to get the maximum amount of most commonly used letters. If you think Wordle is fun, but not challenging or entertaining enough, you can try the many variations that have popped up including ones that use Harry Potter themed words, a dual board where you guess two words at once, and even one only using four-letter (yes those kinds of four-letter) words.

Theres a Yiddish version, of course, and theres also Jewdle, which gives you a word associated somehow with Judaism and once youve either gotten it right or run out of guesses it teaches you about the term! My favorite of the variations is the Hebrew Wordle (although I do get frustrated when it gives me a Hebrew word thats actually based on an English one, for example one day it was sauna, samech-alef-vav-nun-hey). I enjoy testing my Hebrew vocabulary and taking shorashim (root letters) turning them into nouns and building them into various binyanim structures that change the meaning of a verb. This strategy doesnt usually work, but it keeps my conjugation skills fresh and I often get to learn a new word.

This whole experience of the Wordle craze, I think, teaches us some important lessons in Jewish value. First, its good for your brain! The rabbis of the Talmud are constantly trying to stretch their brains with wordplay, to keep their minds agile and fresh with Torah verses.

Though you can play Wordle all by yourself and never share your results or talk about the word of the day, really its best experienced with community, just like Judaism. Everyone across the world gets the same Wordle word of the day and also each week we all read the same parsha (except every once in a while when Israel and the diaspora are one week off). When it comes to our weekly parsha, we learn the same stories and share lessons based on Gods words that have been taught for centuries. We are creating a knesset Yisrael, a worldwide connected community of Israel by studying the parsha in tandem. The same goes for almost any Jewish ritual lighting Shabbat candles, putting on tefillin, celebrating Passover, or singing the Shema. They can all be done alone technically, but are so much more powerful and meaningful when you know there are others doing it with you.

Lastly, words are important. Choosing the wrong word could make your Wordle streak end and also end relationships, friendships, and break trust. Or on the other hand, God created the world with words, meaning we can do the same. We can build up someones confidence, create new bonds, and have new experiences. With words, we make blessings, bring holiness into the world marking a transition from a mundane moment to a holy one.

Do we sometimes miss the mark, being so close just one green square away? Absolutely, we sometimes say the wrong thing, we realize after the fact what we could have said instead. We learn the correct words, to be more articulate, sensitive, welcoming, logical. And then we get the opportunity to try again tomorrow to find the words, to connect with community, to keep ourselves on top of our game.

Rabbinically Speaking is published as a public service by the Jewish Press in cooperation with the Tampa Rabbinical Association which assigns the column on a rotating basis. The views expressed in the column are those of the rabbi and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Jewish Press or the TRA.

Read more here:

The power of Word(le) - jewishpresstampa

Russia and the United States (with NATO behind it) are eyeball to eyeball, and the world waits to see whether Vladimir Putin blinks, to borrow from Dean Rusks comment regarding the Soviet Union from 60 years ago, or whether he orders his military to invade Ukraine (which, as of this writing, he had not).

Tensions are running high throughout the world because of it.

War, though, is a constant presence these days because of the many ongoing global conflictsin Libya, Syria, the Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, in various South American countries in one form or another, and even in Ukraine itself, among many others. Ever since Russia illegally seized Crimea in 2014, separatists in Ukraines southeast have been waging war with the regime in Kyiv, often with the help of regular Russian army units.

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History argues that wars are inevitable. All too often, though, God is used as the excuse for those wars. That was the rationale behind the Muslim conquest that began in the 7th Century and the series of Christian crusades that followed beginning in the 11th.

God is often used today to justify conflicts in our world. We saw it in Bosnia in the early 1990s, where Christians waged war on Muslims. We see it today in such places as Nigeria, where Muslims wage war against Christians.

While it certainly can be argued that God approves of war, the evidence in Jewish law is that God in fact disapproves of war outside very limited situations.

Gods views on the sanctity of life are evident in the Torah from the very beginning. Because all humans are created in Gods image (see Genesis 1:26-27), to maim or kill a fellow human is to commit sacrilege against Gods very own likeness. God says as much to Noah after the Great Flood, as will be seen further down.

