Author Archives: rabbijohnrosove

July 20, 1969 – A Day that Changed Human History

20 Sunday Jul 2025

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Those of us of a certain age remember where we were exactly 56 years ago today, on July 20, 1969 when American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (now 95 years old) stepped out of the lunar module Eagle of Apollo 11 and put their feet into the soft dust of the moon and made history.

I was a 19 year-old college student traveling with a friend through Europe. Early in the morning (European time) my buddy and I stood on a sidewalk looking through a large glass window of a shop in Florence, Italy with a crowd of people watching a small black and white television set tuned to an event watched by 650 million people around the world (3.619 billion of the then world population).

The historian Heather Cox Richardson posted today on YouTube the highlights of the moon landing project begun in 1957 when the Soviets sent the first human into space and then in 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would put “a [person] on the moon” by the end of the decade, a task that was unimaginable at the time, enormously expensive, and very controversial.

Here is Dr. Richardson’s Youtube. If you were alive then, watched the landing and remember anything about it, please share in the comments.

The Abuse of Power in This Era

08 Tuesday Jul 2025

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The Judeo-Christian tradition, upon which the United States was founded, promoted the notion of “covenantal politics” as a means to create an ideal society based upon human rights and dignity, equality and opportunity, justice and respect, accountability and responsibility, forgiveness and reconciliation, personal growth and freedom, all based in the principle articulated in the book Genesis that the human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the Image of God, thereby affirming infinite worth and dignity in every woman, man and child.

In this era of Donald Trump, the question before us is the same question that has always challenged Americans since our nation’s founding: What is political power for? Is it to sate the personal ambition of a politician, or is it to nurture a covenantal America in which politics is the means to further a more just and inclusive nation? If politics is only about ambition and power, then power renders as irrelevant morality and conscience, and it elevates amorality, illegality, sedition, insurrection, violence, and murder.

I know I’m not alone in my disgust and feeling of foreboding about what is happening to American democracy and the spirit of fair play and common decency under the aggressive disregard for human dignity under Donald Trump. Yes, there are still many good people and servant-leaders in every arena of our society committed to the well-being of others. We are watching now, for example, how many good people are doing everything possible to save victims of this horrendous flooding in Texas. And there are many among our political, business and educational leadership, religious and social justice activists, jurists, legal scholars and advocates, journalists and writers, entertainment and sports luminaries actively fighting for what I describe above as our nation’s “covenantal politics.” Certainly, not all is lost yet and mid-term elections will surely come and the vast majority of Americans who now disapprove of Trump’s aggressive disregard for human rights and the fundamental needs of most Americans will have an opportunity to vote against him and his minions.

I have been thinking a great deal about the use and abuse of power since Trump became President again, as he wields it like every common dictator does around the world, for his own purposes and interests. Note the column one story in this past Sunday’s New York Times (July 6, 2025) that describes in detail how Trump’s financial fortunes dramatically reversed since becoming the Republican candidate for President a second time and then winning the presidency again. He was on the verge of financial ruin (hardly a successful businessman he), but now has monetized the presidency to such an extent that he has turned his losses into massive wealth and power. His is a disgusting display of corruption the likes of which America has not seen in the presidency in our nearly 250 years of existence and that no one in his party even talks about much less does anything about.

As I have thought about power, here are a few quotations that offer additional insight and its character and purpose:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ―Lord Acton, English Catholic historian (1834-1902)

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” ―Aung San Suu Kyi (Burmese Politician and diplomat, b. 1945)

“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.” ―David Brin, American author (b. 1950)

“The true measure of a man is how he uses his power.” ―Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Winner (1929-1968)

“With great power comes great responsibility.” ―Voltaire, French Enlightenment author (1694-1778)

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ―Alice Walker, American writer (b. 1944)

“The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no [person] living with power to endanger the public liberty.” ―President John Adams (1735-1826)

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ―George Orwell, British writer (1903-1950)

“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.” ―Mahatma Gandhi, Indian philosopher and non-violent champion (1869-1948)

The Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia – An outrage if ever there is one!

04 Friday Jul 2025

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I am not a lawyer, so I rely on the expertise of legal scholars who are able to communicate clearly to the public what is at stake in cases in which the United State’s government’s actions defy the US Constitution and the law.

I am posting here Joyce Vance’s “Civil Discourse” missive (worth subscribing) because the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, when understood, ought to outrage anyone who cares about American democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, the truth and common decency.

Joyce Vance is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.

Ms. Vance describes in detail the case against Mr. Garcia and the cruel treatment he has received deliberately by the Trump Administration and by Donald Trump himself.

Ms. Vance concludes:

“This case, which has brought issues of due process and the prospect of the executive branch of government ignoring orders issued by the judiciary to the forefront of Americans’ minds, will stand as one of the most important cases in American history.”  

