Andy Jassy has spent the past 15 years converting Amazon from an e-commerce giant into a highly profitable technology company, creating and then dominating the cloud infrastructure market. Now, he’s about to become CEO of the third-most valuable U.S. company after Apple and Microsoft. Amazon has announced that Jassy will succeed Jeff Bezos at the helm in the third quarter, becoming only the second CEO in the company’s 27-year history. Bezos will become executive chairman.

Jassy, 53, is a member of Bezos’ elite group of executives called the S-team. Jassy has been CEO of AWS (Amazon Web Services). As of mid-2020, Amazon controlled 33% of the global cloud infrastructure services market, followed by Microsoft at 18% and Google at 9%, according to Synergy Research. Amazon said that AWS revenue in the fourth quarter jumped 28% to $12.7 billion. Operating income increased 37% to $3.56 billion, accounting for 52% of Amazon’s total operating profit.

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has appointed Dr. Rochelle Walensky as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, succeeding Dr. Robert Redfield, who served from March 26, 2018 to Jan. 20, 2021. Dr. Walensky will lead the CDC’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Before her appointment to the CDC, Dr. Walensky was chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard. Medical School.

She told The Forward, “I’m motivated by the Jewish teachings of tikkun olam. Tikkun olam for me has been giving at the individual patient level — not to judge, not to react, but to give, to heal and to repair.”

Our own Rabbi Gadi makes The Shofar’s “Jews in the News” column this month for his answer to Newsday’s question, “How does your faith view nonviolent protest?” Rabbi Gadi submitted this reply to the “Asking the Clergy” column, published on Jan. 14:

“Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20) is a cardinal precept in Scripture, highlighting the imperative to protest any injustice or transgression. Abraham, the first Jew, protests against what he perceives as God’s injustice in wiping out Sodom, the righteous along with the wicked, and says “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Genesis 18:25)

The Talmud teaches us that whoever can protest to his household if they see any transgression, and does not, is accountable for the sins of his household. The Talmud passage concludes, “…if he could protest to the whole world and does not, he is accountable for the whole world. (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 54b)

While it is clear that Jewish sources support protest, it is equally clear that any civil disobedience must be nonviolent. When Moses sees one Jew striking another in Egypt, he refers to him as “Evil one, why do you hit your fellow!” (Exodus 1:13) According to the rabbinical scholar Maimonides, whoever hits his fellow Jew commits a grave sin (Chovel uMazik 5:1) The wisdom of our forebears encourages us to argue and debate when attempting to resolve disagreements, yet draws clear lines that we must not transgress.

Three new members of the Jewish Congressional Caucus were sworn in as the 117th Congress commenced on Sunday, Jan. 3. From left, Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif) and Kathy Manning (D-N.Carolina) joined hundreds of other members of Congress. Currently, 35 members of Congress are Jewish. In the runoff election in Georgia, Jon Ossoff defeated incumbent Republican David Perdue, becoming the first Jewish senator from Georgia and, at age 33, the youngest senator.

U.S. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has named Merrick Garland, left, as U.S. Attorney General. In 2016, President Obama had nominated Garland to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia, but the Senate majority refused to hold a hearing or vote on this nomination made during the last year of Obama’s presidency.

Also significant in the wake of the 2020 election cycle, Charles (Chuck) Schumer, right, Senate minority leader since 2017, will become the majority leader, succeeding Mitch McConnell, who lost his position when two seats flipped to Democrats in the Senatorial runoff contest in Georgia. The addition of the two Democrats — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — gives each party 50 votes, with Vice President Kamala Harris, who is President of the Senate, able to cast the deciding vote for the Democrats.

Other prominent Jews named to the Biden-Harris administration include Antony Blinken, secretary of state; Ron Klain, White House chief of staff; Janet L. Yellen, treasury secretary; Alejandro N. Mayorkas, secretary of homeland security; and Avril Danica Haines, director of national intelligence. Recently added, David Cohen, deputy director CIA; Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health; and Dana Stroul, Mideast desk at the Pentagon.

In the spring of 1945, in a Nazi slave labor camp 50 miles from Dachau, convict No. B-1713 heard powerful explosions pierce the night air. The guards said “the enemy” was advancing, and they herded the prisoners together to be marched back to Dachau.

They marched for most of three days. At dawn on the third day, a squadron of Allied fighter planes, coming upon what they thought was a column of Nazi troops, swooped low to strafe them. As the SS-troops hit the dirt and began firing their machine guns, one of the prisoners shouted, “Run for it!” A group of them ran toward the forest. The explosions killed most of them, but six, including convict No. B-1713, made it into the woods alive.

He hid in the hayloft of an abandoned Bavarian barn. Days passed. And then one afternoon, he peaked through a crack in the wooded slats and saw a huge tank leading an armored convoy heading toward him. He looked for the swastika on its side. Instead, he saw a five-pointed white star. He ran from the barn, charging toward the tank, screaming and waving his arms.

From the tank’s hatch emerged Cpl. Bill Ellington of the all-Black 761st, son of a slave. B-1713, who had lost his family and survived four years in the camps, fell to his knees before Ellington and repeated the few English words he know: God Bless America! God Bless America! Ellington lifted him into the hatch — and into freedom.

Convict No. B-1713 was named Samuel Pisar. He became an American citizen and a successful lawyer. On Jan. 20, his stepson, Tony Blinken, will become America’s next Secretary of State.

• Story by Andrei Cherny
• Submitted to The Shofar by Ken Stein