In the kitchen with a star EthiopianIsraeli-American chef
BULLETS & BAGELS
A Jewish gun club for shooting and schmoozing
To request a free consultation with Chad, Jason or Steven, visit kolinskywealth.com or call (201) 474-4011
EL AL wishes you a holiday filled with renewal, hope, and freedom.
16 ‘ARMED AND READY’
By Esther D. Kustanowitz
Members of Bullets & Bagels, a self-described “Jew-ish” and apolitical gun club in Southern California, may not align religiously and politically, but most own multiple firearms and identify as pro-Israel. They are part of a growing trend of Jews, alarmed by rising antisemitism, who are considering what might have been unthinkable just a few years ago—carrying a gun.
22 OUR URGENT SEARCH FOR NEW ALLIES
By Talia Bodner
“We have to remember that sometimes, we need to be able to check partisanship at the door so we can sit down and find our common ground,” writes the Columbia University/Jewish Theological Seminary student in an essay excerpted from Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out . “Whichever path to allyship we decide to follow, one thing is clear: If we don’t choose for ourselves, the decision will be made for us. And we will continue to struggle alone.”
28 ISRAEL, AMERICA AND ADHD
By Hilary Danailova
With skyrocketing rates, both Israel and the United States have become global leaders in ADHD research. Israel, in particular, is leading investigations into the increased prevalence and impact of the disorder as well as developing therapies that help both children and adults.
32 CLOWNING WITH SOLDIERS
DEPARTMENTS
12 COMMENTARY
Noah meets Miriam
14 ESSAY
North or South for college?
36 TRAVEL
Panama, a Jewish paradise
40 FOOD
An Ethiopian ‘mouthful’
44 ARTS
• A Dutch take on Queen Esther
• Loved Shtisel ? Try some Kugel
50 BOOKS
• New titles celebrate Jewish women
• Matchmaker Aleeza Ben Shalom on dating
By Wendy Elliman
Israel’s medical clowns, including those at the Hadassah Medical Organization, have adapted their techniques of improvisation, theatrics, physical comedy and therapeutic care to play a key role in helping thousands navigate the horrors they experienced on and since October 7.
Remembrance and Action
We are guided by biblical and modern-day forebears
By Carol Ann Schwartz
Ancient jewish holidays take on added resonance in light of contemporary struggles. I feel this especially as we approach Purim and Passover. Both seem designed to illuminate our path today.
Purim is a blueprint for Jewish self-reliance and a testament to the power of women, a story that echoes across the millennia and gave us Queen Esther’s Hebrew name— Hadassah. Under the banner of her name, this organization became a trailblazer of women’s influence in the Zionist movement and in Jewish life. For the past 10 years, chapters around America have partnered with more than 150 synagogues to celebrate Hadassah Shabbat Zachor—on the Shabbat before Purim—and share their pride in Hadassah’s myriad accomplishments.
Passover, of course, is the foundational story of Jewish national independence, recalling how an exiled, enslaved people built a nation and culture that allowed the Jewish people to endure—and also influenced much of humanity’s religious and ethical legacy.
Though Moses was the leader who faced Pharaoh and led us to freedom, he was empowered by the women in his life: the midwives, Shifra and Puah, who defied orders to kill Jewish male babies; Yocheved, his birth mother, who hid him from the authorities; and Batya, Pharaoh’s daughter, who raised him. The Torah also recognizes Moses’ sister, Miriam, who led the Israelites in song after the Red Sea crossing, as a prophetess.
In the spirit of Purim’s selfdefense and Passover’s liberation, the modern age brought us Zionism, the movement that began in Diaspora Jewish communities to support the rebirth of a Jewish state. Hadassah’s practical Zionism has been a pillar of Israel, building the emerging nation’s health care foundations, keeping the country at the forefront of medicine, pioneering education and nurturing immigrant, refugee and at-risk children.
TO ACCOMPLISH OUR GOALS, WE NEED MORE WOMEN TO JOIN US.
When our founders began their work, American women didn’t have the right to vote. Hadassah’s advocacy and activism were accompanied by leadership training, seizing opportunities within the American Jewish community, the Zionist movement and the larger society to make an indelible impact. In just one example, Hadassah today claims a special status at the World Zionist Congress, whose elections are now open for its fall 2025 convening (see story, page 35).
We live in a paradox: For the Jewish people, the United States is the most welcoming society in history outside of Israel, but it has also gone through eras of antisemitism. What we are enduring now is the worst outbreak in nearly a century. We
were alarmed by Charlottesville, by the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, by the soaring incidence of anti-Jewish hate crimes—yet none of this prepared us for the torrent of hate toward both Israel and the American Jewish community after October 7.
Guided by the example of our forebears who challenged Haman and Pharaoh, and the Hadassah women who came before us, our generation has risen to the occasion. As Israel has defended its borders and citizens, Hadassah has been defending the Jewish state in America’s corridors of power and internationally. Most notably, we launched our largest-ever global advocacy campaign, #EndTheSilence, gathering signatures from more than 130,000 people in 118 countries and demanding that the United Nations support an independent, unbiased investigation into Hamas’s weaponization of rape and gender violence on October 7 and beyond.
And in Israel, the Hadassah Medical Organization plays a vital role in treating and rehabilitating war victims, including at the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, thanks to the generosity and vision of Hadassah women and supporters.
To accomplish our goals, we need more women to join us. And as a result of our actions and our visibility, that’s exactly what is happening. More Jewish women, feeling in need of connection and support, are flocking to our ranks, in small communities as well as large ones. In troubled times, they find us—and we find the best in ourselves.
May we all have a joyous and empowering Purim and Passover!
B’yachad Nerapeh.
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and war ensued, Hadassah responded immediately. The threat to Israel has escalated to include aggression from Hezbollah and Iran. Hadassah’s hospitals must now expand capacity to treat mass casualties and serve as a strong wartime asset to the people of Israel. Hadassah’s Youth Aliyah villages must continue to provide safe haven to students.
We cannot do this without you. Together we will heal. B’yachad Nerapeh.
HOW YOU CAN HELP HEAL THE WORLD
GANDEL REHABILITATION CENTER
Help us complete and fully equip the Gandel Rehabilitation Center to provide physical, occupational and speech therapies, as well as psychological services, for the wounded and other patients who will need long-term rehabilitation.
NEW OPERATING ROOMS AND ICU
Help outfit six new underground Operating Rooms, safe from conventional, chemical and biological attacks, and a crucial new Intensive Care Unit at Hadassah Ein Kerem.
YOUTH ALIYAH VILLAGES
Support our Meir Shfeyah and Hadassah Neurim Youth Aliyah villages, so they can provide critical psychological support and shelter for students and faculty. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT: hadassah.org/togetherwewillheal TO DONATE, PLEASE VISIT: go.hadassah.org/givetogether
CHAIR Ellen Hershkin
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lisa Hostein
DEPUTY EDITOR Libby Barnea
SENIOR EDITOR Leah Finkelshteyn
DIGITAL EDITOR Arielle Kaplan
EDITOR EMERITUS Alan M. Tigay
DESIGN/PRODUCTION Samantha Marsh
EDITORIAL BOARD
Roselyn Bell
Ruth G. Cole
Nancy Falchuk
Gloria Goldreich
Blu Greenberg
Dara Horn
Ruth B Hurwitz
Francine Klagsbrun
Anne Lapidus Lerner
Curt Leviant
Joy Levitt
Bonnie Lipton
Marcie Natan
Nessa Rapoport
Sima Schuster
Susan S. Smirnoff
Barbara Topol
HADASSAH NATIONAL PRESIDENT Carol Ann Schwartz
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Heroes Past and Present
Stories of female resilience and courage |
The definition of a hero is deceptively simple: A person, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, who is admired for doing something brave or good, or for having noble qualities. But the actions one takes to qualify as a hero are often not so simple. This Women’s History Month, we dedicate this issue of the magazine to Jewish female heroes past and present.
The remarkable stories of the women of Purim and Passover, the holidays we celebrate beginning on March 13 and April 12, respectively, are well known: Purim’s Queen Esther, who saved the Jewish people in Persia, and Queen Vashti, who refused to succumb to her husband-king’s misogynistic ways. Passover’s standouts include midwives Puah and Shifra, who defied Pharaoh’s edict to kill the Israelites’ firstborn sons; and Miriam, Moses’ sister who watched over him until Pharaoh’s daughter rescued him from the Nile.
But we don’t have to go back so far in Jewish history to find female heroes. Recently, we have learned of young female hostages released from inhumane bondage in Gaza whose heroic acts while in captivity likely helped save lives.
As Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal wrote on X in response to such fortitude, “To endure over a year in the hands of a cruel, genocidal group and still maintain one’s humanity— to the point of willingly sacrificing for another—that is an unfathomable form of heroism.”
In the United States, we are witnessing different acts of courage, including by young Zionists like Talia
By Lisa Hostein
Bodner, whose essay, “Our Urgent Search for New Allies” (page 22), is part of a recently published collection, Young Zionist Voices, and Gabrielle Siegel, the winner of our annual teen essay contest who chronicles her college hunt in today’s climate (page 14).
Purim’s Esther, whose Hebrew name, Hadassah, inspired the name of this organization, appears in this issue as the subject of “Queen Esther Goes Dutch,” a review of a new Rembrandt-laden exhibition in New York City (page 44), and in our crossword puzzle (page 49).
A modern-day profile of courage can be found in the Ethiopian exodus story of chef Beejhy Barhany, the subject of our cover story (page 40) who shares her family’s history as well as some Passover recipes.
And a Q&A with author Dara Horn (page 64) tells us why the Passover story, the focus of her new graphic novel for youth, is above all about resilience.
In “We Need Heroes,” Sandee Brawarsky reviews several anthologies that profile extraordinary Jewish women (page 50). Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold is one of just four women included in all these collections. Szold’s oft-quoted “Dare to dream, and when you dream, dream big” is still a mantra for these difficult times.
And Hadassah’s new CEO, Ellen Finkelstein, reveals her own mantra as she takes on the mantle of leadership (page 34).
Here’s to the stories of heroism and resilience we all need now. Happy Purim and Pesach!
A SWEET PESACH!
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I appreciated the interviews with Holocaust survivors in “The Last Generation” (January/February 2025 issue), in which they shared their stories and insights. I was especially delighted to read the interview with Ronnie Breslow, as she and my mother were close friends in Philadelphia. We had lost contact after my mother’s death in 1991. After reading the story, I reconnected with Ronnie, and we have now shared memories, love and caring.
May the courage of Ronnie and all the witnesses be an inspiration to Hadassah members and friends.
Cynthia Jacobsen Longmont, Colo.
I applaud this moving and heartrending article about women who lived and survived the Holocaust. I, too, lived through this terror. I was born in 1934 in Munich. My parents and I were deported to Poland in October 1938, but we were returned to Germany.
On Kristallnacht in November 1938, we were arrested and sent to Dachau, just outside Munich. At the time, Dachau was a work camp, but I was too young to work and was released. I was then smuggled into Holland and hidden with a German Jewish family, the Fritz Steins, who lived in Amsterdam.
I have written a memoir about my experience titled I Was Born in an Old Age Home.
I also speak publicly about what
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Please email letters to the editor to letters@hadassah.org . To read more letters, visit us online at hadassahmagazine.org
I endured and my survival and have suffered antisemitic backlash. For example, I recently spoke at the Berkeley City Council on their recognition of their Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration and was heckled and shouted down.
Susanne Kalter DeWitt Berkeley, Calif.
MUST MOVING ON MEAN FORGIVENESS?
I read with interest, and some skepticism, “I Forgive a Country” in the January/February issue. Is it not a bit presumptuous to say “I forgive” when we were not the victims? While atrocities committed in Europe by Nazi Germany may have affected us indirectly as descendants, we were not the ones subject to the torture, nor were we imprisoned in concentration camps. How do we take it upon ourselves, therefore, to bestow forgiveness in the name of those who were?
I understand the impetus to want to move on, let go of the anger. A laudable thing, many would say. But forgiving, that is quite something else.
Eva Zimmerman Queens, N.Y.
After years of soul searching and wondering what my (deceased) parents would think, I reclaimed the German citizenship that had been denied them and my grandparents, just as author Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor did. I still had mixed feelings when I attended a reception for new citizens hosted by the German consulate in Boston, but the welcome speech given by Consul General Sonja Kreibich moved me profoundly. She forthrightly acknowledged Germany’s guilt and sorrow
for its shameful past and its sincere desire to atone. I am now ready to embrace my new citizenship.
Today, Germany doesn’t require allegiance to a flag or any other symbol. I came away with a feeling that my birth country and many others could benefit from this lesson in accepting responsibility
Doris Cohen Northampton, Mass.
RIGHTEOUS IN BUFFALO
As a proud Hadassah member and second-generation Holocaust survivor, I want to applaud Alexandra Lapkin Schwank’s article on the The Politzer Saga and Linda Ambrus Broennimain’s late mother, Dr. Clara Ambrus. While the January/February article, “A Family Saga in Several Spaces,” was exceptional, there were two critical pieces of information that were missing.
The mural, painted by Hungarian artist TakerOne, featured not only Dr. Ambrus but two other local heroes who have been honored as Righteous Among the Nations—Tibor Baranski and Sister Margit Slachta. The article also failed to note the leading role of the Buffalo Jewish Federation in spearheading the project and raising the necessary funds. This work was a major initiative of Buffalo’s Holocaust Education Resource Organization (HERO) to educate our community about the Holocaust and combat antisemitism.
It is rewarding to see these righteous heroes publicly celebrated in Buffalo and in Hadassah Magazine. Judge Lisa Bloch Rodwin Buffalo, N.Y.
I read “A Family Saga in Several Spaces” and kept coming back to Linda Ambrus Broenniman’s statement that “While I hold immense respect for Judaism and its traditions, I’ve realized that my spiritual path lies outside of organized religion.” It made me sad because I believe that organized religion, especially Judaism, provides a community while allowing congregants to explore their spirituality in many ways. There are so many denominations that provide such vibrant spaces, and I am sorry that more people don’t join organized religion for that alone.
Abby Mayou Hardwick, Mass.
A JEWISH AUTHOR ON BEING CANCELED
I am the author of Not From Here: The Song of America, the book reviewed by Judy Bolton-Fasman in the January/ February issue.
Advance marketing for Not From Here began September 1, 2023. There were immediate requests for review materials from editors at The New York Times, Elle Magazine and Oprah Daily, among other outlets. The Daily Beast requested an essay, which I wrote and they happily approved.
One month into the marketing campaign, war broke out in Gaza. Every commitment, inquiry and request evaporated. Editors ghosted us. The Daily Beast canceled my essay four days before the posting date. When we asked for a reason, they said, “We changed the rules.” Indeed.
To date, on Amazon, Not From Here has only 13 reviews.
Which is to say, finding Hadassah Magazine’s review of a canceled book that represents years of my life, that was to be a breakout, that was getting high interest from major sources before the widespread boycotting of Jewish authors in the wake of Gaza, brought tears to my eyes.
I guess the world is the world, but always, we take care of each other. Thank you for your support at a difficult time for Jewish authors. I won’t forget this.
Leah Lax Houston, Tex.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
In “Thanksgiving in Jerusalem” in the November/December 2024 issue, Eden Alexander was mistakenly named as one of the six hostages killed by Hamas last August. The correct name of the murdered woman is Eden Yerushalmi. We regret the error.
‘New Global Blueprint for What It Means to Be Jewish Today’
The Talmudic aphorism “kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh” is usually translated as “all Jews are responsible for one another”—but a closer translation would be “all Jews are intermingled with one another.” Both concepts lie at the heart of Entwine, an initiative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). For over 100 years, the JDC has aided vul -
nerable Jews in over 70 countries and led the Jewish response to global crises. Entwine carries that work to the next generation of young Jews through highly subsidized leadership development opportunities and global service programs. These include two yearlong fellowships—the Global Jewish Service Corps and the Ralph I. Goldman Fellowship—and the invitation-only Global Leaders Initiative.
Entwine also offers subsidized short-term Insider Trips geared toward college students and young professionals looking for adventure and a meaningful way to contribute to tikkun olam . Over weekend or weeklong itineraries to such destinations as Cuba, Morocco, Hungary, Ukraine, India and the United Arab Emirates, travelers visit Jewish communities as well as JDC projects in non-Jewish areas to learn about history, the importance of humanitarian work and to interact with fellow Jews over Shabbat
dinners and other events.
In the last 15 years, nearly 5,000 young Jews have participated in one of Entwine’s experiences. Over 90 percent of participants come from North America, but, in 2024, a small number hailed from Israel, Germany, The Netherlands, Moldova, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Italy, Poland and Argentina.
Lauren Schneiderman served as chair of an Insider Trip to the UAE in December 2024, after having participated in a program in Argentina in December 2022 when, she said, she had been “looking to travel and also connect with my Jewish identity.”
Both experiences ultimately delivered on those expectations but in different ways, the 25-year-old noted. “Argentina was about
Animals From Gaza Get a Second Chance in Israel
The battlefield is a perilous place for animals, and the war in Gaza has been no exception. After Karen Menczer, founder and director of Animal-Kind International (AKI), started seeing footage of malnourished donkeys and horses being used by Gazans to transport heavy loads during the conflict,
AKI’s Animal Welfare Organization Grant Program typically funds initiatives in Africa. But under Menczer’s direction, the organization approved a $3,000 grant last August for Starting Over Sanctuary (SOS) on Moshav Herut in central Israel—“just a little further north” than Africa, Menczer said.
The sanctuary, founded by longtime animal caretaker Sharon Cohen, rehabilitates abused, neglected or abandoned animals and runs onsite educational programs for children. SOS spends about $185,000 per month to care for some 1,600 creatures, including 1,000 donkeys and 100 horses, the majority rescued from Arab or Bedouin villages.
“They have extraordinarily courageous rescue stories,” said Menczer, a Hadassah life member. “Many are heartwarming, most are sad, many have happy endings.”
Beyond AKI’s initial grant, Menczer recently arranged for the transfer of an additional $6,000 toward emergency veterinary care of Deborah and Damka, donkeys rescued from Gaza by Israeli soldiers.
Deborah, a pregnant mare, arrived at SOS with scars and injuries from years of carrying carts. Damka had multiple leg fractures and needed complex orthopedic surgery.
Cohen noted that there is a lack of education in some Arab communities about the proper treatment of animals. Donkeys in particular, she said, “are regarded as disposable and are being overworked with extreme loads. They put metal chains on their faces
Lauren Schneiderman in the United Arab Emirates
Donkeys and horses rescued from Gaza receive care at Starting Over Sanctuary on Moshav Herut in Israel.
Entwine
the history of the Jewish community,” Schneiderman said, while “the UAE is an emerging Jewish community, but being able to meet with community members was a really awesome experience.”
Schneiderman now has become an Entwine community representative, acting as an organizational ambassador to her Chicago community and promoting awareness of global Jewish causes.
Such leadership development is fundamental to Entwine’s vision, according to Sara Glazer, Entwine’s senior director of strategy and planning. “Through their actions,” she said, “Entwine alumni are creating a new global blueprint for what it means to be Jewish today.” — Avi Dresner
with no protection, and they tie their legs till it cuts into the flesh.”
According to Cohen, Israeli soldiers entering Gaza at the outset of the war in 2023 “ran into a lot of abused animals. They would put dogs and cats and donkeys in their tanks and bring them to safety in Israel.”
Menczer said she is often asked why she assists animals rather than humans. “There is no Bill Gates in the animal welfare sector,” she said, noting that there are many organizations helping people. “Animals suffer terribly in conflict zones and get very little attention.” — Jordana Benami
A Symbol of Jewish Identification, Protection and Now Allyship
When Manette Mayberg, a Marylandbased philanthropist, held an event in her home in 2014 for people involved in her family foundation, a woman fell after leaning on a faulty railing and was badly hurt. Mayberg’s rabbi, to whom she turned for spiritual support, suggested she check all the mezuzahs in her house. It turned out that a letter in the Hebrew word for “and your gates” on one of the scrolls featured a broken line. The same word, arecha , on a scroll in the home of the injured guest contained a broken letter as well.
A mezuzah—a parchment scroll contain ing two portions from Deuteronomy rolled up and encased in a protective cover—is affixed to a doorpost not only to signify a Jewish dwelling, but also, according to tra dition, to protect its inhabitants. Some Jews put up a mezuzah at their front door only; others place them on most interior doorposts, too. After the accident, May berg became determined to protect as many Jews as she could going forward and, in 2018, helped fund the launch of the MyZuzah initiative.
For any self-identifying Jewish person looking to affix a mezuzah to a doorpost, MyZuzah will provide a clear plastic case and kosher scroll free of charge. Since launching its inaugural campaign, over 20,000 free mezuzahs have been placed in 74 countries.
