This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

For the past 643 consecutive days (and counting), Eden Agulnik has devoted 10 minutes a day to the language learning app Duolingo. On her phone or computer, Agulnik, a high school senior in Toronto, translates sentences from English to Hebrew, matches new Hebrew vocabulary to English words and practices verb conjugations. 

“I’m on a high daily streak, and just want to finish” the course, said Agulnik, who is on unit nine of 28.

Agulnik first downloaded the app as a way to supplement the Hebrew instruction she received at her Jewish day school. She is one of the more than 1.7 million other people who use Duolingo to learn Hebrew — including around 100,000 teens under the age of 18, according to a Duolingo spokesperson. Agulnik, like the other teens JTA spoke to, uses Duolingo not to start Hebrew learning from scratch, but rather to improve on existing knowledge from synagogue, Hebrew school or home.

Duolingo’s popularity — and debates surrounding its effectiveness — can partly be attributed to its gamified approach to language learning: Users earn “XP” (experience points) for completing lessons under a certain time; are ranked on competitive leaderboards, called “leagues,” based on the number of lessons they complete, and accumulate “streaks” when they complete lessons over many consecutive days. 

For Agulnik and other teens who use Duolingo or similar language learning apps including Babbel and Rosetta Stone, these features can help ensure commitment. But the overall appeal of these language apps is that they offer a free, readily accessible way to engage with Hebrew when their school or synagogue doesn’t offer enough instruction. 

Beatrice Olivetti attended a private Jewish day school in Turin, Italy through elementary and middle school, but is now a student at a public high school that doesn’t have a Hebrew language program. Before turning to Duolingo, Olivetti explored several options. 

“At first, I joined a group of adults in the Jewish community in Turin, which didn’t work for me because that wasn’t right for a 14-year-old girl, “said Olivetti. “Afterwards, I tried online lessons for teenagers all around Italy. But the problem there was that we all had different levels.”

Olivetti has now been using Duolingo for two years, though as a self-described “lazy” user, she has not kept up a streak. And while she doesn’t believe it’s as effective as more traditional lessons, she has found it helpful. 

“I don’t know about improvements, but I’m not afraid of losing my knowledge of the language as I was two or three years ago,” said Olivetti. 

The Pittsburgh-based Duolingo has published several studies on the efficacy of its program, and claims that five units on Duolingo French or Duolingo Spanish is roughly equivalent to the same amount of semesters of university language instruction.

However, Or Rogovin, a professor of Hebrew at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, doubts that the same can be said of the Duolingo Hebrew course, in particular because the course offers very little explicit grammatical explanations.

“Duolingo and other programs were not developed for Hebrew, they started with Spanish. And what works well for Spanish doesn’t work well for Hebrew,” said Rogovin. “Hebrew grammar is so different [from] English grammar or Spanish grammar — it’s so different conceptually — that there’s no way to acquire Hebrew without an actual grammatical explanation. This does not mean that you can’t study it online, but you can’t do it on Duolingo.” 

But other Hebrew educators see it differently. As the director of the Modern Hebrew Language Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Joseph Benatov supports the use of Duolingo, and other similar online resources, as one part of a more extensive curriculum, such as the one he has built for his college students.

“We have a combination of quizzes, longer, more traditional exams [and also] various sorts of more modern assignments, where students need to either create a TikTok or something else that has to do with social media, but in Hebrew — so it’s very varied,” said Benatov.

And though Duolingo is the most popular language learning app worldwide, according to Statista, it’s not the only resource teens are using for Hebrew education.

On YouTube, the Piece of Hebrew channel has around 40,000 subscribers. Co-creator Doron Shafat noticed while teaching on iTalk — a virtual language tutoring platform — that students often struggled with less formal, more conversational Hebrew. In 2020, Doron began uploading videos in Hebrew designed to help intermediate learners. 

“I try to give [viewers] insight into specific words or phrases they need to know, and about Israeli culture. There can be things that are obvious to me as an Israeli, but I know they’re not obvious to an American,” said Shafat.

Thanks to the rise of Duolingo, iTalk and Hebrew-learning YouTube channels, Doron now believes that it’s possible to learn Hebrew independently, even without formal instruction or immersion in a Hebrew-speaking environment. 