I urge you to read the entire post below as it not only paints a terrible legal picture, but a horrendous moral one.

I have felt outrage, along with so many millions of Americans, about Mr. Garcia’s treatment since this case first became a national story months ago. Now that he has been returned to the United States and is being charged with federal crimes as a cover to whitewash what Trump and his minions have done to him and the rule of law, we know much more about what actually happened to Mr. Garcia in El Salvador and what the Trump Administration is capable of doing to any one of us.

Here is Ms. Vance’s report today – July 4, 2025

The Civil Case:

On March 24, 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife filed a civil lawsuit on his behalf in federal district court in Maryland. The defendants included Attorney General Pamela Bondi, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Trump administration had just deported Venezuelans it claimed were gang members to El Salvador, although ultimately it came to light that significant numbers of them weren’t. The Trump administration violated a district court’s order that the men not be turned over to El Salvador, which was ultimately reversed by the Supreme Court.

It’s not unusual for plaintiffs in civil cases to amend their initial complaint as new information comes to light. On Wednesday, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia’s wife, asked the court for permission to do so.

She explained that “the Government filed a motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint as moot, arguing that because it had returned Abrego Garcia to the United States, Plaintiffs have received all the relief they sought.” She wanted to amend her complaint to “clarify that the relief they seek remains live, notwithstanding Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.” Three new items are included in the amended complaint:

  • “The proposed Amended Complaint details the Government’s defiance of court orders after this Court granted preliminary injunctive relief.”
  • “[E]vidence that emerged in a June 2025 whistleblower disclosure from former DOJ official Erez Reuveni, who was previously counsel for the Government in this case. The new allegations include government officials internally acknowledging that Abrego Garcia’s removal was an “administrative error” while simultaneously working to prevent his return and to make post-hoc justifications. These revelations provide evidence of deliberate misconduct that was unavailable when the original Complaint was filed.”
  • “Abrego Garcia’s first-hand account of torture and mistreatment at CECOT, as well as developments regarding his return to the United States and the Government’s stated plan to remove him again.”

The proposed amended complaint, which is attached to the motion for permission to file it, contains predictable but still shocking revelations about conditions at CECOT. The conditions, as alleged, are more like a concentration camp than a prison in the United States, and there is little doubt that if established, the allegations made about those conditions would run afoul of the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Although the government has maintained that once delivered to El Salvador, these men are no longer in U.S. custody, that argument is paper-thin, or at least it should be, since the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to house these men. The allegations made by Abrego Garcia will likely play prominently in litigation over this issue.

The new allegations in the amended complaint include the following:

“Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, ‘Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.’ Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body.

In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.”

And although the complaint alleges that El Salvadoran prison officials acknowledged that Abrego wasn’t a gang member, they threatened him with physical harm at the hands of gang members in the prison:

“As reflected by his segregation, the Salvadoran authorities recognized that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was not affiliated with any gang and, at around this time, prison officials explicitly acknowledged that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine.’

While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would ‘tear’ him apart.

Indeed, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards on personnel.

During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds (dropping from approximately 215 pounds to 184 pounds).”

During a conference call with District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, the government acknowledged it intended to deport Abrego Garcia again, this time to a third country. That would not violate the withholding order that prevented them from sending him to Venezuela. The government’s lawyer represented that it didn’t have imminent plans for deportation, but Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the court, “We have concerns that the government may try to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia quickly over the weekend, something like that.” They asked for an emergency order that would bring him to Maryland if he were released in Tennessee, where he is facing the criminal charges the government filed against him when they returned him from El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia remains in federal custody in Tennessee while the Magistrate Judge considers whether to release him—she previously ruled he was entitled to release, but she was concerned about the deportation issue.

Judge Xinis set a July 7 court hearing in Maryland to discuss the emergency request and other matters. Today, she rejected the government’s request to delay the hearing to a later date.

The same week Abrego Garcia’s wife filed her original complaint, Defendant Kristi Noem traveled to El Salvador to “visit” CECOT prison. She posed for this photo in front of a cell full of prisoners.

A report from the CATO Institute suggests that although the government claims all of the men it sent to Venezuela are “illegal aliens,” in 50 of the 90 cases where they were able to identify how the men entered the United States, the men said that they entered the U.S. legally, with government permission, at an official border crossing point.”

The Criminal Case

The government attempted to save face when it returned Abrego Garcia from El Salvador by filing criminal charges against him involving the transportation of people who were known to be present in the U.S. without legal immigration status. Comments made by government officials went far beyond the facts alleged in the indictment—a clear violation of DOJ policy—in describing his conduct and claiming he was a serious violent criminal who, among other things, had sexually assaulted women.

Last week, there were reports that the government’s key witness, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, likely the owner of the car Abrego Garcia was driving during the incident he was charged with, was a three-time convicted felon. The deal the government cut with him allowed his early released early from federal prison to a halfway house in exchange for his cooperation in the case.