“Our mission is to connect, protect and unite the Jewish people through this tradition,” said Alex Shapero, MyZuzah program director. MyZuzah has since expanded its offerings to artistic mezuzahs for purchase and, since October 7, to what it is calling a “solidarity mezuzah” for Jewish community allies.
The latest initiative came after Patricia Heaton, a Catholic actor and pro-Israel stalwart, reached out to the MyZuzah team last summer after she had urged her non-Jewish followers on social media to put up mezuzahs as a sign of allyship. The organization then designed the solidarity mezuzah—a clear plastic case containing a rolled-up yellow ribbon rather than the customary scroll.
“It doesn’t run afoul of any Jewish law,” Shapero said of non-Jews placing these unofficial mezuzahs, “and is a way for allies to show that they’re standing with the Jewish people and are calling for a just end to the conflict. While we want to focus on our core mission of providing kosher mezuzahs to Jewish homes, at the same time, there is such a desire to help from the ally community that we wanted to give them something actionable and visible as well.”
—Alexandra Lapkin Schwank
The solidarity mezuzah conveys ‘actionable and visible’ nonJewish support for Jews.
trips offer young Jews adventure and tikkun olam in countries such as Ukraine, Cuba and India (above).
MyZuzah recipients show off their new mezuzahs.
Noah Meets Miriam
Tales of surviving and thriving past hardship
By Rabbi Wendy Zierler
The past five years have been rife with challenge: familial losses, the Covid pandemic, October 7, the subsequent wars in Gaza and Lebanon and the alarming rise in antisemitism. Against this backdrop, I’ll be approaching Passover this year thinking of the biblical Miriam.
In Exodus, she watched over her baby brother, Moses, who had been placed in a teivah, a wicker basket, and gently set adrift on the Nile River. In modern Israeli poet Rivka Miriam’s retelling of this story, she imagines the teivah as a symbol of surviving calamity and of creative renewal, which we can interpret as a potential balm for our persistently troubled times.
As Covid was shutting down the world and quarantine became the norm, I was already in the midst of my own isolation—mourning the loss of both of my parents. On March 12, 2019, my father, David Zierler, was hit by a distracted truck driver and killed as he was making his way to a
coffee shop to meet a friend.
At the end of January 2020, five days before the end of saying Kaddish for my father, my mother, Marion Zierler, died, too, from chronic kidney disease. I had been saying Kaddish for a full year and was on to the second when Covid engulfed New York City, where I live, and the rest of the world, subsuming my personal grief into a global drama.
To cope, I adopted a spiritual and pedagogical discipline, born of my scholarly focus. Each week, I translated a different grief- or prayer-related Hebrew poem and offered commentary on it in the form of a weekly dvar Torah at my local minyan. When Covid prevented the minyan from meeting in person, I began writing the commentary and emailing it to a list of readers. I dubbed this practice “Shir Hadash Shel Yom” (New Poem of the Day), and it has persisted to this day.
For Passover this year, which
begins with the first seder on April 12, I have chosen to delve into a poem that draws together the Passover and Noah stories.
In Exodus, after the infant Moses grows too big to be hidden at home from the Egyptians who have been ordered to kill all Israelite male babies, his mother places him on the Nile in a teivah and sets Miriam by the riverbank to watch him.
But this is not the first mention of a teivah in the Bible. In Genesis, teivah refers to the ark that Noah built to save himself, his family and the animals from the flood. After all, the flood’s 40-day duration furnishes one explanation for the origin of the concept of quarantine—the word comes from the Italian word quarantena, which means 40 days—an experience to which we were subjected repeatedly during the pandemic.
This dual biblical usage of the word teivah receives poignant exploration in “Noah’s Ark Slid Down From the Mountains of Ararat,” a poem written in 2011 by Rivka Miriam, a daughter of Holocaust survivors and a major force behind the secular Israeli Torah study movement.
She depicts Noah’s teivah traveling across time and texts, from ancient Mesopotamia to imperial Egypt and, by extension, it seems to me, to our own day:
Noah’s ark slid down from the mountains of Ararat into Miriam’s small hands
And she placed Moses on the padded mat of the ark
A mat made out of the fallen hairs of animals, that were once soft and downy
But which the weight of the years had now made rough—
How it floated, Noah’s ark, traverser of mountain and desert, Crawler on the beds of the sea,
to arrive, shriveled from years, scarred like Jacob’s thigh tendon, To this Nile, and to the little hands of Miriam, who now mumbles “alive and well”
As she places Moses inside.
As Rivka Miriam reimagines it, the teivah endures over time but is radically transformed. Her teivah bears scars that recall those that Jacob obtained after wrestling with the angel in Genesis, an event that left him limping but also with a new name—Yisra’el, the name given to the Jewish nation that descended from him. The teivah thus comes to stand for the history of the people of Israel, then and now: its traumas, continuities and blessings.
In the poem, as Miriam leans over the teivah carrying Moses, she mumbles the words “chai vekayam,” alive and well. These words bring to mind “David Melech Yisrael Chai Vekayam” (David the King Is Alive and Well)—best known today as an iconic Zionist folksong, but originally a Talmudic phrase devised by Judah the Prince, the second-century rabbi and scholar, to announce a New Moon (Rosh Hashanah 25a), suggesting that like the waxing moon, the fortunes of Israel will eventually increase.
Taken together, the Noah and Exodus stories, the ubiquitous folksong and this poem by Rivka Miriam remind us that Jewish stories are often tales of surviving and thriving past hardship and loss.
Today, that’s a reminder we all can use.
Rabbi Wendy Zierler is the Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History. Her newest book, Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry, will be published later this year by the Jewish Publication Society.
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My College List
Where does JWSH 1007 fit in? |
OCTOBER 6, 2023:
I attend Erev Simchat Torah services for the first time. Though I’ve been involved with the Jewish community through summer camp and youth group my whole life, I didn’t grow up a regular synagogue-goer. My family never prioritized it. Before my junior year of high school, I visited Israel and came home committed to going to synagogue every Shabbat and major holiday.
I’m at Congregation Dor Tamid, my small synagogue in suburban Atlanta. I adore everything—our celebration, our dancing, our Torah. I also adore Carol, the 65-year-old friend I have made. We chat for a long time. She asks about my future. I eagerly inform her that I’m considering toptier schools like Purdue, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT to pursue my dream of aerospace engineering within commercial aviation.
By Gabrielle Siegel
in the South because I don’t like the political climate. Then, as many long conversations at synagogue go, she tells me her life story. When Carol shares her wisdom and talks about her regrets over the decades, she never mentions the name of her university or employers. That stays with me. Maybe in the end, it doesn’t matter? That night, I go home, do homework, browse various college websites and fall asleep. Two hours later, the pogrom in Israel begins.
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY (VIRGINIA TECH)
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA (BAMA)
OCTOBER 7+4: I take the PSAT. I arrive early. I know I will need to cry in the arms of my Jewish chemistry teacher, who is proctoring the test, before I pretend everything is normal. I expect an average score. I am wrong. Based on my performance, the University of Alabama offers me a full-ride scholarship. But Bama is antisemitic, right?
I also tell her that, as a proud liberal Reform Jew, I don’t want to stay
OCTOBER 7+2: I drive to Virginia Tech for a prescheduled tour. I am numb. My meeting the next day with a Jewish engineering major is canceled. She’s grieving and can’t leave her dorm. I go to Hillel instead. They’re doing matzah ball soup runs. Something clicks. I highlight VT in green.
I’ve heard stories of rejection, alienation and harassment on the campus. And I don’t want to stay in the South, right? Still, I will visit. Why not? When I do, Hillel interns tell me about a student who transferred to Bama to escape antisemitism at the University of Pennsylvania. I know Penn is not an anomaly. I realize that my college list is shrinking. To attend one of the elite northeastern private schools I once idealized, I’d have to enter as a warrior, not an engineering student. I refuse to pay $90,000 a year to fight. I deserve better.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)
OCTOBER 7+59: Other northeastern
universities can betray me, but MIT never would, right? It’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the nerd capital of the world. When I’m sad, which isn’t unusual post-October 7, I have a list of coping strategies: studying Torah, Instagram doomscrolling, FaceTiming Jewish friends. My last resort? Browsing the MIT admissions blog! I know how weird it sounds, but that blog—with its beautiful student-written stories of community, growth, burnout and survival—is why I dream of MIT. Yet, today, on December 5, MIT President Sally Kornbluth is evasive when asked at a congressional hearing if calling for the genocide of Jews is against MIT’s code of conduct. I highlight the school of my dreams in blood red.
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (GEORGIA TECH)
OCTOBER 7+290: As a Georgian aspiring engineer, everyone expects me to attend GT. Intending to leave the South, I used to resist those expectations. Now, I’m excited by the prospect of attending their Chabad on Campus, studying abroad at the Technion in Haifa through a special exchange program and developing anti-drone technology capable of preventing Iran’s drone attacks.
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE (RPI)
OCTOBER 7+400: Now in my senior year, I fly to Washington, D.C., for the national “Standing Together” rally to support Israel and fight antisemitism. When I arrive, I chat with a Jewish RPI alum who says, “I can’t speak to Jewish life at RPI because I didn’t have a life. People were also too busy to be antisemitic, so that’s a plus?” My Jewish identity
isn’t anti-antisemitism. It is joy.
In my post-October 7 world, my Judaism has expanded to include Jewish rituals and traditions: I wrap tefillin, pray regularly and avoid non-kosher meat. I began these mitzvot in honor of the hostages, but I’ve grown to love them. I highlight RPI, in upstate New York, in light red because I want to have the time during college to keep growing Jewishly.
IN THE END, UNIVERSITIES
ARE SCHOOLS. THEY DON’T
BELONG ON PEDESTALS.
THEY’RE PLACES TO LEARN AND TO GROW.
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY (VANDY)
OCTOBER 7+420: I don’t chase prestige, but I’m tired of helplessness. I refuse to be chased out of prestigious institutions. I’ve decided I am ready to fight, just as Jews have always fought to exist in every other institution that tried to deny us. With its Students Supporting Israel chapter, strong Jewish community and merit scholarships, I choose Vandy, in Nashville, as my potential battleground, my new top-tier aspiration. Yes, I’ll face antisemitism. I’ll fight it. But I will not be a professional activist. I’ll be an engineer whose creations protect my people from missiles. I’ll be a Jew whose words protect my people from hate.
COUNTDOWN
OCTOBER 7+511: On October 7 and
every day afterward, I have watched as thousands of university students, faculty and administrators decided Jews do not have the right to life, freedom or self-determination. They camped on campus grounds, harassed and threatened Jewish students and rejected the intellectual freedom their institutions were supposed to stand for. They turned places of education into places of fear.
Before I decide between classes like MATH 1502 and CHEM 1211, I face one decision with vastly different options than I had 18 months ago— picking where I will spend the next four years of my life.
On a recent Shabbat, when I see Carol at our synagogue, she asks where I’ll be going to college. I tell her that I’ve changed over the past year, but in the end, universities are schools. They don’t belong on pedestals. They’re places to learn and to grow. I want to learn and grow in Judaism and academics, so I’ll be choosing among Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, University of Alabama and Vanderbilt—depending on where I get in—to pursue my new dream of aerospace engineering in nonlethal defense aviation.
These southern universities didn’t feel right for me on October 6, 2023, but I’m not the same woman I was back then.
Gabrielle Siegel is a high school senior and engineering student at FCS Innovation Academy in suburban Atlanta. When not writing, she can be found studying physics, fencing or maintaining her Duolingo Hebrew streak. Siegel is the winner of the 2024 Hadassah Magazine and jGirls+ Magazine teen essay contest, which asked: How has your experience since October 7 changed the way you think about and express your Jewish identity? How has this past year shaped your view of the future and where you are headed?
‘Armed and Ready’
Jewish gun clubs, ownership on the rise |
Deby goodman used to be a cantor at a Conservative synagogue. She also has worked as an accountant and once owned a spa, “the only one around with a mezuzah on every doorpost,” said the Hadassah life member who sits on the board of directors of the Jewish National Fund’s local office in Orange County, Calif. Largely retired, Goodman, 70, now writes a Substack column about Israel and, occasionally, freelances as a karaoke DJ and as a cantor for weddings and funerals.
She and her husband, Jeff, are also currently shomrim, or guards, at their Orthodox shul, Chabad Beth Meir HaCohen in Yorba Linda, roles they have held ever since they helped to establish the synagogue’s security team
By Esther D. Kustanowitz
seven years ago. They carry their firearms every day, even on Shabbat.
“We are observant, and I normally don’t carry anything on Shabbat,” said Goodman, who has been shooting for more than 60 years and described herself as polit
ically conservative. “But a number of prominent Israeli rabbis”— most notably chief rabbi of the Israel police, Rami Berachyahu, in 2023—“encouraged people to carry on Shabbat because it’s pikuach [saving a soul], protecting your friends, neighbors and family.”
Roberta “Robbie” Tarnove also feels strongly about protecting her synagogue. A National Rifle Association-certified shooting instructor, Tarnove has a concealed carry permit but, before the October 7 attacks, had never carried a gun to Temple Beth David, her Reform congregation in Temple City, Calif. Now, after checking with the rabbi and the security guard, she Deby and Jeff Goodman
Taking Aim Bullets & Bagels member Wendy Grossman practices at an outdoor range.
brought a gun to a recent service.
“I don’t love carrying a gun all the time,” said Tarnove, who is in her early 60s and identifies as a political progressive. “It’s not my lifestyle. I don’t like to live that way.” But with family members present, “I wanted to be able to defend them, so I did bring a gun with me to shul.”
Tarnove and Goodman may not align religiously and politically, but both own multiple guns and identify as pro-Israel. They find common ground not only in actively protecting their synagogues but also as members of Bullets & Bagels, a self-described “Jew-ish,” Zionist and apolitical gun club in Southern California.
For many Jews, the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel shattered their assumption of safety, which had already been shaken in the wake of incidents like the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. The national and global picture since then has further fractured any sense of security as stories of antisemitic attacks have flooded Jewish news and social media accounts with increasing and alarming frequency.
In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League reported a 200 percent increase in antisemitic incidents between October 7, 2023, and September 24, 2024. They range from vandalism and graffiti, like the hateful words spray-painted on the San Francisco Hillel, located near San Francisco State University, and the Chabad of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, to arson and physical violence, including assaults on Jews in Brooklyn like an attack on a 13-year-old boy in Crown Heights on his way to school.
In Goodman’s neighborhood, where she said Jews have good relationships with the wider community, she and others are nevertheless concerned about anti-Jewish hate.
“You almost never see it in this corner of Orange County,” Goodman said, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t out there. This makes it easy for people to become complacent that it can’t happen here. But the bad guys are mobile and [bad things] can happen anywhere.”
“There’s a much stronger urge to want to be armed and ready,” said Tarnove, a member of the Los Angeles-based L.A. Progressive Shooters, an association of people who define themselves to the left politically. Like many progressives these days, she has felt isolated from former friends because she supports Israel. After one friend gave her the cold shoulder, Tarnove said, she “tried to explain the nuance, that I’m not anti-Palestinian, but anti-terror and anti-Hamas,” but he cut her off in an email by calling her a Zionist.
On the sunday morning after the November 2024 elections, about 40 Californians drove past signs for Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park and Disneyland in Anaheim to arrive at FT3 Tactical, a shoot ing range in Stanton, by 7:00 a.m. Meeting so early on Sunday all but ensures that group members have the range to themselves. Privacy provides a safe space where “we control the environment and the social culture,” explained Dr. Fred Kogen, a retired mohel who founded Bullets & Bagels in 2013. Inside the ante room to the range, one wall is decorated with “We the People” in
bold calligraphic script; opposite stands a display case with varied firearms and ammunition. The group of mostly 50- and 60-somethings greeted each other warmly and bellied up to the breakfast bar, set right next to the weapons case. Coffee, bagels and spreads were laid out atop a table draped in a banner reading “Bullets & Bagels: Ready, Aim, Schmear.”
All legal restrictions around firearms are upheld at club gatherings. New shooters are trained in the basics off-range with a patient instructor and a fake gun before they can even touch, let alone load, aim and shoot, a real one.
Tarnove discovered Bullets & Bagels by Googling “Jewish” and “guns” not long after the 2016 election, when she said she began feeling the “need to protect myself” in an era of heightened political rhetoric. She attended her first Bullets & Bagels brunch with “a lot of trepidation,” she recalled. “When Fred announced that the club was apolitical, it was an incredible relief to know that I wasn’t going to be bombarded with politics,” said the clinical laboratory scientist. “It was a politically safe space for me to have my Jewish identity and gun identity together.”
Dr. Kogen, who is in his mid-60s and practiced family medicine until the early 1990s, spent three decades as a mohel for Conservative and Reform Jews and Jewsby-choice in Southern California. In 1996, The New York
Robbie Tarnove
Times dubbed him “The Mohel of the Moment,” and in 2014, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency named him to its list of “American Top Mohels.”
At 40, he discovered an interest in shooting and planned an informal event at a local range; 60 people showed up. Six months later, he founded Bullets & Bagels and began hosting quarterly meetups.
More “people would want to shoot if the culture was different” surrounding guns, Dr. Kogen said, referring to the politically conservative, testosterone-infused stereotypes that, accurately or inaccurately, are associated with those who use firearms. He said that Bullets & Bagels has 220 members who pay the $10 monthly dues—an almost 20 percent increase since October 7—and a mailing list of more than 675 names.
Ninety percent of attendees at Bullets & Bagels events are returnees, according to Dr. Kogen. Participants range in age, with an estimated average age of about 55.
He said the two oldest enthusiasts were both 102 years old when they found Bullets & Bagels. One was a woman, who has since passed away, who had never pulled a trigger before her first meeting and, by event’s end, was shooting a .22 caliber revolver at a target 10 yards away. The other is a Holocaust survivor—and practicing dentist until age 93—who at one gathering shared his reflections on the Shoah.
About 30 percent of current Bullets & Bagels members are women over 40 who had “never contemplated holding a firearm, let alone shooting one” until joining the club, Dr. Kogen said.
Attitudes about guns vary among American Jews, and they may be changing. A survey by the American Jewish Committee in 2018 found that
70 percent of those polled believed it was more important to control gun ownership than to protect the rights of Americans to own guns.
“The majority of Jews in the country historically have been liberal on the left, pro-gun reform, pro-gun control, opposed to personal gun ownership,” Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran New York-based political strategist who is also an Orthodox rabbi, told NBC News just weeks after the October 7 attacks. “Jews with guns were always seen as an odd event.”
But now, Sheinkopf added, it seems the long-held view—of the United States being the “one place in the world where Jews are safe—is coming to an end.”
Reports over the past year in media outlets such as Haaretz, The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Post, NBC News and Fox News suggest anecdotally that more American Jews are interested in learning to shoot and own guns for self-defense after October 7. But there isn’t hard data to support those claims.
Firearm surveys from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Pew Research Center include data only from the first half of 2023, and don’t break down their findings by faith.
A June 2023 Pew study, for example, analyzed gun ownership through variables such as gender and race but not religion. Pew found that 40 percent of American men and 25 percent of women said they own a gun, while 38 percent of White Americans, 24 percent of Black Americans, 20 percent of Hispanic Americans and 10 percent of Asian Americans are gun owners.
Yet, there are a growing number of initiatives for Jews who want to bear arms. Like Dr. Kogen’s group, many of these launched prior to October 7, 2023, but have since seen an increase in interest.
In Charleston, S.C., Bagels and Bullets (no relation to Dr. Kogen’s club) trains members of the Jewish community to shoot. Rabbi Raziel Cohen, a nationwide firearms instructor and speaker known as “The
Welcoming Newcomers Club founder Dr. Fred Kogen said that membership in Bullets & Bagels has grown almost 20 percent since the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023.
Tactical Rabbi,” offers a line of merchandise with the logo “Glocks and Bagels.” The organization Magen Am provides armed security services and training for a number of West Coast Jewish communities. The New York State Jewish Gun Club, based in Rockland County, N.Y., helps its members obtain permits and training and advocates upholding the Second Amendment. And the Washington, D.C.-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership identifies itself as “America’s most aggressive civil rights organization” working to destroy gun control.
But for most members of Bullets & Bagels, their association is as much about the schmooze as the guns. Nearly every club member interviewed for this story used the word “camaraderie” to describe what they found at events. And Dr. Kogen him-
self said the primary reason he runs these programs is community.
“My passion is the networking and the educational opportunities [around guns] that this provides the people, and the people I’ve met as a result,” he said.
Over breakfast at most meetings, attendees hear from an expert. In November 2024, it was Lawrence Zanoff, known in the entertainment industry as the “armorer to the stars” for his work consulting on Hollywood productions that involve weapons. December’s gathering featured Rick Travis, legislative director of the California Rifle & Pistol Association.
