Latest news with #Jewish
Boston Globe
29 minutes ago
- General
- Boston Globe
From numbers to names in a forgotten graveyard
This cemetery covers about two-thirds of an acre, with a shrine at the rear holding rosary beads, painted rocks, pieces of paper with unsigned and sorrowful messages, shells, and dollar bills. The grass is diligently mowed between rows of stone markers without names. It was created in 1947, with numbers signifying the order of burials until they ended in 1979, and letters dividing right and left sides: P for Protestant, C for Catholic. Jewish and Muslim patients are also buried here. Back in 2018, over the course of several years, a group of students from Gann Academy, a nearby Jewish high school, Advertisement Ten years after burials ended, I trained in one of the psychiatry units at Metropolitan State Hospital. We sat on the floor next to catatonic patients, tried to speak their language we could not understand, and prescribed medications with many clear bad effects and fewer clear good effects. I had no idea a cemetery existed just down the hill, out of sight. No one buried here would have chosen these biographies for themselves. The 8-year-old boy who fell from his wheelchair and fractured his skull. The 66-year-old who died of terminal burns from a faulty shower. The man who lived in Fernald for 47 unimaginable years before tuberculosis killed him. The resident who worked as a laundress in the hospital for 31 years. Each life story is conveyed with imperative respect. 'As you read,' cautions the website, 'please do so with the same spirit of kindness and communal reckoning that brought us to this work.' The project they created has a holy feel, especially in these times. After the dog and I would finish our pentagon, she liked to bound back across the bridge again. The bridge always made her feel young and, of course, there were biscuits waiting in the car. She knew she was adored. Every aging, fragile need of hers was tenderly met. Advertisement She did not know there was any other way. Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Why does Donald Trump hate Harvard so much? His biographer reveals 'real reason'
US President Donald Trump 's long feud with Harvard University reportedly stemmed not from Barron Trump's alleged rejection—as was rumored—but from Trump's own failure to gain admission in 1964. 'But the other thing is that, by the way, he didn't get into Harvard. So one of the Trump things is always holding a grudge against the Ivy Leagues,' Michael Wolff author of bestsellers Fire & Fury said at The Daily Beast Podcast. Criticising Wolff's claims, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson said, 'The Daily Beast and Michael Wolff have lots in common—they both peddle fake news for clickbait in a hopeless attempt to amount to something more than lying losers." 'The President didn't need to apply to an overrated, corrupt institution like Harvard to become a successful businessman and the most transformative President in history,' she added. There's no official record—public or private—that confirms Donald Trump ever applied to Harvard in the 1960s. In fact, published biographies remain diplomatically silent on the subject. As a young man, Trump reportedly dreamed of attending film school at the University of Southern California—an ambition that never materialized. Ironically, decades later, USC would find itself in Trump's crosshairs for a very different reason: the university lost $17.5 million in federal research funding after the Department of Education determined it failed to adequately protect Jewish students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Trump's Hollywood aspirations ended after high school, when he graduated from the New York Military Academy. Instead of heading west to chase celluloid dreams, he enrolled at Fordham University in 1964. For two years, he commuted from his family's estate in Jamaica Estates, Queens, to the Catholic campus in the Bronx—an arrangement perhaps less glamorous than USC, but decidedly more convenient for a future real estate mogul. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated its crackdown on Harvard, first freezing $2.2 billion in federal funding and then suspending the university's ability to enroll international students. These punitive measures followed Harvard's failure to comply with government demands to address reported antisemitic incidents and to provide federal officials with lists of foreign students.
