Weekly roundup of world briefs

UPenn refuses to reschedule commencement ceremony on Shavuot

(JNS) — The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia said it will not move the date of its commencement ceremony, which is set to take place during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, despite a petition to reschedule the event to accommodate those who celebrate the Jewish holiday.

According to the university’s student-run publication, The Daily Pennsylvanian, nearly 40 seniors who identify as Orthodox Jewish received an email about the decision on March 24. Vice president and university secretary Medha Narvekar, and vice president of social equity and community, and university chaplain Chaz Howard said the school cannot move the date of commencement due to logistical challenges.

“The details and logistics of executing an event of this scale have been set for well over a year, and it is not feasible to move the ceremony even without other in-person school ceremonies in place,” said the email.

The FAQ section on the university’s commencement website said the school will provide “alternate arrangements” to Orthodox students who choose to attend the ceremony in person—for example, by allowing observant Jews to complete a PennOpen Pass attestation verbally at the entrance, and complete required COVID-19 testing and registration ahead of time. A full recording of the event will also be posted online for families to watch at a later date.

More than 1,600 students and alumni of the university signed a petition in March asking the university to move the date of this year’s commencement ceremony.

According to Hillel International, as much as 17 percent of the university’s undergraduate population is Jewish. An active Chabad House at Penn also serves students in a city that ranks among the 10 highest metropolitan-area Jewish populations in the United States.

Greece assumes presidency of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

(JNS) — Greece has assumed the rotating presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance for one year, taking over the position from Germany.

The Greek Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country “is deeply committed to promoting the IHRA’s work, which is key to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.”

One of its goals is “teaching and learning about the Holocaust: Education for a world without genocide ever again.”

“In this context, a number of events will be held aiming to educate younger generations and society as a whole on what the Holocaust means so that it is never again repeated,” the statement said.

The handover took place in an April 1 online ceremony. It included addresses by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis; Deputy Prime Minister Panagiotis Pikrammenos; Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias; Education and Religious Affairs Minister Niki Kerameos; and Ambassador Christodoulos Lazaris, who will serve as IHRA president.

Founded in 1998, the IHRA has 34 member countries, as well as several liaison and observer states. The IHRA carries out internal projects; aims to influence public policy on Holocaust-related issues; and develops research focusing on lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust. In 2016, the IHRA adopted the Working Definition of Antisemitism, which has since been adopted by a number of dozens of countries, political institutions, colleges and other organizations throughout the world.

Of late, the definition has also come under criticism by left-wing organizations and academics who contend that it can be used to stifle free speech related to criticism of Israeli government actions and policies. As a result, progressive groups have issued alternative definitions such as the Jerusalem Declaration, and the Nexus Task Force on Israel and Antisemitism.

Yale to offer beginner Yiddish courses to fulfill language requirements

By Shira Hanau

(JTA) — Yale will launch beginner Yiddish classes in the fall that will allow students to fulfill their language requirements, according to the Yale Daily News.

Yiddish studies now offered at the Ivy League university focus on reading for translation and research purposes rather than on spoken Yiddish. The courses did not count toward its language requirement, meaning students had to take them as electives.

The beginner courses, which will start in the fall, will likely develop into levels of increasingly advanced courses in Yiddish as a spoken and written language.

Recent decades have seen an increased interest in learning Yiddish among younger Jews. Just this week Duolingo, the language learning app, added Yiddish to the list of languages it offers on its app , and earlier this year the Yiddish Book Center released a new multimedia Yiddish textbook.

“Most of our peer institutions teach Yiddish language and I’ve long felt that it was time for Yale to do so as well,” Maurice Samuels, chair of Yale’s Judaic Studies program, told the Yale Daily News in an email. “Yale is a center for the study of Jewish history and the Holocaust and Yiddish is central to those disciplines.”

According to the student paper, the new course will focus on conversational language and incorporate a variety of readings, including love songs, poetry, folktales and even tweets.

Lee Zeldin, leading Jewish pro-Trump voice in Congress, announces run for NY governor

By Gabe Friedman

(JTA) — Rep. Lee Zeldin, one of two Jewish Republicans in Congress and a staunch defender of Donald Trump, is running for governor of New York.

“The bottom line is this: To save New York, Andrew Cuomo’s gotta go,” Zeldin said in a news release Thursday.

