Howard Lovy

Category: Jewish News and Commentary

This section is home to everything Jewish, including my commentaries, book reviews, podcasts, books, and other projects.

  • Michael Steinhardt, Jewish Pride, and Birth of Birthright

    Michael Steinhardt, Jewish Pride, and Birth of Birthright

    When I was managing editor at JTA (1999-2001) I covered the birth of Birthright Israel and other issues involving younger Jews searching for connection to Judaism. That’s why I asked Publishers Weekly if I could interview Michael Steinhardt on his book, Jewish Pride, which outlines the Birthright founder’s search for a formula to battle antisemitism and assimilation by funding programs that contribute to Jewish pride. 

    More than 25 years ago, Wall Street mogul Michael Steinhardt took a look around at his fellow American Jews and the institutions that supported them and did not like what he saw. To him, synagogues and religious schools failed to instill a sense of pride in young Jews.

    That’s when Steinhardt made a decision that would have ripple effects across the Jewish world for the next quarter-century and beyond.

    “On December 31, 1995, I retired and closed down my firm,” Steinhardt writes in his book, Jewish Pride (Post Hill, Sept. 13). “My career as a manager of other people’s money was over. From that day forward, I would dedicate not just my capital but also my time and creative energy to solving the problem that lurked beneath everything I felt had gone wrong with American Jewry.”

    Read the entire feature at Publishers Weekly.

    Read the complete Q&A interview with Michael Steinhardt on my Emet-Truth newsletter.

  • Jewish Mobsters Knew How to Properly Punch Nazis

    Jewish Mobsters Knew How to Properly Punch Nazis

    Yes, Jewish mobsters knew how to properly punch Nazis. This feature for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was fun to write. I talk to author Michael Benson about his book Gangsters Vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America. Before WWII, Jewish mobsters kept Nazis at bay in the US—with their fists.

    The way author Michael Benson tells it, one day in 1938, New York judge and Jewish communal leader Nathan Perlman sat at a bar and thought, “How come these Nazis get to march down 86th Street, goose-stepping and ‘sieg heiling’ like it’s the Macy’s Parade? Why are they so brazen?”

    It was because they were not worried about the consequences. Too few people in then-isolationist America really cared about what was being said about the Jews or what was happening to them in Europe, Benson said. What was needed, then, were Jews who weren’t afraid to break some laws — and some bones — as they challenged the homegrown Nazi threat.

    And that’s when, in Benson’s words, “Judge Perlman thought outside the box.”

    What happened next is the subject of Benson’s book, “Gangsters Vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America” (Kensington), published in late April. As the title suggests, Perlman had a few connections in the underworld. That included Meyer Lansky, an accountant, bootlegger and fixer whose work straddled both the Italian American and the Jewish mob. Lansky, in turn, had at his disposal Jewish members of a mob enforcement organization known as “Murder Inc.”

    Read the rest of my feature on Jewish mobsters at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

    You can also listen to the full audio of my interview with author Michael Benson here.

  • Is Forgiveness ‘Wrong Way’ to Cope with Holocaust?

    Is Forgiveness ‘Wrong Way’ to Cope with Holocaust?

    What is Holocaust forgiveness? For whom is the forgiveness meant? And what if the crime is so big, there can be no forgiveness? I’ve been thinking about these issues the past few months because it popped up unexpectedly in my professional and personal lives. First, the professional, which you’ll find more interesting.

    Early this year, I wrote a feature for Publishers Weekly about what I consider to be a groundbreaking new children’s book about the Holocaust. It begins:

    With anti-Semitic acts on the rise worldwide and polls that show a disturbing lack of knowledge about the Holocaust, Michigan author Danica Davidson says the timing is crucial for her middle-grade book, I Will Protect You: A True Story of Twins Who Survived Auschwitz (Little, Brown, April 5). The title was co-written with Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor before her death in 2019.

    “Eva’s argument was that if we wait until 12 or older to teach about the Holocaust or anti-Semitism, it’s too late, because the prejudice has already set in,” Davidson tells PW. “That’s why she wanted to reach younger kids.”

    You can read the rest of the article here.

