Justin Trudeau said Canada’s government would not tolerate antisemitism after a violent pro-Palestinian demonstration in Montreal where protesters burned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in effigy.

The Canadian prime minister was one of several officials to condemn the protest, which opposed a NATO conference on Friday night and after which three protesters were arrested. It was one of a series of anti-Israel actions in recent days that have led to fallout in the Quebec metropolis, from the shuttering of a cafe in the city’s Jewish General Hospital to the cancelation of an Israeli-made film at a local festival.

“What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling,” Trudeau said in a statement on Saturday. “Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them.”

The demonstrators, many of whom came from student groups, protested the Western military alliance due to members’ support for Israel in its multi-front war. According to Canadian media reports, demonstrators smashed windows, burnt vehicles, attacked police officers and set off smoke bombs and fireworks during the protest.

Attendees could be seen waving Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian flags as well as one with the hammer and sickle, a communist symbol. Some protesters held a banner reading “intifada” in Arabic, a reference to violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel.

At one point, a group of protesters burned an effigy bearing the words “Netanyahu to the Hague,” a reference to the recent warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest issued by the International Criminal Court. Canada is one of several countries to confirm that it would arrest Netanyahu based on the warrant.

“This was nothing like lawful, peaceful protest,” said Bill Blair, Canada’s defense minister, at a conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “This was anarchy. It was an engagement in violence and hatred on display in the city of Montreal.”

He added, “Those behaviors are unacceptable and we condemn them, and in particular the hatred and antisemitism that was on display, in the strongest possible terms.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an umbrella Jewish Canadian body, called Friday’s protest “a terrifying display of violence, hate, and anarchy” and called on Canada’s leaders to do more to fight antisemitism.

The group said in a statement, “Fires were lit, businesses vandalized, and Jewish Canadians once again felt unsafe in their own country.Our political leaders need to stop excusing extremism. Police must enforce the law. And all Canadians must take antisemitism seriously—NOW.”

Friday’s demonstration came one day after a participant in another anti-Israel demonstration was filmed saying “Final Solution is coming your way, the Final Solution.” The term “Final Solution” was the Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust.

The protester in question was later identified as the owner of two franchises of Second Cup, a Canadian coffee chain, located at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. The company said in a statement that it is closing those locations and terminating the owner’s contract. It will continue paying staff and plans to reopen under new management, according to the CBC.

“Second Cup has zero tolerance for hate speech,” the company’s statement said. “This franchisee’s actions are not only a breach of our franchise agreement, but they also violate the values of inclusion and community we stand for at Second Cup.”

In a statement, Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. State Department’s antisemitism envoy and a Holocaust historian, condemned the “Final Solution” comments and added, “The antisemitic rhetoric that fueled the anti-NATO riots in Montreal sends a clear signal. Jew hatred incites violence, disrupts national security, and erodes democracy.”

Elsewhere in Montreal, RIDM, a documentary film festival, canceled the screenings of an Israeli filmmaker’s movie due to pro-Palestinian protests. The film by Israeli-Canadian Danae Elon, “Rule of Stone,” takes a critical lens on Israeli policy. According to a description on the festival website, the film focuses on Jerusalem stone, which is used as the facade for buildings in the Israeli capital. It examines “the erasure of Palestinian history and the gradual exclusion of its people,” and “reveals the contrasts and often invisible violence of its buildings and architecture.”

But the festival has announced that two screenings scheduled for later this week have been canceled. The statement said Elon had withdrawn the film following “consultations by RIDM with all concerned parties,” and that the festival would be changing its submission criteria.

“Danae Elon is an Israeli-Canadian filmmaker whose films have been accompanied by RIDM, and we recognize her personal commitment to criticizing and questioning the state of Israel,” the festival’s statement said. “However, the film’s inclusion in our programming has disrupted our relationships with important partners, including members of the community actively supporting the Palestinian people.”

The festival is the second Canadian cultural event this month to draw pro-Palestinian protest. Last week, the Giller Prize, a prestigious literary award, was given amid a boycott by authors protesting its sponsors’ ties to Israel.

In Toronto over the weekend, a small pro-Palestinian protest featured, according to critics who shared photos on social media, a demonstrator dressed as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the moments before an Israeli soldier killed him and someone holding a sign reading “Free flights to Amsterdam,” an apparent allusion to the attacks on Israeli soccer fans that took place there earlier this month. A Jewish political pundit was reportedly arrested after he refused police instructions to leave the scene.

After stepping down as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in the spring of 2020, Arnold Eisen found himself with the time and motivation to think about a big question he’d long put off as the leader of the Conservative movement’s flagship university and, before that, as a professor of Jewish culture and religion at Stanford University. 

“When my friends asked, ‘Arnie, why is it that you have faith and we don’t?’ — I tried to figure out what experiences in my life made me open to the possibility of faith,” he said last week.

He answers their question in a new book, “Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay,” in which Eisen describes what he believes about a God whom he acknowledges to be elusive, if not unknowable. 

The book is a professional departure for Eisen, whose previous books examined the interior lives of American Jews and and the classics of modern Jewish thought with the forensic gaze of an academic. It is also a personal departure for an observant Jew who nonetheless shared the American Jewish allergy to what he calls “fervent God-talk.” 

“I was writing scholarship about other people’s Jewish thought for something like 40 years, but I always somehow avoided, as many scholars do, facing the questions of what I actually believe,” said Eisen.

Begun during the COVID lockdown and finished after Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel, the book synthesizes the thoughts of some of Eisen’s intellectual heroes, including the Conservative movement theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the German-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber. 

From Heschel he learns that Judaism is a call to action; from Buber, that miracles aren’t evidence of the supernatural, but an invitation to “abide in the astonishment” of creation. In our interview, Eisen said his aim is not to prove to the reader that God exists or that God is good, but to offer one Jewish believer’s account of how Judaism makes sense of the world. 

Eisen grew up in suburban Philadelphia, where his family attended the Conservative synagogue Temple Emanu-El. “I had my mother lighting candles every Friday night. I had my father saying the priestly benediction, putting his hands on my head and crying,” he recalled. Those powerful emotional bonds, he said, shape his theology. ”These memories sustain me. Not every one of us has that. One can come to God and Jewish tradition or any religious tradition later in life, but it makes it easier to have this kind of background.”

Eisen earned a B.A. in religious thought from the University of Pennsylvania, a BPhil in the sociology of religion at Oxford University, and his PhD in the history of Jewish thought from Hebrew University. 

Prior to becoming JTS chancellor in 2007 — the first non-rabbi in the role — he served on the faculties of Stanford, Tel Aviv and Columbia universities. He remains a full-time member of the JTS faculty.

The book, he said, is also meant to close the gap between the academy and everyday life.  

“I wanted to give an account of what this Jew believes at this point in his life, and hope that that will be meaningful to my readers and will engage them in the project of thinking about this for themselves,” said Eisen, 73. 

