(bright music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up later in the show, we'll hear music from Slamabama.

But first, joining me now, our guest is Steve Hunegs, the Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Steve, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you, John.

It's a pleasure.

Congratulations to the station on 60 years of service to the are.

- Thank you for that.

Well thanks for joining us today, as we said, and as we start off, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and maybe your background.

- Sure, again, Steve Hunegs, I'm the Executive Director, as you said, of the JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

It's my great pleasure to serve along with my wonderful staff and our board, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, as I like to call it, 225,000 square miles of paradise.

Red River Valley, of course, is interland between Minnesota and North Dakota.

It's a very important part.

Keep in mind here in North Dakota, we have Synagogue Benet Israel in Grand Forks, Beth El here in Fargo.

Jim Shaw is our board member.

So we're deeply involved in activities in North Dakota, but our annual report with, you can take a look at that.

Some of our areas are, well in the news these days, Israel advocacy.

We do a lot of work in civil rights.

We hold the responsibility for social service agencies and lobbying for the Minnesota Jewish social service agencies, Holocaust education, community security.

Got a staff of 11 people based in Minneapolis.

But as I said before, we're often in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Some of our programs have a national reach, which is terrific.

So we have a national organization and we lobby the members of the federal delegation, six Senators, I like to say we have responsibility for 6% of the United States Senate, members of Congress, the legislatures of the three states, wonderful work.

- So you told us a little bit about that.

What about the Jewish American Heritage Month we're in?

What's that all about?

- President Biden every year signs a proclamation for it when he's president.

And he says this year we're dedicated in Jewish American History Month, talking about the values, contributions, work that American Jews and its impact have contributed to the United States.

And that's really important to remember what the American Jewish community has contributed.

1654, 23 Jews came from Holland, the Netherlands, to what was then New Amsterdam, which became New York.

Some fellows from really humble, John, beginning, grew this wonderful, expansive American Jewish community.

It's all about democracy, right?

I mean, one reason Jews have seen this as such a wonderful place is democratic opportunity, democratic values.

After all, what does democracy mean?

It means people have an opportunity to rise on their own merits, working hard together with people.

I like to tell people that there's never been a better time to be a Jew practically anywhere in the world than the United States in 2024.

And I say that, you two thoughts can occupy your mind at the same time, despite issues with antisemitism, even rising antisemitism, even punctuated by violence such as we had at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

Because both are true at the same time.

And I tell people because of my work, because of our team's work, travel all over the place.

And I can tell you that philosemitism, that is the fancy word for people who wanna partner with the Jewish community, work with the Jewish community, is far more prevalent than antisemitism, which is the good news.

That said, we do have issues with antisemitism now.

So life is ambiguity.

Life is trying to make sense of the internal contradictions.

That's a lot of what we do.

But at the end of the day, American democracy is one of our most important values and something that we all need to defend.

- How many Jewish people are there in Minnesota and the Dakotas?

- I like to say sort of on a good day, maybe 50,000 in Minnesota, perhaps 1,000 combined between North Dakota and South Dakota.

But keep in mind, our communities in South Dakota and North Dakota are very well integrated into the social life of both states.

And many important leaders come out of both South Dakota and North Dakota.

Let's think about North Dakota for a second.

Herschel Lashkowitz, State Senator responsible for so much of urban renewal in Fargo in the 1960s and the 1970s, sort of as a national leader and made Fargo a national leader, judge Myron Bright from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, served for decades.

And the Eighth Circuit Court of appeals of course is the level of the court next highest to the Supreme Court.

He served so long, he was the last member of the federal judiciary who was appointed by Lyndon Johnson.

So his influence from writing all those opinions in three judge panels will last for years and years and years.

If you got to know Judge Bright, you know what a character he was to then.

He's just sort of an exemplar of, remember my point about democracy, how is it that he rose to the Eighth Circuit?

Well it's because he made a lot of friends, made a lot of alliances in North Dakota politics over the years.