An official with Homeland Security Investigations, part of ICE, testified Hernandez Reyes would have been deported but for his cooperation with the government. The Washington Post reported that he said in court that the government “is also likely to give him a work permit.”

In the meantime, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. in Tennessee to enforce local rules that prohibit the Trump administration from making “extensive and inflammatory extrajudicial comments about Mr. Abrego that are likely to prejudice his right to a fair trial.” The motion continues, “These comments continued unabated—if anything they ramped up—since his indictment in this District, making clear the government’s intent to engage in a ‘trial by newspaper.’”

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers raise four points of concern in their pleading:

  • “[T]he government has relentlessly attacked Mr. Abrego’s character and reputation in dozens of public statements … Many of the government’s statements have been highly prejudicial and serve no justifiable law enforcement purpose—and reflect nothing more than the lengths the government will go to in its efforts to paint Mr. Abrego as a dangerous criminal to deflect from its mistake.”
  • “[T]he government has expressed opinions about Mr. Abrego’s guilt and the evidence in this case in ways that go far beyond the limited disclosures permitted” by local rules of court.
  • “[T]he government’s statements have been contaminated with irrelevant and false claims that the DOJ ‘knows or reasonably should know are likely to be inadmissible as evidence in a trial or that would, if disclosed, create a substantial risk of prejudicing an impartial trial.”” As an example, they offer that, “at a press conference announcing these charges, Attorney General Bondi recounted allegations from unreliable alleged coconspirators that Mr. Abrego ‘abused undocumented alien females,’ ‘trafficked firearms and narcotics,’ ‘solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor,’ and ‘played a role in the murder of a rival gang member’s mother.’” They also objected to what they call unsubstantiated claims that Abrego Garcia is Mr. Abrego is a “wife beater” and “domestic abuser.” They conclude that “These assertions are not only irrelevant and inflammatory, but also based entirely on inadmissible hearsay.”
  • “[S]ince the indictment was unsealed, the government has made nearly three dozen statements about the fact that it has charged Mr. Abrego with a crime, without reference to the presumption of innocence.”

In a normal administration, an Assistant United States Attorney who did any of these things would most likely be seriously sanctioned by internal DOJ disciplinary mechanisms. But here, the concern is about the Attorney General of the United States and other high-ranking officials. We are no longer surprised by much, but we should reclaim our ability to be shocked by the truly outrageous. Because that’s exactly what this is.

It is the job of defense lawyers to put the government on its back foot. But they’ve made the claims in this case knowing that they will be thoroughly tested. In their motion, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers ask the court for a very simple sanction: they want him to “issue an order directing the parties to comply with Local Criminal Rule 2.01,” the local rule that prohibits these out-of-court statements. This afternoon, Judge Crenshaw directed both sides to stop making public statements about the case. It’s not clear from his two-sentence ruling, “Motion (69) is GRANTED. All counsel are expected to comply with the Local Rules of this Court,” whether the order extends to DHS employees in addition to DOJ employees, which Abrego Garcia’s lawyers requested.

Despite this limited action, the motion was a strategic one that hints at the kind of arguments that will be used to argue a guilty verdict, if the government obtains one, should be reversed because the jury pool was tainted by the government’s own statements to the public. The motion also recites that, “The Vice President, a Yale Law School graduate, went so far as to flatly lie about Mr. Abrego, calling him a ‘convicted MS-13 gang member,’ notwithstanding that Mr. Abrego in fact has never been convicted of any crime at all.” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are busy making a record.

This case, which has brought issues of due process and the prospect of the executive branch of government ignoring orders issued by the judiciary to the forefront of Americans’ minds, will stand as one of the most important cases in American history. We don’t yet know how it will end. It is a very dangerous moment for our democracy, one we should all pay close attention to. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse. Your support, and your paid subscriptions help me devote the time and resources necessary to this work.

Words of Caution by Experts on Iran and the Middle East

19 Thursday Jun 2025

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So much is being said and written about Israel’s remarkable military and intelligence attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the last week and now about whether the United States should enter the war and use the B2 Bomber and huge ordinance that President Obama commissioned 10 years ago in order to send a clear message to Iran that should negotiations for the Iran Deal not be completed, there was a military option available to the United States to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

I offer here two of the most thoughtful discussions I have read and listened to.