Clearly, God disapproves of gratuitous physical violence of any kind. When Cain kills Abel, Gods agony is clear (see Genesis 4). Nevertheless, God sets a protective mark upon Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him. In pre-Flood days, one life was not to be traded for another.

God even tries to keep the pre-Flood humans from killing animals for food. In Genesis 1:29, the First Human is told, I have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, on which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.

One verse later, God issues virtually the same command to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all that creep upon the earth, where there is life.

All life is sacred.

This changes after the Flood, but not because Gods had second thoughts.

In Genesis 9:1-6, God begins by conceding that humans now can eat meat, but only from a dead animal. Human behavior, it seems, had sunk so low that people did not wait to kill the animals to get their meat; they just ripped limbs right off (a practice that still happens in many non-kosher meat packing plants). Gods dispensation recognizes that human nature is baser than God hoped, and that the only way to prevent such bestial behavior by humans on animals requires making some concessions and setting new rules.

Next comes the equating of human life and animal life. Yes, God says, you can eat meat, but your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it. To make the point that taking animal life qualifies for life-for-a-life treatment, this is immediately followed by Whoever sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed. The positioning of these two statements makes clear that if man wants to be a meat-eater, the animal kingdom has the right to become blood-avengers, just as a man may become a blood-avenger for his beloved dead (although God is not keen on blood-avenging).

This message is brought home in Leviticus 17:3-4, where we are told that a person who kills an animal for food without some kind of sacred justification, blood shall be imputed to that man; he has shed blood. In the immediate case, that sacred justification required that the animal be killed within the precincts of the Tabernacle, presumably as a sacrifice of some kind. The late 19th century founder biblical commentator Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch put it bluntly in commenting on those verses. Killing an animal for no sacred purpose is to be taken as murder.

If to all this we add the laws God makes prohibiting murder, severely restricting the taking of human life in general and otherwise protecting the sanctity and dignity of human beings, there should be no doubt where God stands.

On the other hand, God never issued a blanket ban on killing. God never said, Thou shalt not kill, that oft-quoted phrase that is nowhere to be found in the Torah. Murder is the word used in the commandment (see Exodus 20:13).

As God continues to set forth Israels laws in the Sefer Ha-brit, the Book of the Covenant, in the chapters that immediately follow the Ten Commandments, a distinction is made between murder and manslaughter (see Exodus 21:13). Then, in Exodus 22:1-2, God denotes a difference between justifiable homicide and cold-blooded murder.

While God does not like violence and bloodshed, God also is a realist. If someone is coming to kill you and killing that person is the only way to prevent being killed, that is justifiable homicide.

Gods pragmatism is evident in the commandment regarding an unbelievably cruel enemy, Amalek. As we are commanded in Deuteronomy 25:17-19, You shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Amaleks goal was our annihilation. War against Amalek also is justifiable homicide.

Time and again, God also tells us in the Torah that we will have to go to war against the seven Canaanite nations living in the Land of Israel. And, in Deuteronomy 20:1-18, God sets out some of the rules of war, and even promises to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. It is hard to make a case that God is anti-war given such a declaration. (It needs to be noted, though, that these wars against the Canaanite nations had no religious motivation attached. They made war on us, and we were commanded to fight back, or strike pre-emptively.)

Based on all that the Torah has to say (both pro-life and pro-war), Jewish law deduces the existence of two kinds of acceptable war: the obligatory war and the discretionary, yet divinely sanctioned, one. (Women, by the way, are required to fight alongside men in obligatory wars, according to the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sotah 44b.)

An unsanctioned discretionary war is obviously an illegal war. Davids war of conquest against Syria may be one such, because it was a discretionary war with no divine sanction. (See Sifre to Deuteronomy, Piska 51.) Any deaths that occur in such a war are considered to be outright murder.

The Talmud in BT Sotah 44b attempts to explain the two legitimate categories in this way: The wars waged by Joshua to conquer [Canaan] were obligatory, [while] the wars waged by the House of David for territorial expansion [that did have divine sanction] were discretionary.