One Bullets & Bagels member in her late 60s who asked not to be identified says that attending events helps her feel less alone as she trains
and considers purchasing a gun for self-defense. (She wanted anonymity due to concerns about judgment from her community, which she describes as diverse religiously, ethnically and politically, for even thinking about a gun purchase.)
She said she’s not happy that getting a gun “is something I have to be thinking about.” But when she’s among the Bullets & Bagels crowd, “I realize I’m not being paranoid or an outlier. It’s a legitimate and important concern that people have taken action on, therefore it is appropriate for me to take action.”
At the November event, Deby Goodman was recovering from an injury and sat out the “bullets” part of the program. The “Bring Them Home” dog tag adorned with a yellow ribbon and hanging from a chain around her neck and the blue-andwhite flags decorating her fingernails left no doubt as to her concern for the October 7 hostages being held in Gaza. The manicure, first done in October 2023, gets refreshed regularly, she said, and “it stays that way until all the hostages are free.”
Several other members also wore hostage dog tags around their necks, yellow ribbons or shirts that read “Bring Them Home Now.” Jeff Goodman sported a Bullets & Bagels branded kippah and a shirt reading: “If you can read this thank a teacher. If you can read this in English thank a soldier.”
While Bullets & Bagels members “all have something in common, I’m sure we have a lot of things that are not in common,” said Merle Newman. “That’s why politics is off the table, as Fred says, because we have guns, and since politics and those conversations tend to get heated, they’re better left outside.”
At the monthly meetups, most
Lock and Load About 30 percent of club members are women over 40 who had never held a gun before joining. Danielle Evans (bottom), who is not Jewish but self-identifies as a Zionist, thinks that ‘it is very important for a woman to know how to protect herself.’
people engage in shooting practice using revolvers or semi-automatic pistols. One member who collects historical firearms often brings in a few unusual pieces for others to try. Dr. Kogen enjoys using a carbine—a small rifle that can use pistol-caliber rounds and has limited recoil—for target shooting. Newman has a Sig Sauer SP2022 and a 9mm.
“You have to try different guns,” said Newman, who is in her 70s. “Some feel better in your hand—if you have a big hand, a small hand. It’s kind of like utensils: Some forks feel better in your hand than others.”
The gathering was punctuated by the sharp smell and sound of gun blasts from the various firearms during the shooting part of the program, only somewhat muted by the glass separating the anteroom from FT3 Tactical’s active range. Shooters donned protective eyewear and two layers of ear protection—foam earplugs and headset-style protectors—before entering the range through two sets of doors. Members lined up in individual lanes to shoot at targets up to 25 feet away. Beyond the targets lay the berm, a barrier made of shredded car tires that prevents fired bullets from leaving the indoor range.
According to the giffords Law Center and Everytown for Gun Safety, two organizations that promote gun safety and gun control, the state of California, with the second largest Jewish population in the country, ranks No. 1 in the nation for strong gun safety laws and has some of the lowest rates of both gun deaths and gun ownership. New York and Florida, home to the first and third largest concentration of Jews, rank fourth and 21st, respectively, for strong gun safety laws.
In the Jewish world, many individuals and groups, including Hadassah, advocate for strict gun control laws.
“It’s horrible that people get shot,” Deby Goodman said. “But what you never hear about are the many cases in which guns prevent violence. Just the fact that people know that there is someone who is armed is a deterrence. ‘Gun-free zone’ signs tell the bad guys, ‘Come on in, nobody is going to stop you.’ ”
“I am a gun person in favor of gun control,” Tarnove, the NRA-certified instructor, said, noting that the majority of gun owners in the United States support some degree of gun control, for example, background checks. She also believes in a waiting period to
purchase a gun because “most gun deaths are suicide, not violence.” By enforcing a waiting period, she said, it gives a person with suicidal ideation time to reconsider.
“Gun control needs to be well thought out and to make sense,” Tarnove said, “not just an inconvenience to law-abiding gun owners.”
“Concealed carry should be highly regulated, and open carry should not be allowed anywhere,” Tarnove added, unless one is licensed, trained and insured. “I don’t want to live my life as if there’s going to be a gunfight any second. So many want to be the hero in their own little movie. But statistically the chance of getting in a gun altercation—there are so many more things likely to happen to you.”
When she was cleaning out her late parents’ home, Bullets & Bagels member Wendy Grossman, who is in her 60s, found her father’s World War II .32 semi-automatic Colt. She wrapped the gun in a blanket, put it in a shoebox in her closet and forgot about it for years, until she organized that closet during a Covid lockdown and came across it.
“I realized that I needed to at least know the safety factors of having a gun,” she said. “I was worried about hurting myself or anyone else.”
Ready, Aim, Fire Club members usually practice with revolvers or semi-automatic pistols.
Grossman, who lives in Los Angeles but is planning a move out of state, has since learned from NRA-licensed safety officers and instructors at Bullets & Bagels events. She also has trained at International Tactical Training Seminars, which feature crisis-response courses.
It was Newman who introduced Grossman to Bullets & Bagels in 2021; Grossman has been attending ever since, sometimes managing food and setup. She has now invited several other women to join, including Danielle Evans, a 60-something CPA who is not Jewish but self-identifies as a Zionist. Evans has now attended approximately 25 Bullets & Bagels events and says she has found community among its members.
“In today’s world, I feel it is very important for a woman to know how to protect herself,” Evans said. “I also believe that many people have a fear of guns because they don’t understand them. Even if someone has a fear of shooting, I try to get them to
learn how a gun works.”
Newman’s personal research into firearm ownership was inspired by the ascending crime rates in Santa Monica, where she and her husband, Mark, have lived for nearly four decades. Their neighborhood was once friendly and safe, Newman said, but now “crime has become so intense” that they won’t walk the 24 steps from their front door to their mailbox after dark. The Newmans have been members of Bullets & Bagels for more than a decade.
“We feel safer knowing that if somebody came into our house, we can protect ourselves,” Newman said. “We hope to never, ever, ever have to experience it,” she added, but “if we had to protect ourselves, we have something we could do.”
When first training with guns, Deby Goodman recommends that shooters consider not just their skill level but their capacity to potentially use a
firearm in a threatening situation.
“Before you pick up a gun for the first time, think about, ‘If I or my family were threatened, would I be able to shoot someone and kill them?’ ” said Goodman who, like everyone else interviewed for this story, said she has never been in a situation during which she drew her firearm. “And if the answer is ‘no,’ leave the gun on the table and walk away. If you’re not ready to defend people completely, you shouldn’t be handling a gun, because your enemy will sense that, and they’ll take the gun away and use it on you.”
Tarnove reminds her students that shooting a gun is not a game and requires regular practice.
“You can’t stick a gun in a drawer and expect to be able to pull it out in a situation and use it effectively,” she said. “Six months from now, you’re not going to hit the target if you don’t practice regularly.
“Having a gun,” she added, “is a tremendous responsibility, because once that bullet leaves the barrel, whatever damage it does, whoever is hurt, you’re responsible.”
For her part, Goodman believes the right to bear arms is about freedom, and she cites Exodus 13:19 as support.
“The children of Israel went up from Egypt carrying arms,” Goodman said. The verse uses the word “chamushim,” which is often translated as “armed,” but which also could mean “in a military formation”—or something else entirely. “That’s the difference between slaves and free people. Slaves cannot carry arms. Free people can, and thank God, we are free people.”
Esther D. Kustanowitz is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor and consultant. She also co-hosts The Bagel Report podcast.
Camaraderie Bullets & Bagels’ meetups are as much about the schmooze as the shooting.
Our Urgent Search for New Allies
Embracing the ‘discomfort of disagreement’ |
By Talia Bodner
On college campuses around the world, there is a new bully in the yard. The name-calling, threats, intimidation and physical violence are not exactly new, but in the Campus Tentifada, the bullies have asserted their presence,” Eylon Levy, head of the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office and host of the Israel: State of a Nation podcast, writes in the foreword to the recently published Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out , edited by David Hazony, an Israeli writer, translator and editor.
“Like antisemites throughout history, they are driven by a moral zeal, a conviction that excluding Jews is the noblest expression of virtue. From colleges to workplaces
to city streets, the bullies feel they have the license to scare Jews, to shout them into submission. But there is one thing they did not take into account: You can pick on the Jews, but the Jews are no longer easy pickings.
“The young writers, thinkers and activists appearing in this collection are not simply Gen-Z. They are ‘Gen-Zionists’: a new generation of Jews who understand this historical moment. Gen-Zion-
ists stand up to bullies. They refuse to be intimidated. They will not let anyone shame them for who they are. Around the world, young Jews are mobilizing to show antisemites that Jews fight back, Jews answer back and Jews have each other’s backs.”
“Exactly one month after October 7, David Hazony published an essay in Sapir Journal called The War Against the Jews . ‘Stop acting like the benign ocean water that fuels the hurricane passing overhead,’ Hazony writes. ‘Instead, be the hurricane.’ Little could he have imagined that a song titled ‘Hurricane’ would, months later, at the Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden, become one of the defining texts of this era. There, Israeli Gen-Zionist heroine Eden Golan conquered Europe’s biggest stage despite the braying mobs determined to silence her.”
The essayists in
Young Zionist Voices , which Hazony compiled and edited, “are the hurricane.”
In his own introduction to Young Zionist Voices , Hazony writes that the goal of this collection of essays is “to showcase a new generation of Jewish thought leaders” who are “calling for new ideas about everything being Jewish entails.
On the morning of october 7, when Hamas showed the world exactly what the rallying cry “From the River to the Sea” looks like in practice, that genocidal slogan took off like wildfire on college campuses around the world. Fewer than five days after the October 7 attack, before Israel had even begun a significant military retaliation, thousands of my peers at Columbia University flooded the campus to protest against Israel’s right to defend itself—or more accurately, against Israel’s right to exist. Immediately, teachers and other adults on campus reassured me that, while the voices of the anti-Zionists and antisemites may be loud, they are not the majority, and in fact represent only a tiny fraction of the population
“Zionism for them is no longer just a politicalactivist position; it is a central pillar of the Jewish future.”
“What they all share is not just an unflinching commitment to a flourishing Jewish people continuing far into the future, but also a creativity and dynamism that have been lacking in the Jewish discourse—an inner optimism that transcends
as a whole.
But while this might be the case for their generation, it does not feel true for mine. My parents and my friends’ parents received messages of love and support from their non-Jewish community members, expressing condolences and condemnation of what happened to our Israeli friends and family. I, on the other hand, did not receive a single text from my non-Jewish friends. Not one.
On November 14, 2023, when I stood before hundreds of thousands of people and spoke at the March for Israel at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., I felt immense gratitude for the ability to be in the presence of so many Jews. And still, I felt a deep sense of dread. Because I knew that while I was surrounded by so many
the fear and pain which has, it seems, engulfed the conversations of older Jews.”
With thought leaders like these, he writes, “the Jewish future is in far better hands than many have come to believe. In their light, it is hard to be a pessimist.”
One of those thought leaders is Talia Bodner, whose essay follows.
Jews, there were so few non-Jews standing with us. Everyone around me was so impressed at the non-Jewish allies who spoke up at the rally to condemn Hamas and to advocate for Israel’s right to exist and to defend its people. And yet, all I could think was: Not one of them is my age.
In 2017, my jewish friends and I marched in our pink hats alongside feminists from every generation and background. In 2018, I rallied with my peers from Jewish day school for gun safety, alongside students and their families from every school district and neighborhood. Then in 2020, my Jewish friends and I joined our African American peers in Black Lives Matter protests around the country.
Unsafe Space Bodner decries the ‘tsunami of antisemitism and hate’ on college campuses across the country, including her own— Columbia University in New York City.
Sadly, it seems like we are the only ones noticing.
My identity has been shaped by my efforts to be an advocate, a friend and an ally. In every movement of activism, I stood among friends of different races, religions, genders, sexualities, nationalities, ethnicities and ages. But in November 2023, I looked around at my peers and found myself standing among Jews only. Now, in our moment of great need, young Jews were left advocating alone.
College is the place where young people have the opportunity to develop and solidify their opinions, where we learn to build up our voices to become strong leaders. People tell me again and again that while these anti-Israel protests might sound the loudest, they are not the majority. But if we don’t act now, then they will be soon enough. And if we continue on this path, the voices yelling in colleges will be yelling in positions of authority in industry, in culture and in the halls of government.
Children are taught nowadays to be neither a bully nor a bystander. My generation has been raised to be active upstanders; we are a generation bred for activism. So why,
when an Israeli student on my college campus hangs posters of innocent civilians who are being held hostage, and then gets beaten with a stick, does no one stand up? Why, when a student posts on a school-specific social media platform, calling for all Israel Defense Forces veteran students to “die a slow and painful death,” is it reposted, instead of reported?
And why, when a Columbia student makes a video saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” or “Be grateful I am not just going out and murdering Zionists,” do people not see why it’s the least bit problematic?
Jewish and Zionist students on college campuses are crying out for help, screaming into a void, only to be met with a tsunami of antisemitism and hate. The voice of young Jewish Zionists on campuses is louder than ever before, and still— in our generation of intersectionality, allyship and activism—we Jews are left standing alone. And as more and more “woke” Jews turn against their Zionist brothers and sisters, we Zionist youth who are standing up for ourselves are left with no allies.
So, how do we address what might be the single most important challenge for the young Zionist movement in America today: our lack of allyship? One option would be to abandon our search for allies and to continue standing alone. We can adopt the
Showing Up for Others Progressive Jews have joined Black Lives Matter and other racial justice efforts across the country, including at a vigil in New York City in April 2017.
Talia Bodner
bootstrap mentality of self-reliance: Only Jews are responsible for Jewish self-determination, autonomy and auto-emancipation. And in some ways, when we do succeed, isn’t it even more gratifying to know we were able to do it ourselves?
Perhaps. But that is a big risk that could have disastrous consequences if it is not effective. So, while the Jewish people are a mighty nation, we are too tiny to overcome our challenges without allies. Just as Israel needs allies to stand alongside her in an international community that often seems out to get her, so, too, must we rely on the support of others to help us overcome the challenges of our adversaries. And that means we must continue to work to build allies.
So now the question is: What are we looking for in an ally? For starters, we need people who will amplify our voices rather than trying to speak on our behalf. But this, in turn, raises the question of how the beliefs and political opinions of potential allies affect our ability to collaborate with them on this issue. If we are truly going to recruit allies who will be there for us in our moment of need, then we must cultivate them from the
left and the right, from both liberals and conservatives.
But that gets complicated, especially on campus. On the one hand, it has been reassuring to see leaders on the right who have advocated for American support of Israel. However, as a progressive young woman, I often find it uncomfortable to be in conservative political spaces. I often have to check my other values at the door; I don’t see eye-to-eye with them on so many other social justice issues like LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, climate change, reproductive rights, racial equality, gun safety and the separation of church and state.
Sometimes, I even question whether our conservative allies are really advocating for us for the right reason. I worry when leaders of the radical right, some of whom have been known to promote antisemitism, support Israel’s war against Hamas. Are they supporting Israel because they believe in the justness and morality of the Jewish state, or because they hate our enemies more than they hate us right now? What happens when the war ends? Can
these leaders remain our allies when the radicals among them fall back into antisemitic tropes like “Jews will not replace us?”
On the other hand, even if we can maintain our relationships with the conservative right, we may risk alienating our friends on the progressive left. For years, we had allies on the left because progressive leaders valued our intersectional identities. But now, progressive intersectionality has begun to exclude not only Zionism, but more and more, it seems no longer to include Judaism, either. When champions of social justice spew anti-Zionist and antisemitic hate speech in their efforts to delegitimize Israel, I find it hard to imagine a world in which we are ever able to rebuild those relationships.
And yet, surely, we must try. Right?
There was a time when we could engage in healthy discourse across the picket line, with diverse perspectives and opinions. When Israel and Hamas went to war in the spring of 2021, I was a junior in high school and
Generational Allies At the D.C. March for Israel, some non-Jewish leaders spoke up for ‘Israel’s right to exist and to defend its people,’ Bodner writes. ‘Yet, all I could think was: Not one of them is my age.’
the president of my school’s Jewish Student Association. When my progressive friends would post slogans on social media that were hypercritical of Israel, I found myself immersed in deep and difficult conversations
about the complexities of the war, the nuances of the region and the righteousness of Israel’s struggle. After such conversations, my friends almost always stood by me.
Only three years later, in the wake
of Israel’s war against Hamas, some of those people who were once my closest friends won’t talk to me. My high school best friend blocked me on October 7, the moment I posted “My heart is in Israel.” It seems dear friends would now rather completely
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Visible Support Clergy of many faiths joined counterprotests at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017.
ignore me than have a conversation about our differences of opinion. So yes, it’s disheartening and challenging, but I still believe we need to keep trying to find people willing to have the tough conversations.
Some of us will continue to reach out to our former allies on the progressive left, and we need those people not to give up on those friendships. Others will turn to the conservative right and attempt to build stronger relationships there— and we need those people to cultivate new allies as well. Still others will choose to go it alone, and we need those people’s valiant efforts to continue to strengthen our collective resolve. The question of which path to take is arguably the hardest and yet
most important choice every young Zionist will inevitably have to make. The truth of the matter is, I have seen people with whom I agree 99 percent of the time willing to drop me on a dime over the one thing we can’t agree on. And if I expect them to work harder at maintaining our friendship despite our differences, then I must be willing to commit to the same. It has become increasingly important to embrace the discomfort of disagreement in order to break the cycle of intolerance that our society has fallen into. We must be able to make space for people with opposing viewpoints and continue to engage them intellectually. And we have to remember that sometimes, we need to be able to check partisanship at the
door so we can sit down and find our common ground.
Whichever path to allyship we decide to follow, one thing is clear: If we don’t choose for ourselves, the decision will be made for us. And we will continue to struggle alone.
Talia Bodner is a student from the San Francisco Bay Area who is studying in the joint program between Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. An alumna of Young Judaea, she spent a gap year on the movement’s Year Course in Israel, where she interned in the Knesset and volunteered teaching English to Israeli Arab students.
Israel has become a hub of research on the disorder
By Hilary Danailova
Starting around fourth grade at my daughter’s public school in Philadelphia, I noticed that her math tests included not only problems to solve but also a checklist at the end with questions like, “Did you review your work?” and “Did you label your answers properly?”
I soon learned why: A quarter of the school’s students have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. The neurodevelopmental syndrome, traditionally diagnosed during childhood but increasingly identified for the first time in adults, is associated with traits that explain the need for the checklists. These traits include impulsivity, inattention, difficulty focusing and an overabundance of energy.
One fellow parent confided that her daughter’s ADHD challenges went far beyond absentminded math mistakes. “It’s everything, all day long,” she told me of her fifth grader, who recently joined the school’s social worker-supervised organization club. “She’ll forget to bring
books home. Or hand in her homework—she’ll be doodling and not even notice the teacher.”
It wasn’t just schoolwork, either. Before her mother hung a checklist in the shower, the daughter often forgot to use soap or rinse out the shampoo.
This family is far from alone: Reported diagnoses of ADHD have skyrocketed in recent years. A 2022 report—the latest figures available— revealed 7 million pediatric ADHD diagnoses in the United States, a rate of roughly 11 percent and an increase of 1 million in just six years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, an estimated 6 percent of American adults have an ADHD diagnosis— equivalent to one in 16, or approximately 15.5 million adults—with around half of them diagnosed in adulthood, a rate that is steadily rising as awareness of ADHD in adults has increased. (There are no statistics on rates of ADHD in the American Jewish population.)
Halfway across the world, Israel
has among the highest rates of childhood diagnosis of the disorder—a little more than 14 percent of Israelis ages 5 to 18, according to a 2016 report, the latest figures available.
The report, spearheaded by Dr. Michael Davidovitch, a developmental pediatrician with Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services, also showed that the rate among children had essentially doubled since 2005.
While the debate over the reasons for the climbing numbers remains unsettled, most experts attribute the rise in reported ADHD cases to a combination of increased awareness, reduced stigma and a genuine increase in the disorder’s prevalence.
Causal evidence for the rise is also unclear. Researchers interviewed for this article have a variety of theories to explain the diagnosis rates in the United States and, especially, in Israel. One theory suggests that those with ADHD are more likely to seek new places and emigrate if the need or desire arises (both countries have significant immigration populations). Another theory connects the high level of stress in Israel, a country perpetually at war, with ADHD, since stress can cause inflammation, a known risk factor for ADHD.
With skyrocketing rates, both Israel and the United States have become global leaders in ADHD research. Israel, for its part, is focused on leading investigations into the disorder’s prevalence and impact as well as developing therapies that help both children and adults.