The first is an article that appeared this week in Foreign Affairs written by Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and Steven N. Simon, a Visiting Professor and Distinguished Fellow at Dartmouth College who previously served on the U.S. National Security Council and in the U.S. Department of State – “America Should End Israel’s War on Iran – Not Join It: How Trump Can Prevent a Disastrous Escalation.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/america-should-end-israels-war-iran-not-join-it

The second is a 20 minute-interview  on the Substack The Contrarian by former Washington Post columnist and Contrarian co-founder Jen Rubin with Wendy Sherman, former United States Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden Administration and the lead negotiator for the United States in the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) – otherwise known as the “Iran Deal” – that President Trump cancelled in 2017: https://contrarian.substack.com/p/is-the-us-about-to-be-dragged-into?r=53ubpn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=tru

War with Iran

15 Sunday Jun 2025

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I have listened weekly since October 7, 2023 to a Podcast called “For Heaven’s Sake” with Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein HaLevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together, these two Israeli Jewish thought-leaders have sought to understand events taking place in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran as they have unfolded every week. Of all their podcasts, I will most remember the one they recorded this past Friday called “War with Iran.”

I recommend that you listen to it, whatever your attitudes are about the Israel-Hamas war, or the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, or Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing government.

You can listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/war-with-iran/id1522222281?i=1000712767321  

“The Art Spy” by Michelle Young – A Book Review

10 Tuesday Jun 2025

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Rose Valland

What most intrigued and shocked me in reading this well-written and deeply researched new biography and history called The Art Spy (New York: HarperCollins, 2025, 390 pages, including notes) by the American art historian Michelle Young about Rose Valland (1898-1980), the acting curator of Jeu de Palme Museum in Paris from the 1930s to 1950s, and an art spy on behalf of the French Resistance against the Nazis, was the massive crime of greed the Nazis perpetrated against the world of fine art in Paris, how that greed began like a trickle of water at the beginning of the occupation and then became a torrential wave that helped transform the “City of Light” into a ‘city of darkness.’ This book details the heroic commitment of Rose Valland as she recorded in stunning detail what happened to the art stolen by the Nazis between 1939 and 1944.  

Rose cataloged every work of art by classical and modern painters and sculptors that were taken from Jewish homes and galleries, art collectors and French museums by Nazi criminals for themselves, for Hitler’s “Führermuseum,” or for the purpose of selling them at inflated prices to support the German war effort. The Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris was the art center the Nazis used to accumulate tens of thousands of stolen paintings, drawings, sculptures, jewelry, furniture, books, and other fine art to ship out of the French capital.

Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring (1893-1946), who Michelle Young characterized as “an insatiable predator,” visited Jeu de Palme from Berlin dozens of times and walked away cumulatively with thousands of master-works for himself that he promised he would pay for, but never sent a franc. Göring was convicted by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after the war for his many crimes against the Jews and others and sentenced to hang, but he committed suicide a day before the execution could take place.

Another Nazi art thief, standing six feet and four inches, was the “handsome and athletic Bruna Lohse” (1911-2007). He absconded with hundreds of master paintings and pieces of fine art, was tried after the war in a French military trial – Rose served as one of the prosecution witnesses – but Lohse charmed his American interrogators and ultimately was acquitted. He went on to become wealthy as a German art dealer well into his 80s, never expressing any remorse for his war crimes.

Michelle Young cites the names of many Nazis and collaborating French art historians whose names and deeds have subsided into the rear-view mirror of history. She brings them forward so we now know who they were and what crimes they committed.

Young reports:

“The Nazis looted approximately 650,000 works of art [thousands from 69,619 Jewish homes] by war’s end in Europe during WWII. Rose and her team were responsible for the restitution of more than sixty-one thousand works of art in the decade after World War II. Even when the world moved on, Rose was still fighting. Today, it is believed that over one hundred thousand pieces of Nazi-confiscated artwork, taken from all over Europe, have yet to be recovered.”

This means that thousands of today’s contemporary private art collectors and art museums around the world are holding, unwittingly perhaps, many famous art objects stolen from French Jews, from other collectors and from European museums. They include the master works of Da Vinci, Veronese, Rembrandt, Delacroix, David, Picasso, Degas, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Duchamp, Chagall, Matisse, Braque, Leger, Ensor, Klee, Rodin, Pissarro, and many others.

Over a period of four years, Michelle Young (fluent in French, German and English) painstakingly, and with the assistance of her husband, read every letter, list, and document written and saved by Rose Valland, who safe-guarded all her records meticulously in her apartment.  

Rose was unpaid for years at Jeu de Palme because of the misogynist and petty hostility of Henri Verne who oversaw the national museums in France and the Ecole du Louvre. For Rose, she continued to do her work because for her, preserving the world’s great art was a labor of love.

Rose lived with her life-partner, Joyce Heer, in Paris’ Latin Quarter. Joyce was a “half-German British citizen employed by the US embassy…who lived in a world of constant uncertainty because the British, even before the war began, were treated like the enemy, even by non-Germans.”

Joyce was imprisoned for about six months and suffered hunger and humiliation before being released. The two women “lived in perpetual terror that they might be overheard speaking English or spied on.” Undeterred, Rose understood that her role was to chronicle what was happening to the fine art the Nazis stole for shipment by train and truck to Germany.