Zeldin, a House member from Long Island, handily won reelection in the fall over a Democratic Jewish challenger, despite being abashedly pro-Trump in a state where the former president is extremely unpopular.

Both Zeldin and David Kustoff of Tennessee, the other Jewish House Republican, voted to object to the Electoral College’s presidential vote tally after condemning the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Cuomo, the incumbent governor, is ensnared in a series of scandals — one involving lies about nursing home deaths in New York from COVID-19, as well as several allegations of sexual harassment by former colleagues.

The last Jewish governor of New York was Eliot Spitzer, who held the office between 2007 and 2008 before resigning amid a prostitution scandal.

Helen Mirren to play Golda Meir in upcoming film ‘Golda’

By Gabe Friedman

(JTA) — Academy Award winner Helen Mirren will portray Golda Meir, Israel’s only female prime minister, in an upcoming biopic set during the Yom Kippur War.

Production on “Golda” will begin later this year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The news follows the announcement last month of another star-powered production on Meir, a series titled “Lioness” led by Israeli actress Shira Haas of “Unorthodox” fame.

While “Lioness” will follow Meir from “her birth in Kiev to her American upbringing in Milwaukee, her role in the formation of Israel and her rise to become the new nation’s first and only female prime minister,” according to a report in Deadline, “Golda” will focus on the turbulent Yom Kippur War period.

Along with the rest of Israel, Meir and her all-male cabinet were taken by surprise by the attack on the eve of the holiday in 1973 by Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces.

“Golda” will be directed by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, who won the 2018 Academy Award for best short for “Skin,” a film involving neo-Nazis that he later made into a feature.

“As someone who was born during the Yom Kippur War, I am honored to tell this fascinating story about the first and only woman to ever lead Israel,” Nattiv said in a statement.

He added: “I could not be more excited to work with the legendary Miss Mirren to bring this epic, emotional and complex story to life.”

UConn students rally to combat hate following anti-Semitic incidents on campus

(JNS) — Students at the University of Connecticut held a rally on Monday against hate speech and anti-Semitism following a number of incidents on its main campus in Storrs.

“Anti-Semitism, like all forms of hatred and bigotry, has absolutely no place on UConn’s campuses,” said a university spokesperson, reported NBC Connecticut. “The university proudly supports all those gathering in solidarity on the Storrs campus today not only to condemn these vile acts but to express the shared values that truly reflect our community.”

On the first day of Passover, a swastika was found spray-painted on the side of the chemistry building. A few days later, another one was found spray-painted on the campus’s Philip E. Austin Building. A university spokesperson said “UConn Police documented the graffiti in both cases and are actively investigating.”

In February, a swastika was found on the wall of a men’s bathroom, along with an “anti-black racial slur,” according to the school’s student-run publication The Daily Campus.

Avital Sutin, vice president of UConn’s Hillel chapter, said that in the past academic year, seven anti-Semitic incidents have taken place on campus. Students who rallied on Monday are calling for more education that would help combat hate on campus.

“I think a major thing that allows this to keep happening is the lack of education. The more people know about what they’re doing, the less likely it is to happen,” said Dori Jacobs, president of the UConn Hillel student board.

Popular language-learning app Duolingo launches Yiddish course

(JNS) — Duolingo, the world’s most popular language-learning platform, launched a Yiddish course on Tuesday.

The site teaches Yiddish through game-like lessons that take five to seven minutes a day. Lessons and exercises are adapted to the user’s learning style, and students are tempted to stay motivated by earning virtual coins, unlocking new levels and watching their “fluency score” rise as they master a new language.

According to Duolingo, some 10,000 students have already signed up to learn Yiddish.

Meena Viswanath, whose family includes a number of prominent Yiddish scholars, was the project’s expert in blending academic Yiddish with the everyday vernacular spoken by Jews worldwide, primarily Chassidic Jews whose roots go back to Eastern Europe.

“We used mostly the spelling and grammar that’s a little bit more formalized among the secular Yiddishists,” she said, according to JTA. “But then when we recorded the audio, we used the pronunciation that is used in the vernacular among students, specifically in Borough Park in Brooklyn and so forth.”