Our conversation was edited for length and clarity. 

You are a scholar of American Judaism and the history of Jewish thought, and for 10 years you were a chancellor of a university, albeit one that also ordains rabbis. Why did you feel the need to write a book of theology?

When I was chancellor of JTS, working six long days a week, I had every excuse in the world to avoid this. But I recognized, even before I stopped, that the first project I wanted to take on when I stopped being chancellor was this. I wanted to try to do an account of what I myself believed about God. 

And then I had a sabbatical year off, and it turned out to be the COVID year, and it was also the year I was about to turn 70. So there was this confluence of circumstances that led me to sit down and think hard and reflect. 

I am going to ask you something that may be unfair, but I am thinking of an old radio program, “This I Believe,” where guests had to lay out their philosophies in five minutes. Do you have the elevator pitch version of your theology? 

I don’t have that pitch, but let me start with the title: ”Seeking the Hiding God.” When I say the hiding God, the dominant theological issue in Jewish life for the last couple generations has been the Holocaust, and one of the major theological responses to the Holocaust is what we call [in Hebrew] “hester panim,” the hiding of God’s countenance, which is a phrase from the end of the book of Deuteronomy. And some Jewish thinkers apply this not only to reactions to tragedy, but, for example, to the condition of modern life. Martin Buber writes a book called “Eclipse of God.” Or the Orthodox thinker Eliezer Berkowitz, who says that this is a permanent condition of human life: that if God was so close to us that we could grab God at every opportunity, there wouldn’t be room for us to be free human beings with initiative in action and thought. So God needs to be far away, as it were, for us to be who God wants us to be. 

I had the sense for a long time that if I was really a better person or more devoted to my Judaism, or spent more time in prayer, or more time thinking about God, that I would be granted a much more robust set of religious experiences, and I would be much more certain about this God that our tradition teaches us can be encountered. And what I came to recognize is that my sporadic, momentary, ephemeral encounters with God were far more typical than not, and that many Jewish thinkers testify that this is precisely the kind of experiences that they’ve had as well. 

That’s the “hiding part.” But you also write in the book that if God’s countenance is hidden, God’s intentions are not. You write how Buber said that human beings cannot know when or how God acts to punish or reward, but they can heed the prophets who said they should pursue “righteousness and loving-kindness to the maximum extent possible under the circumstances.”

If there’s a mantra in the book, it’s Deuteronomy 29:28: The mysteries belong to God, but the revealed things are given to us and to our children to live a life of mitzvah, and we can have this good life. 

In that regard, a word that keeps coming up in your book is “action,” and how human action is key to bringing out redemption, or realizing love in the world, or righting injustice. That seems key to your theology. 

Central, absolutely central. I can’t imagine belief in God is meant for us to secrete ourselves away and to meditate and contemplate our own enlightenment. That’s not what this tradition says. I’m a child of the ’60s, and I saw that political action and social activism made a difference for good in the world. And in Heschel I had in front of me this personal example, even before I met him: I’d read his books and admired his work, and then I got to meet him, and he just left me convinced that that piety does not stop in the synagogue. You have this famous paragraph in his book “God in Search of Man” in which he writes that Judaism doesn’t take a leap of faith. It takes a leap of action. And that paragraph means everything to me. 

I think many Jews appreciate action — home rituals like the Passover seder, or acts of loving-kindness or social action expressed as tikkun olam — but don’t understand the point of prayer. I know it’s a vast question, but what do you think is happening when you are in prayer?

I can say that for me, there isn’t only one thing that’s happening, and it doesn’t always happen. Prayer in Judaism is not just petition, which is what the English word sounds like. It’s not just asking for things. It could be saying thank you, or saying hello, or “here I am, God, I’m happy you’re in my life,” or “I’m sorry.” And for me, the hope is to have a sense of being fully myself. I’m trying my best to stand before God, even when it’s really hard to imagine this God that I want to stand before. I’m really standing before myself and that which is most precious to me in the world, and trying to use my time in the world well, and stepping aside from all the distractions of normal life and focusing inwards. And by focusing inward, you somehow connect to God.

But what I should declare in this moment, since you asked in this direct way, is that unlike some Jewish thinkers like Mordecai Kaplan [the founder of the Reconstructionist movement], who did not believe in a God who can hear prayer, I’m much more open-minded about this. I would not have the chutzpah to make a declaration about what God can and cannot do. I think Kaplan was anachronistic there and that you can’t say what any modern person can believe. And I testify in the book that I myself have had experiences where I feel my prayers have been answered. What that means from God’s side, I don’t know. 

I know lots of people who can’t bring themselves to engage in anything like what we call prayer, because they can’t tell it to their minds, and so they don’t try. And what a shame that is. Because if one opens oneself to this possibility of encounter with the divine, the transcendent, whatever you want to call it, then it may happen. 

You write that when you teach American college students about Buber and Heschel, they ask “why these thinkers needed to talk about God so much when what they really cared about was ethics.” It’s the classic question: Can’t you be good without God, and what does belief in a supreme being add to the equation? 

Yes, one could have a good life without God. And yes, one does not have to be a Jew to have a good life or whatever afterlife is promised to us. But if this is an eternal human search, and if you can have the grace of encounter with God — if that is possible, why would you possibly want to live without that? I’m not preaching to anybody. But what I am saying, in all humility, is that I cannot imagine my life without the Torah and without the quest for God or the Sabbath any more than I could imagine my life without my wife and my kids and my good friends — without love. It’s just part of the basic operating equipment that makes me the person I am. The great theologian Franz Rosenzweig taught that we’re not here to prove anything. We’re here to testify. 

I want to ask you to put on your institutional hat for a second, and ask from that perspective why so many American Jews might be resistant to the transcendent. According to Pew, U.S. Jews are far less likely than the public overall to say that religion is important in their lives. You write in your book, “Jews engage in sustained or fervent God-talk much less than Americans of other faiths.” As someone who was in the business of training rabbis for 10 years, do you see that as a failure of the synagogue or other institutions?

Because of my background in modern religion in general and in modernization, and my studies of sociological theory and sociology of religion, I’m acutely aware of how difficult faith is in the modern world, and especially for Jews in America, where we are such a distinct minority. And if you’re a Jew, you’re exposed to this dominant secular language on the one hand, and Christian language on the other hand, which is, chances are good, evangelical or fundamentalist. And the Jewish language you hear from other Jews is a very ultra-Orthodox language, which may not suit you, and you may become convinced that that’s the only language there is. So we have failed them, yes, but the culture is such that it makes it really hard not to fail.

I had the experience again this past weekend speaking at a synagogue in San Diego, and having to tell committed Jews that the theology which says God is responsible for everything that happens in the world is by far not the only Jewish theology there is. One does not have to believe that the Holocaust happened with God’s acquiescence, let alone with God’s active participation. And [the audience] was simply not aware of all these options. They’ve never been exposed to them, not as adults and not back in Hebrew school. That, to me, that’s tragic.