    So far so good. I enjoy my occasional gig at PW because their religion editor allows me to interview some fascinating Jewish authors.

    Then came this letter addressed to pretty much every higher-up editor at the magazine:

    I was dismayed to see the article below on PW. Eva Kor is an anomaly among survivors of the Shoah. She has generated a great deal of anger over her disturbing accounts of forgiving Nazis for perpetrating genocide against Europe’s Jews. Most of her support has come from a small segment of Christians drawn to her message. You have the opportunity to highlight the many outstanding works which accurately educate readers, including young readers, about the truth of the Shoah. Even the title, “Forgiving Dr. Mengele,” of the documentary about her should have alerted you to the pernicious nature of her message.

    Please consider posting an update, removing this piece, or simply keeping in  mind the importance of accurate portrayals of the Shoah in the future.

    Thank you,

    Emily Schneider

    I could tell that my editor at PW must have been in a slight panic over the prospect of wandering into an internal Jewish argument. I received an email in the evening asking what we should do about this.

    To find out what happened next, read the entire commentary on my Emet-Truth newsletter. 

  • Authors Bring Holocaust Story to Young Readers

    Authors Bring Holocaust Story to Young Readers

    Publishers Weekly ran a feature I wrote on a groundbreaking children’s book by Michigan author Danica Davidson and Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor. The book comes at a crucial time in history, when antisemitism is on the rise and knowledge about the Holocaust is fading.

    Holocaust Story
    Eva Mozes Kor

    With anti-Semitic acts on the rise worldwide and polls that show a disturbing lack of knowledge about the Holocaust, Michigan author Danica Davidson says the timing is crucial for her middle-grade book, I Will Protect You: A True Story of Twins Who Survived Auschwitz (Little, Brown, April 5). The title was co-written with Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor before her death in 2019.

    “Eva’s argument was that if we wait until 12 or older to teach about the Holocaust or anti-Semitism, it’s too late, because the prejudice has already set in,” Davidson tells PW. “That’s why she wanted to reach younger kids.”

    Holocaust education is under scrutiny today after a school board in Tennessee pulled Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-prize-winning Maus off its shelves, and a recent Pew Research Center poll shows that fewer than half of Americans know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

    Read the entire feature at Publishers Weekly.

  • Palestinian Activist Huwaida Arraf Wants Seat in Congress

    Palestinian Activist Huwaida Arraf Wants Seat in Congress

    The Jewish Telegraphic Agency ran a feature I wrote about Huwaida Arraf, a longtime anti-Israel activist.

    Now running for Congress in Michigan: a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian Christian who is married to a Jew and spent time living on an Israeli kibbutz before rejecting coexistence efforts in favor of advocating for Palestinian resistance.

    The onetime organizer of the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group that recognizes the right to “legitimate armed struggle” against the Israeli occupation, Huwaida Arraf has alarmed Detroit-area Jewish and pro-Israel groups with her plans to enter a crowded Democratic field ahead in the August 2022 primary in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District.

    Rabbi Asher Lopatin, executive director of the Michigan-based Jewish Community Relations Council of the American Jewish Committee, called Arraf’s past statements about Israel “hateful, destructive and antisemitic.”

    For her part, Arraf has condemned antisemitism in pro-Palestinian advocacy and says she encourages Jews to approach her with any questions and not to believe everything they read about her.

    “Know that I will always stand for people’s rights,” she said. “And when we come together to defend the rights of all people — not really based on ethnicity or religion — we will find ourselves on the same side.”

    Read the rest of my feature on Huwaida Arraf at JTA, the Jerusalem Post, or the Times of Israel.

    Also, on my Substack Newsletter Emet-Truth: Shooting the Messenger on Huwaida Arraf.

    Read more of my Jewish News and Commentary here.

     

  • Ben-Dror Yemini On How To Fight Media Bias

    Ben-Dror Yemini On How To Fight Media Bias

    Ben-Dror Yemini is a journalist on a mission to report the facts. You’d think that would be a basic job description for any journalist, but when it comes to reporting on Israel, the search for the truth can often be a rare exception. Media bias against Israel, including the false claims of “apartheid” and other crimes against Palestinians, is deeply woven into the narrative consumed by most Americans—most glaringly in the New York Times, Yemini says.