Obviously, the eternal war against Amalek also is an obligatory war since it is mandated by the Torah. That would seem to shut down the possibility of obligatory wars in the current day, since neither the seven nations of Canaan nor Amalek exist any longer. Maimonides, however, includes as obligatory a war waged to fend off an attacking army (see Mishneh Torah, The Laws of Kings and Their Wars, 5:1). Elsewhere, he refers to the defensive war as a commanded one, perhaps in an effort to distinguish it from an obligatory war. Ostensibly, he bases this on Numbers 10:9, which recognizes the need to go to war in your land against an enemy who oppresses you. Others have argued, however, that obligatory and commanded are synonymous where war is concerned.

Pre-emptive strikes against an enemy who poses a credible and somewhat immediate threat fall under Maimonidess definition of a defensive war.

If Putin invades Ukraine, that war clearly falls under the category of an illegal war, just as Davids war against Syria was illegal.

As for God wanting wars waged for religious reasonsin order to compel the people being attacked to convert or dieGod never said any such thing. In fact, when Moses, speaking for God, warned Israel not to consider joining alien religions, he specifically said that those religions also were given by God (see Deuteronomy 4:19), so declaring war against those religions defies God. While it is true that the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus forcibly converted the Idumeans, that was an exceptionand one of which Judaism disapproved.

God reluctantly approves of war in very limited circumstances, but to use God as an excuse for making war is abject heresy.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is http://www.shammai.org.

Link:

Of God and war - The Jewish Standard

PODCAST Hello Rapids Fans! This week on Holding The High Line, its a new season, new intro, who dis? Rabbi and Red have Rapids CCL Fever. We react to the kit drop and that tweet congratulating the Los Angeles Rams. Also weve got a bunch of stickers you can just have if you message us a mailing address and how many you want.

The guys review the final preseason game, a 1-1 draw with Orlando City. Then we preview the first leg Round of 16 match with Comunicaciones FC. The show ends with an interview with Academy Technical Director Chris Cartlidge.

Heres the link to the armadillo trophy.

Holding The High Line is an independent soccer podcast focused on the Colorado Rapids of MLS and a member of the Beautiful Game Network. If you like the show, please consider subscribing to us on your preferred podcatcher, giving us a review, and tell other Rapids fans about us. It helps a ton. Visit bgn.fm for a bunch of other great podcasts covering soccer in North America.

We also have anewsletter. Visit ourSubstack pageto read our content and sign up for our newsletter via email.

Find us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Blubrry, and many other podcatchers. See the full list of podcatchers with subscription links here. For full transcripts of every episode, check out our AudioBurst page. Our artwork was produced by CR54 Designs. Juanners does our music.

We are brought to you by Ruffneck Scarves and Icarus FC. Ruffneckscarves.com is your one-stop-shop for official MLS, USL, and U.S. Soccer scarves as well as custom scarves for your group or rec league team. Icarusfc.com is the place to go for high-quality custom soccer kits for your team or group. With an any design you want, seriously motto, they are breaking the mold of boring, expensive, template kits from the big brands.

Have your team looking fly in 2022 like Andre Shinyashiki with bleached hair with custom scarves and kits from Ruffneck Scarves and Icarus FC.

HTHL is on Patreon. If you like what we do and want to give us money, head on over to our page and become a Patreon Member.

We have partnered up with the Denver Post to sustainably grow soccer journalism in Colorado. Listeners can get a three month trial of the Denver Post digital for 99/month. Go to denverpost.com/hthl to sign up. This will give you unlimited and full access to all of the Posts online content and will support local coverage of the Rapids. Each month after the trial is $11.99/month. There is a sports-content-only option for $6.99/month.

Follow us on Twitter @rapids96podcast. You can also email the show at [emailprotected]. Follow our hosts individually on Twitter @LWOSMattPollard and @soccer_rabbi. Send us questions using the hashtag #AskHTHL.

