H EADLINES
HIAS PA Clients Celebrate Thanksgiving Virtually
L OCA L
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
HIAS PENNSYLVANIA didn’t
want its newly arrived immigrant
and refugee clients to miss out
on their fi rst Th anksgiving in
the United States, even if large,
in-person gatherings are out of the
question. Th e staff and board organized
Th ankful Together, a virtual
celebration featuring meal
drop-off s, prerecorded perfor-
mances and Zoom breakout
rooms organized by language,
on Nov. 22.

The celebration started
when volunteers began deliv-
ering home-cooked meals to
the homes of 20 immigrant
and refugee families. Later that
day, guests gathered on Zoom
to hear addresses from HIAS
PA staff and watch prerecorded
performances by Philadelphia
arts organizations.

Th e event was hosted by
Executive Director Cathryn
Miller-Wilson and Charlie
Heil, adult education lead
instructor. “Whether or not you are
Jewish, or an immigrant, we
have all been strangers once and,
therefore, know deep in our souls
the importance of welcoming,”
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Miller-Wilson said.

Board President Carol
Gantman said the organization’s
refugee Th anksgiving tradition
traces back many years.

“It was thought that it would
be great for all new arrivals from
the previous year to be able to
celebrate with us at HIAS PA
their fi rst authentic Th anksgiving
in America,” she said.

In past years, HIAS PA
partnered with community
organizations and synagogues to
fi nd space and supplies, coordi-
nated about 100 people to set
up and cook, and arranged for
kid-friendly activities like face
painting and storytelling, as well
as performing arts acts for adult
guests. Immigrant and refugee
families were encouraged to
bring dishes from their countries
of origin to serve alongside
turkey and pumpkin pie.

HIAS PA clients who arrived
in the United States aft er the
previous year’s Th anksgiving
but before the upcoming one
were invited to attend, regard-
less of what stage they are at in
the immigration process.

Gantman noted that HIAS
PA staff and board chose the
name “Th ankful Together”
to acknowledge that many
schools do not teach the
history of marginalized people
in the United States, partic-
ularly the history of Native
Americans who are portrayed
in the Th anksgiving story.

Philadelphia Cit y
Councilmember Helen Gym
sent Th anksgiving greetings
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JEWISH EXPONENT
The Lullaby Project presents a music video during Thankful Together with
Cathryn Miller-Wilson and Charlie Heil.

Photo by Sophie Panzer
for this year’s celebration in a
recorded message thanking
immigrants for their contribu-
tions to the city. Gym is vice chair
of Local Progress, a network that
advocates for immigrant protec-
tions like sanctuary cities and
the Development, Relief, and
Education for Alien Minors Act.

“Having attended HIAS
Pennsylvania’s Thanksgiving
events in years past, it’s always
been my greatest honor to
welcome immigrant families to
our communal table,” Gym said.

“Immigrant families make our
city so incredibly strong. More
than a quarter of all Philadelphia
residents are immigrants, or
have at least one immigrant
parent. And our city truly could
not be what it is without you.”
Participants from Th e Lullaby
Project, an organization that
pairs new parents with music
artists to create personal lulla-
bies for their children, presented
their ballads in music videos.

Culture Shock, the dance
troupe at the University of
the Sciences in Philadelphia,
submitted a dance routine, as
did K-pop cover dance group
L8NITE and culture nonprofi ts
Asian Arts Initiative and
Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture.

Th e Carver Choir of Carver
Engineering and Science high
school submitted a performance
of “Th is Little Light of Mine,”
with each singer’s part recorded
separately in their homes. House
singer Lady Alma submitted an
onstage performance of her song
“Keep it Moving” and the band
Worldtown Soundsystem sent a
kaleidoscopic underwater music
video for its song “Freedom.”
Artist House choreogra-
pher and dancer Asya Zlatina
submitted a solo performance
to Fayerlech by the Jewish
folk group Veselei Igraii. She
used to listen to their album
“Bazetsn di kale” with her
grandmother. Th e song was her
fi rst exposure to Yiddish, and
she was working on choreo-
graphing a group performance
for it before the pandemic hit.

She turned it into a solo perfor-
mance to accommodate social
distancing this fall.

