5776: A review of major events in the Jewish world

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(Part two of two)

JTA – A stabbing and car-ramming epidemic in Israel that some called a third intifada was among the most dominant Jewish stories of the past year. But 5776 was a year of many other notable events.

Below is part two of the timeline of the Jewish year’s major events – the good, the bad and, in the case of the deaths of some Jewish giants, the very sad. Part one ran in the Sept. 16  Jewish Voice.

March 2016

•             Jewish comedian Garry Shandling dies in Los Angeles at 66. Shandling wrote for several sitcoms before starring in his own shows, including “The Larry Sanders Show,” which aired on HBO in the 1990s and earned Shandling 18 Emmy Award nominations.

             Venice launches a yearlong commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the world’s first official Jewish ghetto. Among the many events scheduled for the anniversary is an appearance by Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who presides over a mock trial of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender character from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”

             Microsoft pulls its artificial intelligence tweeting robot after it posted several anti-Semitic comments. The software company had launched the chatbot as an experiment but quickly paused the endeavor after the controversial tweets, several of which expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.

•             A Pew study of Israelis finds that 48 percent of the country’s Jews agree that Arabs should be “expelled or transferred” out of the country.

The finding, the most shocking in a wide-ranging study of Israeli attitudes, is based on interviews with 5,600 Israelis conducted between October 2014 and May 2015.

•                             Israeli leaders condemn the actions of a soldier caught on video shooting an apparently incapacitated Palestinian lying on the ground. 

“What happened today in Hebron does not represent the values of the IDF,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says following the release of the video, shot by the human rights group B’Tselem. The soldier is charged with manslaughter in May and later goes on trial.

•             Thousands of delegates attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington featuring appearances by most contenders for the presidency – most controversially Donald Trump, who sparked much talk of protests and walkouts in the days leading up to the conclave.

Speaking the morning after Trump’s address to the gathering, AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus issues a rare apology for Trump’s attacks on President Barack Obama and says the group is “deeply disappointed that so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with or condone.” 

Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and John Kasich also addressed the conference, while Bernie Sanders issued a written statement to the group from the campaign trail.

•             Merrick Garland, the chief of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, is nominated to the Supreme Court to replace Antonin Scalia, who died in February. In his acceptance speech, Garland emotionally recalls his grandparents who had fled anti-Semitism for better lives in the United States. Republicans vow not to consider his nomination during President Obama’s last year in office.

•             Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, is the world’s richest Jew, according to Forbes. The magazine’s annual list of the world’s billionaires shows Zuckerberg surpassing Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to claim the top spot among Jews.

April 2016

•             Days ahead of the New York primary, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton engaged in a heated exchange over Israel at a debate in Brooklyn, with the Vermont senator accusing the former secretary of state of neglecting the Palestinians and reiterating his charge that Israel used disproportionate force in Gaza in 2014. Clinton said she worked hard to bring peace to the region as secretary of state. Clinton won the primary in New York, home to the country’s largest Jewish population, 58-42 percent.

•             A majority of professors at Oberlin College sign a letter condemning the “anti-Semitic Facebook posts” by a fellow faculty member. The letter, signed by 174 professors, does not name Joy Karega, the rhetoric and composition professor whose posts, including one accusing Israel and “Rothschild-led bankers” of responsibility for downing an airliner over Ukraine in 2014, draws widespread attention.

•             The first same-sex Jewish wedding ceremony in Latin America is held at a synagogue in Argentina. Some 300 guests attend the wedding of Victoria Escobar and Romina Charur at the NCI Emanu El Temple in Buenos Aires.

May 2016

•             Bernie Sanders names three prominent critics of Israel to the committee charged with formulating the Democratic Party platform: Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress; James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute; and Cornel West, a philosopher and supporter of the BDS movement. Days later, Sanders releases a statement emphasizing that while he supports Israel’s right to live in peace, lasting peace will not come without “fair and respectful treatment of the Palestinian people.”

•             In an announcement timed to the annual independence celebrations in Israel, the nation’s Central Bureau of Statistics reports the population has risen to 8.52 million residents, a tenfold increase over the 806,000 at the time of Israel’s founding in 1948.

•             Morley Safer, a 46-year veteran of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” dies at 84 a week after retiring from the show. Safer, the winner of 12 Emmy Awards, helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War with his coverage of U.S. atrocities.

