Hate crime or pubescent prank?
by Debra Rich Gettleman
This past Shabbat, the first one of the 2023 school year at UC Berkeley, proved to be anything but restful for Jewish Fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi). Instead, it offered a glance into antisemitism on campus.
At about 1am Saturday morning, a group of students were seen in the area carrying buckets according to one member of AEPi. What happened next, is not hard to guess.
The fraternity, with 20 live-in members, and 8 students who keep kosher, was doused with a disgusting array of shellfish. “We go outside, we saw crayfish had been thrown all over our deck, all over the side driveway, through the windows into someone’s room and scattered all around the backyard,” AEPi president, Jadon Gershon-Friedberg, told reporters, “We found claws by the side of the house and by the door. We found a fish tail and head in someone’s room,” he said. “It was absolutely disgusting.”
Gershon-Friedberg called 911 and filed police reports with both the city and campus police deparments. According to the Berkeley Police Department, the incident is “under investigation.”
So, here’s my question: is this a hate crime or a pubescent prank? Here’s how I see it.
- Shellfish is clearly a food outlawed to Jews through the laws of Kashrut.
- No other fraternities were targeted
- This act was directed at Jews to hurt and intimidate them.
Dan Mogulof, UC Berkely spokesperson said in a statement, “The campus administration has a long-standing and unwavering commitment to confronting antisemitism, and its expression, as we do with all forms of bias, discrimination, and hatred,” He added, “An investigation is underway, and we will, as always, ensure there are appropriate consequences if laws, campus policies, and/or the Student Code of Conduct are found to have been violated.”
If laws, campus policies and/or the student code of conduct was violated? Hmmm. This doesn’t seem like a hard one to this journalist. I mean, perhaps there is a stipulation in the Berkeley student code of conduct that allows for students to vandalize a Jewish fraternity by dumping an array of stinky bivalves on, in, and around their home. But I’m hard pressed to believe that.
Like so many college “pranks,” I fear that this one will be swept under the “kids just being kids” rug, thus allowing and even encouraging further acts of antisemitism and hatred against Jewish students and other campus minority groups.
So, Berkeley and Campus police, we’re watching. We’re waiting. And we are hoping that you do the right thing here.
Adidas: Fighting antisemitism or prospering because of it?
by Debra Rich Gettleman
When I say Kanye West, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Maybe I’m biased, but I’m guessing it’s antisemitism. Ye, the artist formally known as Kanye West, made headlines last fall when he declared that he was going “death con [sic] 3 on Jewish people.” But that was just a small sample of the remarks ye has publicly made over the years, not the least of which was endorsing Hitler for killing 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Well, the good news was that Ye paid a price for his hateful tweets and comments. Fellow celebs came out against the rapper/fashion designer. But the biggest hit was to his pocketbook when the German company, Adidas, cut ties with Ye and his newly manufactured Yeezy sneakers. With over a billion dollars of Yeezy kicks in their coffers, Adidas was in a quandary. Do they try to salvage the cash outlay and sell off the antisemitic shoes or just dump them in a landfill somewhere and try to move forward.
The decision announced this month to sell the shoes and share the proceeds with groups that fight antisemitism offers a unique solution. But is it the right one?
The sneakers are being sold online in limited quantities and part of the profits from the sneaker sales will go to the Anti-Defamation League, (ADL), one of the globes most powerful antisemitism combatants. Another organization who will get a share of the profits is Robert Kraft’s Blue Square campaign, part of the New England Patriots owner’s #standuptojewishhate organization.
Kraft, in a statement to the AP, described the partnership with Adidas as “a unique opportunity to raise awareness about antisemitism and all hate to a community that might otherwise not be aware.”
But forgive my skepticism. The Yeezy brand of clothing and shoes brought over $2 billion in sales to Adidas last year. And the truth is, Adidas only ended the partnership with West after enormous pressure from celebrities and Jewish organizations.
So, I have to ask, is this really about fighting antisemitism? To me, it seems more like a clever business stunt to use negative publicity to increase Adidas’ bottom line. I mean, they say a portion of the proceeds will go towards fighting bigotry, hatred and antisemitism. What portion?
According to my research, there is no fixed percentage of sales that will go to various anti-hate organizations. In a recent Seattle Times piece by David McHugh, it notes that Adidas is determining the amount of money it will donate based on what’s “appropriate” for each organization.
Bjørn Gulden, Adidas CEO, insists that selling off the inventory and donating to Jewish organizations is a win-win for everyone. But he’s quoted in McHugh’s peace as admitting that the Yeezy sales are “of course helping both our cash flow and general financial strength.”
This gives me pause. While many Jewish leaders, like Elliot Steinmentz, coach of New York’s Jewish orthodox Yeshiva University basketball team, have praised Adidas’ decision, it feels like Kanye and Adidas are scoring a “get out of jail free” card that allows both to continue to benefit from the sale of these tainted sneakers. According to Steinmetz, Adidas “is choosing the best way out of a tough situation.”