Paul Rosenberg (1881-1959), one of the most wealthy prewar Paris Jewish gallery owners, collectors and agents for modern masters including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, escaped Paris with his entire family to New York City before the Nazis conquered Paris. Only his son Alexandre (1921-1987) refused to go to America and instead fought in the French Resistance under the leadership of the exiled General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970). Michelle Young tells the Rosenberg family story fully in this book. The Nazis stole virtually everything the Rosenbergs owned except what they had sent abroad or hid in the French country-side before the war began.

One might think, while reading this well-documented biography, that the theft of such massive amounts of art is secondary to the murder of six million Jews and the havoc and brutality the Nazis wreaked upon Europe, and they would be right. The point of the book, nevertheless, is to highlight the heroism of Rose Valland who risked her life daily to save French high culture. That is a story worth telling that Michelle Young told so very well.

Young wrote eloquently of the essence of art itself and the Nazi destruction of master works they called “degenerate art”:

“Each painting held thousands of years of collective evolution in the art of representation, to humanize, …thousands of years of contemplation on how the real three-dimensional world and the complexity of human nature could be embodied on a two-dimensional canvas. Art is transcendent–a visual medium that stirs emotion and helps people understand their place in a world that can never be fully comprehended. Even the earliest men and women made rudimentary art within the environment around them. This wanton destruction in the Nazi rooms in the Louvre served to erase a form of expression through which humans differentiated themselves from animals. And yet, here were men of a supposedly superior race acting in the most inhuman, destructive way.”

Young wrote about Rose’s deepest intention:

“It would have been painful for Rose to see her museum used as a laundering facility [Rose called the Jeu de Paume a “confiscation factory”] for stolen art by deceitful men with dubious intentions. Her job, her life calling, was about celebrating the beauty in art and presenting it to the public, but now she was witnessing the wholesale theft of the world’s finest creations.” [Rose’s hope was that the Allies] “would one day prevail and her intelligence could be used. With her inside glimpse into Nazi operations, she could see how, as she later stated, ‘the persecution against the Jews was coupled with the looting of their property.’”

Michelle Young tells the stories of other French heroes during war as well, specifically Jacque Jaujard (1895-1967), Valland’s ally, who sought to stand in the way whenever possible of the Nazi plunder of Europe’s art treasures as the director of the Louvre Museum. Jaujard also had deep concern for his Jewish workers in the museum. Presciently, Jaujard evacuated major works starting in 1938 when many in France thought the war was about to start. Villard quoted Jaujard: “I would like my Jewish colleagues to leave first.” Young wrote: “…knowing what fate might befall them in the hands of the Germans. There was no detail that Jaujard would overlook.”

As they did everywhere, the Nazis created euphemisms to describe the worst of their crimes (e.g. “The Final Solution” for the Shoah – “transfer” and “safeguarding” for the plunder of Europe’s art). Rose described the Nazi thievery as a “camouflage of intentions.” The Nazis, under the mastermind of Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946), a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue who was tried and convicted at the Nuremberg Trials and executed for his war crimes in 1946, was the one who classified many artworks as “degenerate art,” that is, art that did not fit with the racial-creed of the Aryan vision of culture.

Rose was stoic throughout the war and “did not allow herself the luxury of crying or feeling sorry for herself.” Rather, she developed her spy craft, “discreetly eyeing the shipping labels to decipher their destinations…surveilling Nazi staffers, even discovering their home addresses down to the floors and apartments they lived in.”

Young concludes the book by describing the allied invasion of France on the Normandy beaches on D-Day (June 6, 1944), and the eventual re-taking of Paris by the allied powers and the French Resistance, as well as some of the violent retribution by Parisians upon French collaborators with the Nazis. She also describes Rose’s eight-year-long effort to retrieve what she estimated to be 100,000 works of art that had been looted from France alone, and return it, to the best of her ability, to their rightful owners based upon her detailed journals and record-keeping.

Rose died in Paris in 1980 in obscurity at the age of eighty-one, three years after her life-partner Joyce Heer died. They are buried together in a cemetery in Rose’s hometown, Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, France.

Michelle Young’s thorough historical and biographical treatment of this heroine of the French Resistance fills a gaping hole in our knowledge of one of the greatest crimes in history and one of the most courageous women of the Nazi era. I recommend this book highly. It ought to be part of every library covering the history of art, WWII and the Holocaust.

I Protest President Trump’s Call-up of the California National Guard

08 Sunday Jun 2025

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President Trump has wanted to use the US military and states’ National Guard as a show of his concentrated federal power since his first term. He even wanted to shoot demonstrators in the legs who were protesting police brutality against the George Floyd murder by police in a demonstration outside the White House. Now, he is getting his long-held wish to hold a military parade on the streets of Washington, D.C. next week on his 79th birthday just as autocrats around the world love to do to intimidate and threaten civilian populations in their countries.