Matt Pollard is the Site Manager for Last Word on Soccer and an engineer by day. A Colorado Convert, he started covering the Colorado Rapids as a credentialed member of the press in 2016, though hes watched MLS since 96. When hes not watching or writing about soccer, hes being an outdoorsman (mostly skiing and hiking) in this beautiful state or trying a new beer. For some reason, he thought that starting a podcast with Mark was a good idea and he cant figure out how to stop this madness. He also hosts Last Word SC Radio.

Mark Goodman, the artist formally known as Rapids Rabbi, moved to Colorado in 2011. Shortly thereafter he went to Dicks Sporting Goods Park, saw Lee Nguyen dribble a ball with the silky smoothness of liquid chocolate cascading into a Bar Mitzvah fountain, and promptly fell head over heels in love with domestic soccer. When not watching soccer or coaching his sons U-8 team, hes generally studying either Talmud or medieval biblical exegesis. Which explains why he watches so much MLS, probably. Having relocated to Pittsburgh in 2019, he covers the Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL for Pittsburgh Soccer Now.

Photo courtesy of Colorado Rapids.

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Rapids Podcast: CCL Fever, Chris Cartlidge Interview - Last Word on Baseball

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I caught up with Somerville writer Steven Beeber, author of Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs: A Secret History of Jewish Punk. This study of the intersection of Punk Rock and Jewish culture must make for a very interesting read. I dont know if any Punk Rock dirges have made it into a hymnal yet or can be interpreted through Talmudic Law but hey, as the Bard wrote, Ah, Sweet mystery of life.

Doug Holder: How has living in Somerville been for your writing life. Do you think it is a good place for creatives?

Steven Beeber.

Steven Beeber: Somerville is an excellent place to be a writer. Ive heard it said that there are more writers here per capita than anywhere else in the country. Im not sure thats true Im not a statistician but I do know that in a field that can often be lonely and isolating, that there is a genuine community here, which is so important. Its not Paris in the 20s, maybe, but the cafes are plentiful and the gatherings regular, so it isnt far off. Also, my wife and I both have writing sheds in our backyard, so thats yet another plus. On a more serious note, it should be said that the institutional support from the city itself is amazing. The Somerville Arts Council, among other institutions, is pivotal to providing not just support, but a forum in which writers can reach an audience.

DH: How in the world is Jewish culture reflected in, of all things, Punk Rock?

SB: Jewish culture, as opposed to Judaism the religion, is deeply embedded in Punk, especially the original version of Punk that came out of New York City. Needless to say, New York is home to many Jews, and this was especially true in the 1950s and 60s, the period during which the Punks came of age. The character of Jewish culture ironic, humorous, attuned to the injustices inflicted upon the marginalized is all but synonymous with Punk. Add to that a preoccupation with neurosis, anxiety, and, above all, Nazis, and you have all the ingredients to birth a new rock movement. Ultimately, I would say that Punk was a reaction to the Holocaust by the first generation that was raised in its aftermath.

DH: Did the Ramones, John Zorn, Lou Reed, the Dictators, etc., ever talk extensively about their Jewish background in regard to their music?

SB: Only John Zorn did before I approached them about my book. His Radical Jewish Culture movement took the unspoken elements of NY Punk to an explicit level, which makes sense since he is categorized as Post-Punk more than Punk. But in regard to the others, all of them did speak about their backgrounds extensively on record for my book.

Tommy Ramone (born Tamas Erdelyi), for instance, was raised in anti-Semitic Hungary until coming to NY as a child, and his idea for what became the Ramones bore all the hallmarks of his conflicted feelings about being an outsider. In many ways, Tommy was the mastermind behind the band, the original manager who insisted that they look and behave a certain way, the one who came up with their signature drum sound and joined the band because no one else could be taught to play it, the one who, most pivotally, insisted against the other members protests, that Joey be the lead singer. While Dee Dee and Johnny felt that Joey was the opposite of what a rock star should look like, Tommy knew that it was this very quality that made Joey perfect. As I say in my book, this look was about as Jewish as it could be, to the point where Joey could have passed for an anti-Semitic caricature in the official Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer.