New York Post
5 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Jewish students walk out of MIT commencement after speaker accuses university of aiding Israel's ‘genocide'
A commencement speaker accused the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) of being part of wiping 'Palestine from the face of the Earth' Thursday, leading multiple students to walk out. Megha M. Vemuri, MIT's class of 2025 president, praised her classmates for protesting against Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks and the ensuing Gaza War. Advertisement 'Last spring, MIT's undergraduate body and graduate student union voted overwhelmingly to cut ties with the genocidal Israeli military. You called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. And you stood in solidarity with the pro-Palestinian activists on campus. You faced threats, intimidation and suppression coming from all directions, especially your own university officials,' Vemuri said. Her comments drew a mix of boos and cheers, according to video obtained by Fox News Digital. One of the attendants, waving what appeared to be a Palestinian flag, scuffled with security. Some students walked out as Vemuri spoke. Advertisement Others in the crowd shouted, 'Shame.' 'But you prevailed because the MIT community that I know would never tolerate a genocide. Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza,' Vemuri continued. She went on to say, 'We are watching Israel try to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth. And it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.' 3 Multiple students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) walked out during the commencement ceremony after Megha M. Vemuri accused the university of wiping 'Palestine from the face of the Earth.' FOX News Advertisement Jewish and Israeli students walked out and some in the crowd protested as Vemuri accused the university of being 'directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.' 'The Israeli occupation forces are the only foreign military that MIT has research ties with. This means that Israel's assault on the Palestinian people is not only aided and abetted by our country, but our school. As scientists, engineers, academics, and leaders, we have a commitment to support life. Support aid efforts and call for an arms embargo and keep demanding now as alumni that MIT cuts the ties,' she said. One graduating Israeli student, who wished to remain anonymous, told Fox News Digital, 'All of our families came from far to see the ceremony and were extremely disappointed. All the Jewish families, not only the Israelis, stepped out and left the ceremony. MIT administration approved and supported that.' 3 Megha Vemuri, MIT's class of 2025 president, praised her fellow graduates for protesting against Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. Boston Globe via Getty Images Advertisement After Vemuri gave her speech at Thursday's commencement event, she was told she would not be allowed at Friday's undergraduate ceremony. 'With regard to MIT's Commencement 2025 activities, the speech delivered by a graduating senior at Thursday's OneMIT Commencement Ceremony was not the one that was provided by the speaker in advance. While that individual had a scheduled role at today's Undergraduate Degree Ceremony, she was notified that she would not be permitted at today's events,' an MIT spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement. 'MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony.' 3 Video obtained by Fox News Digital reveals that Vemuri's comments drew a mix of boos and cheers. FOX News College campuses across the U.S. have been rocked with protests amid the Gaza war. MIT was among a plethora of campuses where antisemitic agitators delivered incendiary speeches and faced off with police. Not too far from MIT, Harvard is facing serious pressure from the Trump administration over allegedly harboring 'pro-terrorist' conduct on campus, losing millions in federal funding.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New doc tells story of Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel
An Elie Wiesel documentary presents a compelling portrait of a Holocaust survivor who bore witness. Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, the new documentary portrait of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Holocaust survivor, and Jewish writer who devoted his life to sharing the story of what millions of his fellow victims couldn't, received the Yad Vashem Award and was just shown at the Docaviv Festival. The documentary opens with a telling quote from Wiesel: 'Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness.' That encapsulates his life's mission: He wanted to create a world of witnesses, and he did so by bringing the story of the tragedy of the Holocaust to millions. But living a life filled with this sense of mission took a toll on him, personally, and on those around him, as this candid and very compelling documentary by Oren Rudavsky shows. The film came about because the director's friend, author and Holocaust film historian Annette Insdorf, who was close to the Wiesel family, had been getting requests from filmmakers who wanted to tell Wiesel's story since he died in 2016. But she felt that Rudavsky and his late partner, Menachem Daum, who collaborated on such documentaries as Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust, would be a good fit for a Wiesel film. 'The process of making a film is partially by choice, partially by chance, and partially whether you can raise the money to make it,' Rudavsky said. He decided to make the film despite all the obstacles. 'I think a figure like Elie Wiesel is somebody whose message of tolerance and speaking up in times of crisis is very relevant today,' he said. 