Yesterday and today, while circumventing the legitimate authority of California Governor Gavin Newsom to call up the California National Guard (if it would be needed –  Governor Newsom does not believe it is needed), Trump has himself called up 2000 National Guard troops and deployed them in Los Angeles citing a rarely used provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services  ”10 U.S.C. 12406,”  that has been activated only when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” That is NOT happening in Los Angeles County. Governor Newsom has stated that local police departments are acting responsibly, as opposed to the charges of the President.

The White House sent out this letter yesterday, insulting the Democratic leadership of the State of California, and falsely characterizing the situation in Los Angeles as out of control. The letter is transparent. It is part of Trump’s retributive justice against blue states generally and Democratic political leadership in California specifically. Of course, the great irony of this White House statement is that Trump pardoned hundreds of convicted criminals serving prison time for attacking the government of the United States, killing and injuring dozens of police officers who were guarding the nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021:

“In recent days, violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles, California. These operations are essential to halting and reversing the invasion of illegal criminals into the United States. In the wake of this violence, California’s feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens. That is why President Trump has signed a Presidential Memorandum deploying 2,000 National Guardsmen to address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester. The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs. These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The Commander-in-Chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.” -Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley was quoted this morning in the NY Times (link to the full article is below):

“For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling. It is using the military domestically to stop dissent.”

I agree.

A friend rightly compared Trump’s action this weekend to the arson attack on the home of the German parliament in Berlin on Monday, February 27, 1933, four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. The fire, allegedly set by the Nazis themselves, was used to weaponize the NAZIs on their rapid march to destroy what was left of democracy in Germany.

Though I do not believe that we in America are experiencing 1930s Germany, the desired march towards autocracy by this President is obvious.

Now is the time for us to protest Trump’s over-reach. We best remember the warning of the German theologian and Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) who aptly wrote about the consequences of passivity in the face of anti-democratic governance and brutality:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and Id did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Read the NY Times piece on this action here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/trump-national-guard-deploy-rare.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“We all want to change the world” – by Kareem Abdul-Jabaar – A Review

01 Sunday Jun 2025

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Kareem Abdul-Jabaar’s newly published book We all want to change the world – My Journey through Social Justice Movements from the 1960s to Today is a sweeping, thoughtful, self-revelatory, honest, and inspiring review of most of the major social justice movements and human rights challenges in the United States since the 1950s when Kareem was coming of age as a African American athlete in New York City. One of the greatest basketball players in the history of the NBA, Kareem is now among the most prolific writers, probing thinkers and public intellectuals in America.

I read Kareem’s Substack newsletters from start to finish each time he publishes (twice weekly) and I find him always smart, rational, intellectually honest, thorough in his research, moral, and entertaining with his short videos of extraordinary athletic feats, musical selections, and cultural moments. Just as his Substack newsletter is worth reading, so is his newest book.

Kareem covers the impact on American society of the movements for Free Speech, Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War, Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation, and the cultural, emotional and psychological mindsets that spawned the courageous leadership that furthered human rights and opportunities in the United States for discriminated groups of Americans.

Kareem describes his personal mantra as that inspired by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer’s adage: “No one is free unless everyone is free,” and what Dr. King said in another way: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

As a young black man growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City, becoming a famous athlete, meeting Dr. King, Mohammad Ali, and other leading black sports, entertainment and human rights figures, and reading constantly from the time he was a teen-ager, the shy, intellectual, self-reflective and compassionate young man felt compelled to think not only about himself and his athletic career and the moral compromises that many fellow black athletes felt they had to make in order to further their careers, but about every individual struggling for dignity beyond the stereotypes and cultural definitions that oppressed them.

Kareem wrote:

“Writing [the chapter on Civil Rights as My Gateway Movement] was especially challenging for me. As I chronicled the history of decade after decade of civil rights abuses and the martyrs who gave up their lives in pursuit of the freedoms already promised by our Constitution, I felt the rising heat of frustration and anger from my younger days. I needed to take frequent breaks to remind myself that frustration and anger by themselves accomplish nothing. Injustice is fueled by indifference, but passion without a plan is just as destructive. For me, the fiery passion of my youth needed to be channeled in order for me to do my part to bring about justice.”

This book is well-researched and well-written, and it lays out the historical facts and events of each of the human rights movements Kareem discusses in detail. He first presents those events historically, then dives into the emotional, social, and psychological challenges the leaders and followers of each movement confronted. For me, about three years younger than Kareem (age 78), I remember so much of what he describes, and I appreciate his insights about the forces that propelled the leadership of each movement to do what they did, as well as the baked-in cultural norms that reflected (and still reflects) the thinking of massive numbers of Americans.