I want to ask specifically about the Conservative movement, because you headed one of its flagship institutions. First, is there something capital-C Conservative about your theology?

No, I didn’t write the book denominationally. I am a lifelong Conservative Jew, and my theology is certainly compatible with that. But I am a Jew first and foremost, and the dominant resources in my book are the Torah and the siddur and the rabbis of old, and modern Jewish thought of all stripes. There’s [Modern Orthodox Rabbi Joseph] Soloveitchik is in this book, along with Heschel, and [Reform Jewish philosopher Emil] Fackenheim, Kaplan. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist. It’s not a Conservative book.

More and more, we may affiliate with a particular synagogue, but we’re not necessarily in our thinking denominational. I cannot be ultra-Orthodox because I’m an egalitarian Jew, but beyond that, there’s meaning to be found in every single denomination.

The other question I want to ask about the Conservative movement is its relevance. In sheer size, influence and market share it is not the central movement it was a generation or more ago. In what ways did you confront this challenge as chancellor, what changes did you hope to bring about, and did some of that thinking have anything to do with the ideas in the book?

Let’s understand what conditions fostered the growth of Conservative Judaism in the ’30s through the ’60s, which were sociological and economic and political. This was the right movement with the right message for the time. And then I think the movement made two key innovations — the first, of course, being egalitarianism regarding women, and the second, which I had a direct role in, which was opening itself up to LGBTQ individuals in a full way. Had we not done either of those things, the movement would not be even as successful as it is today. It would not be a live movement. 

But these are very difficult times, and I think that we’re not doing so badly. Yes, the number of people who say “I’m a Conservative Jew” is much less than it used to be. I think that is primarily because Conservative rabbis will not perform intermarriages, and if you can’t have a Conservative rabbi [officiate] your wedding and you’re intermarried or the child of an intermarriage, you’re not going to say, “I’m a Conservative Jew.” But the membership statistics [as opposed to self-identity] are not that bad. The Reform movement is several percentage points above Conservative, Modern Orthodoxy is still around 3 to 4%, which means it’s not growing by leaps and bounds, and ultra-Orthodoxy is growing, yes, but only by virtue of birth rate. So we in America have a problem. All of us have a problem. Yes, the middle is shrinking, but Judaism is shrinking and religion is shrinking. If less than 40% of American Jews are affiliated with anything Jewish, where are we with this community? How can we be a stronger community? How do we get people in the door? This is our problem. 

So since you wrote a book about theology, not institutional reform, I want to ask how your ideas about God and practice and action might address the questions you just posed. 

When it comes to what you do with the people when they’re in the door, I have strong opinions, and they are directly related to the book. The Yom Kippur chapter, for example, explains how, on the one hand, I love Yom Kippur. I love the music. I love the liturgy. I love the experience of 25 hours with my community. And yet I can’t stand a lot of the liturgy. I disagree profoundly with the leading theme. I don’t think God is there deciding who lives for another year and who doesn’t, and that’s the central theme of the day. 

So how can you have a congregation which gets together for 25 hours without giving people the chance to sit around small tables, when they’re most open, perhaps most thoughtful, and discuss honestly with one another what they actually believe about these things? I urge every single rabbinical student I come in contact with, do not do the Unetaneh Tokef prayer [“who shall live, and who shall die…”] without contextualizing it. Do not let people believe that if they walk out of synagogue and get hit by a car, God has decided to get them hit by a car. 

The final thing I’d say about this is that we’re in a difficult time. Because of AI, people are going to lose their jobs, and people who have jobs are going to be [doing something] completely different than they were before. And it’s scary because of climate change: The catastrophe is imminent, and at some level, we all know this. The Hamas attack on Oct. 7 made tragedy and fear visceral for many Jews, and some of them flocked back to Jewish communities. They want contact with their tradition. They’re looking for meaning. It’s a moment of crisis, but it’s a moment of great opportunity, and we just need to be creative. 

There are dozens of really skillful clergy and educators in this country who are doing this all the time, and it can be done. It’s just not widespread enough. We’re not always as creative as we could be, but I’m convinced that the possibilities are there now. 

I wanted to ask about Israel: How does it fit into your theology? You write that “God is counting on human beings to write the next chapter of history,” which would suggest that you find it difficult to believe that Israel’s creation and its well-being are in the hands of a God who intervenes in history. 

Israel is crucial to my Judaism, but it’s not because God is doing this. I don’t know what God is doing there. I pray that it will turn out to be the beginning of the flowering of our redemption. But who knows? 

My teacher David Hartman [the late Israeli-American philosopher] taught me and many other people that the theological model for Israel is not Exodus, where God split the Red Sea, but Sinai, where what is important is that Jews try to live up to the responsibilities of the Covenant, and that they translate the ethical principles pronounced in the 10 Commandments. Israel opens up new possibilities for covenant. What can we do now that we’re a majority responsible for non-Jews as well as for Jews, Jewish healthcare policy, Jewish foreign policy, Jewish educational policy, etc.? It’s a great opportunity to see what mitzvah can mean in the modern world. In a place where Jews have a majority, it’s not about God intervening in history.

My last question is going to be the classic one that I think everyone who tackles theology has to talk about, which is your views of the afterlife. Do you believe in one, and how does death figure into your thinking about God and your purpose in life? 

I can’t be like Moses Mendelssohn in the 18th century, the great Jewish thinker, and prove to you logically that there’s an afterlife where the good are rewarded and the evil are punished. I can’t do that, but what I can do is witness to the kind of faith that I’ve managed to acquire, which holds out the possibility that death is not the end of everything. Genesis teaches that Sarah’s life continues with her children, and Jacob’s life continues with his children. And I certainly think that’s true, but it’s not only in children, and it’s not only in students, and it’s not only in the legacy we leave behind us. It could well be that there’s some immortality for the person. 

When I was at Stanford and the Dalai Lama came to speak, I was really struck by the fact that he fervently believes that our beings do not cease to be when we die. So we’re in good company. I think that we should not give up on this, and that theologians, if they can encourage this kind of hope, they should, and that’s what I try to do in the book.

Israeli authorities announced early Sunday that the body of a rabbi who disappeared Thursday in the United Arab Emirates had been found.

Israel had previously warned that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, who worked in the capital of Abu Dhabi as an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, may have been the victim of terrorism. The Mossad and other security agencies were involved in searching for him, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement late Saturday.

“The murder of the late Chabad emissary Zvi Kogan in the Emirates is a cowardly and despicable antisemitic act of terror,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on social media after Kogan’s body was discovered. “The State of Israel will not rest nor be silent until those responsible for this criminal act pay for their actions.”

