Just before we moved to Swanzey, New Hampshire, from New Jersey in 1955, one of my older sisters brought home a copy of “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, which was played over and over on our second-hand Columbia 360 record player. It was my introduction to rock ‘n’ roll, and curiously pleasing to my 6-year-old ears.

We made the move when my parents bought a women’s clothing store on Central Square in Keene. We brought with us a 10-inch RCA Victor TV, but in the era before cable television, reception was poor, unless you had a serious antenna on your roof. We did have a trusty GE desk radio plugged in near our kitchen table, and I gravitated more to that than to the TV, notwithstanding it being, we’ve all later concluded, the golden age of television.

Before the move, my father bought that used record player in a fine wooden case, and a stash of used 78, 33 and 45 RPM records, covering the gamut from pop to show tunes to classical. My father’s tastes leaned more to opera and symphonies, but from that motley record collection I had my first and only course in music appreciation.

Occasionally, I’d buy new records at Beedle’s Music Center on Main Street, or at the Melody Shop, which was two doors away from my parents’ store. But it was that old collection of my father’s records that kept a musical hold on me.

As I got a bit older, I would put the old record player next to a Sears, Roebuck tape recorder my father had bought for me, and, together with one of my best friends, would make our own “radio programs,” playing records from our collection, and reading news and commercials from the Keene Sentinel.

Those programs led directly to our deejaying record hops at Monadnock Regional High School. Usually held on Friday or Saturday nights, we’d borrow equipment from the school’s audio-visual department, and records from a few of the students, one of whom seemed to purchase at least two or three new 45s a week.

While both of my sisters eventually gravitated to Calypso or to Viennese waltzes and classical piano music, I remained with rock. Our town had one radio station at that time, WKNE (for which I would later work as a disc jockey), but its format was Middle of the Road (MOR), featuring the likes of Patti Page, Jo Stafford, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. For the music I liked, I’d have to tune to Boston’s WBZ, or at night when the radio signals were better, to New York’s WABC. Later, Buffalo’s WKBW would be added to my list of 50,000-watt radio powerhouses that featured a Top 40 format.

For all the music that would follow, “Rock Around the Clock” remains, to me, the gold standard. From the “one, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock” opening, its driving syncopation, and its raucous blend of saxophone, bass and guitars, it was the perfect dance record. First recorded in 1953, it was re-released in 1955 in conjunction with its being on the soundtrack of the movie “Blackboard Jungle.” While critics and musicologists, professional and amateur, may debate which song actually spawned the rock ‘n’ roll age, Haley’s megahit could very well be the consensus choice.

I only recently learned that the Michigan-born and Pennsylvania-raised Haley had a Keene connection. For a brief time in the mid-1940s, he joined a western swing group called the Down Homers, and later formed his own group, the Range Drifters, that performed on WKNE. For a while, he was a disc jockey at the station. When I arrived at the station in 1966, the MOR format was still in place, and the Beatles era was into its seven-year run, played out in Keene on a competing station featuring a rock-only format. Haley and his contemporaries had been unceremoniously pushed aside, only to be re-discovered years later with the popularity of the TV show “Happy Days” and the motion picture “American Graffiti.”

I worked parts of six years at WKNE, on weekends, summer vacations and during the Christmas holidays. I even entertained the idea of making radio announcing a career, but the pull of public service moved me in a different direction entirely. I went to University of New Hampshire and received a degree in history (and did some announcing on WUNH on the side), and then went on to Brandeis University, where I received a master’s degree in contemporary Jewish studies.

With that, I embarked on a career in Jewish community relations, working for such organizations as the Jewish Community Council in Boston and the Anti-Defamation League. For the past 30 years, I’ve been at B’nai B’rith International, the oldest Jewish service organization in the US; the past 19 years as its CEO.
​
Today, I must have “Rock Around the Clock” on a dozen oldies compilations that I keep in my car to play on my way to work. Rather than sounding like a musical dinosaur, its incessant beat remains as fresh as it did the day my sister announced she had bought a new record that was all the rage. Sixty-plus years later and counting, it conjures up record hops and dancing with abandon to a new sound. Haley died too young, at the age of 55, in 1981, yet he lived long enough to see his infectious hit become a national musical icon.

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has called on EU Member States to adopt in full the IHRA Working Definition on Antisemitism as part of a joint Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism on the continent.

As a steep rise antisemitism continues to plague the Europe, the EJC together with the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute and B’nai B’rith International, have presented a first-ever action plan to combat antisemitism to the Council of the European Union and the EU’s Coordinator on combating antisemitism Katharina von Schnurbein.

This comes after the Council Declaration of December 6 on the fight against antisemitism and the development of a common security approach to better protect Jewish communities and institutions in Europe.

In November, CNN released a poll, which found that antisemitism was alive and kicking throughout Europe. According to the CNN survey, one in five said Jews have too much influence in the media and too much influence in politics, while more than a quarter of Europeans polled  believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance. Seven countries were surveyed including Austria, Germany, the UK and Poland.