Zlatina’s family left the
Soviet Union and immigrated to
the United States when she was
a child. She said Th anksgiving
is a big deal for her family
and one of the holidays they
gather for every year. She grew
up loving “Molly’s Pilgrim,” a
children’s book about a young
Jewish girl who creates a
Th anksgiving project honoring
her immigrant heritage.

“Th at book was always very
meaningful to me as someone
who comes from an Eastern
See HIAS, Page 16
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H EADLINES
Katz Center Lecture Traces History of Hate
L OCA L
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
THE THEME OF the 24th
annual Joseph and Rebecca
Meyerhoff Lecture in Judaic
Studies was soberingly timely.

The Herbert D. Katz
Center for Advanced Judaic
Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania hosted “Tracing
the History of a Toxic Present:
Antisemitism and Resurgent
Ethnonationalism” on Nov. 19,
just a few days aft er the FBI
reported a 14% rise in anti-Se-
mitic hate crimes in 2019.

Th is year’s lecture was deliv-
ered by Alexandra Minna Stern,
the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
Collegiate Professor of History,
American Culture
and Women’s and Gender Studies
and Associate Dean for the
Humanities at the University
of Michigan. She is the author
of the books “Eugenic Nation:
Faults and Frontiers of Better
Breeding in Modern America”
and the “Proud Boys and the
White Ethnostate.” Th e latter
was published in 2019 and uses
historical analysis, feminist
studies and critical race
studies to deconstruct white
nationalism. She acknowledged the
urgency of her topic at the
beginning of her talk.

“2020 has seen the
emergence and the resurgence
en masse of far right actors
across the United States and
really across the world,” she
said. “According to the recent
Department of Homeland
Security threat assessment
report, which was issued
earlier this month, 2019 was
the most lethal year for white
supremacist violence in the
country since 1995. And you
may remember that was the
year of the Oklahoma City
bombing.” She added that white
supremacist extremists have
conducted more lethal attacks
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM in the United States than any
other movement since 2018,
attacks responsible for the
deaths of 39 people. Th ese
statistics are matched by a rise
in hate crimes.

Steven Weitzman, director
of the Katz Center, introduced
the event with a brief summary
of the organization’s 2020
fellowship program.

“Our fellowship program
this year has been focused on
America’s Jewish questions,
and our fellows have been
aiming to develop new perspec-
tives on the Jewish American
experience and on America
itself,” he said.

During her talk, Stern
explained that the wave of white
supremacy and extremism is
distinguished by the fact that
it has become increasingly
visible in mainstream culture
through conspiracy theories
and social media. She traced
this phenomenon to right-wing
movements in France in 1968,
which focused on infl uencing
culture rather than on existing
political parties.

Many on the American
far-right believe the Republican
party and
conservative movements have sold out to
Jewish interests, so they seek
to infl uence hearts and minds
rather than relying on tradi-
tional political organizing.

Stern wrote her latest book
because she has studied the
history of eugenics and was
interested in how it infl u-
enced contemporary far-right
movements. She argued that the
white ethnostate idealized by
white nationalists is a eugenic
project, and Jews are perceived
to threaten that project by
encouraging immigration,
interracial marriage and the
breakdown of gender norms.

“Jews are seen as the group
most responsible for the loss
of the white American Dream.

Nineteen-fi ft ies America has
vanished and will never come
back in large part due to Jews
and Jewish organizations,”
Stern said.

She identifi ed specifi c points
in history that American
white supremacists look to for
support of their views.

“Jews are blamed over and
over again for the passage of
the Hart-Celler Immigration
Act, which is seen as the point
of demographic no return,
as well as the Voting Rights
Act to enfranchise African
Americans,” she said. Th ese
developments would also set
the stage for women’s libera-
tion and gay pride movements
in the ’70s.

During her research, Stern
found that anti-Semitism sits
at the core of far-right ideolo-
gies and feeds into racism and
xenophobia. Israel is begrudg-
ingly admired and perceived
as an ethnostate, yet resented
for its Jewish population.

Jews are also viewed as the
nefarious force behind the desta-
bilization of gender and vilifi ed
for promoting non-hetero-
sexuality, women’s rights and
See Lecture, Page 16
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