Kogan, who held both Israeli and Moldovan citizenship, was one of thousands of rabbis dispatched by the Chabad movement to posts around the world to attend local Jews and Jewish travelers. Chabad expanded its limited presence in the United Arab Emirates starting in 2020, when the Middle Eastern country normalized relations with Israel in a historic agreement; Kogan is listed as one of five rabbis working in the country.

Kogan’s murder could pose a test for relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Israeli media is reporting, without citing sources, that Israeli and Emirati authorities believe Kogan was abducted and murdered by Uzbek nationals working on behalf of Iran. Iran, which is known to orchestrate terrorism beyond its borders, vowed to retaliate after Israel bombed its military facilities in October, in its own retaliation against an Iranian missile attack, but so far has not done so.

The Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement had called for prayers on Kogan’s behalf on Saturday night, when his disappearance broke into public view.

“We are deeply concerned about Rabbi Zvi Kogan, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary who went missing in the Emirati city of Dubai on Thursday,” the Orthodox movement said in a statement attributed to Chairman Yehuda Krinsky. “Our emissaries are working closely with authorities as they investigate his disappearance. We pray, along with the worldwide Jewish community for his safe return, and we ask everyone to keep Zvi haCohen ben Ettel in your prayers.”

On Sunday morning, the movement said in a statement, “With great pain we share that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Abu Dhabi, UAE, was murdered by terrorists after being abducted on Thursday.”

Following the official Israeli statement, the UAE’s interior ministry issued a statement on social media late Saturday about the case. Identifying Kogan only as a Moldovan national, it said it had received a report from Kogan’s family and was investigating.

“The Ministry confirmed that, upon receiving the report, the relevant authorities immediately began search and investigation operations,”it said in the statement. “It also urges the public to obtain information from official sources and to refrain from spreading malicious rumors or misleading news aimed at causing confusion in society.”

Dubai, the UAE’s largest and most international city, quickly became a popular destination for Israeli travelers after the normalization agreement in 2020, the first with Arab countries in a series known as the Abraham Accords. But Israel has officially warned against non-essential travel to the country during the Israel-Hamas war and has advised Israelis living there to remain on high alert.

Chabad representatives and outposts, in some locations the most identifiably Jewish targets, have faced threats before. Police in Greece said last year that they had foiled a planned attack against the Chabad center in Athens; the suspects in that case had ties to Iran. In 2019, a gunman in Poway, California, opened fire at a Chabad center, killing one and injuring the rabbi.

Six people, including the rabbi and his wife, were killed when terrorists attacked the Chabad center in Mumbai, India, in 2008.

Kogan’s wife, who joined him in the UAE, is reportedly the niece of the rabbi murdered in Mumbai.

In 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted in southern Italy, burying the nearby Roman city of Pompeii in scalding stone and ash. The catastrophe famously entombed, and preserved, the city’s villas, workshops, and a gladiator barracks known as the Caserma dei Gladiatori.

Excavators first unearthed the barracks in the late 1700s. Among the ruins they found a bronze helmet, with a circular brim, a griffin rising from its crest, and on its forehead, a palm tree — then a symbol tied to Jews in the Roman province of Judea.

But was the helmet worn by a Jewish gladiator? Did Jewish gladiators even exist? 

It’s at least as likely that Jews took to the arena in ancient Rome as it was that gladiators fought sharks, a key plot point of Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” the hotly anticipated action movie that landed in theaters this weekend. A sequel to 2000’s “Gladiator,” which ended with the death of Maximus (Russell Crowe), “Gladiator II” casts no light on the possible history of Jewish gladiators; its strongest Jewish connections are the presence of Jewish actors, including Israelis Lior Raz and Yuval Gonen and former “Great British Baking Show” host Matt Lucas, in its cast. They join Kirk Douglas, who starred in 1960’s “Spartacus,” in the ranks of Jews who have portrayed gladiators on screen.

But many have occupied themselves with questions about the role of Jews in ancient Rome’s famous bloodsport, including whether fights took place in ancient Israel and what Jews thought about the activity, whether or not they participated. Here’s what the scholars and evidence have to say.

Did gladiator battles take place in ancient Israel?

Public spectacles, including games and gladiatorial battles, were a central part of Roman life. Rome’s Jewish client king of Judea, Herod the Great, built several amphitheaters to host games in the province during his reign in the 1st century BCE, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, writing around a century after Herod’s reign. Two of the amphitheaters were in the area of Jerusalem, and have not been located by archaeologists, but the third, in Caesarea, still exists.

The amphitheaters in Jerusalem hosted games including foot-races, boxing and discus throwing, according to researcher Loren Spielman, an associate professor in Judaic studies at Portland State University who has written about Jewish entertainment in the ancient world and published a book in 2020 on the subject.

Josephus said Herod’s Jerusalem events also included “live beast shows” and public executions, but gladiators are “conspicuously absent” in Josephus’ account, Spielman said in a 2012 paper. Josephus criticized the spectacles, saying they were unwelcome with the Jewish audience, “foreign to Jewish custom,” and “a glaring impiety to throw men to wild beasts.”

“The omission of armed battle between single gladiators at Herod’s games may have been a concession to the delicate sensibilities of Herod’s Jewish subjects, though it is difficult to say this with any certainty,” Spielman wrote.

Spielman said that, despite Josephus’ disgust at the violence, Jewish attitudes toward Roman entertainment was “probably more complex.” Julius Caesar gave Jewish high priest Hyrcanus II, and his sons and ambassadors, the right to sit with Roman senators at gladiator bouts and beast shows, he wrote.

Despite the lack of evidence for gladiators in Jerusalem, in Caesarea, there were gladiator bouts, according to Lawrence Schiffman of New York University. Schiffman is a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jews in the Greco-Roman world who recently finished a three-year project on Caesarea. (The area today is known for its well preserved ruins and for being the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)

“It’s pretty clear from Josephus and from the archaeology” that gladiators fought in Caesarea, Schiffman said. Caesarea had a more pagan population than Jerusalem, but was still home to a sizable Jewish community, he said, adding that he doubts many Jews attend gladiatorial fights there.

“I think anyone who believes large numbers of Jews went to a game to watch people killed, as opposed to sports games where they did pagan rituals, something like that, I think it’s got to be small, and I admit to you that that’s a judgment call,” he said.

What did Jews think about gladiator bouts?

Jews had a complex and rocky relationship with ancient Rome, which went through several iterations in its rise and fall, from the early republic to its later schism between east and west. The Romans dominated Judea from 63 BCE, resulting in two Jewish rebellions. Most salient to Jews is the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

Schiffman said the Jewish religious practice was generally tolerated in the empire, however, and that the rebellions were more political, related to issues like taxation, incompetent governance and insensitivity. Estimates of the Jewish population in the empire range from 4.5 to 10 million, which would have made them around 10% of the population, but the figure is disputed.