The document makes several recommendations to the EU and its Member States, which include using the IHRA Working Definition on Antisemitism “as a reference tool to better grasp all manifestations of contemporary antisemitism”, bettering its assistance to Member States “in providing hate crime training to law enforcement”, having closer cooperation with communities on security issues, and creating common guidelines “for countering antisemitism in education that will provide long-term positive effects for Jewish communities in Europe.”

Following the plan announcement, EJC president  Dr. Moshe Kantor called the action plan “an excellent and detailed document which we hope the EU Council will adopt in order to make our communities safer and more secure.

“This is what we, European Jewry, require to reverse the disturbing trend of rapidly and horrifyingly increasing antisemitism across our continent,” exclaiming that this document is “our answer to hate and intolerance against Jews. 

“If there is to be an end to the current deluge of antisemitism then it requires a holistic, strategic and forward-looking response,” Kantor emphasized.

Part of the plan also encourages the European Union to address antisemitism within its Human Rights Dialogues with third countries. “Regular and timely reporting and monitoring of antisemitism in third countries, especially where Jewish communities are under threat,” is needed to “help to increase awareness internally.” 

It added that “strengthening the collaboration with Israel and the US in countering antisemitism worldwide” could play a large role, adding that “condemning systematically antisemitic remarks publicly at international forums such as the UN.”

Meanwhile, November’s CNN poll also found that one in twenty Europeans surveyed knew nothing or very little about the Holocaust, especially among those aged between 18 to 34. 

Such concerns prompted the action plan to include suggestions that will ensure the EU and its Member States properly address Holocaust education and remembrance in the next MFF, and that “support for projects currently funded through the remembrance strand of the Europe for Citizens Programme is increased.”

With Holocaust denial also on the up, the proposal says that “every threat to the remembrance of the Holocaust, such as Holocaust denial and distortion, should be rigorously called out and academic research be encouraged. Implementation of the Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia should be strictly monitored in this particular aspect.” 

Kantor explained that as is the case “with all other minorities, the Jewish community should have the right to define hatred against it and assist in addressing ways to end discrimination at all levels and in all manner of new and manifold methods.

“If our leaders are serious about combating antisemitism then we cannot allow any gaps or loopholes for discrimination and exclusion,” he said, adding that “the battle against hate and intolerance needs to take place in the political, educational, legal, law enforcement, judicial and diplomatic arenas.”

US President Donald Trump’s annual State of the Union address on Tuesday drew a wide range of responses from American Jewish groups.

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) praised Trump’s speech, which featured several noteworthy Jewish-related moments, and accused Democrats of using their guest invitations to “highlight radical positions their base wants to hear, but which are out of step with mainstream America on things like transgender issues, climate change activism, ‘open borders’ immigration reforms, gun control, and the ‘resistance.’”

“The State of the Union is an opportunity reflect on the freedom we enjoy as Americans and the heavy responsibility our elected leaders bear to defend our freedom. Democratic members of Congress could have focused, as President Trump did, on what unites and strengthens us. Instead they chose to put forward divisiveness and partisanship,” the RJC charged in a statement.

Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) Executive Director Halie Soifer, on the other hand, asserted that Trump had delivered a message “characterized by fear and empty words.”

“Tonight was a missed opportunity for the president to lead and unify the country after a painful period of obstruction and a 35-day government shutdown,” she said. “There is no onslaught of immigrants or security crisis on our southern border, and the US military must not be used for political purposes. We reject the president’s ongoing obfuscation of the truth.”

“In response to the president’s call for unity, we are unified in support of political change that will restore moral leadership and credibility to the White House, and our mission is more important now than ever before,” Soifer concluded.

B’nai B’rith International President Charles O. Kaufman and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin said, “We are encouraged that the president expressed his support for the longstanding US-Israel alliance and highlighted the 2018 move of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Israel’s rightful capital. We remain deeply concerned about Iran’s hegemonic tendencies in the Middle East and the existential threat it poses to Israel. We welcome the president’s forceful commitment to keep Iran and the threat it poses globally in check.”

“We appreciate the special attention given during the address to the frightening rise of antisemitism in the U.S. with the inclusion of Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting survivors Judah Samet and injured police officer Timothy Matson as special White House guests in the House gallery,” they added.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted, “On #SOTU: Thank you @POTUS for your strong condemnation of anti-Semitism and commitment to protecting the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

The AJC also highlighted the moving gesture of Congress members singing “Happy Birthday” to Samet, who turned 81 on Tuesday.

World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald S. Lauder stated his organization was “grateful for the president’s unambiguous declaration that ‘we must never ignore the vile poison of antisemitism, or those who spread its venomous creed. With one voice, we must confront this hatred anywhere and everywhere it occurs,’ and for the public recognition he accorded to Holocaust survivors Judah Samet and Joshua Kaufman as well as the US Army veterans who liberated the Nazi concentration camps 74 years ago.”
​
“We send our great appreciation and thanks to President Trump and hope his words resonate everywhere,” Lauder said.