    Yemini is the first to admit that he has no magic formula to undo the damage caused by media bias—except to print the truth. No, he says, that does not necessarily mean printing only positive things about Israel. It means helping people formulate their opinions about what kind of society Israel is, faults and all, based on facts. If the facts were as well-known as the falsehoods, he says, then that would go a long way toward dispelling some misunderstandings that Israeli and diaspora Jews may have toward one another.

    I recently spoke with Yemeni in advance of something called the Z3 Project on Israel-Diaspora relations. The California-based group asked me to interview him about the media landscape and how it impacts Israel-Diaspora relations. The first question I asked was whether he believes that information gap is so wide, right now that American Jews are starting to internalize some of the false claims about Israel.

    Click here to listen to the entire interview with Ben-Dror Yemini

    Read more of my Jewish News and Commentary here.

  • Author Brings Executed Iranian Jewish Leader to Life

    Author Brings Executed Iranian Jewish Leader to Life

    IranianThe Jewish Telegraphic Agency ran a feature I wrote about the granddaughter of an Iranian Jewish leader who was executed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    As a news photo editor currently with NBC News, Shahrzad Elghanayan has worked with many photojournalists whose instinct is to run toward danger. It is, she said, “a sign of courage, empathy, and feeling responsible for your fellow human beings.”

    That instinct is part of what connects Elghanayan with her grandfather, Tehran businessman Habib Elghanian, who was the head of the Jewish Association of Iran until he was executed during the country’s Islamic revolution in 1979. There were so many times when Habib, at the time Iran’s most prominent secular Jewish leader, could have saved himself – but chose instead to stay in Iran helping Jews.

    “He stayed there to protect the Jewish community he had led since 1959 and what he had built from scratch,” Elghanayan said. “I can understand that.”

    In her book “Titan of Tehran: From Jewish Ghetto to Corporate Colossus to Firing Squad — My Grandfather’s Life,” published by the Associated Press in November, Elghanayan not only researched her grandfather’s death, but also celebrated his life.

    Read the rest of my story on Elghanayan at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency or in the Jerusalem Post.

    Read more of my Jewish News and Commentary here.

  • Natan Sharansky Knows What ‘Anti-Zionism’ Really Means

    Natan Sharansky Knows What ‘Anti-Zionism’ Really Means

    Natan Sharansky
    A screenshot from my Zoom call with Natan Sharansky.

    I interviewed former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky over on my Emet-Truth newsletter. To say that Sharansky has experience with antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism would be an extreme understatement. As a former Soviet “Prisoner of Zion,” he spent years under torturous conditions in the gulag. He knew that when Soviet leaders began to talk about Zionism, all Jews, Zionist or not, were in trouble. When he was finally released and immigrated to Israel, he was surprised to notice the same phenomenon. That’s when he came up with what he called his “3D test” of antisemitism. They are:

    • Delegitimization of Israel
    • Demonization of Israel
    • Double standards in judging Israel

    Put them together, you can bet that what is billed as criticism of Israel is actually antisemitism. The 3Ds became the basis for widely accepted definitions of antisemitism. But the battle is still being fought, he says, not with other nations, but with Jews in America who are reluctant to be seen as equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

    In this interview, Natan Sharansky and I discussed this dilemma and other areas where Israel and the Diaspora meet.

     

    Listen to my interview with Natan Sharansky here.

  • College Antisemitism: My Personal Story

    College Antisemitism: My Personal Story

    The college antisemitism I faced at Wayne State University in Detroit in the ’80s was of a similar character to kind endured by Jewish college kids today. The only difference is that I had no online network to which I could turn for solidarity or comfort. I faced it alone. I told my story to the Detroit Jewish News, which was then picked up by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (where I was once managing editor) and by other newspapers, including The Jerusalem Post.