Among other self-revelatory sections of the book, Kareem describes himself as a feminist. He wrote:

“As a Black teenager growing up in New York City, I loved books, movies, television, and music. Looking back on all that I was exposed to, I see now how those popular art forms conspired to produce a pounding thrum of dangerous misogyny, an insistent earworm that ran through my generation as it had so many generations before. With this evolving women’s movement, as more and more voices joined the chorus protesting misogyny, our heads were cleared enough to choose for ourselves. That’s how it was for me.”

In his epilogue, Kareem confessed:

“The biggest challenge I had in writing this book was the frequent breaks I had to take due to the build-up of frustration and anger. Again and again in my research, I saw the same pattern: basic human rights denied, indignities and disrespect piled on, and the refusal of oppressors to acknowledge why they were wrong. The worst was the complicity of so many people who disagreed with the discrimination in principle but who were too complacent to act. They might justify their collusion with ‘What can I do?’ but they already know the answer. They just don’t like it.”  

He concludes the book discussing the ongoing need for open and public protest in all the areas he discussed:

“The Founders enshrined the right to protest in our Constitution. They did that because they knew that the forces of self-interest and corruption would always try and to subvert the ideals of democracy they laid out.”

Kareem can be forgiven for the human rights issues he did not include in his book. However, there is one that Kareem does not discuss in this volume – the oldest of all hatreds, antisemitism. I’ve wondered why he didn’t discuss it specifically since it has become a major issue in North America, on college and university campuses, and around the world especially since Hamas’s brutal attack, murder and rape of 1200 Israelis and others on October 7, 2023 in Southern Israel and reactions to Israel and Jews as a consequence of the ensuing war between Hamas and Israel.

On October 9, 2023, two days after the Hamas attack, Kareem wrote in his Substack newsletter of his support of Israel. He condemned Hamas categorically, and elsewhere he described antisemitism as “especially heinous.” Kareem was the 2022 winner of Canada’s “Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s first Ally Against Anti-Semitism Award,” so his pro-Jewish and pro-Israel bona fides are undisputed. Given Kareem’s 1.1 million Substack readers and the likely large number of people of color, athletes, and liberal-left readers who will read this book (as well as interested moderates and conservatives), I would have appreciated his discussion of antisemitism, its nature and history going back thousands of years and reemerging today in the United States, especially in this post-October 7th period in which so many on the far left publicly have identified with Hamas against Israel and Zionism and so many on the far right who openly court and identify with neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists, including the sitting President of the United States.

Hamas is among the most brutal, undemocratic, unenlightened, Jew-hating, extremist Muslim terrorist organizations in the world. It is one thing for decent people to want peace and justice for the Palestinian people in some kind of a demilitarized state of their own alongside a secure and democratic Jewish State of Israel, but it is something else entirely to support Hamas and its call for a free “Palestine from the River to the Sea.” That position means the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jews. It is antisemitic Jew-hatred.  

There is a strong human rights case to be made about this oldest of hatreds that would have merited Kareem’s inclusion of a discussion of antisemitism in his book. Historically, the evidence is clear that in every country in which Jews have been discriminated against, attacked and accused of corrupting the soul of a people or nation, human rights generally and democracy specifically have been diminished and/or destroyed. To me, antisemitism would have been an obvious chapter to write about. I’m disappointed that Kareem didn’t take the opportunity to address Jew-hatred head-on, especially because I know he understands what antisemitism is and its “heinous” character. It was a missed opportunity to educate those very groups and individuals in which antisemitism has taken root and found a home in recent years on both the far left and the far right.

Eurovision 2025 Final: Israel’s Yuval Raphael Finishes in Second Place as Hundreds Protest Gaza War in Basel – Haaretz

18 Sunday May 2025

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My Introductory Notes: This article from Haaretz today (May 18, 2025) describes the 2nd place finish of Israel’s spectacular new-comer star, Yuval Raphael, in the 2025 Eurovision Competition. She was not expected to place second, but her song and her beautiful voice, won the day. I post at the end the link to Yuval’s official entry into the competition.

No one from a singer’s host country is permitted to vote for his/her own country’s entry, so Yuval won on the merits, despite anti-Israel demonstrations inside and outside the concert hall.

Yuval survived the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of 1200 Israeli young people at the Music Festival in Southern Israel by hiding for 8 hours underneath the bodies of fellow concert-goers who had been murdered.

Yuval had never performed before any large audience, so to ascend so quickly to represent the people and State of Israel at this international competition before 6500 people in the hall and millions watching on television is a remarkable accomplishment. She did so with courage and grace, and her voice is spectacular – resonant, beautiful and open, entering the heart.

Here is the Haaretz article:

The Eurovision Song Contest final ended on Saturday night in Basel, Switzerland. Israel’s Yuval Raphael’s performance of “New Day Will Rise,” a song written by Keren Peles, finished in second place, with Austria taking the lead.