Jews likely had more compunctions about witnessing bloodshed for entertainment than their pagan neighbors due to religious morals, Schiffman said, adding that gaps between monotheistic religions and pagans were wider than gaps between different religious groups today.

“Jews valued life as something very sacred and that’s why Josephus reports that people were horrified by seeing people thrown to wild beasts for entertainment,” said Richard Hidary, a Yeshiva University professor who published a book on rabbis and the Talmud in the Roman world. 

Many gladiators were not actually killed in combat due to their value as entertainers, however, potentially making the games more palatable for ancient Jews. 

“If you had gladiatorial combat when no one was getting killed, you can say, ‘Why not go?” Schiffman said.

The games also featured other contests, such as chariot races. Jews likely attended these games, although their attendance was complicated by pagan rituals that took place at the arena. The rituals were looked down on by Jewish religious authorities, but that did not rule out Jewish spectators.

“For a person to go to the arena to watch chariot races when there’s going to be pagan rituals done at the beginning, he sits there and talks to his friends while it’s going on,” Schiffman said. “If Yankee stadium had prayers mentioning Jesus at the beginning of the game, of course Jews would go.”

Hidary said rabbis debated watching the games in the Jerusalem Talmud. One rabbi held that watching the games was prohibited due to idolatry because of sacrifices and pagan prayers at the beginning. Another said it was fine to attend if “you come late and skip that part,” while another held that paying for an entrance fee contributed to bloodshed, Hidary said.

Other rabbis saw benefits in attending the games. The spectacles gave the public a forum to air grievances to officials in attendance, and if Jews partook, they could benefit the community by joining calls for better treatment or lower taxes. Another rabbi said it was permitted to attend because “you can cry out to save the life of the loser,” Hidary said. 

“If the Jew goes and he tries to save someone’s life, that’s a good thing,” Hidary said.

If a combatant was killed, witnesses were also needed to attest to that fact that he was dead so his wife could remarry, so witnessing the death could be construed as fulfilling a mitzvah, or religious commandment.

While there was no straight answer on whether it was permissible to attend, the discourse indicates Jews were going.

“What you do see is, for sure, many Jews were going to the stadium. And so they were going no matter what. This was entertainment and the rabbis are trying to deal with this, like should we prohibit it? Discourage it? Are they even going to listen?” Hidary said.

A large Jewish population lived in the empire outside Judea, and Jews in the diaspora also likely attended games, in Rome, for example, although there is no direct evidence, Hidary said. 

“You can probably assume that they were doing whatever most people were doing,” he said. “If Jews in Israel are going to games, even all the more so Jews in Rome, who are probably more assimilated.”

But were there Jewish gladiators?

The helmet found in Pompeii’s gladiator training grounds, now housed in a Naples archaeological museum, features a seven-frond palm tree weighted down with dates above its wide brim and metal gratings that protected the fighter’s eyes. The two-horned griffin on the helmet’s crest appears to screech down at the tree.

Samuele Rocca, an Israeli-Italian researcher at Ariel University in the West Bank, has argued that the palm tree relief was specific to Jewish culture at the time and was likely worn by a Jewish combatant. Similar images appear on coins made in Judea at the time, for example.

Israeli academic Haggai Olshanetsky argued that the evidence for Jewish gladiators was “inconclusive” in a 2023 paper in the archaeological journal Atiqot. 

“If there were such Jewish gladiators, they were very few,” he wrote, adding that if Jews were combatants in the games, they would have been more inclined to battle beasts than other men.

In the original “Gladiator” film, Crowe plays Maximus, a Roman general who is enslaved, made a gladiator, and rises to fame in the Roman Colosseum. Olshanetsky distinguishes between slaves and prisoners sentenced to death in the arena, and professional gladiators, who were well-funded athletes, similar to professional NFL players. (Today, football can be complicated for some Jews who view the game’s play as dangerous and akin to the senseless violence that the ancient rabbis prohibited.) 

Hard evidence for Jews in the arena is “limited to those sentenced to death,” Olshanetsky wrote, mainly those sentenced after Jewish revolts against Roman rule. The Jews in these cases fought animals, or each other, to the death, he wrote, citing Josephus. 

Schiffman pointed out that there were Jewish warriors who were captured by the Romans and brought to Rome as slaves, “so there could have been more trained warrior types” of Jews in the Eternal City.

For the Pompeii helmet, Olshanetsky argues the palm frond was linked to other cultures including the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Christians, while the griffin was a pagan symbol, according to some Jews at the time. The palm frond was also a symbol of victory and is found on other artifacts, such as gladiator’s graves.

Besides the helmet, there are other suggestions of Jewish gladiators. A first-century book describes “a man of the Jewish race who was of greater stature than the tallest German” in a procession ahead of Roman games, but does not state unequivocally that the man was a gladiator.

Reish Lakish, a famous rabbi in Judea in the third century CE, may have been a gladiator before turning to Torah. The Babylonian Talmud says he sold himself to the “ludim,” a term some scholars have associated with gladiators, but Olshanetsky argues the translation is unclear, and that other mentions of Reish Lakish refer to him as a brigand before he became religious. 

Spielman said graffiti that shows a “crude drawing of gladiators” from a tomb for Jewish man named Germanos, son of Isaac, in the catacombs of Beit She’arim, a Jewish archaeological site in today’s northern Israel, may suggest a Jewish gladiator was buried there, but the link is also inconclusive. He also noted that “the Colosseum itself was funded largely by the spoils from the Jewish Revolt.”

Olshanetsky argues the best evidence of a Jewish gladiator is the story of a Roman senator named Glabrio who lived in the first century CE. A text from more than a hundred years later says Glabrio and others were charged with atheism, “a charge on which many others who drifted into the Jewish ways were condemned.” Glabrio was sentenced to battle a lion as a gladiator and “dispatched the lion with the most accurate aim.” Olshanetsky says Glabrio likely practiced some aspects of Judaism, or converted, but says the account is made murky by the conversion and conflicting textual evidence.

Hidary said the Talmud discusses people selling themselves to become gladiators, and whether the community should raise money to rescue them. As with many debates preserved in the Talmud, the very discussion indicates that the question, at least, was real.

“They wanted to discourage people from doing it but if they did, they would end up raising money to get them out of there. But we do see this was one path that people took when they were pressed for money, they would become a gladiator,” he said.

Schiffman said the evidence was “scanty.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that there were some. But having said that, there is no evidence that there ever was one,” he said.

For the director of “Gladiator II,” no evidence to the contrary is justification enough to introduce characters and scenarios to the arena. Asked about whether the $200 million production was historically accurate, Scott reportedly said, “The short answer to that is, were you there?” Consider that an invitation to look for a Jewish gladiator in “Gladiator III” — which is already in the works.

She claimed Auschwitz was just a work camp, not a death camp, and that nobody had been gassed to death there.