He was a wonderful judge.

He was a wonderful lawyer.

And those sorts of characteristics made it possible for him to be appointed to the Eighth Circuit.

- And you talked about how many were in Minnesota and Dakotas, are most of those in the Twin Cities, though?

- Sure.

We have a significant majority.

But keep in mind, remember I mentioned there were synagogues in Fargo and Grand Forks, synagogues in Sioux Falls, synagogue all the way over in Rapid City, Rochester, Duluth, throughout the Twin Cities and Minneapolis and St. Paul and the suburbs.

Interestingly enough, the Jewish community used to be far more widespread in terms of smaller towns in the Dakotas as well as Minnesota.

Over time, the influence of the universities or influences of getting jobs, people tended to gravitate towards the larger cities.

- You mentioned coming here over in 1654, I think, But how and why did Jewish people settle in Minnesota and the Dakotas?

- Great question.

It was the weather I think.

Any number of reasons, first families would come.

The Minnesota Dakotas tradition was like much the rest of the United States.

First came the German Jews, right?

1830s, 1840s, 1850s, highly educated people.

Some of them leaving the tumult of mid 19th century Europe, the German revolutions of 1848.

And they settled here, significantly a mercantile class, educated people, small numbers, St. Paul, Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul, for instance, founded by exclusively German Jewish families.

1870s, 1880s, things become more difficult for the Jews of Eastern Europe.

Between 1880 and 1920, nearly 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe came to the United States.

A huge number, transformed American Jewish community, transformed global jewelry, transformed the United States.

Why did they come?

Because the United States was such a wonderful opportunity for people.

- So how were Jewish people treated when they first arrived in this region, and how are they treated now?

- Again, when the German Jews arrived, and just drawing upon a little bit of the Twin Cities, St. Paul Jewish experience, but we can extrapolate from there to the entire region, they were very welcomed.

They weren't a lot and they were sort of seen as contributors to society and the like.

They weren't all that much different than Americans in that sense.

When the Jews of Eastern Europe came, they were far more facially in the sense of what they wore, how they acted, traditional Jewish communities.

That led like with all generations, excuse me, all immigrants, some difficulties, some hardships as people assimilated, as people assumed American customs, became the great sort of struggle of American Jews to maintain their traditions while adopting to American morays as well as modernity too.

So you see this fascinating sort of kaleidoscope of American Jews as they become in touch with all sorts of American culture in society and ending up with something I think fairly unique.

And that is the American Jewish community.

- Where does your family immigrate from?

- Three of my four grandparents were born in the United States.

So we have relatively deeper roots.

My dad's mom, this is interesting, my dad's mom was from Poland and she came to Fargo, well not on the Adriatic, but they sailed over on the Adriatic, ended up in Fargo in North Dakota.

If you go to Bonanzaville, there's an exhibit on Jewish history and my grandma's passage ticket on the Adriatic as part of the exhibit.

Very proud to have come to Fargo, North Dakota.

Eventually the family moved to Minnesota.

But what happened was in 1914, World War I breaks out, and my grandma came from a very large family, as was traditional before the war.

Nobody knew the war was coming.

The dad took the two oldest daughters and they would establish themselves and then would send money back home.

But the war intervened and my paternal grandmother and the rest of the family could not come until after the war.

So it was a real struggle to survive all those years during World War I in the bloodshed between Russia and Germany.

- And you're talking about wars and things.

Let's talk a bit about what's going on in the world right now with Israel and Gaza.

What is your view on what's going on?

- First, a hopeful note.

I had the privilege to be in Jerusalem just recently on both Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

And remember, that was during the time Ramadan.

So if you're in Jerusalem on Fridays, the approach of the Jewish Sabbath as well as the Muslim Sabbath too.

And I'm happier to report Jews, Christians, and Muslims were completing their important spring rituals, their holy observances not quite side by side, but in the same city in a certain amount of peace.