The competition venue, which holds around 6,500 spectators, featured performances by several frontrunners, including Sweden, Austria and France.

Audience voting opened at the start of the performances. A combination of public votes and national jury scores determined the final results. Viewers could vote up to 20 times using the official app, phone, or text message. Jury votes had already been cast during a rehearsal held Friday night.

Austria was crowned the unexpected winner, after Wasted Love by JJ received a total of 436 points. Israel received 357 points. The public votes awarded Israel 297 points – more than any other country.

Raphael, 24, was at the Nova music festival during the October 7 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.

During the attack, she hid in a shelter near Kibbutz Be’eri and sustained shrapnel injuries. She was one of only 11 survivors from that shelter, having hidden under the bodies of victims for eight hours.

She later shared her harrowing experience in a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council. Witnesses said that on Saturday, two protesters—a man and a woman from Holland — splashed red paint and began shouting during Raphael’s performance. Security guards quickly led the protesters out of the venue.

Since Thursday’s second semifinal, Israel had dropped to seventh place in the betting rankings, with Finland and Estonia overtaking it. Raphael was scheduled to perform fourth out of 26 entries – a relatively early slot that, according to past trends, tends to reduce a country’s chances of winning.

During Friday’s jury rehearsal – and similarly in Thursday’s semifinal dress rehearsal – a few audible boos and other disturbances could be heard during Yuval Raphael’s performance. However, no disruptions were heard during rehearsals for the press.

After a relatively quiet week, a pro-Palestinian protest took place in Basel ahead of the final. Several hundred people gathered in central Basel to express solidarity with the Palestinian people and to oppose Israel’s participation in the contest. Demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Boycott apartheid Israel,” “No stage for genocide,” and “Free Palestine.”Swiss police declined to provide Haaretz with information regarding the investigation of a pro-Palestinian demonstrator who made a throat-slitting gesture toward Raphael and the Israeli delegation on Sunday. “The public prosecutor’s office is handling the case, and for tactical reasons, we cannot provide further information at this stage,” the police stated repeatedly.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Israel%27s+Yuval+Raphael%27s+song+at+Eurovision&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS934US991&oq=Israel%27s+Yuval+Raphael%27s+song+at+Eurovision&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l5.11033j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2cf0822c,vid:Q3BELu4z6-U,st:0

Like an Old Car

16 Friday May 2025

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As we age, we’re like old cars – hopefully classic cars – but regardless of whether we regard ourselves as old Chevy’s or Cadillacs, the reality is that just as those jalopies break down and need replacement parts and tune-ups to keep running effectively, so too is it for each of us.

I passed my 75th birthday last December, and though I feel good enough, the reality of aging is ever-present and something I don’t take for granted.

I first got the shock of my life at the age of 59 when I was diagnosed with a relatively advanced stage of prostate cancer. I had surgery to remove it and then I had to confront (for the first time in my life) that had modern science, a great doctor and competent and compassionate nurses not taken care of me, I would have died young, like my father before me who succumbed to his second heart attack at the age of 53.

As I’ve aged, I think much more than ever before about my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents too, and the maladies of aging they experienced in their generations. Thanks to medical research and development in so many areas of bodily and mental health over many decades, longevity and good health have increased in modern societies if we’re treated, that is, by competent physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and state-of-the-science hospitals and clinics. How we take care of ourselves, how much exercise we do each day, whether we eat well and in moderation, forgo alcohol and drugs, get adequate sleep, enjoy positive mutually supportive relationships with family and friends, control our stress levels, do productive and creative work, have good genes, and get appropriate bio-medical support – all taken together – make a substantial difference in our quality of life, happiness and contentment, health, energy and longevity.

I regard my body and mind often like the first car I co-owned with my brother – a 1955 Chevy. I loved that car, and when Barbara and I led a congregational tour to Cuba years ago, seeing those 1950s models rumble along on the streets of Havana, held together by spit and wire, made me happy and nostalgic for my early years.

Last week, after returning from an overseas trip, to catch up on my health issues, I saw a different doctor every day. But – whether I complain about the effort it takes to go to one physician after another, given my respect for their competence, expertise and treatment, I much prefer that to the alternative. I used to say when I played golf regularly, especially when I had a mediocre hitting day that was frustrating no matter what I did to make adjustments in my focus, stance and swing: “Better this side of the grass.”

I depend now more than ever on the expertise of those physicians and the bio-medical assistance they prescribe to sustain me as a positive thinking half-glass-full 75 year-old Jew that I now am, a positive quality that propelled me from my youngest years to be productive and to find meaning in my life. I’m grateful not only to them, but most especially to my family, friends and community. They sustain and inspire me.

May we all “live long and prosper,” and be for each of us the embodiment of wisdom, strength, love and support that we can offer to one another.