She challenged a German court to prove that the Nazis committed mass murder, and declared on TV that the Holocaust was “the biggest and most sustainable lie in history.”

She spent years in prison, as an elderly widow, for lying about the Holocaust, and was deemed the “Nazi grandma” by German media.

On Wednesday, Ursula Haverbeck, one of Germany’s most infamous Holocaust deniers and a hero of the country’s far-right and neo-Nazi movement, died while awaiting her latest prison term. She was 96.

Her antics, particularly in the last two decades of her life, brought shame to many Germans and helped keep Holocaust denialism from being completely snuffed out of public life there. She routinely flaunted national laws designed to keep citizens like herself from denying or downplaying the atrocity of the Jewish genocide.

“We won’t have any impact on you with words,” one German judge, Lisa Jani, announced during one such 2022 sentencing of Haverbeck. In explaining why a prison term was necessary for the nonagenarian, Jani said the defendant had “strayed miles from the historical truth” and “damaged the memories of millions of murdered people.”

“She is a lost cause,” Magistrate Bjoern Joensson, who issued an earlier sentence against Haverbeck, said about her in 2015, according to German news agency Deutsche Welle. He added that it was “deplorable that this woman, who is still so active given her age, uses her energy to spread such hair-raising nonsense.”

Born in 1928, Haverbeck married Werner Georg Haverbeck, a former Nazi officer nearly two decades her senior. Ursula largely stayed in her husband’s shadow until his death in 1999, after which she began publishing writings and other work glorifying him and the Nazis and questioning the historical record on the Holocaust.

She was first convicted and fined in 2004 for such writings; many more convictions followed. At a highly publicized 2015 trial of an Auschwitz guard, Haverbeck stood outside the courtroom and went on TV to deny that Auschwitz had ever been a death camp. She also challenged the court to prove that people had been murdered there, leading to her being sentenced to 10 months in jail.

More such sentences followed, the longest — for more than two years — coming after magazine articles Haverbeck published in 2016. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to appeal her sentence, Haverbeck initially failed to show up for her sentencing date in 2018. She was finally arrested and served the time, running for a seat in the European Parliament under the auspices of a fringe far-right party while behind bars.

Even then, Haverbeck continued to spread denialism and face heavy legal consequences. Her latest conviction for incitement came just this past June. She was sentenced to a year and four months in prison for her lies about Auschwitz and died while appealing the ruling.

As Haverbeck spread lies throughout the last years of her life, German society was shifting further to the right. Far-right ultra-nationalist parties, who have promoted messages of German pride and argued that Germans should no longer have to feel guilty about the Holocaust, have gained more seats in parliament; celebrity politicians have made waves for inciting comments, including employing banned Nazi phrases. 

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Happy Friday! In this week’s Jewish Sport Report, we profile Orthodox college football player Sam Salz, invite you to an exciting Jewish sports event next month and share hall of fame updates across multiple sports.

Let’s dive right in.

Inside Orthodox player Sam Salz’s historic college football debut — and his improbable path to the SEC

Before Nov. 16, Sam Salz had never played a snap of organized football. The 5-foot-6, 160-pound wide receiver grew up attending an Orthodox day school in Philadelphia that didn’t have a football team.

But last Saturday night, Salz took the field for the first time with the Texas A&M Aggies, the No. 15-ranked team in Division I and a decorated program that plays in the elite Southeastern Conference.

Salz walked me through his first taste of football, and what it meant to hear his name called for a play as the Aggies routed New Mexico State 38-3.

“There’s probably a Jewish kid, and maybe even especially an Orthodox kid, who wants to play football, or wants to play sports, and is sitting somewhere confused about what he should do, or who’s told that he’ll never be able to do it,” Salz said. “Even getting to see me run down on that field, successful play or not, could have given him all the hope that he wanted.”

Click here for Salz’s remarkable story.

Halftime report

COOPERSTOWN CALLING? Longtime second baseman and former Team Israel player-turned-manager Ian Kinsler is on the 2025 MLB Hall of Fame ballot, making him the first Jewish player to make the ballot since Kevin Youkilis in 2019. Kinsler is a 4-time All-Star, two-time Gold Glove winner and 2018 World Series champion. Getting on the ballot is itself an accomplishment — even if his chances at making it to Cooperstown alongside the likes of fellow first-balloteer Ichiro Suzuki appear slim.

DEFLATED. One prominent Jew who will definitely not be enshrined in a hall of fame in 2025 is New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who, according to ESPN, was not selected for the 2025 class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Kraft, one of the league’s most influential owners and a six-time Super Bowl winner, failed to advance out of the hall’s nomination committee for the 13th time. Ralph Hay, a co-founder of the NFL, was chosen instead.

HONORED. More on halls of fame! Former NHL star Mathieu Schneider was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in New York last weekend. Schneider, who scored 223 goals across 21 seasons in the league, said being a Jewish pro athlete “meant an awful lot to me.”

LISTEN TO THIS. U.S. rugby bronze medalist Sarah Levy appeared on the Women of Reform Judaim’s “Just For This” podcast, which highlights women in leadership positions. Check out the interview here, and for a refresher, here’s our profile of Levy from this past summer.

HOLDING COURT. The Israel Tennis and Education Centers Foundation raised half a million dollars at a fundraiser Tuesday in New York City to benefit the organization’s work supporting Israeli children across socioeconomic and religious backgrounds. The ITEC, which has more than 200 courts across Israel, has expanded its work since Oct. 7, 2023.

Jews in sports to watch this weekend (all times ET)

🏒 IN HOCKEY…

Jakob Chychrun and the Washington Capitals host Jack and Luke Hughes and the New Jersey Devils Saturday at 7 p.m. Jason Zucker — who scored his 200th career goal Wednesday — and the Buffalo Sabres face Jake Walman, Luke Kunin and the San Jose Sharks Saturday at 8 p.m. Zach Hyman and the Edmonton Oilers host Adam Fox and the New York Rangers Saturday at 10 p.m.

🏈 IN FOOTBALL…

Michael Dunn’s Cleveland Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-19 last night on “Thursday Night Football.” In the NCAA, Jake Retzlaff and No. 14 BYU face No. 21 Arizona State Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Sam Salz and Texas A&M play Auburn Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

⚽ IN SOCCER…

Daniel Edelman and the New York Red Bulls face their crosstown rivals, New York City F.C., at Citi Field in the MLS conference semifinals on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. In European soccer, Matt Turner and his Premier League club Crystal Palace play Aston Villa Saturday at 10 a.m., and one level down, in the Championship, Manor Solomon and Leeds United take on Swansea Sunday at 10 a.m.