'His kind, prophetic, messianic way he spoke is very… well, timely is the wrong word because he's timeless, I think.' Rudavsky admitted that it was a challenge to create a film portrait of a man who was so revered by many. His mother had studied with Wiesel at Boston University, and his parents had Wiesel's books. As he read over Wiesel's works, such as Night, an autobiographical novel about his Holocaust experiences, and watched many of Wiesel's speeches, he said, 'It was daunting – absolutely!' But after he gained the trust of Wiesel's widow, Marion, who recently passed away, and his son, Elisha, who told him their stories and were honest about how difficult it could be to be close to Wiesel and to be in his shadow, he began to formulate a structure for the film. THE DOCUMENTARY uses rare photographs and clips, as well as interviews with his family members and short animations to tell the story of Wiesel's happy childhood in the heart of a close-knit Jewish community he was born into in 1928 in Sighet, a village which was alternately part of Romania and Hungary. He was encouraged by his parents to study both Torah and literature, and he spoke multiple languages. 'As in a dusty mirror, I look at my childhood and wonder if it really was mine,' Wiesel says in the film. He shares his vivid memories of how his family was put in a ghetto under Nazi rule and then deported to Auschwitz when he was 14. His mother instructed him not to stay with her and his three sisters but to go to the men's camp with his father. The father and son were able to stay together through the concentration camp, a death march, and Buchenwald, where his father eventually died, and Wiesel recalls his anguish at being helpless as his father passed away. Taken to a Jewish children's home in France following the war, he realized that the Holocaust experience would always be a key part of who he was. 'Whether we want it or not, we are still living in the era of the Holocaust. The language is still the language of the Holocaust. The fears are linked to it. The perspectives, unfortunately, are tied to it,' he said in a speech years later. His parents and younger sister were killed in the war, but he was reunited with his older sisters afterward, and one of them is interviewed in the film. For about 10 years, he did not talk or speak about the war, studying at the Sorbonne and working as a journalist. Eventually, in response to encouragement from the author Francois Mauriac, he wrote a long book on the war in Yiddish, The World Was Silent, which he then shortened and translated into French, changing its title to Night. The documentary dramatizes, through its animations, some of the most horrific moments from the book. 'Why do I write?' Wiesel says to an interviewer. 'What else could I do? I write to bear witness.' He went on to write many more books, including novels, autobiographies, and memoirs, and his fame grew. But the movie details how he remained isolated from others, resolving not to become close to anyone until he met Marion, a translator, whom he married. WHILE HE traveled the world speaking about his life and his writings, he had a special moment in the spotlight in 1985 when he opposed then-president Ronald Reagan's visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, that contained graves of SS officers. While Reagan seemed not to have known about the presence of the SS graves when he was first invited there, Reagan compounded the faux pas by saying that these SS members were victims of the Nazis 'just as surely as' those who were killed in the death camps. The planning of the Bitburg visit coincided with the moment when Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by Reagan. In a small meeting, which was caught on tape and is included in the documentary, and in a public speech when accepting the medal, Wiesel very respectfully – but very directly – challenged the president, imploring him not to lay a wreath on the graves of those who murdered his family and millions of others. 'This medal is not mine alone. It belongs to all those who remember what SS killers have done to their victims… While I feel responsible for the living, I feel equally responsible to the dead. Their memory dwells in my memory. Forty years ago, a young man woke up and found himself an orphan in an orphaned world. 'What have I learned in those 40 years? I learned the perils of language and those of silence. I learned that in extreme situations, when human lives and dignity are at stake, neutrality is a sin. It helps the killers, not the victims. But I've also learned that suffering confers no privileges. It all depends on what one does with it,' he said. He went on to say, 'I, too, wish to truly attain reconciliation with the German people. I do not believe in collective guilt nor in collective responsibility. Only the killers were guilty; their sons and daughters are not, and I believe, Mr. President, that we can and we must work together with them and with all people, and we must work to bring peace and understanding to a tormented world that, as you know, is still awaiting redemption.' Rudavsky said he was impressed by 'that speech, which I consider as one of his top few speeches. His eloquence, the whole circumstance considering where we are now with our politics… the way he spoke so gently and persuasively to President Reagan...' The film goes on to show Wiesel's speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1986 and other important moments, such as his visit to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey, who featured him on her show. 'He always saw himself as a teacher,' said Rudavsky, and one of the highlights of the film is a scene in which a class of African-American high school students in the US discuss Night, completely engaged by it. As he worked to finance the film, Rudavsky said he was grateful to a number of his producing partners, among them the Claims Conference, Jewish Story Partners, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Public Broadcasting Service's American Masters, and Patti Askwith Kenner. The film has been shown at and will be shown at Jewish film festivals in America, and Rudvasky is hopeful for a limited theatrical release of the film in the fall in the US. Eventually, it will be shown on the PBS American Masters series. It has won Audience awards at several US film festivals and will likely turn up on one of Israel's documentary channels. Asked at a recent screening – and virtually all screenings – what Wiesel would say about what's happening in the world today, Rudavsky said, 'I can't speak for Elie, but he would be crying for those who are suffering.'