    I don’t want anybody to think that my college experience was all negative, though. In fact, I loved my time at Wayne State. This story is one of a few that really molded me into the kind of journalist, and Jew, I am today. That’s why I’m also going to file this post under “memoir,” too, because it is part of a continuing story of my life and the evolution of my relationship with Judaism. Here’s how this story begins:

    In 1985, I stood in the corner of a crowded meeting room at the Wayne State University Student Center, stone-faced, while people I did not know lined up at a microphone to denounce me before the Student Newspaper Publications Board.

    “I don’t think Howard Lovy should be editor of The South End because he is biased toward Israel,” said one, referring to the student newspaper, where I was up for the editor’s position.

    The board would decide if I should take the top job. By virtue of my role at the paper, I was in position to assume the top editor slot.

    “Howard is a Zionist,” said another critic, “so he should be disqualified from this important job as editor of The South End.”

    Some of them said something about the racist rabbi, Rabbi Meir Kahane. Another said something about the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon three years previously by an Israel-allied militia group and with the knowledge of the Israeli army. Apparently I was responsible for all these things and people. I should not have been surprised.

    Read the entire essay on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency website.

  • Author Illustrates Fluidity of Racial, Religious Identity

    Author Illustrates Fluidity of Racial, Religious Identity

    Publishers Weekly ran my edited interview with author Laura Arnold Leibman about the fluidity of racial and religious identity. In the version below, there’s a little more of our discussion, including the Leibman’s feelings on critical race theory and other issues. Through her discovery of this multiracial Jewish family, many of our preconceptions of black, white, and Jewish fall by the wayside.

    What does it mean to be Jewish? Or Black? What about both? Now, how about a black Jewish family that can trace its lineage back to two enslaved people in Barbados? This was a mystery and challenge that proved too intriguing for Reed College professor Laura Arnold Leibman to pass up. Her book, Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family (Oxford University) tracks a family that can trace its lineage back to Sarah and Isaac Brandon, two enslaved people in Barbados. The result is a book that sheds light not only on the past, but also can illuminate our current debates over how to make Judaism more welcoming and the fluidity of race. PW recently interviewed Leibman to learn more about how and why she wrote this very timely history book.

    Tell me about your background and how you approach your work

    I’ve been working in Jewish studies for a while, but my training is as an early Americanist. I’m really used to working with communities where there are few resources. That did help in terms of working in Barbados and trying to trace the history of the enslaved part of the family.

    How did you first discover Sarah and Isaac Brandon?

    I was in Barbados, working on the book that became Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life, which came out in 2012. I was interviewing Karl Watson, who is the king of Barbadian history. He mentioned there was this interesting case involving Isaac Lopez Brandon. Later, as I found the miniatures, I was like, “Whoa, wait a second.” Suddenly, I’m so much more interested in that story because we have objects. For me, once I have the objects, then I’m really engaged in the story. It would be so much harder without some visual sense of who they are just from how they smile in their miniatures. So then it was a matter of going back and looking at the manumission records to try and figure out what had happened.

    Your book is about moving from enslavement to freedom, and the fluidity of religious and racial boundaries. When you sit down to write something like this, what’s foremost in your mind

    For me, this was really an opportunity to try and get at some of the lives of people of Jewish and African descent in those different places where we don’t have that wealth of information. I really did want that to be their story. But, also, how their story relates to that larger history, that’s even harder to capture because there are people who didn’t end up being freed. I do feel like the minor characters in the background, they really help fill in the “what if?” What if this had happened exactly this way? What would their lives have been like?

    You’re a historian, but there are so many elements to this book that resonate today, from Jewish/African American relations to what they’re now calling Critical Race Theory. What do you want people to walk away with after reading your book? 

    If people see there’s been a diversity of types of Jews in the United States and in the Americas from the get-go, that would be a great revelation, just as Jewish communities today talk about how can we be more inclusive and even more welcoming. At the same time, I am interested in people thinking about how the understanding of race changed over time. That, I think, is a concrete way for people to engage with some of the aspects of Critical Race Theory that sometimes people not catching on to, which is how race is socially constructed. But just because it’s a social construct doesn’t mean that it’s something that isn’t constantly being a source that acts upon people. What gives them their agency at various points and what are they not in control of?