🏀 IN BASKETBALL…

Deni Avdija and the Portland Trail Blazers face the Houston Rockets tonight at 8 p.m. in the NBA Cup and Saturday at 8 p.m. in regular season play. Domantas Sabonis, who is converting to Judaism, and the Sacramento Kings play the Los Angeles Clippers tonight at 10:30 p.m. in the NBA Cup and host the Brooklyn Nets Sunday at 9 p.m. in regular play.

⛳ IN GOLF…

Daniel Berger is competing in the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic tournament this weekend in Georgia.

🏎 IN RACING…

Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll will be on the grid this weekend at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Lights out at 1 a.m. on Sunday.

Join us for an online event to mark the 75th anniversary of a remarkable Jewish basketball championship

On Dec. 10 at 8 p.m. ET, I will sit down (virtually) with Matthew Goodman, author of “The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team,” to discuss the 75th anniversary of the City College of New York’s extraordinary 1949-50 basketball championship — and the point-shaving scandal that rocked the sport in its aftermath.

The CUNY Beavers, a team made up entirely of Jewish and African-American players at a time when the NBA was still segregated, became the only team in history to win the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year.

Click here for more information and to register for our free online event.

Pam Bondi, whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to be his attorney general, said last year that campus protesters who express support for Hamas should face FBI questioning.

Trump named Bondi, who served as Florida attorney general from 2011 to 2019, on Thursday. The nomination came after his first pick, the scandal-plagued  former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew following meetings with Republican senators, who apparently made clear that allegations of sexual predation and drug use , which he has denied, would bury him.

Bondi’s confirmation process is expected to face fewer hurdles.

On Friday, Jewish Insider uncovered an interview Bondi gave Newsmax, the conservative news outlet, last year about the spike in anti-Israel protests on American campuses following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which sparked Israel’s multi-front war.

“The thing that really was troubling to me, these students in universities in our country — whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas — and they’re out there saying, ‘I support Hamas,'” she said in the Oct. 23, 2023, interview. “Frankly, they need to be taken out of our country, or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away when they’re saying, ‘I support Hamas. I am Hamas.’ That’s not saying I support all these poor Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza.”

A number of protests in the weeks after the attacks included people who praised the attacks, although most of the protesters focused on condemning Israel’s counterattacks and on the suffering of Gaza Palestinians. Over the past year-plus, some hardline pro-Palestinian activists have continued to evince support for Hamas.

The Republican Party platform, released in July, calls for the deportation of noncitizens who back Hamas and terrorism, and pledges to “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.” Trump and his advisers have also called for deporting foreign students who organize pro-Hamas protests.

The platform does not recommend the investigation of Americans who express rhetorical support for the terrorist group, as Bondi did in her interview, a path that could trigger First Amendment challenges.

Bondi, one of Trump’s earliest and most steadfast backers in his bid for the presidency, advised him during his first impeachment proceedings. She has a record of pro-Israel statements, lining her up with most of Trump’s other cabinet picks, though she has also lobbied for Qatar’s government, according to Semafor.

Some Jewish Republicans were wary of Gaetz because he voted earlier this year against emergency defense assistance for Israel and also opposed a bill that would codify an official definition of antisemitism, and invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union address.

It’s clear from Ritchie Torres’ social media that he spends a lot of time thinking about Israel.

But now, the Democratic congressman from the Bronx may have another locale on his mind: Albany.

In the weeks after Election Day, Torres, an outspoken pro-Israel advocate, has signaled that he may challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul in a primary in 2026.

“Kathy Hochul is the new Joe Biden,” he tweeted Friday morning. “She may be in denial about the depth of her vulnerabilities as a Democratic nominee. A Democratic incumbent who is less popular in New York than Donald Trump is in grave danger of losing to a Republican in 2026–an outcome not seen in 30 years.”

Torres added, “Let’s avoid repeating history and avoid sleepwalking toward impending disaster and defeat. ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’”

Torres’ comments come as Democrats nationwide and in New York are smarting, and recalibrating, following a Republican sweep of the White House, House of Representatives and Senate. President-elect Donald Trump also made substantial gains in New York City and State. As the political world begins to think about 2026 — still two years away — Hochul could be vulnerable. She has a record-low approval rating of 39%, according to a recent Siena College poll, and fought off a surprisingly close challenge from Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin in 2022.

Torres — who won reelection in his deep blue district — has criticized the far left in the wake of the campaign, during which he stumped for Kamala Harris in front of Jewish audiences, but hasn’t definitively said that he’s in the 2026 race. When asked whether he is running for governor, a spokesperson for Torres told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency over text, “The Congressman has yet to make a final decision regarding his future.”

“I’ve made no final decision as to where my future lies, but I’m concerned about the crisis of governance we have in New York State and New York City,” Torres told Spectrum News New York 1. “We have a leadership crisis in America and nowhere is it more profound than in New York.”

On Friday morning, Torres told Politico’s New York Playbook newsletter that he plans to embark on a “listening tour” of New York and “and find out about the needs of New York state.”

Torres, 36, assumed congressional office in 2021 after serving on the New York City Council for seven years, where he was the first openly gay candidate from the Bronx elected to the office. A moderate Democrat — Torres parted ways with the Congressional Progressive Caucus February — he is known for his pro-Israel politics and for his advocacy against antisemitism.

In Nov. 2023, Torres spoke at the March for Israel in Washington, D.C. and in March, he went to Israel to visit the sites of the Oct. 7 massacres. He is a kind of local celebrity at SAR Academy, a Jewish day school in Riverdale that he has visited multiple times over the past few years. He also traveled to Israel with the school’s principal on a Jewish Community Relations Council trip.

His office has been hit with anti-Israel vandalism. In a speech in January, he said pro-Palestinian protests immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack reminded him of “when the public mobs of Jim Crow would openly celebrate the lynching of African Americans.”

In June, he mocked a covert Israeli campaign to sway him and other Black Democratic U.S. lawmakers to be pro-Israel.

“If you think I need to be ‘influenced’ to be pro-Israel, then please see a doctor because your brain might be rotting,” he wrote on X. He then issued a rare criticism of Israeli conduct.

“The blithering idiots behind this embarrassing operation should be fired for gross incompetence,” Torres wrote. “A foreign influence operation that singles out Black Congressional Democrats is racist. There’s no correlation at all between race and Israel in the United States Congress.”

Torres also told Politico Friday that others have suggested he could run for New York City mayor, given Mayor Eric Adams’ scandal-plagued tenure.

Though no one has yet declared a candidacy for governor in 2026, another standout pro-Israel congressman, Republican Mike Lawler, from Rockland County, has also recently weighed a bid for the position. Torres and Lawler together introduced a bill in April to place monitors on college campuses to address antisemitism.

Zeldin, the 2022 Republican candidate, who is Jewish, was recently tapped by Trump to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

For decades a museum of Jewish art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, held the remains of several unidentified Holocaust victims in its collection.

But last week the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art took steps to give those remains a proper home, by burying and holding a Jewish funeral for them.