“They have every right to try and avoid losses and by donating profits to help raise awareness in the fight against antisemitism, they are choosing an acceptable vehicle for minimizing those losses,” said Steinmetz. “I’d say it’s a high five to Adidas for finding a way to foster positivity out of a negative business condition.”
A high five? Really? It feels more like a low blow to this journalist.
Barbie’s Fate is not yet Sealed
by Debra Rich Gettleman
Barbie, created by Ruth Handler, the first woman President of Mattel, (and Jewish woman to boot,) whose parents barely escaped Poland fleeing from poverty and antisemitism, is considered the most iconic doll of all times. When Handler invented Barbie, an adult female doll for children, there was plenty of conflict about her sexuality. But while moms balked, kids couldn’t get enough of the well-endowed beauty. Mattel sold a whopping 350,000 dolls in its first year back in 1959.
Cut to today and Greta Gerwig’s film, “Barbie,” has raked in over $1 billion in global sales. But the brightly smiling glamor girl with a body to kill, hasn’t been welcomed everywhere. In fact, she was outright banned in Beiruit.
Barbie’s ban in Lebanon was a big bummer. But recent announcements from the Lebanese film oversight committee suggest that Barbie’s back!
It all started when Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada sent a request to Lebanon’s General Security agency instructing them, “To take all necessary measures to ban showing this move in Lebanon.”
According to Mortada, the film “promotes homosexuality and transsexuality…supports rejecting father’s guardianship, undermines and ridicules the role of the mother, and questions the necessity of marriage and having a family.”
The Lebanese film oversight committee, made up of representatives from the Ministry of Economy and General Security, met to assess the suitability of the internationally successful “Barbie” movie. Unlike Minister Mortada, they unanimously voted in favor of Barbie’s Middle East appearance.
Now scheduled for an August 31st release in Lebanon, Barbie and Ken aren’t toasting in the hot tub just yet. Despite the positive endorsement from the film oversight committee, the final decision on the screening is still officially pending.
Will Barbie join the ranks of banned Buzz Lightyear, Gru, and Thor? That’s the billion-dollar question. We’ll keep you posted.
Love is the Answer – said no neo-Nazi ever!
by Debra Rich Gettleman
What if there was a drug that could rid the world of hatred and antisemitism? Would you lobby to make it legal? I certainly would.
Well, a guy known as Brendan, a leader of the Midwest faction of Identity Evropa, the infamous white supremacist group behind the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, insists that a single dose of MDMA changed his racist ideology into pure love for all of mankind.
Apparently, Brendan wasn’t doing so great due to his ties with the white nationalist movement. He lost his job, was dropped by friends, and found himself cut-off by his family. At rock bottom, he enrolled in a University of Chicago research study about how MDMA enhances the pleasantness of physical touch. Still carrying his racist ideology with him at the onset of the study, he discovered something pretty astonishing during his carefully monitored MDMA high.
Life Changing Ecstasy
He’s quoted in a BBC article saying, “I felt in that moment that all of my priorities in my life were just so messed up, the way I was interacting with people, particularly people who are close to me. But there was also an almost euphoric feeling, a feeling of love, and I concluded that was the sort of feeling that I should strive to permeate across the world,”
MDMA (aka molly or ecstasy) has been proven effective in the treatment of PTSD. In fact, Israel has been using it since 2019 for that very purpose. But the US FDA continues to drag its feet on approving MDMA and psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms) for the treatment of a host of mental health disorders.
Rachel Nuwer, author of just-released book “I Feel Love: MDMA and the Search for Connection in a Fractured World,” shared with The Forward’s Senior Contributing Editor, Rob Eshman, that after speaking with Brendan for her book, “It does raise the possibility that this could be a ripe field of investigation.” She raised the question of whether we could utilize MDMS or other psychedelics as tools to de-radicalize people with extremist views.
Psychedelic Jews
Alexander Shulgin, a California pharmacologist dubbed by Jewish Currents as
the “zeyde of psychedelics,” was the first to experiment with MDMA.
According to Nuwer, Shulgin and his colleagues were stunned by the results. “All they knew,” Nuwer writes, “Was that it seemed to catalyze mental breakthroughs than normally would take months, years, or even a lifetime of traditional therapy to achieve.”
But since 1985, MDMA has been drug non-grata here in the USA.
Luckily, a Chicago Jew and activist for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPs), Rick Doblin, was raised with the edict that “oppressive rules are made to be broken.” His family delivered books to Soviet Jews in the 70s.
He tells Eshman, “What I learned from my parents is that there are big, big systems going on in the world, but you can make tiny individual differences,” He adds, “You can’t open up Judaism in Russia, but you can bring two prayer books.”
That idealism has helped Doblin in his campaign for more and better psychedelic research. MAPS, created in 1986, continues to research the healing potential of MDMA and other psychedelics. Over the course of the past 35 years, MAPS has raised over $130 million for psychedelic research and education.
But Nuwer makes it clear in her book that while MDMA can help shift perspectives, intention is a critical element to success. She clarifies with Eshman, “If you just put MDMA in Donald Trump’s Diet Coke, he’s not gonna suddenly change. He’s just going to love himself more and love his followers more.”
Recent Comments