And I saw it with my own eyes being again on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

The Gaza War, of course, is a terrible thing to see, right?

Innocent bloodshed is something that we have to abhor and do our best to try to overcome.

And nevertheless, this was a war started by Hamas.

People talk about a ceasefire.

There was a ceasefire in place on October 7th, started the war, swept over the dividing line, and talk about genocide.

They were murdering every Jew upon whom they could get their hands.

Not to mention the sexual predation, the mass sexual predation of the day.

Fast forward to now, practically the entire world is saying release the hostages.

There's a deal on the table which Hamas refuses to accept, and they could end the war right now simply, at least some period of calm if they would accept a deal to 33 hostages they want released.

Everything is so local.

Hirsch Goldberg of Poland, young man who had his arm blown off on October 7th, whose video was just cruelly released by Hamas, his parents' friends, our good friends of our former rabbi Rob Conn who went to live in Israel.

And I happen to see Rob in Jerusalem.

So talk about things being very personal.

You look and see what's happening in the college campuses, the seizure of the Hamilton building at Columbia.

What was the sign that was unfurled, Intifada?

What does Intifada mean?

Intifada was the terrorist activity after the Camp David Accords failed unfortunately that was launched against Israeli, murdered a thousand Israelis by bombs.

You might remember the bombs in restaurants and the like.

What is that a call for when you see a sign that says Intifada?

That really means murder Jews.

And when they talk about globalizing the Intifada, which is one of the chants on college campuses these days and throughout the world, that means murdering Jews wherever you can find them.

So I talked about a certain amount of optimism being this country.

You also have to take great care because there are people, and this is one thing about the Gaza war too, that people have become somewhat liberated, so to speak, in what they will say now.

Things that people would never utter before are now being said as a matter of politics, like destroy Israel and essentially kill the Jews.

So for that reason, we live in very tenuous times.

- And go back to General Eisenhower, he famously had German citizens after the war there forced to come and see concentration camps is my understanding.

Because he commented then, "In years to come, there will be those who say that this never happened."

- The Second World War changed American Jewish life wherever.

500,000 Jews served in the Armed Forces during the war.

People went off to Europe at the Pacific and came back with much different views.

Of course, Israel was born three years later and that was also a seismic change in global jewelry as well as American jewelry.

My own cousin, Sonny Cohen, was killed in action December 1944, laid to rest at the American Military Cemetery in Lorraine.

The point being here that all Americans came together to fight the Holocaust, to fight Japanese brutality, to fight German brutality.

Eisenhower had the foresight to say, "Unless we establish this record, people will say it didn't happen."

He was visiting Ohrdruf, which was a sub camp book involved in the company of generals Pat and Bradley and Eisenhower when he said, he made this talk, he actually wrote the General Marshall.

He said, "I came here because I don't want people to say someday that this was all a form of propaganda."

If you go to the United States Holocaust Museum, his words are etched upon the stone right outside the museum.

But he's proven 100% correct.

Unfortunately, Holocaust denial is present throughout the world.

You can talk about October 7th when there are people, even people at universities who deny the sexual predation of October 7th.

So you got Holocaust denial, now you have the newest form of denial in the mass rape of October 7th.

- You brought a couple other items with you.

- Well first of all, here's a North Dakota hero, Herman Stern working with Senator Gerald Nye.

Sort of an irony in that because he was something of an isolationist, but maybe hold this up again, my dear friend Art Phillips and Carl Oberholser made this wonderful documentary about Herman, who sort of single-handedly helped save 125 German and Austrian Jews because he was so darn determined.

Everybody knew Herman and North Dakota Strauss and supporter of the hospitals, the Boy Scouts, little league, everything that he could possibly do.

And people wanted to help him because he'd helped so many in his life.

Even Senator Nye, who was kind of a curmudgeon, didn't like Jews much, but nevertheless, thought it was important to help Herman.

I always thought this was a good lesson in democracy because why was Herman able to help save people?

Because people wanted to help Herman because he'd helped them.