“It is much more possible in comparison to the past, because nowadays you have an enormous quantity of resources to learn — and I think that’s the most important thing. To [learn] a language is to consume as much content as possible, even if you don’t get or understand the entire message,” said Doron. 

Doron has noticed two main types of people interested in his content and other online resources for learning Hebrew.

“It’s either Jews that have connections to Israel, or have family in Israel, or they want to do aliyah, or they already did aliyah —  that’s the biggest group,” said Doron, using the Hebrew term for immigrating to Israel. “The second group is people who are not Jews, but have affection to Israel or to Judaism for cultural reasons or for religious reasons — mainly Christians.” 

A Duolingo spokesperson noted that the most common motivation for Duolingo Hebrew users, according to their survey, are “connecting with people,” “fun” and “school.”

Paulina Gamel, a senior at Northwest Yeshiva High School in Seattle, began learning Duolingo in part to prepare for a seminary program in Israel she plans on attending next year. 

Gamel has Hebrew lessons in school, but has found that Duolingo can be even more effective for her than instruction in the classroom.

“I would say Duolingo [is more effective], just because I have a lot of distractions in class —  I’m sitting next to my best friend and not doing Hebrew all the time. If you just sit down and do Duolingo for 30 minutes a day, you accomplish a lot. It’s [been] such an easy way to keep up my Hebrew skills, as well as improve it. It’s a simple thing, and it helps me remember to do Hebrew every day,” said Gamel.

One of the main reasons Gamel has persisted with Duolingo — she’s now on a 50-day streak — is to deepen her connection with Judaism.

“It really helps me because I personally say tefillah [prayers] every day. And the more I learn Hebrew, the more I’m able to like [understand] the words that I’m saying. I think that’s helped bring me close to Judaism,” she said.

A Pennsylvania man will be charged with terrorism and attempted murder after allegedly firebombing the official residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro, hours after Shapiro and his family hosted a Passover seder there.

On Saturday, Shapiro posted a picture of a table set for the seder on social media, with the message, “From the Shapiro family’s Seder table to yours, happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach!”

On Sunday, he shared that Pennsylvania State Police officers had awoken him and his family at 2 a.m. to alert them that an arsonist had set fire to the building and they needed to evacuate. The family escaped unharmed and the fire was extinguished, but not before doing significant damage to the residence, including the reception room where the seder had been held.

Official photographs distributed by the state’s media service showed the charred pages of a Passover songbook, with English lyrics from the classic song “Chad Gadya” and the Israeli national anthem “Hatikvah” both visible.

After a short manhunt, police arrested Cody Balmer, a Harrisburg man who reportedly posted anti-Democrat content on social media. He is set to be charged with multiple felonies on Monday.

Shapiro decried political violence during a press conference on Sunday afternoon. While there was no immediate indication that Shapiro had been targeted because of his religion, he signaled defiance.

“If he was trying to terrorize our family, our friends, the Jewish community who joined us for a Passover seder in that room last night, hear me on this: We celebrated our faith last night proudly, and in a few hours we will celebrate our second seder of Passover,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro, who inaugurated his campaign for governor in 2022 with a video featuring his family’s Shabbat dinners, was a finalist for the vice presidential slot on the Democratic ticket last year. After Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz instead, some questioned whether Shapiro had been passed over because of antisemitism or over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war, which had caused critics to call him “Genocide Josh.” But he said he believed antisemitism played “no role” and that he was happy to remain in the governor’s spot, where he is popular. He is widely seen as a potential future presidential contender.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian protest leader arrested by ICE at Columbia University, can be deported, a federal immigration judge ruled Friday.

The ruling by Jamee Comans, a Louisiana immigration judge, is the most significant development in Khalil’s case since he was arrested in his apartment building almost exactly a month ago and accused by the Trump administration of being “aligned to Hamas.”

But it does not mean that Khalil will immediately be deported. His lawyers were given until April 23 to request a stay of his deportation, which they plan to seek, the Associated Press reported. A New Jersey federal judge has also temporarily halted his deportation.

Khalil’s arrest split Jewish groups. Some cheered the impending deportation of an activist who, they said, led a movement that harassed Jewish students and spread antisemitic messaging. Others expressed concern about infringements on due process and civil liberties. His protest galvanized protest across the country.