People with adhd have impaired executive function, which means they have difficulty managing skills such as planning, organizing, time and financial management and self-regulation. Their impulsivity—and the need to
find workarounds to compensate for cognitive challenges—can also spur creativity. While they might find it impossible to complete tasks they find boring, those with ADHD can concentrate intently on what interests them.
Without proper treatment, however, the disorder can mean a lifetime of forgetfulness, missed deadlines and zoning out in class, meetings or even while driving.
“In the last decade or so, it’s more and more understood that ADHD is a disturbance that goes with a person throughout his life,” observed Dr. Shlomzion Kahana, a neurologist at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. (Israel’s medical community places ADHD within the field of neurology rather than psychiatry, where it is classified in the United States.)
“The fidgety child becomes the distracted, inattentive adult causing problems in work, family relationships, maintaining jobs,” She added. “It’s really a pervasive disorder.”
Yet thanks to a groundswell of awareness—people these days openly discuss and share tips for managing ADHD on TikTok and other social media, for example—those with the disor der are far more likely to be diag
nosed than they were in previous generations. And there are established protocols for treatment, largely a combination of medication, such as the stimulants Ritalin and Adderall, and behavioral therapy.
“There’s a lot of evolution in this field,” said Dr. Gabriel Vainstein, a neurologist with Maccabi Healthcare Services and the chair of the Israeli Society for ADHD (ISAD), a nonprofit group that shares information about the disorder as well as organizes conferences and events.
Drawing on their country’s centralized and highly developed health care system and its national electronic patient database—and often in collaboration with American counterparts—Israeli scientists have furthered that evolution.
In one example, in a study published in 2023 that followed more than 100,000 Israeli adults in their 50s and 60s over 17 years, Rutgers Brain Health Institute in New Jersey and Israeli scientists at the University of Haifa and Meuhedet Health Services found that those with ADHD are three times more likely to develop dementia than those without the disorder. The study also suggested that early treatment with stimulants may reduce that risk.
Israeli researchers frequently draw on American data.
A 2020 study led by Dr. Eugene Merzon of Leumit Health Services, in collaboration with colleagues from Hebrew University and other Israeli institutions, analyzed data from across the United States and found higher rates of Covid infection among indi-
viduals with ADHD, along with an increased probability of recovery.
The researchers hypothesized that people with ADHD may have inherited genetic advantages that enhance their immune system’s ability to fight Covid.
Indeed, in studies over the past five years, Israelis have discovered connections between ADHD and a host of medical issues, including childhood infections. They also found higher rates of obesity, substance abuse, eczema, lupus and even allergies among those with ADHD.
“It’s unbelievable how much of ADHD is a medical problem,” observed Dr. Iris Manor, a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Tel Aviv University who collaborates frequently with colleagues at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City and is a member of the ADHD professional societies in both Israel and the United States.
“But we don’t know what the mechanisms are,” she added, “just that there are associations—and mechanisms that don’t work as they should.”
Israeli therapists and researchers have created ADHD behavioral therapy techniques that have become global models. There is even a new Israeli-made app, Pery, that uses artificial intelligence to help parents navigate their child’s ADHD symptoms.
One of the best-known therapies for the disorder in Israel may be Adina Maeir’s cognitive-function intervention, known as COG FUN. Maeir, a professor at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Occupational Therapy, pioneered the application of occupational therapy to the disorder.
In 15 to 30 sessions, depending on the patient’s age, COG FUN tackles the practical challenges of living while distracted. Teaching patients to understand “the connection between
Beth Krone, a psychologist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, has worked with Israeli researchers
cognition and everyday functioning,” Maeir said, is a departure from the blame most patients are accustomed to for failures that feel beyond their control.
For example, therapists simulate routines or activities like meal preparation and homework, pausing to evaluate the demands of each task and evaluate strategies in an environment free of judgment.
“That’s important, because at home or in school, the context is demanding,” Maeir said. “And because they’re so overwhelmed, patients don’t have an opportunity to learn from those experiences.” She theorized that the high executive-function demands in developed countries like Israel and the United States, where several ADHD clinics run programs similar to COG FUN, could help explain high diagnosis rates in those countries.
In recent years, behavioral therapy in both Israel and the United States has been tweaked to accommodate the growing number of adult patients “who come usually much more impaired, and with a lot more emotional baggage,” Maeir said. “It’s, ‘I’m a mess. I’m late to everything. I’m about to be fired from my job. My wife is about to kick me out. My relationship with my children is terrible.’ You know, challenges in every area of life.
“So after years of failure and poor performance, feeling inadequate and not understanding why, we try to help them discover what works and what doesn’t—what’s biological, what’s psychological, what’s actually stigma.”
With increased awareness and resources, it’s a very different landscape than the one Dr. Merzon, who also teaches at Ariel University, navigated during his childhood in the
Soviet Union. It wasn’t until Dr. Merzon left Donetsk, Ukraine, for Israel in the 1990s—and, at 32, was diagnosed with ADHD during his pediatrics training—that he understood there was a name and treatment for his lifelong difficulties with organization.
‘WE TRY TO HELP THEM DISCOVER WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T— WHAT’S
BIOLOGICAL,
—ADINA MAEIR
Growing up as the low-achieving son of a professor of medicine, “everyone said I was lazy,” he recalled. ADHD “was not something that was known or talked about.” Dr. Merzon said that he overcame his deficits out of a desperate fear of failing to secure one of the few university spots available to Jews, as opportunities were limited due to pervasive antisemitism. The alternative, the Soviet Army, “was not a good place for Jewish kids,” he said.
Beth krone, a clinical psychologist who teaches psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine and has worked with Israeli researchers, got her first view of ADHD as a young Montessori teacher. “I had kids that would only do their math as long as they were standing up,” recalled Krone, a Hadassah life member. “As soon as I told them, ‘Sit still,’ they couldn’t
focus to do the math. Their brains were all over the place trying to focus on sitting still.”
Both Drs. Merzon and Manor, who have collaborated on ADHD research, theorize that ADHD is more prevalent in countries with higher levels of immigration, such as Israel and the United States. “People with ADHD need novelty,” Dr. Merzon said. “We’re easily bored. We need something new to do.” Tackling a new culture, he explained, is the ultimate challenge.
In his view, those with ADHD, which he believes is largely hereditary, are more likely to immigrate, and high immigrant populations perpetuate incidence of the disorder by passing it down.
For her part, Dr. Manor has found connections between trauma-and stress-hormone-induced inflammation and the emotional dysregulation and hypersensitivity associated with ADHD, suggesting that environmental considerations are a contributing factor.
For example, her research has uncovered an association between stress in pregnant women and higher rates of ADHD in the children they birth. “And Israel has a lot of wars, so a lot of women are pregnant during times of tension and conflict,” Dr. Manor said. She predicts that in roughly six years, Israel will see a surge in ADHD diagnoses among children born to families in the southern Israeli communities most traumatized by the October 7 Hamas massacre.
The lack of clear causal evidence around ADHD leaves Krone reluctant to speculate about theories like Dr. Manor’s. “Things play out differently for different people, sometimes along heritable lines, sometimes not along heritable lines,” said the psy-
chologist, who has studied ADHD from the perspective of epigenetics— the science of how lived experience alters the expression of genes, including from one generation to another.
Speculation, she added, “can draw stigma to immigrant communities, or Jews or people who are stressed or traumatized.”
For his part, Dr. Davidovitch, the Israeli developmental pediatrician, attributes higher rates of diagnosis to both greater awareness and greater open-mindedness on the part of physicians and parents. “Israel is a very highly competitive society. Parents want their kids to have every advantage,” he said, explaining the new willingness to medicate a child who might be lagging in school.
Dr. Davidovitch is currently researching the impact of rising screen use—“the tablets and the iPhones and all these computers that take children’s attention from the morning to the evening”—on aggravating ADHD severity. “Of all the external factors that I believe are crucial, it’s the screens,” he said.
From new york city to tel Aviv, the millions of successfully treated patients are testament to the modern understanding that ADHD, while not curable, is usually manageable. Indeed, Dr. Merzon points to himself as proof, and even credits the disorder for inspiring his career.
“If I didn’t have ADHD, I don’t
think I would’ve become a researcher,” said Dr. Merzon, who uses Ritalin to stay focused. “I was so interested in the topic, so patient to understand how it worked and how it influenced my adult life.” Now he explains to his juvenile ADHD patients that “you don’t have to blame yourself—you have to turn that weakness into a strength.”
“One of the strengths of people with ADHD is that they can think along a different angle,” he said. “Your struggle with your weakness prompts creative decisions, unique strategies to cope. And that’s how it can become your superpower.”
Hilary Danailova writes about travel, culture, politics and lifestyle for numerous publications.
Our Youth Aliyah villages provide a safe haven for students, embracing them with more than food and shelter. Through education and support, guidance and love, we help young refugees and children from at-risk homes achieve a brighter future. Hadassah is developing future citizens and leaders for the State of Israel. You have the power to give our youth hope.
Clowning With Soldiers
Hadassah’s medical clowns help heal those traumatized in war |
By Wendy Elliman
On october 7, 2023, a 23year-old paratrooper with bullets in his arm and lung dragged a fellow soldier to safety through gunfire—only to discover he had rescued a corpse. The bullet wounds inflicted by terrorists at Kfar Kisufim near the Gaza border healed faster than the soldier’s psyche. While the hole in his lung eventually closed and vascular surgeons at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem repaired his torn arm with an artery from his leg, the trauma stayed with him, month after month.
Today, that soldier, whose name is withheld for his privacy, is on his way to being sound in both mind and body. Improbably, men and women with painted faces and red noses were among those who aided him, and he is now training to join their ranks as Israel’s first wounded soldier to become a medical clown.
For over two decades, Israel’s medical clowns have helped hospital patients throughout the country cope primarily with short-term stress, from managing postoperative pain to fear
around medical procedures. Now, they have adapted their techniques of improvisation, theatrics, physical comedy and therapeutic care to play a key role in helping thousands navigate the horrors they experienced on and since October 7. This clowning subdiscipline, developed in Israel by clowns working with Israel Defense Forces soldiers since 2016, is known as rehabilitative clowning.
“Because we’re skilled in perceiving how others feel, we can break down barriers and reach those broken by fear, pain and grief,” said David Barashi, 48, head of the Rehabilitation Clown Project at HMO, whose clown name is Dush. “By bringing them close, we can help them through a slow spiral of healing.”
Created as a paramedical field in the 1990s, medical clowning in Israel began at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in 2002, initiated by Barashi with the help of Dream Doctors, a nonprofit that trains and integrates professional medical clowns into Israeli hospitals.
Over the past two decades, medical clowns have overcome many raised eyebrows to win recognition as accomplished, multidisciplinary, research-backed health care professionals.
Israel today is “a global leader in the field,” according to Dream Doctors CEO Tsour Shriqui. The country boasts 105 trained medical clowns who contribute to the well-being of an annual 200,000 patients, young and old, in 34 hospitals countrywide.
The clowns’ success in alleviating fear and pain in patients recovering from surgery and undergoing treatment convinced Barashi that their techniques would also be effective in treating psychological trauma— emotional, mental or psychological injury triggered by overwhelming or life-threatening events.
Nine years ago, he brought this idea to clinical psychologist and PTSD expert Yoram Ben-Yehuda, formerly of HMO, who heads the IDF Home Front Rehabilitation Center in Rehovot, one of several centers that treat soldiers for PTSD and other complex reactions to battle. Ben-Yehuda was receptive, and Barashi volunteered weekly to integrate clown therapy into the work of the IDF rehab center’s team of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists.
Then came October 7. In hospitals nationwide, medical clowns worked around the clock with traumatized soldiers, civilians and their families. Barashi and five medical clown colleagues at HMO covered its two Jerusalem hospitals and visited evacuees and families of hostages.
Ben-Yehuda, meanwhile, was sitting shiva for his son, Itamar, a 21year-old army medic who was killed battling terrorists on October 7. As soon as Ben-Yehuda returned to the IDF rehab center, he established an
Yoram Ben-Yehudah (left), head of the IDF’s Home Front Rehabilitation Center, and medical clown David Barashi
Amichai Azar (left) works with Barashi and other clown colleagues at HMO and the IDF rehab center. emergency trauma unit and recruited Barashi onto its team, while the medical clown continued to work at HMO. “Early intervention can prevent trauma becoming chronic,” Ben-Yehuda said. “It’s a very significant part of rehabilitation.”
Rehabilitative clowning at the IDF rehab center combines therapeutic sessions and resilience training with group acting and improvisation. It is conducted by Barashi and two clown colleagues. One is Amichai Azar—his clown name is Shpachtel—who also works at Hadassah.
“For clowns, there’s no ‘fourth wall’ separating us from these distressed soldiers of all ages and all ranks,” the 50-year-old Azar said. “We can cross barriers and connect, create empathy, allow pain to be shared, give our patients reason to lift their heads. Our approach is designed to help them address and process their trauma in a safe, non-threatening way.”
With many female soldiers impacted by the war, Barashi’s colleague and Dream Doctors female clown Keren Asor-Kliger, 46, (clown name Jonam) was an essential recruit to the team. “It’s a privilege to be part of something so necessary,” she said. “I’ve worked with over 1,000 traumatized soldiers this past year. I’ve been with them at their lowest point, helped bring light back into their lives and accompanied them on their return to life, family and friends.”
The son of a disabled veteran, Barashi learned early not to look away from those who are injured. In his work with soldiers, Barashi adds Ramat-Clown to his name—a play
on ramat kal, the Hebrew for chief of staff—and adapts his own clown costume, adding an army vest and beret over a distinctly nonregulation blue-and-white striped T-shirt, along with his standard red clown nose. He also sports three unbestowed stars of a full general on his shoulder along with a half-dozen fake medals across his chest.
The protocol that Barashi and his colleagues have developed for rehabilitation clowning begins as one-on-one therapy, building nonjudgmental trust and rapport. “We have profound conversations about life, the horror, fallen comrades,” he explained.
It took weeks for a 20-year-old infantrywoman, trapped in images of blood, burning and death from her eight hours in hell at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, to open up to a medical clown and other therapists at the IDF rehab center, for example. Slowly, they coaxed her to confront her trauma, and today, she is back with her unit.
This individualized interaction increases as the clown-therapist works on emotional support, social interaction and problem-solving, helping patients confront their fear, grief and anger. The soldiers then move to group sessions in which participants relate their trauma and hear that of others, as resilience and confidence are rebuilt.
“Slowly, they retrieve joy,” Barashi said. “Slowly, they tell stories and they play, visibly repairing themselves.”
The IDF rehab center program includes a weekly visit to the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus. Its purpose is to give recovering soldiers a sense of helping those like themselves, but it has had another outcome, too. Several soldiers at the IDF rehab center now want to train as medical clowns, and Barashi hopes to inaugurate a pro-
HADASSAH ON CALL
Decode today’s developments in health and medicine, from new treatments to tips on staying healthy, with the Hadassah On Call: New Frontiers in Medicine podcast. In each episode, journalist Maayan Hoffman, a third-generation Hadassah member, interviews one of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s top doctors, nurses or medical innovators. Catch up on recent episodes, including a conversation with nurse and sexual health specialist Anna Woloski-Wruble about maintaining sexuality and intimacy as we age. Subscribe and share your comments at hadassah.org/hadassahoncall or wherever you listen to podcasts.
gram in April to integrate them into the ranks of rehabilitative clowns.
“I want to be a caregiving figure like Dush has been to me,” the wounded paratrooper said. “I want my eyes to tell soldiers in pain, ‘I see you, your difficulty, your fear,’ as his told me.”
Barashi himself is no stranger to trauma. He worked with Covid patients at HMO during the pandemic, and he has volunteered as far afield as Nepal and Haiti following earthquakes.
However, working with soldiers has been a longtime dream. “I’ve always believed I have something to give them,” he said. “No matter their age, background, rank, religious or political outlook, every last one of them is heroic. They’ve defended this precious country with their blood. They’ve been to hell, come back, and many have then returned to the field to fight. It’s my privilege to work with them.”
Wendy Elliman is a British-born science writer who has lived in Israel for more than five decades.
Eyes on the Future
What’s new at Hadassah and on the international stage
SIX QUESTIONS FOR HADASSAH’S NEW CEO
Ellen finkelstein assumed her role as hadassah’s ceo/executive director on January 6, excited by what she calls an “amazing opportunity” to be a partner to Hadassah National President Carol Ann Schwartz, a role “I can really sink my teeth into.”
The New Jersey native and resident most recently served as chief strategy officer at Yeshiva University’s Office of Institutional Advancement. A University of Virginia graduate, she previously worked with Fortune 500 clients at Accenture Consulting and as marketing director at Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Northern New Jersey. An avid hiker, reader and college basketball fan, Finkelstein says she’s proud to be the mother of three adult sons and a new life member of Hadassah. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What do you see as Hadassah’s greatest strengths?
During my interview process, I reached out to Hadassah leaders across the United States and was blown away by their compassion, professionalism and engagement in the community. I’m thrilled to know there are no barriers to entry—not by political party or by religious stream. All are united by their commitment to Israel, to fighting antisemitism, to improving health care for women and children, to medical innovation and to women’s empowerment. These shared values foster a sisterhood on a really deep level, which makes Hadassah a meaningful, exciting place to be and to support. I’m here to help—namely, to assist the efforts of our volunteers and lay leadership and to energize the professional staff.
You’ve worked in the Jewish nonprofit space for decades. What stands out for you?
As big as the Jewish nonprofit
world is, it’s still a small world. I’m proud to have met and worked with a lot of talented people in multiple organizations who I’ll continue to collaborate with in this new position. The Jewish community is a remarkable force of nature. I’m sometimes in awe of the generosity and commitment of philanthropists who are working and giving to secure the future of the Jewish people. In part, that’s why there is no place I’d rather be than at Hadassah, as a Jewish woman and a Zionist.
Supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism are Hadassah priorities. Did those play a part in you taking on this role?
As someone raised in a traditional Jewish home, Israel had always been a part of my life, but I hadn’t been until a decade ago. My first trip was transformative, forging an unbreakable connection. I’ve long been inspired by the work done by American women in support of Israel, but
Ellen Finkelstein
I didn’t fully understand the impact until I had the opportunity to spend time listening to Hadassah Medical Organization Director-General Dr. Yoram Weiss, board chairperson Dalia Itzik and the fantastic medical staff. Their work is truly inspiring, and I’m proud to have the opportunity to support their efforts.
Today, fighting antisemitism in the United States is crucial. We’re seeing antisemitic incidents skyrocketing at rates we never imagined possible in our lifetime. Hadassah is standing proud with Jews across America and around the world. We will not whitewash our Zionism and will not tolerate hatred toward our people. We will work with like-minded organizations and advocate in the halls of Congress and the United Nations to stand up and speak out.
Has women’s empowerment always been a focus for you?
I was privileged to be raised by parents who assured me from the
earliest age that I can be and do anything. Yet too many women are raised to think we shouldn’t have a loud voice or be in leadership roles. Throughout my career, I’ve been privileged to manage and mentor female professional staff and lay leaders, to help give them the skills and confidence to make an impact. That’s such an important part of leadership.
What are your thoughts on women’s philanthropy?
The female philanthropists I’ve worked with have been mindful about the impact of their giving. As Jewish women, we view our involvement in the world not only in terms of how it impacts us and our families, but how it affects the greater world. In that way, I think the women of Hadassah are using their money and time to make a real impact.
Do you have a mantra?
Look for the good, for the positive.
VOTE FOR A PLURALISTIC ZIONISM
Jews across the Diaspora now have the power to vote on how to allocate $6 billion to support various Jewish causes, interests and communities inside and outside of Israel over the next five years. Votes for delegates to the 39th World Zionist Congress, which will meet in October in Israel, will help shape the future of the Zionist movement.
The 22 slates running to represent American Jewry embody a broad array of religious denominations, political values and cultural traditions. Rather than vote directly for the 152 Americans who will serve as delegates to the Congress, voters cast ballots for slates made up of like-minded coalitions of groups.
The elected delegates will make decisions about how to spend $1.2 billion annually for the next half decade for programs that advance Zionism, fight antisemitism and address pressing issues, for example, sending Israeli shlichim , or emissaries, to Diaspora communities, support for those affected by war in Israel and Ukraine and a number of other initiatives.
Sometimes called the Parliament of the Jewish People, the World Zionist Congress is made up of 525 elected delegates and 232 appointed delegates and convenes in Jerusalem every five years. Of the 525 elected delegates, 200 must be from Israel, 152 from the United States and 173 from elsewhere in the Diaspora. It is also policy that 25 percent of the delegates on each slate be under the age of 35, and 40 percent must be women.
As the largest women’s Zionist and Jewish women’s organization in America, Hadassah is committed to strengthening Israel-Diaspora relations, promoting inclusivity and pluralism within the Zionist movement and reinforcing Zionism around the world.