That's what the story of America is all about.

And this is 1936, 1937, the Peel Commission report, talk about a way, two-state solution, hopefully to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

That was the conclusion drawn by the British in 1936, that the only way to resolve the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was through division of the land.

But the United Nations also accepted in 1947, in which unfortunately the Palestinian Arabs rejected at that time, you could have had two states for two peoples way back, this is late 1947, 1948.

It says right at the beginning of this report, there is no conflict in history which requires context more than the Arab Jewish dispute over Palestine.

They say Arab Jewish because it was 1936.

So all those years ago, that's what the Peel Commission report was emphasizing, and that holds today.

You need to a deep understanding of history in order to fully understand what's happening in the Middle East.

- Can a two-state solution ever come about, do you think?

- I hope so.

I think it's critically important.

It is the position of much of the American Jewish community, certainly position of our organization that the path to peace in the Middle East, path to peace in the Middle East is with two independent states in the Middle East, fair and safe and secure.

Israel against a demilitarized Palestinian state.

Events of recent and events of the near past have made some doubt it, but if you could quote the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, when he said that, "To expect a miracle is what a realist does."

So that's important.

- You mentioned it throughout the interview, can you define antisemitism?

- I think it's hostility and prejudice against Jews.

Kind of just simple that, right.

That was a term coined by Wilhelm Marr and actually a German antisemite back in the 19th century, early part of the 20th century.

It's not pleasant to say this, but probably a more accurate term now is just plain Jew hatred, hatred of Jews.

And that's what we're seeing in so many places associated with the war.

Kill Israelis, kill Jews, et cetera, destroy Israel.

- How can people report incidents of hate?

- If you go to our website for the JCRC, community security is one of our areas of responsibility also.

And there's a place where you can file a report on our website.

- What about some events coming up in the region that your group's sponsoring?

- We have our annual event in June 2nd with Haviv Rettig Gur, who is a Times of Israel podcast writer.

Haviv is a tremendous authority in the Middle East coming all the way from Israel for our annual event.

And that's in Minneapolis.

We have our Power of Place.

We take teachers who teach the Holocaust from the Midwest and throughout the country.

This year we're taking them to Poland, Germany, and France to literally be on the ground so when they go back to their high schools, they can help teach.

We have our Yom HaShoah commemoration about the Holocaust coming up actually in this Sunday.

So we have a lot of different events coming up.

Just kind of a quick shout out to Williston, North Dakota.

There's a new movie out about Nicholas Winton.

Nicholas Winton helped save several hundred Jewish children from primarily Austria and Germany through his own determination.

And his son Nicki, Nicholas Winton Jr., we brought him to Williston, North Dakota so he could tell the story of his father.

We had hundreds of people in Williston, both the high school as well as the community, came out to hear the story of Nick Winton as told by his son.

And now it's a movie, Nick Winton's story, I think it's called "One Life."

- Well we're out of time, so if people want more information, where's the best place for them to go?

- Just our website or email me.

You can email me at Steve@minndakjcrc.org.

And happy to respond to all the emails.

It's been a great pleasure to be with you, John.

Thank you.

Thank you to Matt and everybody here at Prairie Public Television.

- All right, Steve, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(bright music) Slamabama is a high energy country pop band who travel the country to share their love of music.

Their talent will invite you to the show, but their big hearts, genuine comradery, and southern hospitality will ensure you have a great experience.