“We are committed to preserving history in a way that respects human dignity,” Sofia Thornblad, the museum’s chief curator, told local news organizations. “This burial is a testament to our dedication to honoring the memories of Holocaust victims and educating future generations about the importance of remembrance and ethical stewardship.”

The museum said the remains likely dated back to before the year 2000, when it was more common for museums to accept human remains into their collections. Shifting priorities in the museum space have led to a reexamination of such practices. The Tulsa museum also includes an extensive collection of Holocaust-era artifacts donated by Jewish Oklahomans, including refugees from Nazi Germany.

Thornblad said the museum was “unable” to perform any DNA testing that might have revealed the identities of the remains, but said that they had originally come from the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. (Jewish groups including Operation Benjamin have invested considerable resources as of late into identifying and reburying World War II-era Jewish remains.)

The Tulsa museum isn’t the only one to have taken steps to bury remains of Holocaust victims in its collection. In 2019 the Rockland Holocaust Museum and Center for Tolerance and Education, in Rockland, New York, announced it would hold a proper Jewish funeral for the ashes of victims of the Chelmno death camp it had recently discovered in its collection. The ashes had been donated in 2006 by a Holocaust survivor who’d gathered dirt from the camp, apparently without realizing it held the ashes of others.

The same year, the Imperial War Museum in London also announced it had the remains of several Jewish death camp victims in its collection and would be giving them a Jewish funeral. The remains of five adults and a child, all murdered at Auschwitz, were donated in 1997 by a private donor; the museum’s decision to bury them on English soil marked the first time that Holocaust victims had been laid to rest in the United Kingdom, according to Museums Journal.

The question of what to do with human remains has vexed museums in recent years, particularly when it comes to Native American remains. Decades after passage of a law urging tribal remains to be returned to their descendants, many museums had yet to act on their own collections, according to a ProPublica investigation last year.

Those present at the Tulsa funeral last Thursday, held at a Jewish cemetery, included local rabbis, an archaeologist, and local descendants of Holocaust survivors. Thornblad was among those who took turns shoveling dirt into the grave, in accordance with Jewish custom.

The Jewish people have long taken pride in their moniker, People of the Book. But Jews are also people who dance — and not just at weddings and bar or bat mitzvahs, or on holidays like Simchat Torah.

Like many other communities, Jews dance to foster and build community, and to come together for spiritual, social and recreational occasions. They dance to express unity and individuality, their peoplehood and creativity. Simply put, they dance to belong.

An illuminating exhibit at the venerable 92nd Street Y, New York  — which has been celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, rebranded as 92NY — explores the Jewish community’s rich movement traditions. Drawing upon 92NY’s extensive archive of photos, programs, posters and more, “Dance to Belong” tells the story of the vibrant and creative community Jews built and uplifted  through dance.

Among the many treasures on view are a 1915 photo depicting a dance class with lines of women clad in white tunics, their arms waving, a la Isadora Duncan; a 1940 poster advertising an evening by ballet and Broadway choreographer Agnes de Mille, featuring maverick modern dancer Sybil Shearer; and a 1943 playbill for a concert starring flamenco greats La Argentinita and Jose Greco.

“I was asked by Jody Arnhold, who is the chairwoman of the board [of 92NY], to curate a show on the 150th anniversary that would celebrate dance at the Y,” said cultural historian Ninotchka Bennahum, a professor of theater and dance at University of California Santa Barbara and a co-curator of the exhibit. “I knew that the Y was a social justice warrior [in] its commitment to working artists, to Jewish dance artists, to BIPOC artists, to immigrant artists. It was a 150-year story.”

Dance has been part and parcel of 92NY since it opened its doors in 1874 as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, founded by a group of German Jewish businessmen to serve the social and spiritual needs of the burgeoning American Jewish community. First located on West 21st Street, then 42nd Street, the organization moved uptown several times to 65th Street in 1899, then 92nd and Lexington the next year. In 1930, the current digs at 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue opened.

According to Bennahum, 92NY became an essential meeting space because Jewish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, like Jews today, weren’t necessarily affiliated with synagogues or other Jewish organizations, nor did they always speak the same language or come from the same socio-economic class. The 92NY served as a crossroads for Jews across religious, national, economic and social identities.

“Think of the people coming [to New York], not speaking English, feeling that they live in translation,” Bennahum said. “What do we carry with us in our body? Dance is shelter … which required no translation.”

“We’re talking about Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Mizrahi Jews meeting in intercultural exchanges, or, in the words of [dance scholar] Hannah Kosstrin, who calls these many intercultural exchanges ‘kinesthetic peoplehood,’ the migration of Jewish cultures and people — Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Israeli, American, Palestinian, Turkish — from the Sefarad and Eastern Europe to the U.S.,” she added.

In addition to providing New York’s Jews a place to dance socially, 92NY offered its stages and studios to a cadre of early modern dancers. The Harkness Dance Center, which opened at 92NY in 1935, became a prime space where eminent modern dancers including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Paul Taylor presented their works. Furthermore, when doors were closed to African-American, Asian-American, Latinx and Native American dance artists, 92NY welcomed them.

The exhibit, which opened in March and is on display in the Kaufmann Concert Hall lobby and adjacent Weill Art Gallery through Dec. 31, traces the myriad ways dance has shaped the venerable cultural institution. Featuring video panels designed by Jeanne Haffner of Thinc Design, “Dance to Belong” moves across five major themes. The first focuses on education and community building, and includes photos of children’s classes; senior adults standing at a ballet barre, legs lifted; and Israeli folk dance sessions led by Fred Berk, founder of the Y’s Jewish dance division in 1951, who introduced Israeli folk dance to Jewish communities across the U.S.

Other sections include “Black Moderns,” which spotlights the 1960 premiere of a then-unknown multi-racial company helmed by the now-renowned Alvin Ailey, whose choreography examined challenges of being Black in America, and “Dance As Political Manifesto,” which traces how Eastern European Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side used dance and choreography as protest, and how successive generations followed suit.

Dance continues to thrive and evolve at 92NY; upcoming performances include former street-dance krumper-turned-ballet dancer Babatunji Johnson on Dec. 14 and, on Jan. 11-12, 2025, “A Dance of Hope” from Carolyn Dorfman Dance that draws upon Dorfman’s “rich Jewish legacy.”

“This exhibit confirms the Y’s longevity and significance of community-based dancing not as something tertiary, but as something primary,” Bennahum said of “Dance to Belong,” emphasizing that the institution has “creat[ed] a continuous space for dance in always giving sanctuary to contemporary artists, in believing in Jewish dance artists and in believing in all artists.”

“Dance to Belong” is on view at the Milton J. Weill Art Gallery and the Kaufmann Concert Hall lobby at the 92nd Street Y (1395 Lexington Ave.) through Dec. 31. Admission is free.