“It is imperative that all Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel—ultra-Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and nondenominational—have their
rights protected and their input respected,” said Hadassah Magazine Chair and former Hadassah National President Ellen Hershkin, who will serve as a delegate at the Congress in October. “It is crucial that representation at the World Zionist Congress is not weighted in any one direction but truly expresses the diversity of the Jewish people worldwide.”
Hadassah received special status in 1994 from the Zionist General Council, which granted the organization 32 permanent seats with full voting rights. The Hadassah delegates are part of the 232 appointed delegates and include the organization’s current national president, immediate past national president, current Zionist Affairs chair, past Zionist Affairs chair and representatives selected by Hadassah from Hadassah Israel and Young Judaea.
At the 38th World Zionist Congress in 2020, then-Hadassah National President Rhoda Smolow spoke up to ensure that all factions of the Zionist movement in Israel and the Diaspora had a voice when she issued a statement reiterating the organization’s commitment to diversity in the Zionist movement—from the liberal denominations and unaffiliated groups to the ultra-Orthodox.
Voting for the Congress is easy. From March 10 to May 4, all American Jews over the age of 18 who are permanent residents of the United States and have not voted in Israel’s Knesset elections are eligible. Voting for the American delegates is primarily conducted online through the American Zionist Movement portal ( azm.org/elections ). Registration costs $5.
Now is the time to vote for representatives who will strengthen the Zionist movement and ensure a safe and secure Israel and strong Diaspora for generations to come.
—Diana Diner
Diana Diner is the Zionist educator at Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
A poster (above) advertises the convening of the 23rd World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem (top).
A Jewish Paradise Between Two Oceans
Tropical Panama beckons with amenities for Jewish travelers |
When most international travelers add the Central American country of Panama to their list of top destinations, it is most likely to behold, if not sail through, the engineering marvel that is the Panama Canal. In 2024 alone, more than 800,000 people visited the canal’s Miraflores Visitor Center, and local authorities expect the 20242025 cruise season to see more than 225 passenger ships transiting the canal, with some carrying upwards of 4,000 guests.
But Jewish travelers have further incentives to visit the lush tropical paradise—the country’s increasingly sophisticated kosher amenities, from high-end gourmet restaurants to hotels that cater to an observant clientele.
Indeed, in recent years, Orthodox social media influencers such as Gabriel Boxer (aka the “Kosher Guru”) and TikTok star Miriam Ezagui have documented the trendy kosher scene as well as excursions to the Monkey Island nature preserve, outdoor adventures like canoeing and cultural interactions with the indigenous Emberá community.
The evolution of Panama as a
Jewish destination may be due to its status as the largest Jewish community in Central America. The country of more than four million is home to 10,000-plus Jews, most of whom identify as traditional or Orthodox, and boasts several synagogues, over 35 kosher restaurants and two large kosher supermarkets. The Panama Kosher Fest, held annually in January, seeks to highlight both kosher cuisine and local culture.
The abundance of kosher resources, unusual in a tropical setting, provides a foundation for indulgent vacations set amid palm trees, modern skyscrapers and the unique geography of being sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
Panama City—the capital and home to most of the country’s Jewish population—is in the Eastern Standard Time Zone, so for those visiting from the East Coast, there’s no need to change clocks or deal with jetlag. And unlike an increasing number of foreign destinations, levels of antisemitism are insignificant.
“Panama as a country has been very good to the Jews,” said Max Harari, president of El Consejo Central Comunitario Hebreo de Panamá,
By Lori Silberman Brauner
or the Central Hebrew Community Council of Panama, which acts as an umbrella organization for the country’s Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities. And, in turn, “the Jewish community has been very much involved in the development of this country.”
Indeed, many local Jews have worked, and continue to prosper, in the fields of construction, real estate, trade and commerce, and Panama has had two Jewish presidents. Max Delvalle Maduro served as vice president from 1964 to 1968—with a one-week stint as acting president in April 1967—and his nephew, Eric Arturo Delvalle Cohen-Henriquez, was president from 1985 to 1988 while dictator and military officer Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was Panama’s de facto ruler. The current mayor of Panama City, Mayer Mizrahi Matalon, is Jewish.
The jewish presence in panama dates to the early 1500s, with the arrival of Conversos escaping the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, whose tentacles had reached the Americas. Many of these early Jewish settlers either assimilated
or, if their faith was discovered in the New World, were forced to convert to Catholicism, resulting in no visible Jewish presence for several hundred years.
Jewish immigration to Panama resumed in the 19th century, when the Spanish Empire began to fracture and many of its former colonies declared independence. At the end of Spanish colonial rule in 1821, Panama became attached to a federation known as Gran Colombia, only becoming completely independent in 1903.
According to the World Jewish Congress, in the middle of the 19th century, a number of immigrants of Sephardi origin from the Caribbean region and a much smaller group of Ashkenazi from the Netherlands settled in Panama, attracted by economic developments such as the construction of the bi-oceanic railroad and the California Gold Rush, which had brought them west. A further influx of Sephardi Jews from the Caribbean led to the establishment of Panama’s first synagogue, Kol Shearith Israel, in 1876.
Today, Kol Shearith Israel is the only non-Orthodox synagogue in Panama. It is housed in a community center that was consecrated in 2006 in Panama City’s Costa del Este neighborhood.
The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 continued to bring Jews seeking economic opportunities. After World War I, Sephardi Jews, many of Syrian origin, arrived after fleeing persecution and instability in the Middle East brought about by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
Another synagogue, Shevet Ahim, opened in 1933 to serve this Sephardi
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population. Based in Panama City’s Bella Vista neighborhood, the vast, ornately decorated synagogue maintains branches in other parts of the city, including Ahavat Sion in Punta Paitilla and Bet Max Ve Sarah in the Punta Pacifica neighborhood.
With the rise of Nazism in Europe, more Ashkenazi Jews began immigrating to Latin America, including Panama, in the 1930s and 1940s. Beth-El Synagogue, established in the 1940s, is today the only Ashkenazi synagogue in Panama City aside from two Chabad outposts.
Following World War II, Panama experienced further Jewish immigration as Jews from Arab countries were forced to flee their respective countries following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Jews continue to immigrate to Panama, especially from the economically volatile nation of Venezuela as well as from Colombia and Argentina. Panama also draws American retirees to its tropical climate and comfortable, more affordable way of life.
Harari, the community president, said that Panama remains a safe place for Jews, and that there is no issue
with wearing a kippah on the street, for example.
“We consider ourselves Panamanians,” said Harari, who estimates that the community today is 65 percent Sephardi and 35 percent Ashkenazi. His own car was decorated with Panamanian flags during this reporter’s meeting with him in December.
With several day schools in Panama City serving Jewish children from the Reform to ultra-Orthodox communities, “a huge majority of Jewish children have the privilege of having a Jewish education,” said David Mizrahi Fidanque, a former Jewish community leader.
And unlike in many smaller Diaspora communities, “a very large percentage of the children return here” after completing their university education, oftentimes abroad, Mizrahi Fidanque said.
Michael Harari, a cousin of Max, is a Shevet Ahim congregant who works in real estate property management. He is especially proud of the meaningful work of dozens of Jewish communal organizations, from local medical welfare groups and food pantries to Zionist groups like United Hatzalah, Keren Hayesod
Awash in Color Scenic delights include festive Casco Viejo (opposite page), the Biomuseo on the Amador Causeway (left) and the chance to observe container and cruise ships transiting the Panama Canal.
IF YOU GO
• With over 35 kosher restaurants under the supervision of Shevet Ahim and two full-service kosher supermarkets, keeping kosher in Panama is a (tropical) breeze. Lists of kosher restaurants are available at chabadpanama. com and gokosherpanama.com/food .
• Restaurants cover the spectrum of meat and dairy cuisines, with establishments like La Fonda Mi Reinita specializing in Panamanian dishes, such as chicken tamales; the whimsical garden vibes of Italian dairy restaurant Blame Kiki; and Yoss Burger, where you can order hearty meat entrees, including Israeli-style arayes—meat stuffed in a pita and then grilled—bursting with herbs and spices.
• Outside of Panama City, there are Chabad Houses in Boquete, in the West of the country, and in Bocas del Toro, along the Caribbean coast, which offer kosher options. On Shabbat, Chabad in Panama City offers prepaid communal Friday night dinners and lunches at its Punta Paitilla center. A few blocks away, the Beth-El Synagogue runs a prepaid kiddush luncheon.
• The Shabbat meal organization Fadalu, which means “welcome…come on in” in Arabic, provides home hospitality with a local Jewish family, most likely Sephardi, at no charge (donations are always welcome).
Contact program coordinator Susie Antebi at
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and Hadassah Panama, the national branch of Hadassah International. “Somehow, everyone is involved in one or another,” Harari said.
With the support of key philanthropists in Panama’s Jewish community, Hadassah Panama helped to fund the establishment of a major conference hall at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. The Panama Auditorium has hosted hundreds of medical and scientific conferences featuring experts from around the world.
Fadalupty@gmail.com for information.
• All visitors to synagogues and other Jewish institutions must complete a security screening ( visitors.centraldsi.com ) in advance. Once you receive an emailed letter of acceptance, be sure to print out a copy to present to security guards, even for Shabbat services.
• Go Beyond and Panama Travel Co. offer customized kosher tours in Panama, from outdoor adventure trips to visits to Jewish communal institutions such as synagogues and schools.
• There are a host of upscale hotels in Panama City, from the centrally located Intercontinental Miramar overlooking the Bay of Panama, to the JW Marriott Panama in Punta Pacifica near several synagogues, to other top-name establishments like the Waldorf Astoria Panama, W Panama and Sortis hotels. In walking distance of many restaurants and synagogues in Punta Paitilla is Eshel Suites , which offers Shabbat-friendly conveniences like a keyless entrance, candles and grape juice.
• No trip to Panama is complete without a visit to the Panama Canal’s Miraflores Visitor Center. Not only will you see an incredible IMAX 3D film narrated by Morgan Freeman about the origins and building of the canal, but you can also watch ships passing through its locks. From Panama City, several operators run full- and partial-transit day cruises. For a deeper histor -
Indeed, support for Israel is evident to any observer visiting Panama City’s synagogues, where giant posters and signs in Spanish and English call for the return of all the Israeli hostages. There is also a somber, glass-encased art installation inside Shevet Ahim that pays tribute to the victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Lori Silberman Brauner, former deputy managing editor at the New Jersey Jewish News, is currently working on a book about Diaspora Jewish communities.
ical dive, David McCullough’s book, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 , is a must read.
• Amador Causeway is a 3.7-mile road that connects Panama City to three islands, with amazing views of the city and the Pacific entrance to the canal. Along the way you will find the Biomuseo museum dedicated to country’s natural history, playgrounds, bike rental shops, kosher ice cream spots and one of the city’s two colorful “Panama” signs for taking pictures.
• Panama City’s Casco Viejo , or historic old quarter, dates back to 1673. Strolling through the UNESCO World Heritage site, you will see churches, squares, museums, cafes and many shops. When you are ready for dinner, stop at Lula, known for its kosher Israeli street food with a Latin flair, with an array of menu items like schnitzel, hummus and empanadas.
• To take a trip even further back in time, check out Panama Viejo , the remains of the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific Ocean and the country’s original capital, dating to 1519, that today is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After wandering through the ruins, visitors can view an exhibit on crypto-Jews—those who maintained some level of secret Jewish practice—in the Plaza Mayor Museum Samuel Lewis García de Paredes.
COURTESY OF RAHEL MUSLEAH (TOP LEFT)
Shevet Ahim synagogue
An Ethiopian ‘Mouthful’ From Beejhy Barhany
A chef’s love for Judaism, Israel and feeding people
By Adeena Sussman
Beejhy barhany would love to feed you with her own two hands. “Silverware is so cold and clinical,” the Ethiopian-IsraeliAmerican chef told me by phone from her home in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. “The hands are the first tool that was given to us by nature, and the best way ensure a point of connection. If I want to show you hospitality, I am going to offer you the best morsel I’ve got straight from the tips of my fingers.”
It’s a concept central to Ethiopian food culture known as gursha (“mouthful” in Amharic), which Barhany also chose as the title for her tantalizing new cookbook, Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond, scheduled to be released on April 1. Barhany, owner of the vegan and kosher Tsion Cafe in Har-
lem, sees the book as a vehicle to extol the virtues of Ethiopian food to a wider audience.
“A lot of people think that it’s only spicy food, or a lot of raw meat, or that it’s all vegan,” said the 48-year-old, who parents two teenage children—daughter Alem and son Berhan Ori—with her husband, Padmore John, who grew up on the Caribbean island of Dominica. “We’re talking about a now-trendy but ancient cuisine rich in health benefits, vegetable-forward and very delicious.”
Barhany also documents in the book her dramatic childhood years and the larger story of both her family and people—the Beta Israel, as Ethiopian Jews are known. Co-authored with food writer Elisa Ung, Gursha spans generations and continents, returning again and again to the Beta Israel’s enduring love for
Judaism and Israel, where the chef’s extended family remains and which she visits frequently.
Barhany’s story begins in fertile Tigray, Ethiopia, where she was the beloved first grandchild of her generation, given free rein to scamper among fields of pumpkin and wild greens on her family’s land. Her mother, Azalech Ferede, would start every day by roasting potent green coffee beans for the Ethiopian coffee ceremony known as buna—the Amharic word for coffee.
Ferede would prepare for Shabbat by making dishes like the berberespiced chicken stew known as doro wat (see accompanying recipe) and fragrant dabo bread—the Ethiopian Jewish version of challah—that she’d serve to her young daughter with milk and honey to remind her to continue yearning for Zion.
But her idyllic childhood ended abruptly. In the immediate years after the assassination of dictator Haile Selassie in 1975, violence broke out all over the country, creating an unstable environment ripe for discrimination against the Beta Israel. In 1980, Barhany’s community, though forbidden to leave Ethiopia, traveled
The chef enjoying a meal with her family
Ya Fassikah Kita
Makes 3 to 4 large matzahs
1 ⁄2 cup ivory teff flour
1 ⁄2 cup brown teff flour
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 cups lukewarm water
1 t ablespoon vegetable oil (omit if using a nonstick pan)
in a caravan of 300 people under the cover of darkness, loading everything they could onto their horses and carts. They eventually bribed their way past the Sudanese border to the northwest, where they met other Beta Israel refugees who eased their arrival. Still, the next two years in Sudan were tense. Unable to reveal their Jewish identities, they observed Shabbat and kashrut in secret, though they had warm relations with their Muslim neighbors.
Eventually, Barhany’s cousin, Ferede Aklum, known affectionately as “The Moses of Ethiopia” for his role working with the Mossad to squire hundreds of Ethiopians through Sudan on their way to Israel, smuggled the family via Uganda and eventually Kenya. After a few weeks on the move, they finally flew to Israel on their own, not as part of one of Israel’s airlifts that brought tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel beginning in 1984.
Though everyone kissed the ground on arrival, once they moved into an absorption center, the family experienced their first reality check. Many Israelis had never seen a Black Jew, and Barhany and her relatives were forced to undergo official conversion in Israel. “That hurt, because we were far more ritually observant than the
1. In a large bowl, use your hands to combine the teff flours, salt and lukewarm water, breaking up clumps of flour, until smooth.
2. Warm a 12-inch skillet over high heat. If the skillet does not have a nonstick coating, add the oil and swirl to coat the pan.
3. Pour 1 cup batter into the center of the pan and use the
majority of Israelis,” she recalled. Once the family settled in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, Barhany adjusted well to school, eschewing her own cuisine and leaning hard into Israeli staples like chocolate spread and schnitzel. Living during her teen years in the Gaza envelope on Kibbutz Alumim—where she worked and studied—cemented
bottom of a ladle to spread it over the surface of the pan. Cook until dry on top, about 3 minutes. Push a wide spatula underneath the matzah and carefully flip it over. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until the matzah is completely cooked through, about 3 minutes.
4. Repeat with the remaining batter. Serve immediately.
military and professional settings.
“Racism is everywhere,” said Barhany. “Israel is the country that molded me to be who I am, but I have a very strong opinion about the integration of cultures there. We can’t sweep it under the rug, and I want it to be a better place for Jews of color and Black Jews. I don’t want to hear, ‘This is typical.’ Treat people as human beings in order for people to live harmoniously in the land of the Jews.”
In 2000, barhany moved to New York, a city that had besotted her during her backpacking travels. In Harlem, she felt at home, celebrating the richness of Black culture and creating a community with other Ethiopian
Jews, who in all of America number around 2,000. To quell homesickness and remain connected to her ancestry, she began recreating her family’s treasured recipes, eventually realizing that food was both a grounding influence and a potential career path.
It also became an outlet to promote Ethiopian culture among other Jews.
“I first met Beejhy over a decade ago when I was writing an article about Ethiopian Jewish food,” recalled Leah Koenig, the author of
Faith and Family Barhany, seen above with her daughter, Alem, writes in her book that Shabbat rituals have helped to shape her life ever since her idyllic childhood in Tigray, Ethiopia.
several best-selling Jewish cookbooks, most recently Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen. “She invited me to her apartment in Harlem, and we cooked together— doro wat and kik wot—and I remember how welcoming she was, how vibrant her personality was and how passionate she was about her cuisine and culture.”
Barhany opened Tsion Cafe in the former home of Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, a legendary jazz club, in
ETHIOPIAN CULINARY LUMINARIES IN ISRAEL
Israel, now home to more than 170,000 people of Ethiopian descent, has a vibrant Ethiopian culinary scene.
Born to a Beta Israel father and an Ethiopian Christian mother who converted to Judaism upon immigrating to Israel, 34-year-old Elazar Tamano grew up looking for new ways to express his heritage. After being the runner-up on one of Israel’s popular television cooking competition shows, The Next Restaurant , the Tel Aviv resident began to stage his sold-out Ethiopian popup dinners all over the country to showcase his twists on tradition, like berbere-spiced fish tartare on a teff cracker and spicy long-cooked meat encased in a crispy injera pocket.
Fanta Prada, the 42-year-old proprietor of Balinjera, an Ethiopian restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Yemenite Quarter is a former attorney and model who pivoted a decade ago to food to ensure she was doing her part to promote Ethiopian culture.
“It’s about so much more than the food,” Prada explained as she served me a vegetarian sampler arranged artfully on a giant round of injera bread. Everything in her restaurant is prepared fresh daily, including her gingery Swiss chard that I featured in my book Sababa (recipe available at hadassah magazine.org/food ). “It’s about thousands of years of longing for Israel and preserving that story for future generations.”
Harlem in 2014. In addition to a full complement of Ethiopian breads and stews, she put Nigerian jollof rice on the menu to honor Pan-African culture; braised fava beans as a paean to a dish she loved during her time in Sudan; and her signature shakshuka.
“We are educating people about Jewish and Black diversity and inclusion through the food during a new Harlem renaissance,” Barhany said. “After they come, they leave intrigued, happy and satisfied. We want to engage and attract all people and walks of life and instill dialogue and respect.”
That has proven to be more of a challenge since the Hamas attacks on October 7. “My heart was broken,” Barhany said. “It is devastating, and I pray for peace and coexistence.”
Tsion Cafe has been added to boycott lists, and its entrance was vandalized with a swastika drawn on its awning. “We’ve been called ‘dirty Jews,’ but this existed even before that day,” she said. “There are people who hate for no reason.”
Countering that hate with positivity, hospitality and Jewish pride has become even more important to Bar-
hany. In Gursha, for instance, she showcases Shabbat and holiday traditions through rich text and photographs. The book also features Passover-friendly recipes like the accompanying one for matzah, Ya Fassikah Kita, which uses the Ethiopian staple teff flour—considered
Doro Wot
Serves about 8
2 pounds chicken drumsticks (8–10), skinned
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon fine sea salt
8 large eggs
6 cups kulet (recipe follows)
1. In a large bowl, combine the drumsticks, lemon juice and salt. Add cold water to cover and swish the water around to mix. Soak for at least 10 minutes and up to 1 hour.
2. Prepare a large bowl of cold water and ice and keep it nearby. In a medium pot, combine the eggs with cold water to cover. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook the eggs for 8 minutes. Remove the eggs from the pot and place in the ice bath until completely cooled.
3. Peel the eggs, leaving them whole. Make four shallow, evenly spaced cuts from top to bottom on each egg, scoring the white but stopping at the yolk.
4. Meanwhile, in a large pot, heat kulet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until simmering.
kitniyot and therefore off limits to some Jews during the holiday. In contrast, her seders, she said, are simple affairs that focus on family and storytelling rather than a lavish table groaning with sumptuous food. “Passover is about the journey from slavery to freedom, literal and spiritual,” Bar-
5. Drain the water from the drumsticks. Wash the drumsticks well under running water, massaging the chicken and rinsing several times.