(upbeat music) ♪ I shoulda known he wouldn't be home tonight ♪ ♪ When I drove by ♪ ♪ I shoulda known he wouldn't get the phone ♪ ♪ When I called 20 times ♪ ♪ This ain't the first time I've caught him in a lie ♪ ♪ He does it just because he can ♪ ♪ I don't know why I let him wreck my life ♪ ♪ I know he can't be trusted ♪ ♪ If it's nice he's gonna bust it ♪ ♪ Boys break things ♪ ♪ They never take care of anything ♪ ♪ Always gotta be blowing something up ♪ ♪ Or tearing something down ♪ ♪ Always up to something out running around ♪ ♪ Boys break things ♪ ♪ I shoulda known when I was eight years old ♪ ♪ One broke the chain off of my bike ♪ ♪ I shoulda known when another broke his arm ♪ ♪ Underneath the Friday night lights ♪ ♪ I've seen 'em crash their cars ♪ ♪ I've seen 'em smash guitars ♪ ♪ They do it just because they can ♪ ♪ I don't know why we let 'em wreck our lives ♪ ♪ We know they can't be trusted ♪ ♪ If it's nice they're gonna bust it ♪ ♪ Boys break things ♪ ♪ They never take care of anything ♪ ♪ Always gotta be blowing something up ♪ ♪ Tearing something down ♪ ♪ Always up to something out running around ♪ (upbeat music continues) ♪ Can't change a thing about 'em ♪ ♪ But we can't live without 'em ♪ ♪ And I'll never understand ♪ ♪ When a heart is in their hands ♪ ♪ Boys break things ♪ ♪ They never take care of anything ♪ ♪ Always gotta be blowing something up ♪ ♪ Or tearing something down ♪ ♪ Always up to something out running around ♪ ♪ Boys break things ♪ ♪ They never take care of anything ♪ ♪ Always gotta be blowing something up ♪ ♪ Or tearing something down ♪ ♪ Always up to something out running around ♪ ♪ Oh why do boys break things ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ It's gonna be a long week ♪ ♪ But we can fly like a blue streak ♪ ♪ But we can let it just pass us by ♪ ♪ Or we can try to get in one more round ♪ ♪ Pick up the trailer and the steamboat ♪ ♪ Call up the gang and let them all know ♪ ♪ We're gonna meet down at the Amoco ♪ ♪ Head to the cove and party till the sun goes down ♪ ♪ We'll have a little Sunday funday ♪ ♪ Before the clock strikes Monday Monday ♪ ♪ Get the cooler and I'll bring the beer ♪ ♪ You bring the ice ♪ ♪ Bikini type of baby 'cause the weather's nice ♪ ♪ And we'll run away run away ♪ ♪ And now the troubles they'll be gone away gone away ♪ ♪ We'll have a head to the lake ♪ ♪ Laying to bake in the Sunday ♪ ♪ We'll have a little Sunday funday ♪ ♪ For Sunday service lead them to the Lord ♪ ♪ To raising hell on the knee board.

♪ ♪ We got it covered sun up to down let's get unwound ♪ ♪ Tell all your friends in town ♪ ♪ We're having us a Sunday funday ♪ ♪ Before the clock strikes Monday Monday ♪ ♪ Get the cooler and I'll bring the beer ♪ ♪ You bring the ice ♪ ♪ Bikini type of baby 'cause the weather's nice ♪ ♪ And we'll run away run away ♪ ♪ And now the troubles they'll be gone away gone away ♪ ♪ We'll have a head to the lake ♪ ♪ Laying to bake in the Sunday ♪ ♪ We'll have a little Sunday funday ♪ ♪ Let's tie up, tie on ♪ ♪ Till the Saturday night hangover is gone ♪ ♪ We'll have a little Sunday funday ♪ ♪ Before the clock strikes Monday Monday ♪ ♪ Get the cooler and I'll bring the beer ♪ ♪ You bring the ice ♪ ♪ Bikini type of baby 'cause the weather's nice ♪ ♪ And we'll run away run away ♪ ♪ And now the troubles they'll be gone away gone away ♪ ♪ We'll have a head to the lake ♪ ♪ Laying to bake in the Sunday ♪ ♪ Grill up a steak and call in late on Monday.

♪ ♪ We'll have a little Sunday funday ♪ ♪ It's Sunday funday ♪ ♪ It's Sunday funday ♪ - Well, that's all we have this week on "Prairie Pulse."

And as always, thanks for watching.

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