•             Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and major backer of Republican candidates, endorses Donald Trump for the presidency.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Adelson cites Trump’s executive experience and the threat of a “third term” for President Obama if Hillary Clinton is elected. Adelson plans to spend more than ever on the 2016 presidential election, even in excess of $100 million, The New York Times reports.

•             Julia Ioffe, a reporter who wrote a critical profile of Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, is deluged with anti-Semitic phone calls and messages on social media, including a cartoon of a Jew being executed. Ioffe files a police complaint about the threats.

•             An 11-minute video showing what appears to be a Hasidic school principal sexually abusing a young boy refocuses attention on sex abuse in the haredi Orthodox community. The video, which prompts an investigation by state police, was filmed secretly from an overhead camera and posted on social media before being removed.

June 2016

•             Rabbi Maurice Lamm, the author of “The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning” and several other notable Jewish books, dies. First issued in 1969, the book is considered a seminal work on the topic of Jewish death and mourning rituals.

•             British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, already under fire over allegations of rampant anti-Semitism in his party, draws more criticism for seeming to compare Israel and the Islamic State terrorist group. “Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organizations,” Corbyn said in remarks following the release of a report on anti-Semitism within Labour. The report found the party is not overrun by anti-Semitism but that there is an “occasionally toxic atmosphere.”

•             Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, is stabbed to death while sleeping in her bed in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba by a Palestinian teenager. The attacker, Muhammad Nasser Tarayrah, had jumped the settlement fence and entered the sleeping girl’s bedroom. He later is shot and killed by civilian guards.

•             Israel and Turkey sign a reconciliation agreement six years after relations were cut off following an Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Nine Turkish citizens were killed in the raid. Under the agreement, Israel will create a $20 million humanitarian fund as compensation to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims, which would not be released until Turkey passes legislation closing claims against the Israeli military for the deaths.

•             Anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses nearly doubled in 2015, the Anti-Defamation League reports. 

A total of 90 incidents were reported on 60 college campuses in 2015, compared with 47 incidents on 43 campuses in 2014.

The ADL audit records a total of 941 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2015, an increase of 3 percent over the previous year.

July 2016

•             Pope Francis visits Auschwitz, where he prays in silent contemplation and meets with Holocaust survivors. Francis also visits the cell of Polish priest and saint Maximilian Kolbe, who died at Auschwitz after taking the place of a condemned man. Francis is the third pope to visit the camp, following the Polish-born John Paul II in 1979 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2006.

•             Debbie Wasserman Schultz steps down as leader of the Democratic National Committee following the emergence of emails showing senior DNC staffers sought to undercut the campaign of Jewish presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. One email, from Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall, alleges that Sanders is an atheist and that it could be used against him. Marshall resigned in August.

•             Bernie Sanders, the first Jew to win a major party presidential primary, endorses Hillary Clinton for president. At a rally in New Hampshire, Sanders said he would work with Clinton to keep Donald Trump from being elected.

•             Goldie Michelson of Worcester, Massachusetts, the oldest living American, dies at home at the age of 113 and 11 months. Michelson, the daughter of Russian Jewish parents, immigrated with her family to Worcester when she was 2.

•             Jared Kushner defends his father-in-law, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, from charges of anti-Semitism following the elder Trump’s tweeting of an image of Hillary Clinton with a six-pointed star reminiscent of a Star of David over a background of dollar bills. The tweet is later deleted. “I know that Donald does not at all subscribe to any racist or anti-Semitic thinking,” Kushner said.

•             Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, author, activist and Holocaust survivor, dies at 87 of natural causes. Wiesel, who wrote “Night” and “The Jews of Silence,” was well-known internationally for his books and as a leading voice of conscience.

•             Israel’s highest rabbinical court rejects a conversion performed by a prominent American rabbi, Haskel Lookstein. The conversion had been rejected originally in April by a court in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petach Tikvah. Lookstein, the former rabbi of Kehilath Jeshurun, a modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, performed the conversion of Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

August 2016

•             American gymnast Aly Raisman wins three medals at the Rio Olympics, a gold for the overall U.S. women’s team and two individual silvers. Israel takes home two medals at the games, both bronze in judo, while American Jewish swimmer Anthony Ervin at 35 becomes the oldest person to win a gold medal in an individual swimming event. The Rio games also paid tribute to the 11 Israelis killed at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

             The Movement for Black Lives adopts a platform describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and claims it perpetrates “genocide” against the Palestinian people. The group, a coalition of 50 organizations that emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement, is criticized by Jewish organizations.