6. Submerge drumsticks in the kulet. Bring back to a simmer and cook gently, stirring occasionally and reducing the heat if the sauce begins to boil, until the drumsticks are completely cooked through, 25 to 30 minutes. During the last 5 minutes of cooking, add the eggs and gently stir to completely submerge them in the sauce. Serve warm.
Kulet
Makes about 16 cups of soup base
hany said. “That’s what we’re always striving to remember.”
Adeena Sussman lives in Tel Aviv. She is the author of Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Kitchen to Yours and Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen Sign up for her newsletter at adeenasussman.substack.com
10-12 large yellow onions, peeled and quartered
6 cups vegetable oil, plus more if necessary
2 cups berbere (available at gourmet markets or find Barhany’s recipe at hadassahmaga zine.org/food )
4 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
3 tablespoons fine sea salt
8 cups hot water
6 ounces tomato paste (or 12 ounces, if you prefer less heat)
1 tab lespoon ground cardamom
1. In a food processor, puree the onions until smooth.
2. Pour the onions into a large pot and bring to simmer over high heat. Cook, stirring occasionally and reducing the heat if the onions begin browning, until most of the water has evaporated, 35 to 40 minutes.
3. Stir in the oil and simmer for about 5 minutes to incorporate. Stir in the berbere, garlic, ginger and salt. The mixture should be moist; if it appears dry, add more hot water, about 1/2 cup at a time. Cover the pot and cook over medium heat until the mixture has taken on a red hue, for another 10 to 15 minutes.
4. Add the hot water and tomato paste and stir well. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the flavors blend and the stew base becomes fragrant, about 1 hour.
5. Remove from the heat and stir in the cardamom. Let cool.
Queen Esther Goes Dutch
An icon in 17th-century Amsterdam, and today
By Robert Goldblum
With the eighty years’ War still flaring and the yoke of Spanish rule hanging around their necks, the 17th-century Dutch were in need of a potent symbol of liberation that would speak to their fight for freedom.
Enter the biblical Queen Esther.
Rembrandt van Rijn, the great Dutch master, and his artist contemporaries found inspiration in the hero of the Purim story at a time when waves of Jewish immigrants were arriving in Amsterdam from the Iberian Peninsula. Beautiful, crafty and courageous, having saved the Jewish people from a genocide in ancient Persia, Esther seemed to resonate with the Dutch as they fought off Catholic Spain for independence.
Her story of daring wafted through the cultural air in Amsterdam and became a stand-in for the country’s political predicament.
Meanwhile, the exotic setting of the biblical tale in far-off Persia (modern-day Iran) was particularly enticing as the Netherlands was fast becoming a global shipping power.
The story of Esther’s hold over
the Dutch people—and over their most celebrated painter—as their religiously tolerant nation was emerging is told in “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt,” a traveling exhibition that runs through August 10 at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan.
The exhibition, which curator Abigail Rapoport described as a dialogue between Amsterdam’s Sephardi Jews and the wider Protestant Dutch society, includes paintings by Rembrandt, his contemporary Jan Steen and his pupil Aert de Gelder. It also features ceremonial art, such as rare Esther scrolls and decorative objects.
“The Dutch at the time were kind of living with Esther,” Rapoport said in an interview. “The country was trying to get free from Spain, and she must have provided some kind of model. Amsterdam was framed as the New Jerusalem, a symbol of God’s favor for the Netherlands’ hardfought independence.”
Indeed, Esther’s tale is one of “tyranny and triumph,” as University of Pennsylvania art historian Larry Silver writes in the introduction to the coffee table book of the same name
that accompanies the exhibition.
In Amsterdam, Queen Esther, it seemed, was everywhere. Inside the Jewish community, the elaborate Esther scrolls created by Jewish illustrator and copper engraver Salom Italia—some of which are displayed in the exhibition—were wildly popular, Rapoport said. They were adorned with largescale illustrations with figures from the Esther story set amid Dutch cityscapes, one example of the show’s cross-cultural dialogue.
Beyond the Jewish community, plays dramatizing the biblical tale were plentiful. Some Dutch homes featured large wooden cupboards with scenes from the Esther story intricately carved into them; such scenes also appeared etched into the cast-iron plates inside fireplaces. Snuffbox covers carried her image. Prominent Protestant women sat for portraits dressed in queenly garb— Esthers for a new generation.
‘The Wrath of Ahasuerus’ by Jan Steen
Elevating Esther Rembrandt van Rijn’s ‘The Great Jewish Bride (Esther?)’ is the opening work in the Jewish Museum’s exhibition.
in the show, as are hanging Sabbath lamps bearing Esther’s likeness, a German stoneware jug with scenes from Esther’s life carved into it and a number of theater playbills for performances of the Purim story.
Rembrandt lends his sumptuous colors and magical interplay of light and dark to the subject of Esther— three of his oil paintings and five of his etchings are in the show—but he frames her in a new light.
“The essence of the show is about how Queen Esther is this icon,” Rapoport said, yet “Rembrandt is fashioning Queen Esther in his time. He’s transforming her image. Queen Esther was imagined before Rembrandt, but now he’s depicting her as a woman of their contemporary world instead of the static image of previous generations.”
In the show’s opening work, “The Great Jewish Bride (Esther?),” an etching from 1635, Rembrandt portrays a woman with a look of deep resolve, her long tresses falling over a billowy dress. She is gripping the chair she is seated in with her right hand and holding a scroll (perhaps, a Megillat Esther scroll?) in the left.
“It’s like the fate of the Jewish people is in her hands,” Rapoport said. Rembrandt, she explained, “is getting you to really focus on Esther in a lifelike way; he’s making her an empowered woman in the real world.”
James Snyder, the Jewish Museum’s director, noted in an interview
An Inspiration Elaborate Esther scrolls by Jewish illustrator Salom Italia were popular in Amsterdam.
that “Rembrandt had this fascination with the Jewish culture of the Netherlands, and many of his models and subjects were Jewish. And so, there was total logic for his embrace of Esther at that time. But this also resonates with the social and political maturing of the newly empowered Netherlands.
“So, to look at that when we are in such a transitional social and political moment here is pretty moving,” added Snyder, evoking the current day.
The exhibition lands at a particularly fraught moment for Jews everywhere, as the antisemitism and anti-Zionism already on the rise prior to October 7 have since shot up dramatically worldwide, including in modern-day Amsterdam, where in November, Israelis soccer fans visiting the city for a game were harassed and attacked.
The Persian queen’s example provides both solace and strength for communities under siege at “such a time as this,” as Mordechai, Esther’s uncle, tells her in the Purim story.
During the 2024 election cycle, she also struck a deep chord with both sides of the political aisle in the United States. Christian conservatives seeking to mobilize women for Donald Trump saw a reflection of Esther’s bravery in their own fight, for example, against abortion
rights, according to an article in The New York Times. And, in a CNN town hall, Kamala Harris mentioned that after President Biden announced that he wouldn’t run for re-election, she had spoken to her pastor about the Esther story, saying that “it was very comforting to me.”
Esther’s story, Rapoport said, is “perfect for this moment, because she’s like your quintessential heroine.… It really is a range of people, communities and cultures elevating Queen Esther.”
A similar cross-cultural dialogue is on display in the exhibit, with one of Salom Italia’s Purim scrolls situated next to Rembrandt’s Jewish bride, the brave queen pictured in old world Amsterdam still flexing her muscle for contemporary museumgoers in New Amsterdam.
‘Esther’ by Aert de Gelder
Robert Goldblum is a writer living in New York City.
Bringing Anne Frank to New York
‘A stand against antisemitism’ | By Jane L. Levere
Ronald leopold has served as executive director of one of the most visited museum sites in europe— the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam—since 2011. Now, in a move he sees as “a stand against antisemitism” and Holocaust denial, Leopold has brought the Anne Frank House to New York City with a full-scale recreation of the annex rooms where Anne, her family and four other Jews hid for two years.
“Anne Frank The Exhibition” is on display at the Center for Jewish History through the end of October, extended from the original April closing due to its popularity. The show takes visitors on a journey through Anne Frank’s life, set against the rise of the Nazi regime and the backdrop of World War II. The exhibition provides context for Anne’s experiences, beginning with her early years in Frankfurt followed by her family’s move to Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution, her deportation to the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands and, later, to Auschwitz. The show concludes with her tragic death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany at the age of 15.
Leopold, 64, who lectures around the world on behalf of the museum, has called the Anne Frank House “the world’s most famous empty space”—haunted by the absence of the family that once lived there. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Why is this an important time to present this exhibition?
With ever fewer Holocaust survivors in our communities, I think the responsibility of the Anne Frank House has never been greater. This exhibition is, in part, a response to this responsibility.
What inspired you to stage this exhibition in New York City?
We realized that many people are unable to travel to Amsterdam, and even if they are able, they might have difficulties getting tickets to the house. So, we’ve been thinking for a
Looking for more arts coverage?
Read an interview with Wendy Sachs, director of October H8te , a documentary about antisemitism on college campuses, at hadassahmagazine.org/arts.
long time about what we could offer those audiences who cannot visit the house. And, obviously, during the pandemic, that became even more of a problem. We began to think about how we could bring this story to audiences across the world.
How will the objects on display— including documents that have never been seen before—shed new light on Anne and her family?
What we hope is that the more than 100 artifacts will contribute to a deeply personal connection between visitors and Anne Frank’s story. They show us a teenage girl, radiating life, embracing life, full of dreams, full of fear, of course, but also in a very intimate way. Just look at the beautiful handwritten verse that she writes in an album of her dearest friend. With such an artifact, you can create a very
intimate relationship between the visitor and the story.
Who is the intended audience for this exhibition?
It’s been designed for all kinds of visitors but specifically geared to young visitors. We think it’s incredibly important for a new generation to learn about Anne Frank.
How does the exhibition differ from the actual annex rooms in the Anne Frank House?
What’s different is that the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam is unfurnished, and in New York, we will present a hiding place that’s been furnished. The original furniture in the house has been lost. But we know partly from Anne’s father, Otto, exactly what their hiding place looked like. And that’s an important
Ronald Leopold at the Center for Jewish History’s exhibition
source of information for us, which we use now to furnish this replica.
What changes have you observed in your 14 years at the Anne Frank House?
What never changed is the interest in the story of Anne. As the distance in time increased from the end of the
war, you would think that this interest would diminish. But actually, we see that the interest, also among the younger generations, is increasing, which is, of course, a very helpful sign. What we do see in terms of changes is that younger generations know less about the Holocaust. There is less and less time or attention to
LOVED ‘SHTISEL’? TRY SOME ‘KUGEL’
THE PREQUEL TO THE POPULAR HASIDIC FAMILY DRAMA IS STREAMING IN AMERICA | BY AMY KLEIN
You want I should give you the good news or bad news first? The good news is that there’s a prequel to Shtisel , the Israeli television series about the ultra-Orthodox eponymous family who lived in the Geula neighborhood of Jerusalem that became a global hit.
The bad news? Kugel , which is available exclusively on Israeli streaming service Izzy starting in late February, doesn’t star the gorgeous and plaintive Michael Aloni, who played Akiva, the wayward and favorite son of Rabbi Shulem Shtisel.
Instead, the new show from Shtisel co-creator Yehonatan Indursky takes place in Antwerp, Belgium, and is the story of Shulem’s younger brother, Nuchem Shtisel (Sasson Gabay), and his daughter, Libbi (Hadas Yaron), set a few years before they both travel to Jerusalem to find her a husband. (A small spoiler here for those who haven’t watched Shtisel : The
duo’s time in Jerusalem, where Libbi eventually marries, are major plot points in season two of the original show.)
“The creators felt that Shtisel was over for them, that they said what they had to say,” executive producer Dikla Barkai said in an interview from her home in Israel. For a spinoff, the production team realized, they wanted to “take a side character and make a whole series for them.”
Who better to follow than Nuchem? “He’s such a great character,” Barkai said, “and this way we could take it out of Jerusalem and make a whole new world for them. It’s similar but totally different.”
It is different. For one, as shown in the first few episodes, Kugel —named after the beloved Ashkenazi casserole that features heavily in this series—is lighter and more humorous. (“If you burn the whole kugel, there wouldn’t be a burnt part of the kugel,” one
Holocaust education in schools in many countries. We need to rethink how to present the memory of the Holocaust in the 21st century.
Jane L. Levere is a New York-based freelance journalist and contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post and Forbes.com, among other publications. She is a life member of Hadassah.
character oh-so-wisely states.)
Also, Nuchem, who works as a jewelry dealer, is a more nuanced character than his older brother. More shyster than scholar, he alienates his wife with his schemes, preys on widows and sets off a matchmaking crisis with his daughter—unheard of in the insular Hasidic world, where girls like Libbi may be considered old maids if not married by age 22.
Despite his behavior, Nuchem is charming and can be lovable, even as he strives to become a gvir —a mover and shaker in the community, worthy of entry into the city’s private sauna open only to wealthy donors, or as he calls it derisively, the “shvitz.”
Nuchem cares for the women in his life— his estranged wife, the women he woos and his daughter, Libbi, a teacher and aspiring writer.
“Something’s troubling you,” Nuchem says to her in one scene when the two are eating alone after his wife leaves.
“Nothing,” she answers.
“Even nothing can be troubling,” he says. “Nothing and more nothing can suddenly become heavy.”
And that’s what Kugel is: a collection of seemingly ordinary “nothing” moments— Nuchem cycling through Antwerp, the coattails of his long black jacket flapping; Libbi pensively riding the bus when everyone but other Hasidim fade to the background; bearded men gathering to eat kugel at a restaurant. Yet, together, these moments form an intimate portrait of a broken family struggling to piece their lives together.
Amy Klein is the author of The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind.
Nuchem Shtisel in Antwerp
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Shortly after his injury, Noam wanted to join his fellow soldiers for the traditional IDF training graduation ceremony at Masada, and Yad Sarah helped to make it possible. Rather than taking the cable car, Noam – with the assistance of his fellow soldiers and Yad Sarah crutches – did the traditional hike up the mountain to receive his unit beret and recite the IDF oath.
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Noam Bratt IDF soldier, Yad Sarah client
Photo: Dror Farkash
Across
Actors Erwin and Gilliam
Go by, as time "Hogwash!"
A Destined Leader of Her People
A Destined Leader of Her People
By Jonathan Schmalzbach
99 Luftballons" singer
ACROSS
Soldier's helmet, slangily "La Bohème," e.g.
1. Actors Erwin and Gilliam
Purim quote part I
5. Go by, as time
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11. “Hogwash!”
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19. Purim quote part I
___ boom bah!
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Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, first American to publicly celebrate a ___ mitzvah
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55. Purim quote part V
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59. Favorite
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68. The Trojans of the N.C.A.A.
69. Put on paper
69. Put on paper
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33. Lago contents
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Answers on page 58
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We Need Heroes
Highlighting remarkable Jewish women from the Bible to today | By
Sandee Brawarsky
Many a bar mitzvah boy beginning in the 1980s received the celebratory volume Great Jews in Sports by Robert Slater, first published in 1983. The frequently reissued book, most recently in 2005, is a collection of biographies of outstanding athletes—including a few women—written to spread Jewish pride.
There was no companion book for bat mitzvahs until Slater and his wife co-authored Great Jewish Women in 1994. Since then, other biography collections of women have been published, but the recent surge of such volumes showcasing the lives of remarkable Jewish women—all excellent choices for girls and their mothers, too—is especially welcome. Indeed, in this challenging time for Jews, shadowed by the events of October 7 and rising antisemitism, the idea of honoring Jewish women for their leadership, accomplishments and resilience is particularly resonant. We
A few women appear in all four titles: Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, poet and immigration advocate Emma Lazarus, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
need heroes, as we try to inspire a kinder and more peaceful world.
Whether described as mensches, in the book She’s a Mensch!; icons, in Iconic Jewish Women; more than nice, in “Nice” Jewish Girls; or bursting with sheer chutzpah in Chutzpah Girls, the superlatives are well deserved. These four recent collections of short biographies celebrate Jewish women who broke barriers, pioneered new fields and made a difference in the world.
“For too long, the stories of Jewish women—facing both gender and religious discrimination—have been overshadowed or omitted, even within the Jewish community itself. We felt it was time to rectify this historical bias by shining a spotlight,” Julie Esther Silverstein, co-author with Tami Schlossberg Pruwer of Chutzpah Girls: 100 Tales of Daring Jewish Women (Toby Press), wrote in an email.
For Silverstein, these four were “essential inclusions because each exemplifies extraordinary moral courage and transformative leadership with lasting impact on Jewish identity and broader society.” Though the women are from different eras and broke ground in different fields, they “share a legacy of using their influence not for personal gain but to uplift their communities.”
Rochelle Burk, the co-author with her daughter Alana Baroch of She’s a Mensch!: Jewish Women Who Rocked the World (Intergalactic Afikomen), agreed. “You couldn’t do a book without them,” she said.
The other women featured across the books include a wide selection drawn from politics, arts, entertainment, science, law, education, religion, space exploration, Jewish leadership and more.
The timeline of the 100 profiles in Chutzpah Girls spans the period from the biblical Sarah to changemakers of the 21st century, more than 3,000 years of Jewish life. In the book, I discov-
ered some Jewish women I’d never heard of, such as Annalouise Paul, born in 1964, who is the leader of the Annalouise Paul Dance Theatre.
A dancer and choreographer from Australia who today tours around the world, she began studying flamenco as a teenager. In the process, she learned about flamenco’s development during the Spanish Inquisition as a melding of Jewish, Roma and Arab influences. Paul also discovered that on one side she is a descendant of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492: “Flamenco was not just a beautiful dance but part of Annalouise’s core being, her DNA,” write the authors in Chutzpah Girls.
Then there’s the Latvian-born Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, who in the 19th century made history as “the first woman to set off on a solo cycling trip around the world”; and Asenath Barzani, from Mosul in 16th-century Kurdistan, now Iraq, who was the daughter of a legendary rabbi. Asenath studied with her father and eventually became head of his yeshiva. She was an authority on Jewish law and liturgy—and, “according to legend, she had supernatural powers. She once saved a
burning synagogue and its holy books by unleashing a flock of angels with only a whisper.”
Chutzpah Girls also honors heroes from October 7, including Inbal Lieberman, who defended Kibbutz Nir Am on that dark day. The combat veteran was the first woman to lead security in her kibbutz near the Gaza border, holding off the attackers until army reinforcements arrived. Thanks to her efforts, not a single member of the kibbutz was hurt that day.
Attractively designed, the book features accompanying original portraits of all 100 women, created by 12 Jewish female artists from around the world. The paintings, too, tell memorable stories. Moran Samuel, an Israeli paralympic world champion rower who won a gold medal for Israel at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, is seen both rowing and in a wheelchair. Samuel took up the sport after a rare spinal stroke curtailed her basketball career.
She’s a mensch! is illustrated with vibrant artwork by Arielle Trenk. The book opens with the line, “They rock! Jewish women ’round the world have talent, strength and smarts. They shine like stars in every field from science to the arts.”
HADASSAH MAGAZINE PRESENTS
Join us on April 24 at 7 PM ET for a Hadassah Magazine virtual discussion about the achievements of remarkable Jewish women through the ages. Panelists will include Julie Esther Silverstein and Tami Schlossberg Pruwer, co-authors of Chutzpah Girls , one of several new anthologies that share the stories of important Jewish women, including, of course, Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold. Bring your teenage children and grandchildren! Register with this QR code or at hadassahmagazine.org.
anything,” Burk, one of the co-authors, said in an interview. “For the women we profiled, even their childhoods are fascinating. They didn’t just become who they were in adulthood.” Indeed, many of these women came from humble beginnings and, often with the support of others, crafted lives of wide renown.
Among the noteworthy portraits are those of actor Marlee Matlin, who in 1987 became the first deaf person to win an Oscar, and astronaut and scientist Jessica Meir, part of the first all-woman spacewalk in 2019.
Geared toward the youngest audiences, aged 5 to 10, this title features 20 women who lived at some point over the past 140 years.
“You want to get girls thinking at an early age about how they can do
I was also thrilled to see Marthe Cohn, a French nurse who became a spy in World War II. With her fluent German and blond hair, she passed as a non-Jewish German nurse and was able to uncover Axis military secrets.
Pioneers Among the women in ‘Chutzpah Girls’ are (opposite page, from left): Queen Esther; Shlomtzion, queen of Judea during the Second Temple era; Zivia Lubetkin, who led Jewish resistance against the Nazis, and her granddaughter Roni Zuckerman, Israel’s first female fighter pilot; and Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold.
Cohn, who deserves to be more widely known, was awarded France’s highest military honor for her wartime efforts. The question posed with her bio is: “How can you be brave?”
I had the honor of interviewing Cohn in 2019 when an excellent documentary about her life, La Chichinette: The Accidental Spy, was released. For about 60 years, until the film was made, she remained silent about her experiences. Now 104, she lives in California.