In regard to The Dictators all of whom were Jewish the lead singer, Handsome Dick Manitoba, and the original songwriter, Richard Meltzer, were especially forthcoming about the connection, though others such as the producer, Sandy Pearlman of Mo cowbell fame and lead guitarist and band founder, Andy Shernoff, were clearly influenced by their backgrounds.

Lou Reed, of course, wrote indirectly about his Jewishness from the beginning and more explicitly about it near the end. The Black Angels Death Song, from the Velvet Undergrounds debut, appears to be about the killing fields of Holocaust-ravaged Poland, and Egg Cream, from one of his last albums, extolls the magic of that Jewish elixir that was so much a part of his New York Jewish boyhood. Reed also took part annually in the gathering known as The Downtown Seder, a hip Passover gathering organized by the Knitting Factory founder Michael Dorf, in which Reed would read the traditional Four Questions attributed to the Wicked Child.

Many other members of the Punk scene also spoke at length about their Jewish backgrounds, including, among others, Lenny Kaye of The Patti Smith Group, Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs, Alan Vega of Suicide, and Punk manager and impresario, Danny Fields, to whom Legs McNeil dedicates his oral history of Punk, Please Kill Me. My book, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, contains profiles based on extensive interviews with almost every early Punk rocker of importance.

DH: The Punk Rock scene originated in the Lower East Side of New York City, once the home of many Jewish immigrants in the early part of the last century. This was fertile ground for the Jews starting out in America. How did this neighborhood help to birth this new genre of rock music?

SB: I actually published an essay about this very subject in a collection called Jews: A Peoples History of the Lower East Side. In it, I posited that the LES was pivotal to the burgeoning Punk scene. Not only did Hilly Kristal born Hillel Kristal on a Zionist Socialist collective in New Jersey choose that location for CBGB, the club that became ground zero for the scene.

Tuli (Naphtali) Kupferberg of The Fugs and Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground both performed there regularly during the late 60s when future punks such as Chris Stein of Blondie religiously went to see them. Tuli remained there most of his life, and Richard Hell (Richard Meyers) fled there from anti-Semitic Lexington, Kentucky as a teenager. I could go on, but the bottom-line is that many of those who laid the groundwork for Punk and many of those who brought it to fruition, both lived and worked there, and even if they didnt, they were influenced by its volatile mix of gritty urban drama and theatrical liberal schmaltz. Its no mistake that CGBG was within spitting distance of Ratners, Katzs and the Second Avenue Deli.

DH: I am Jewish, and have a weakness for the Concord, Grossingers style of Jewish Borscht Belt humor. How did this play out in this music scene?

SB: The Borscht Belt is at the heart of everything. The Punk rockers as teens idolized Lenny Bruce, who began in that world before becoming too risqu to continue there. But other Borscht Belt comics, while tamer on the surface at least in terms of four-letter words still held the same attitudes as Bruce and dealt with them in the same way. So much of Borscht Belt humor is a coded attack on the mores of polite society, a sendup of the stuffy, hypocritical world in which Jews found themselves.

Think, in an earlier era, Groucho doing his number on society doyenne Margaret Dumont. At the same time, this humor was also self-directed, a way of defusing the attack through self-deprecation that at times hinted at genuine internalized self-loathing. Jerry Lewis and his arrested development act, Henry Youngman and his take my wife, please. Groucho himself and his, I wouldnt belong to any club that would have me as a member. Remember too, though, that Groucho is also renowned for his reply to a restricted club that denied his half-Jewish daughter admittance: If she keeps out of the water from the waist up, maybe you could let her in the pool?

DH: I dont know if my old Rabbi would agree with your thesis. Has the book been used for serious study in the Jewish academy?

SB: Yes. But I wouldnt say its limited to the Jewish academy. I have been asked to speak on the topic at conferences and universities around the world, and in fact am pretty well known in Germany. You know the phrase, Im big in Japan? I often say Im big in the other former Axis power.

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Somerville writer Steven Beeber: Finding the bagels, knishes and schmaltz in Punk Rock - The Somerville Times