“So many people, especially Americans, are aware of Yiddish. But their awareness is often limited to stereotypes or a few phrases here and there that they heard their grandparents or neighbors say,” she said. “I really hope that those people will open the course and start doing it and realize, ‘Hey, Yiddish is a real language, it’s got grammar, it has a vocabulary.’ ”

IDF Northern Command calls snap border drill

By Lilach Shoval

(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Israel Defense Forces GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Amir Baram ordered a snap war-readiness drill on Monday for Golani Brigade troops deployed along the northern border.

Maneuvers included airborne-combat scenarios, among them “removing” Hezbollah forces that “infiltrated” the Mount Hermon sector.

One of the extreme-case scenarios that the IDF is preparing to counter in the event of an armed conflict with the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which is Iran’s largest proxy in the area, is a Hezbollah incursion into Israeli territory

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Pfizer vaccine found effective against COVID-19 variants

By Abigail Klein Leichman

(Israel21c via JNS) — Israeli researchers report that the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is as effective against B.1.1.7 variant of the virus, aka the U.K. variant, as it is against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. The vaccine was found to be moderately less effective against the B.1.351 (South African) variant and the combined British-South African variants of the coronavirus.

The study was published on March 20 in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.

“Our findings show that future variants could necessitate a modified vaccine as the virus mutates to increase its infectivity,” said principal investigator Ran Taube of the Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics in Ben-Gurion University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.

The researchers are continuing to test other circulating variants as they emerge, consisting of mutations that could possibly pose a challenge to the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness. A recently detected Israeli variant is “of no clinical or epidemiological significance,” according to the Israeli Health Ministry.

The ministry is conducting ongoing studies regarding the known coronavirus mutations, sending samples from every hospital and the four national health maintenance organizations to the Central Virology Lab at Sheba Medical Center.

Thus far, these studies support the Ben-Gurion research, showing that no currently circulating variants are significantly resistant to the Pfizer vaccine.

This article was first published by Israel21c.

Israel fails to pay so Pfizer halts shipment of COVID vaccine doses

By Gabe Friedman

(JTA) — Pfizer halted a shipment of 700,000 COVID vaccine doses to Israel, alleging that the country has not paid for a previous shipment of 2.5 million doses.

The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that the shipment was supposed to arrive this past Sunday but was indefinitely delayed pending payment.

Israel paid for its first 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine soon after they were made available, helping the country earn the world’s highest vaccination rate. But when its supplies began to dwindle in February, Israel secured a deal with Pfizer for additional doses.

Israel has spent 2.6 billion shekels, or nearly $700 million, on vaccines so far, according to the Post.

The country of over 9 million people has begun to slowly normalize large social events and gatherings, such as concerts and sporting events, with the help of a digital vaccine “passport” system. But close to half the country has still not been vaccinated, including some waiting to see the effects on others.

Sudan repeals 1958 boycott law against Israel

(JNS) — Sudan’s cabinet decided on Tuesday to repeal a law dating back to 1958 that barred diplomatic or business relations with Israel, it said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The decision still needs to be confirmed in a joint meeting between its sovereign council and cabinet before going into effect, though it is being seen as key to paving the way for more official ties.

According to the report, Sudan’s military is behind the move.

Sudan was one of several Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel after the initial U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September. Morocco also followed suit shortly afterwards to solidify ties with the Jewish state.

Israel’s Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen, who led a delegation to Sudan in January, said in a statement: “This is an important and necessary step toward the signing of a peace accord between the countries.”

Israel welcomes inaugural Abu Dhabi-Tel Aviv flight in official ceremony

By Shimon Yaish

(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The first commercial flight from Abu Dhabi to Israel touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Tuesday with the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Israel on board for an official reception along with his delegation.

Tony Douglas, CEO of Etihad Airways, said he had never received a warmer welcome anywhere in the world.

“This is an exceptional opportunity to bring the capital of the Emirates closer to Jerusalem and to give citizens the opportunity to travel between the two countries thanks to this new airline. The hospitality is incredible in Abu Dhabi, and we look forward to seeing you in the Emirates,” he stated.

UAE Ambassador to Israel Mohammad Mahmoud Al Khajah said: “Today, we celebrate the inaugural flight of our capital since the signing of the Abraham Accords. A new era of dynamic cooperation is opening up to us, which allows us to promote cultural and tourist exchanges.”

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.