None of these books claim to be comprehensive or definitive; the authors all recognize that many other luminaries might have been included. As Julie Merberg writes in the introduction to “Nice” Jewish Girls (Downtown Bookworks) of her final list, “It’s just where I landed.” Her biographies are more extensive than those in the previous two works and are highlighted by Georgia Rucker’s bold and colorful illustrations.
Her 36 women include several not featured in the other books, such as the four “wondrous Wojcicki women”—sisters Anne, Janet and Susan and their mother, Esther. Anne co-founded genetic testing company 23andMe; Janet is an anthropologist and pediatric epidemiologist researcher; and Susan, who passed
away in 2024 from lung cancer, was one of Silicon Valley’s most successful female executives. She was involved in the creation of Google, working as its first marketing manager, and was CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023. All have credited their mother, an educator and parenting expert, for their success.
Merberg explained in an interview that she felt an immediate level of comfort with her subjects as she researched them, relating to their warmth and humor, or commitment to social justice, education and family. She has tried to recreate that sense of connection in these pages, and near the end includes a “Jewish Geography” chart. “It’s a small Jewish world” she writes on the chart, and with minute drawings and dotted lines shows readers how interconnected the lives of many women featured in the book are: Barbra Streisand held a fundraiser for political trailblazer Bella Abzug when Abzug first ran for elected office, for example, and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg mentored Anne Wojcicki.
Of all the books here, Iconic Jew-
ish Women: Fifty-Nine Inspiring, Courageous, Revolutionary Role Models for Young Girls (Gefen) is the one most clearly aimed at bat mitzvah girls. In the introduction, Israeli author Aliza Lavie, a former member of Knesset, writes that she was inspired to pen a book for this audience when, while on a tour for her 2008 book, A Jewish Woman’s Prayer Book, she met a number of 80-yearold women preparing for the bat mitzvahs they never had when young. She includes Israeli women not as well known in the United States—for example, Miriam Ben-Porat, Israel’s first female Supreme Court judge, and Yehudit Nisayho, one of the Mossad agents who captured Adolf Eichmann—along with Americans like Holocaust historian and ambassador Deborah Lipstadt and Abzug. Lavie provides thoughtful guidance for bat mitzvah planning, encouraging readers to select a woman whose life story speaks to them and honor her by incorporating her into the bat mitzvah ceremony. Each of Lavie’s biographies includes sections with project and activity ideas, from one that focuses on ways to “Give Back”—such as finding organizations that support causes connected to the woman chosen by the bat mitzvah—to one with suggestions on how to “Get Out of
‘She’s a Mensch!’ showcases the poet and immigrant advocate
Your Comfort Zone.”
In the “Get Out of Your Comfort Zone” section in Ben-Porat’s biography, for example, Lavie asks readers to imagine a dialogue between Justice Ginsburg and the Israeli judge: “Both were named for strong women from the Bible; both had families that hailed from Eastern Europe. Both broke glass ceilings throughout their lives, oftentimes while also navigating society’s expectations of them as women.”
The book also recounts how Ginsburg and other women at Harvard Law School were asked how they could justify taking the place of a man in the program; and how Ben-Porat’s landlord told her that she could still reconsider her law program: “It’s hard
ON YOUR SHELF: MUST READS
By Sandee Brawarsky
Counting Backwards
By Binnie Kirshenbaum (Soho Press)
This novel, author Binnie Kirshenbaum’s eighth, focuses closely on a loving, happily married couple—he is a scientist; she is an artist—as the husband’s health plunges because of early-onset Lewy body dementia. With dark humor and much insight into love and grief, Kirshenbaum details the couple’s unraveling lives as they shift from sharing dreams to an unexpected place of despair. Written in short, tense scenes, the novel is informed by the author’s own experiences after her husband received a similar diagnosis.
Accidental Friends
By Susan Josephs (Bink Books)
A debut novel, this is the well-crafted story of an uncommon friendship between two women— Rose, a 93-year-old former ballet dancer who fled the Nazis decades earlier, and Nina, a 36-year-old yoga teacher, both living in sunny
to be a nice girl and a lawyer. You have to choose between the two.”
Over the years, other books have been published to satisfy the desire for female role models—women who have refused to allow society to make choices for them. These include the 1989 photography collection The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women by Diana Bletter and Lori Grinker and a coloring book of influential Jewish women, Real-Life Jewish Women That Changed the World, published last year.
There is also a Canadian-focused book for ages 6 to 10, She’s a Mensch!: Ten Amazing Jewish
Venice, Calif., and are brought together by a deadly car accident. Journalist and playwright Susan Josephs describes their dynamics with depth and compassion and captures the magic and history of beachside Venice.
Four Red Sweaters: Powerful True Stories of Women and the Holocaust
By Lucy Adlington (Harper)
Offering an original perspective on tragic events of the Holocaust, British novelist and textile historian and collector Lucy Adlington weaves together the experiences of four young women whose paths never crossed. Each of their lives was upended by the Holocaust; each had a connection to a different red knit sweater that they treasured, whether it was handmade, a store-bought gift or secretly plundered. Adlington’s impressive research gathers the stories behind these everyday items—now motheaten, faded, torn at the elbows or lost—to present the women’s remarkable stories.
Godstruck: Seven Women’s Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion
By Kelsey Osgood (Viking)
Kelsey Osgood, who converted to Judaism, interviews other young women who, like her,
Women by Anne Dublin. Additionally, RBG’s Brave & Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone features a list of remarkable women compiled by Ginsburg, with biographies written by Moment Magazine editor Nadine Epstein.
Ultimately, all these books are about highlighting possibilities.
Henrietta Szold seems to be speaking directly to young women when she said, as quoted in Chutzpah Girls, “Dare to dream, and when you dream, dream big.”
Sandee Brawarsky is an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.
left their secular lives to find meaning and fulfillment in religion. She devotes a chapter each to the spiritual journey and inner lives of six women who found their homes in different religions—Quakerism, Islam, Catholicism and others—as well as a chapter on her own path to Orthodox Judaism. Osgood’s story and insights run through the entire book, along with wide-ranging cultural references from religious figures, authors such as Tolstoy and modern-day feminists. These are riveting accounts of connection and faith.
Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer By David Denby (Henry Holt)
Essayist and film critic David Denby’s four Jewish subjects—Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan and Norman Mailer—are not only creative geniuses and public intellectuals, but all are also larger-than-life personalities who ultimately changed American society and culture. While the four hardly knew each other, they were all alive at the same historical moment in the years after World War II. Denby, a staff writer for The New Yorker , describes how their Jewishness shaped their creative output and success, as did the fact that they were very much at home in America. The profiles are both celebratory and honest.
One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe
By Dara Horn. Illustrated by Theo Ellsworth (Norton Young Readers)
This is “a book, about a book, about a book?”
the boy asks the goat about midway through Dara Horn’s new Passover graphic novel.
One Little Goat, for ages 8 and up, not only features the titular goat, but also time travel, a missing matzah and, ultimately, finding meaning in the seder in all its detail.
The book the unnamed child protagonist is asking after is a medieval commentary on the Haggadah, itself a collection of stories that recount biblical stories (a book, about a book, about a book).
Medieval commentators and
HADASSAH MAGAZINE PRESENTS
Join us on March 20 at 7 PM ET when Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein interviews award-winning author Dara Horn, one of America’s most insightful Jewish commentators, about One Little Goat and about the alarming rise and historical roots of antisemitism, the subject covered in her essay collection People Love Dead Jews. Free and open to all. To register, use the QR code here or go to hadassahmagazine.org.
their Haggadot are one stop on the boy’s quest to find the afikomen, which his little sister has thrown into a rift in time. He must search for it through more than 3,000 years of past seders in countries from Israel to Ethiopia to Poland to finally bring a close to his own family’s never-ending meal, “where the food has been regenerating for six months.”
After all, as Horn explains in One Little Goat, without the afikomen, a piece of matzah set aside to eat at the end of the meal and, in many households, hidden and then exchanged for gifts, the seder cannot be completed.
A dreamlike fantasy adventure rooted in rich Jewish tradition—what else would we expect from Horn? A writer and professor of literature, she is known also for her pointed book of essays, People Love Dead Jews, which became a lens for understanding antisemitism. (Read a Q&A with Horn on page 64 and register for the magazine’s upcoming virtual event with her; see details at left.)
In One Little Goat, she offers a sharp-eyed view of the reality of Jewish life and memory. The goat comes from the Passover song “Chad Gadya,” an allegory for the Jewish people’s struggles against oppressors through the ages. One of the times visited by the boy is the eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on a seder night.
Despite the tragic interludes, One Little Goat is funny, chaotic
and whimsical—an Alice in Wonderland-like tale in which a boy falls deeper and deeper into Jewish history, guided, and sometimes pushed, by the wisecracking goat. Theo Ellsworth’s black-and-white illustrations, brimming with busy swirling patterns and wide-eyed characters, enhance the surreal tone.
Amid the chaos, Horn shares moments that reveal the touches of magic in every seder, where “a cracker is exchanged for presents” and “an ancient invisible immortal man,” Elijah, is invited to sip some wine. Perhaps it takes a graphic novel about a seder, and about the stories woven into every Passover, to fully appreciate that Jewish history in its tragedies and triumphs is not just backdrop but a source of pride and even joy. —Leah Finkelshteyn
Leah Finkelshteyn is senior editor of Hadassah Magazine.
NONFICTION
Dating How-To’s From Aleeza Ben Shalom
When i was young, my mother used to say there were three criteria a man must meet to be considered marriage-worthy: He must have a rabbi in the family; he must have financial means; and his mother must be good looking, as this would ensure goodlooking children. It was not until I was much older that I realized these requirements somewhat paralleled the wish list in Fiddler on the Roof’s “Matchmaker”:
“For Papa, make him a scholar, for Mama, make him rich as a king, for me, well, I wouldn’t holler if he were as handsome as anything.…”
Aleeza Ben Shalom, author of the new Matchmaker, Matchmaker: Find Me a Love That Lasts (Union Square)—the title another ode to that famous Fiddler song—would likely tell you this is terrible advice. Ben Shalom, who lives in Israel, became a household name in the United States in 2023 when she starred in Netflix’s
reality show Jewish Matchmaking.
She is not the first reality show matchmaker—the series is a spinoff of Indian Matchmaking—nor even the first Jewish one. In 2008, Patti Stanger began an eight-year run on Bravo with The Millionaire Matchmaker. Ben Shalom might, however, be the first one who received nearly unanimous praise from both Jewish and non-Jewish viewers.
In California’s J. Weekly, Alix Wall wrote that “Jewish Matchmaking is…good for the Jews…. I would even posit that this matchmaker is one of the most positive representations—if not the most positive—I’ve seen of a Jewish woman on television. She gets extra points because she’s a real person, not a fictional
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character on a sitcom.”
Ben Shalom’s book is an in-depth yet easily accessible look into her methodology. Each of the 11 chapters illustrates lessons in dating using real-life singles and couples she has introduced. Chapter 3’s Benjamin is ready for marriage, but the woman he is dating, Lily, “is not ready yet.” Does he wait until she’s ready or move on? In Chapter 4, how does Jonathan overcome dating anxiety and avoid self-sabotage?
Throughout the book, Ben Shalom addresses the evolving landscape of dating, including the influence of dating apps, instant messaging and social media. She advises couples to set aside their phones during dates and underscores when an individual’s excessive focus on answering texts
Throughout these ‘testaments’— many of them vignettes devoted to a person or a place—
Auerbach foregrounds the fates of others...The anecdotes Auerbach chooses to recount are quietly illuminating.
—The New York Review of Books
whitegoatpress.org
and messages can serve as a “yellow flag,” signaling the need to “slow down and evaluate.” Additionally, she explores how expectations formed through social media profiles can affect the experience of a first in-person meeting.
Each chapter concludes with short pieces of advice and practical dating tips. One example: Highs in dating are exhilarating, but they aren’t sustainable.
Ben Shalom also offers guidance on talking to a friend about “your thoughts and feelings while dating”— first noting that you should only “do it with the right people. Someone with their own agenda might try to push you in a certain direction, while too many opinions could drown out yours. Stick with one or two trusted people, such as a mentor, spiritual guide, parent or a married friend to help you. (You know I love singles, but they’ve got the same questions and concerns that you do!)”
Then there is Ben Shalom’s “Five, Five and Five Rule,” which states that couples should have at least “five dates, no more than five hours per date and no more than five days between dates.” Why? Read her book to find out.
I can’t tell you that I have personally followed any of the advice outlined in Matchmaker, Matchmaker. I have been married for 18 years to my high school sweetheart, whom I met when I was 14.
What I can tell you is that the book is a well-written, engaging read and that her years of successful matchmaking are apparent. Her abil-
ity to relate to Jewish clients of all religious backgrounds, from secular to Orthodox, and her gentle handholding coupled with sensible pointers make her someone worth listening to.
As for my mother’s (tongue-incheek) marriage checklist? I think Ben Shalom would rightfully say that we shouldn’t be looking for criteria in a mate to appease other people. My mother-in-law is pretty good looking, though.
—Talia
Liben Yarmush
Talia Liben Yarmush is a writer, social media strategist and pop culture junkie. She was previously the digital editor for Hadassah Magazine
FICTION
The
Anatomy of Exile
By Zeeva Bukai (Delphinium Books)
Framed within two Romeo and Juliet-type stories, Zeeva Bukai’s debut novel, The Anatomy of Exile, is more than a tale of star-crossed lovers. Set between pivotal events in Israel’s history—the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War—the novel investigates ideas around home, exile and belonging and whether different peoples can coexist in peace.
In the opening scene, Tamar, an Ashkenazi woman, and her Mizrahi husband, Salim, are on the beach in Tel Aviv shortly after his return from service in the 1967 war when they learn that Salim’s sister, Hadas, has been killed by an Arab gunman in what is assumed to be a terrorist attack. It takes years, and Tamar and Salim living in a different country, before Tamar reveals to Salim that Hadas had been carrying on a longterm affair with her killer, Daoud, despite being married to an Israeli Jew.
National Jewish Book Award Winner
In flashbacks, Bukai carefully reveals the background of her protagonists. Salim and Hadas were smuggled out of Syria to Mandate Palestine in 1944 as children. A few years later, they and other Mizrahi Jews were settled near Tel Aviv in a beautiful but run-down former Arab village, Kafr Ma’an, that had been abandoned by its Arabs residents as they fled—or were forced to flee, as Hadas posits—during the 1948 War of Independence.
Tamar’s parents had escaped from Poland to Tel Aviv before the Holocaust. Teenage Tamar falls in love with and marries Salim and moves in with him in Kfar Ma’an, despite their different backgrounds and prejudices in both families. Indeed, Tamar’s mother objects: “You’re killing me with this Arabische Yid.”
Bukai’s lyrical writing shines in describing the Israeli scenes, especially Tamar’s beloved Kafr Ma’an: “Her first impression of the village was that of a dilapidated Eden. Groves of citrus trees heavy with unripened fruit perfumed the air.”
Hadas loves Kafr Ma’an, too. It was there she met Daoud—son of one of the Arab villagers who had left the town—and where they started their relationship. As a married woman, she continues to rendezvous with him in the abandoned houses of Kafr Ma’an, long after the Jews there have been resettled to Tel Aviv. It is where she feels most at home, and also where she is found dead.
Devastated by his beloved sister’s death, and despite Tamar’s objections, Salim relocates his family to Brooklyn.
“People want to kill us here,” he says of Israel. “For what? Land? A house?” Indeed, longing for land, a
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establish
house—a place to call home—forms the beating heart of this book.
In Brooklyn, Tamar’s teenage daughter Ruby falls for Faisal, the son of a Muslim family who had moved to the United States from Jaffa, then an Arab majority city and part of Tel Aviv. Scarred by Hadas’s death and continuously uncomfortable with her life in the United States, Tamar wants to separate the two. Samir, however, is more sanguine and, surprisingly, feels a connection with Faisal’s parents, speaking to them in Arabic, a language that Tamar does not understand. The tides of otherness are constantly shifting in this novel, not just in the differences between Arab and Jew, but also between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi— and between generations.
The novel includes a return to Israel for some of the characters and a post-1973 war riot in Jaffa, with men in keffiyehs shouting, “Free Palestine now!” According to its author, The Anatomy of Exile was years in
the making; nevertheless, it is also a book for our time.
The novel ends abruptly, leaving the reader to answer many central questions. But the final sentence sums up the themes of hope and tragedy for the characters, and for Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel: “Tamar closed her eyes and saw Kafr Ma’an as it had been, as it could have been.”
—Elizabeth Edelglass
Elizabeth Edelglass is a fiction writer, poet and book reviewer living in Connecticut.
The Midwives’ Escape: From Egypt to Jericho By Maggie Anton (Banot Press)
As Passover approaches, our attention turns once again to the story of the Exodus. In her new novel, award-winning author and Jewish scholar Maggie Anton, best known for her Rashi’s Daughters series, has delved into this timeless narrative, adding her own feminist twist.
The Midwives’ Escape: From
Egypt to Jericho focuses on female characters who have often been sidelined in traditional Jewish texts. Anton reimagines the Israelite Exodus from Egypt through the perspectives of an Egyptian mother and daughter, the titular midwives, Asenet and Shifra. (Pua, another midwife, is also a character, perhaps a reference to the midwife by that name in the Torah; she is Asenet’s sister and is married to an Israelite.)
In the preface, Anton reveals her inspirations for the story, among them the popular animated film Prince of Egypt, as well as the intensive research she did—including spending time in Israel and following the biblical path of the Israelites under Joshua.
But, she writes, “I wasn’t too concerned about historical accuracy since even experts didn’t agree on what happened when or where.” This is a novel, after all, which gives Anton leeway for interpretation and exploration.
The book begins with the plague of the firstborn (in Anton’s narrative, it’s all firstborns who die, not just men and boys); among the dead are Asenet’s abusive husband and their son. Upon seeing what the Israelite God does for His people, Asenet and Shifra decide to join the Israelites in leaving Egypt. What follows is a story that spans decades, detailing the journey through the desert, multiple battles and the work of creating a new community. Interspersed throughout are pencil drawings of various biblical scenes—the pillar of fire at the Sea of Reeds, the cloud
From Apathy to Action: The revival of Jewish determination SPONSORED
By Adam Milstein
If apathy breeds complacency, nothing ignites a fire quite like the recognition that our survival is at stake. October 7 has generated a powerful sense of urgency and motivation in the Jewish community –not seen in many years.There have been few experiences in my life more rewarding or meaningful than becoming an active philanthropist.
After I’ve been involved in Jewish and Israeli activism for decades. Throughout my philanthropic career, I’ve witnessed the ebb and flow of community involvement. From the ever passionate to the occasionally engaged and one-time donors, the Jewish community’s taste for proudly standing up and taking action wavers with the times. Yet, this past year has been unlike any other period I have seen.
For the first time, I’ve observed an unprecedented surge in passion, commitment and determination. This renewed vigor is a promising sign for the future of Jewish life both in Israel and in the Diaspora. My optimism, however, comes with trepidation. Can we turn this extraordinary energy into real impact, or will it fade?
Here’s how we got there and what we can do.
1 . A LEGACY OF COMFORT AND COMPLACENCY
Our post-Holocaust generation(s) lived in a time of newfound Jewish engagement. Organizations like the Jewish Federations of North America, ADL and AJC thrived. Despite conflicts like the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars, antisemitism in America seemed to wane. “Never Again” felt sufficient.
This sense of security led to complacency. Beneath the surface, antisemitism festered, promoted not only by white supremacists but also by the Islamo-Leftist alliance. The latter exploited this comfort, advancing radical agendas in universities, media and politics. Many in the Jewish community refused to acknowledge the growing threat, particularly from their perceived allies on the far left.
2. A NEW AWAKENING TO PERSISTENT THREATS
The atrocities of October 7 were a wake-up call. Rabid antisemitism exploded on the streets of major cities, college campuses became hostile, and social media amplified hateful propaganda funded by misguided sympathizers, including self-hating Jews, as well as foreign actors.
The Jewish community now realizes that antisemitism isn’t a relic of the past but a current and urgent danger. October 7 may not be another Holocaust, but its impact will resonate for generations. Today’s advocates are required to be strategic, drawing on lessons from history to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.
3. THE JEWISH SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL IS AS STRONG AS EVER
Contrary to the mainstream media’s obsession with the anti-Zionist fringe, the Jewish support for Israel remains robust, strategic and deeply organized. Groups like “Jewish Voice for Peace” attract media attention, but they represent a tiny fraction of the Jewish community. The overwhelming majority of Jews stand firmly behind Israel – 85% of American Jewish adults believe U.S. support for Israel is crucial post-October 7, and 57% feel a stronger connection to Israel and their Jewish identity since the attacks. Meanwhile, groups such as “Queers for Palestine” and “If Not Now” make headlines, but don’t achieve anything meaningful.