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
JD Vance botches defense of the MAGA 'brain drain' Trump has caused in academia
Vice President JD Vance showed some mind-numbing ignorance in a recent attempt to downplay reports that his administration has caused a 'brain drain' — or an exodus of expertise leaving the United States' scientific fields — by suspending research grants and targeting student visa programs. Reputable voices in academia have highlighted the Trump administration-fueled crisis and its potential to inflict lasting damage on the future of American science. But in an interview Thursday with the right-wing outlet Newsmax, Vance waved off those concerns with some jingoism and what appears to be thinly veiled racial bigotry: First of all, I've heard a lot of the criticisms, the fear that we're going to have a brain drain. If you go back to the '50s and '60s, the American space program, the program that was the first to put a human being on the surface of the moon, was built by American citizens — some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War II, but mostly by American citizens who had built an incredible space program with American talent. This idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things, that you have to import a foreign class of servants and professors to do these things, I just reject it. I just think we should invest in our own people. We can do a lot of good. Vance, who previously delivered a speech framing universities as 'the enemy' in American society, went on to suggest that U.S. colleges may not be producing 'good science' because, according to him, many schools discriminate against white and Asian people. This was an especially ironic claim given it's his administration that is currently threatening to pull student visas from thousands of Chinese students. But let's sit with his 'why can't Americans do this' question for a moment, shall we? Because it sounds patriotic — but it's fundamentally idiotic. For one: Vance's comments were surprisingly dismissive of contributions from the more than 1,500 German scientists, some of them Nazis, brought to the United States as part of an operation known as 'Project Paperclip' (the vice president isn't exactly known for giving accurate lessons on American history). But to be clear: There's an illustrious history of immigrant scientists coming to the United States and making tremendous contributions to the American way of life. But aside from that, Trump's crackdown on science is also causing American scientists and aspiring scientists — the ones Vance claims to care about — to reconsider their career path. The Boston Globe highlighted that trend in a recent report sourced from more than two dozen young scientists, who said they're considering going abroad to find jobs or, potentially, abandoning scientific research entirely due to the Trump administration's actions. Per the report: Across New England and the country, thousands of budding scientists have awoken to a stark new reality, one they never could have imagined just six months ago. Funding for laboratories that focus on everything from the genetic causes of aging to cancer is drying up. Jobs in biomedicine are vanishing. Medical schools are rescinding offers of admission and once-thriving scientific internship programs are shutting down for lack of money. In university hallways, cafes, and cafeterias, from Cambridge to Providence, students are commiserating and strategizing over their increasingly precarious futures. And other nations see opportunity in the United States pursuing an anti-science agenda under Donald Trump. As I wrote in a recent Tuesday Tech Drop, foreign science organizations are licking their chops at the chance to poach American scientists who may be looking to take their expertise elsewhere. All of this highlights the ignorance in Vance's idea that American science will chug along undeterred as Trump's administration cracks down on academic freedom. The notion that American scientists will be eager to work in an increasingly repressive environment — one in which their research can be irreparably quashed and their foreign-born colleagues can be unceremoniously booted from the country —seems utterly detached from reality. This article was originally published on