4. AFFLUENT JEWS HAVE THE MEANS, BUT THEY SEARCH FOR IMPACT
Since October 7, wealthy Jewish Americans, who traditionally donated to institutional giants, are now searching for effective, scalable ways to combat Jew-hatred. They’re convening, brainstorming and investing in strategies that include legal action, traditional and social media, influencing elections and building alliances with Christians, African Americans and others.
However, these philanthropists often lack the time or expertise to identify effective, smaller nonprofits making a real impact. They rely on institutional gatekeepers, who often overlook innovative organizations and ideas. This disconnect needs to be bridged.
5. YOUNG JEWS HAVE THE WILL. THEY NEED A WAY TO ENGAGE
The Impact Forum, which I co-founded in Los Angeles in 2017 to convene a community of philanthropists who together empower and mobilize nonprofits, has seen unprecedented growth since October 7. Young Jews are gathering not just to show solidarity but to take meaningful action.
The challenge ahead is ensuring that this energy is harnessed strategically. New philanthropists must align with proven efforts and established organizations to maximize their impact. Platforms like the Impact Forum provide the structure to guide this momentum.
Still, too many young Jews remain glued to their phones, doomsurfing. Now is the time to step up: to get involved, support effective initiatives and fight for our future. The resilience and determination I have witnessed since October 7 should infuse the Jewish people with hope and optimism for the future. And we must not waste this moment.
With the right direction and philanthropic expertise, the determination of today’s Jewish community will lead to a more vibrant and secure future for the Jewish people.
Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American “Strategic Venture Philanthropist.” He can be reached at adam@milsteinff.org, on Twitter @AdamMilstein, and on Facebook www.facebook.com/AdamMilsteinCP.
To learn more about how you can become an active philanthropist and make
Guide to Jewish Literature
Also available online with purchasing links. Go to hadassahmagazine.org and click on Guide to Jewish Literature.
CLARA’S SECRET
Stephan R. Frenkel
This critically acclaimed bestseller presents the captivating story of Clara Prinz, a remarkable woman forced to leave her native Berlin in 1939. As Clara traveled alone on a voyage into the unknown, she turned to memories of her adolescence during La Belle Époque –the Beautiful Era fi lled with optimism and cultural transformation at the dawn of the twentieth century. Through Clara’s chance encounters with notable personalities of the period, Clara’s Secret weaves an unforgettable tapestry of personal and historic events. Clara’s Secret is ultimately a compelling story of the advancement of humankind and the survival of its decline.
Available on Amazon and www.laevnotes.com.
ALIYAH: A J EWISH FAMILY SAGA
Harold Emanuel
Sixteen-year-old Lazar Hermanski and fourteenyear-old Daria Solov survive the 1881 Warsaw pogrom, endure a perilous journey in steerage, and arrive in New York. They marry, have a family, and navigate the conflict of adjusting to their new country and culture while attempting to follow their Jewish traditions. Throughout the story, family members participate in historical events, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the women’s su rage movement, and interact with historical figures such as Lillian Wald, Fanny Brice, and Fiorello LaGuardia.
Available on Bookshop.org.
A MONG THE BLOSSOMS
Batya Ansell
The year is 1987. Rachel Martin is a bright, sensitive thirteen-year-old who feels that nothing will ever turn out right for her. Living in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, the one anchor in Rachel’s life is her supportive father, but even he won’t be able to protect her from the events that lie ahead. School continues to be a joke...until an older woman with a dark and mysterious past comes to take over her English class...and from then on nothing is ever quite the same.
Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.
E NDURING TIES
Scott Morvay,
Edited by Larry Holtz
Enduring Ties provides an upto-date, in-depth exploration of Israel’s ongoing war and its complex history as a close ally of the United States. The author delves into the ups and downs of this critical relationship, examining pivotal moments and shifts over time. Woven into the narrative are parallel discussions on the culture wars, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and other key issues that have shaped public opinion and policy toward Israel. The book also takes a hard look at the political divide in America, contrasting the progressive left’s waning support for Israel with the steadfast backing from conservatives.
Scolar Publications. Hardcopy and paperback versions available for online at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Bookshop.org.
THE CULTURE WARS
Scott Morvay,
Edited by Larry Holtz
The Culture Wars: A Worldwide Battle of Traditional and Nontraditional Points of View is a thought-provoking book that illuminates the stark contrast between the progressive narrative – rooted in the radical ideals of a vocal minority. This book examines the divide between the skewed ideals perpetuated by the media and entertainment industries and the principles that embody real-world values. Covering the most pressing topics, including Title IX, modern programming, music, sports, history, education, youth indoctrination, women’s rights, and more, provides a comprehensive exploration of the ongoing battle, whose victor will claim the very soul of our society. Scolar Publications. Hardcopy and paperback versions available for online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
WOMAN OF VALOR
Lynne Golodner
This award-winning novel invites readers into the Orthodox community of Skokie, Illinois, where Sally Lieberman must decide whether to stay in the world she chose or leave to save her family. “A stunning read” filled with food, friendship and passion, Woman of Valor is a courageous story of love and self-determination that will have you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and anywhere you buy books.
MY YOUTH AND E ARLY D EATHS
Allen Stein
Late one night in the summer of 1897, Morris Massimo Levy, nearly sixteen, of mixed Italian-Catholic and EastEuropean Jewish background, watches as the father of the girl he loves is dropped from the Brooklyn Bridge by the notorious Jewish gang leader (and actual historical figure) Monk Eastman. The event helps propel Morris into a dangerous involvement in the notorious wars between the ethnic gangs of the Lower East Side of New York City and prompts his initiation, despite his idealistic impulses, into the ruthless means one often needed to survive and flourish in early modern America. Paperback $15.95; e-book $7.99. Order on https://madvillepublishing.com or Bookshop.org.
THE L AST D EKREPITZER
Howard
Langer
Winner 2024 National Jewish Book Award Book Club Award. “A remarkable novel about faith lost and regained in the aftermath of the Holocaust. In telling this story of the last surviving rebbe of a Hasidic dynasty passing as a Black street-fiddler, Langer has discovered a new idiom of American Jewish writing. A brilliant re-imagining of the legend of the hidden righteous soul told as though the melodies of Hasidic niggunim were blues.” David Stern, Starr Professor of Jewish Literature, Harvard University. “If you liked James McBride’s novels …. you’ll love The Last Dekrepitzer.” Kathryn Hellerstein, co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature. “Verdict: Get it.” Kirkus Reviews.
Cresheim Press, 262 pages; hardcover $27.95, e-Book $15.99. Available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold.
THE R EAL R EASONS WHY J EWS DON ’ T BELIEVE IN J ESUS
Stuart Federow
Jews and Christians use the same words, but they have di erent meanings to Jews than they do to Christians. To understand the word, “messiah” in the Christian way, one has to hold certain assumptions. These foundational Christian beliefs must be rejected as unbiblical, and more than the many other reasons, this is why Jews don’t believe in Jesus. Available on Amazon.
SHABBAT SHALOM: LET’S R EST AND R ESET
Suzy Ultman
Shabbat Shalom: Let’s Rest and Reset introduces the Jewish day of rest, validating the varied experiences of Jewish readers, and informing and entertaining Jews and non-Jews alike! Author and artist Suzy Ultman melds her own Jewish upbringing with her current trendsetting aesthetic to create a much-needed series of gorgeous, appealing, and perfectly simple books. Available on Bookshop.org.
CAVE OF SECRETS
Lynne Golodner
This bestselling novel set in Scotland explores love, Jewish identity, self-discovery and ancestral redemption with a touch of magical realism to keep you on the edge of your seat. “Lynne Golodner’s enchanting romance is a captivating tale that beautifully captures the delicate dance between mending the past and embracing the promise of the future.” Midwest Book Review. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and anywhere you buy books.
R ICHARD CODOR’S JOYOUS HAGGADAH
Richard and Liora Codor
A cartoon haggadah that follows the traditional steps of the seder. Written in a concise, contemporary style, it includes songs, games, recipes and prayers in English, Hebrew and transliterated Hebrew. It makes the seder fun and meaningful for family, guests and even for those “who don’t know how to ask.”
Softcover, 48 pages, $11.95. Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
A WORLD WORTH SAVING
Kyle Luko
A groundbreaking, actionpacked, and ultimately uplifting adventure that intertwines elements of Jewish mythology with an unflinching examination of the impacts of transphobia, from Newbery Honor-winner Kyle Luko . “Rare and beautiful . . . [this] page-turning adventure is nothing short of magic.”—Rick Riordan, bestselling author of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Available on Bookshop.org.
THE G IRLS OF J ERUSALEM AND OTHER STORIES
Marsha Lee Berkman
From the opening vignette in which a photograph is a silent witness to history to the powerful coda “Miracles,” a novella set against the vibrant panorama of the Yiddish theater in America, the fi fteen memorable narratives in The Girls of Jerusalem and Other Stories span continents and eras as they chronicle love and loss, piety and heresy, mysticism and rationality to reinterpret ancient tropes of exile, dislocation, and profound change, revealing a new understanding of Jewish history and memory. “Luminous tales of exile and loss that bequeath new life” Kirkus Reviews (starred review). A best book of the year selection. Available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, and wherever books are sold.
THE OVEREXAMINED LIFE OF JACOB HART
Jerry Wald
Jacob believes there’s an answer to any problem. That conviction propelled him to a successful engineering career. But following retirement and his wife’s death, Jacob su ers an existential crisis. The man who believed anything was solvable becomes consumed with uncovering the role of a higher power in his crumbling world. Plagued with prophetic visions, he travels to Lake Paradise to find his coveted answer to life’s mysteries. Joined by a rabbi who has lost his faith, an unruly professor, and a powerful CEO, the friends embark upon a philosophical pursuit for the ages. But a political scandal might destroy everything.
Available in paperback and e-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org.
BETWEEN THESE WALLS
Michael Newman
Daniel, a young American, is recruited by Israel’s Mossad. During his mission, he discovers the mysteries behind his own beginnings: from a baby found under the body of his dead mother toward the end of WWII, in the back of a destroyed SS sta car, to adoption by a US Army Medical Corps colonel. Explore the training methods of Mossad agents, and the role of former Nazi scientists in Arab capitals. Discover the horrors faced by German Jews through the eyes of a Jewish lawyer, and their brutal treatment in the Nazi concentration camps, and their fight to create the State of Israel.
Available on Bookshop.org.
100 J EWISH BRIDES: STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Barbara Vinick and Shulamit Reinharz
With stories from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, this collection of intimate personal testimonies will surprise and inspire.
A Jewish wedding after conversion in Madagascar, a reunion of Holocaust survivors in Sweden, a shipboard romance initiated by a celebrity: These stories from 83 countries describe Jewish wedding traditions, some familiar and others eyeopening, in a multitude of cultures and settings, past and present.
Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org; 100jewishbrides.com.
SHOES OF THE SHOAH
Dorothy Pierce
A biography of Henny Fletcher Aronson who survived the German invasion of Lithuania, the Kovno Ghetto, the Stutthof concentration camp and a death march. Be with Henny as she lives through the German atrocities and see her loved ones destroyed by the Lithuanians as well as the Germans. Henny’s story is one of courage, hope and the will to live. Hopefully, her story will inspire those in dire conditions and remind us of what we as humans are capable of doing.
Available in h ard cover, soft cover, and audio at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
THE JOURNEY OF SARAH LEVI -BONDI
R. P. Toister
Follow Sarah as she escapes the Jewish ghetto in Rome, determined to honor her father’s wish: “You have to do something good for the world.” This request motivates her to become the research director of a team working to cure childhood leukemia at Rockefeller University in NYC. After two successful trial treatments, President Gerald Ford asks Sarah to treat the grandson of the Nazi criminal who sent over 1,000 Italian Jews, including her family, to Auschwitz in 1943. Sarah’s decision—and the surprising conclusion of her journey—underscore the irony and significance of one life.
Novel available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.
To advertise here, please call Randi O’Connor at (212) 451-6221, or email roconnor@hadassah.org. Space is limited.
over the tabernacle and the village at Kadesh-Barnea.
The Midwives’ Escape is an expansive story with a large cast of characters. The chapters are narrated by Asenet or Shifra, but since they do not alternate in a set pattern, it can
be confusing; I kept having to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to remind myself who was telling the story in that section.
Anton liberally utilizes midrash in her retelling and includes littleknown characters, such as Miriam’s
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granddaughter Achsah. The author is at her best when bringing biblical women to life, as we see with Asenet’s first interaction with a mysterious older woman with long white hair whom she later finds out is Serach bat Asher, granddaughter of Jacob, the patriarch.
The two women help each other cross the parted Sea of Reeds, trudging together, as Asenet describes, “our arms intertwined.”
“The old woman and I concentrated only on putting one foot in front of the other until I lost my grip on my basket of midwife supplies and could only watch in dismay as it began floating away…. But someone unexpectedly grabbed my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see the mystery woman holding my basket out to me.”
While reading, I often longed for deeper interaction between the women; the story sometimes felt distant on the page. When Anton does dig deeper, as with any of the births described, or the midwives’ interactions with Miriam or Serach, it’s a welcome, but all-too-brief, aside.
The Exodus story is, by its very nature, a slow burn—protracted, with a significant emphasis on telling rather than showing. The payoff comes when finished, reflecting on the journey and all it encompasses, as we do each year at the seder.
That, too, was my reaction to The Midwives’ Escape. Anton undertakes a monumental task in writing about the Exodus, and it is only when finishing the book that one can appreciate the craft and knowledge with which she brings the story to life. —Jaime Herndon
Jaime Herndon is a writer and avid reader. Her work can be found at Book Riot, Undark, Kveller, Motherly and other places.
How to Succeed With Trying
Flying saucers, Frisbees and biblical heroes | By
Joseph Lowin
It is often said that true success requires encountering obstacles and working hard to overcome them. Take the example of the Hebrew root ח-ל-צ (tsadi-lamed-het), to succeed. The root is thought to come originally from a Semitic-adjacent ancient Egyptian language, in which it means “to pass through hindrances.”
In Scripture, the root is found many times in relating the success of biblical heroes. In Genesis, King Potiphar calls Joseph an
(ish matsliah), “successful man,” because he is convinced that God ודָֹיְבְּ
(matsliah be-yado), “puts success in his hand,” seeing that םיִקִלֱֹאִ
(va-titslah ru’ah elokim), “The spirit of God rested [on Joseph’s head].” Psalm 118 contains a verse that has found a successful home in the Hallel prayer, asking God to
(hatsliha na), “Let us prosper.”
Changing the focus, Psalm 45 describes a king at his wedding who is reminded that he is a warrior and, therefore, must חַלצ (tselah), “win success,” and pierce the enemy’s heart. And in II Samuel 19:18, David, informed of the death of his beloved son Absalom, withdraws to a refuge across the water. To accompany him back, David’s soldiers ןֵדְֵּרַיַַּה וּחְלצ (tsalhu ha-yarden), “crossed the River Jordan,” overcoming the topographical obstacle to his return to Jerusalem.
To continue the image of an obstacle that must be overcome, our Sages argue that תַחַלַַּצ (tsalahat), usually translated as plate, is also the word for a pocket in which a protagonist hides his hand, making it difficult to retrieve what’s inside. In her book, A Moment of Hebrew, the Academy of the Hebrew Language’s Ruth Almagor-Ramon mentions the Mishnah’s discussion of impure vessels, where the rabbis ponder the usage of the root as a תיִחלְצ (tselohit), flask, which, with its narrow neck, provides an obstacle to pouring out purifying salt.
Today, given its shape, tsalahat has been used to describe a Frisbee and a hubcap, even a תֶפֶֶפֶעְמַ תַחַלַַּצ (tsalahat me’ofeffet), flying saucer. At certain stages in life, some people begin to doubt their religious faith and find themselves asking, הָחלצ
(madu’a derekh resha’im tsalekha), “Why do bad people prosper?”
Yet, we use the same root when wishing success for others. When a good friend is going in to take an exam, for example, one calls out,
(be-hatslakha), “Good luck!” And when a couple announces their coming marriage, it is proper to reply, תַחלצ
(be-sha’a tova umutslahat), “May it arrive at a good and felicitous moment”—love being the only thing to pierce the heart.
Joseph Lowin’s columns for Hadassah Magazine are collected in HebrewSpeak, Hebrew Talk and his most recent book, Hebrew Matters, available at gcrr.org/gcrr-press/hebrew-matters
QUESTION
ANSWER
Dara Horn
On Passover and resilience
|
By Amy Klein
When dara horn saw her four kids fighting over a graphic
novel a few years ago, the award-winning writer and professor of literature realized that the medium—and the book’s artist, Theo Ellsworth—would be a perfect way to tell a Passover tale she had been thinking about that centered on time travel and a never-ending family seder.
Horn, 48, the author of five previous novels as well as the 2021 essay collection People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, says she has been “completely obsessed” with Passover since she was a child. She sees a link between her new graphic novel, One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe (Norton Young Readers), and the nonfiction work that has made her a leading voice in the discussion of the global rise of antisemitism. Pesach, she says, represents the “institutionalization of resilience.” This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You wrote One Little Goat before October 7. How does it land now?
To me, Pesach is really a scary holiday, because it’s actually commemorating the night before the Exodus, when you’re waiting for the Angel of Death. I heard this Israeli thought leader say that when we learn on Passover about the attempts over and over again to kill the Jews, she had always thought, “We are safe from this.” But after October 7, this woman realized, “They were trying to prepare me.” The idea is true: Passover is preparation for this recurring story, and it’s also giving people the skills and the resources to see what their role is at this moment and where they fit.
Is there any throughline between your work on antisemitism and this book?
I spent 20 years of my life as a writer pushing back against what the late historian Salo Baron called “the lachrymose view of Jewish history,”
i.e., full of tears. Then, I reluctantly turned to writing People Love Dead Jews to explore this idea. I started working on this graphic novel before the essay collection came out, but that book basically ate my life.
I see how interrelated these things are because I now no longer think it is realistic to try to avoid the “lachrymose aspects” of Jewish life. But I also think that what is remarkable about Jewish life isn’t this litany of horror, but this incredible resilience. Pesach is this institutionalization of resilience—we’re giving that resilience to children.
If there was doubt before the Hamas attacks that people love dead Jews, how have the last year and a half furthered your thinking?
Even before October 7, I was inundated with responses from Jewish readers that were all identical, and it didn’t matter who they were— all basically saying to me: “You know, I felt uncomfortable my whole
life. I never understood why this book articulated this for me. I never told anybody this before, but....”
And then they would tell me these horror stories. Often it was something that was still happening, and they’d say, “Can you help?” And then after October 7, it was like that on steroids.
Do you think you will ever return to novel writing?
After October 7, I’ve had to put a pin in my fiction. I’m working on an organization called Mosaic Persuasion, an educational group for K-12 schools to educate the broader American public about who Jews are.
I’m also working on a book that actually has an even worse title than People Love Dead Jews. It’s called The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living. I feel grateful that I’m in this position to help people, because however it is that I’m approaching this problem, I know it is very helpful.
Amy Klein is a freelance writer and the author of The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind.
Family, Israel and Charity
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— Barbara Lefton Sarasota, Florida
Family, Israel and charity have always been deeply important to Barbara Lefton. Growing up in the World War II era, Barbara knew that money was scarce, but that didn’t keep her parents from giving to charities.
Their example stuck with Barbara, who has spent her life giving back and teaching her four children,
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LET’S TALK ABOUT
TYPE 1 GAUCHER DISEASE
Type 1 Gaucher disease (GD1) is a rare, genetic disease in the general population. However, it has a higher prevalence within those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent:
STEP 1: TESTING
Because of this higher likelihood, if your family is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, or if you display symptoms such as a swollen abdomen, easy bruising, or excessive fatigue, genetic screening is strongly recommended.* GD1 can also cause complications in pregnancy, so it is important to know for yours, and your future family’s health.
A saliva or blood test can see if you have GD1, or are carrying the gene which causes it. GD1 is hereditary, meaning it is passed from parents to their children. Talk to your doctor about genetic screening for you and your family.
*Dor Yeshorim doesn’t test for GD1. Make sure to look into additional options in order to test for GD1.
STEP 2: TREATMENT
GD1 is progressive, so reaching a diagnosis and starting treatment as soon as possible is important to help prevent irreversible damage.
Once a correct diagnosis has been reached, there are available treatments which can help manage GD1 symptoms. Talk to your doctor about these options to find the right choice for you or your loved ones.
There are plenty of resources out there to help you and your loved ones through this process, and which can help to further explain GD1. Talk to your doctor if you want to know more, or visit: www.KNOWGAUCHERDISEASE.COM