On Friday, Comans did not question the government’s argument that the administration may deport Khalil, who is a green card holder, on the grounds that he undermines U.S. policy goals, according to NPR.

The government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable,” Comans said, according to the Associated Press.

The decision comes after the federal government filed a memo signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which he stated that although Khalil’s behavior may have been lawful, his presence and activities in the country undermine “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”

Khalil’s detainment was the first in a succession of arrests of international students connected with pro-Palestinian activism. Although the Trump administration has framed the effort as part of their initiative to fight antisemitism on campuses, some Jewish organizations have expressed concerns about whether the crackdown could damage free speech.

Following the ruling, Khalil said in court, “I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.”

If he is deported, Khalil would be sent to either Syria, where he was born, or to Algeria, where he has citizenship, according to NPR.

“Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent,” said Khalil’s attorney, Marc van der Hout, in a statement to ABC News. “This is not over, and our fight continues.”

David Sassoon, a former co-director of the couture house Belville Sassoon which designed over 70 outfits for Princess Diana, has died at 92.

His death was confirmed to Women’s Wear Daily by fellow designer Zandra Rhodes.

The designer was born in London in 1932 to Iraqi Sephardi Jewish parents and co-led Belville Sassoon for over five decades alongside his creative partner Belinda Bellville. Sassoon made a name for himself dressing the British royal family for decades, including some of Princess Diana’s most iconic looks, such as her 1981 wedding dress.

Sassoon’s work was a key part of what made Princess Diana into a “global style icon,” author Bethan Holt told Women’s Wear Daily. His groundbreaking designs were influenced in part by his Jewish heritage.

“Jewish traditions played an enormous part in the clothes I designed,” Sassoon said in a 2023 interview with The Guardian after his designs were featured in an exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands celebrating Jewish Londoners who shaped global style.

Sassoon stopped designing in the 2000’s and retired in 2012, according to InStyle. His cause of death was not announced.

Last Passover, Agam Berger marked the holiday in the small, dim room in Gaza where she was being held hostage. With her fellow soldier Liri Albag, she used a makeshift haggadah to recount the story of the ancient Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt.

Yarden Bibas, meanwhile, reminisced from where he was being held captive about the joyful celebration his family had once enjoyed, clinging to hope that he would be reunited with his wife and children by this year’s holiday.

All three were released during a two-month ceasefire earlier this year and are marking Passover’s arrival by calling for the dozens of hostages who remain in Gaza to be freed.

“While I will celebrate this holiday with my family, it won’t yet be full,” Berger wrote in an essay published in the Wall Street Journal. “There are 59 hostages still held in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. This is their second Passover in chains of iron. We can’t allow a third.”

Bibas returned to the devastating news that his wife and young sons had been murdered in captivity. “I am here and so thankful for this but am struggling to celebrate when I still haven’t processed what I have lost and when I know that David is still in a tunnel,” he wrote Friday on Instagram, referring to his best friend David Cunio, who remains a hostage.

The holiday arrives amid renewed fighting in Gaza and few signs of an impending deal that might result in the release of the remaining hostages. While President Donald Trump said on Thursday that negotiators were “getting closer” to such a deal, CNN reported this week that the pace of talks has slowed since Israeli officials retook the lead from U.S. officials.

Now, Jews worldwide are preparing to leave seats empty at their tables to symbolize the hostages’ plight, or share the stories of hostages during their seders, for the second straight year.

“Every abductee has a family that sits around the table on the night of the seder with tears in their eyes and a broken heart,” wrote Shir Siegel, whose father Keith was released in January, on Instagram as she encouraged others to set a place for a hostage.

“There are small things that families and friends do that will make them feel that they are not alone. And this is perhaps the greatest thing we can do for them,” she wrote, noting that her family would be setting a place for Nimrod Cohen, a soldier captured from his tank.

Cohen’s mother Viki is the illustrator behind a new children’s haggadah that incorporates symbols of individual hostages — the released, the living and the dead. It’s one of several projects meant to bring the stories of the hostages to the seder table, including a new haggadah produced by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main advocacy group for hostages and their families.

A haggadah produced annually by the Israeli artists collaborative Asufa, meanwhile, does not focus on the hostages but alludes quietly to them nonetheless, with two images of seder tables showing yellow chairs like those used in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and beyond to symbolize the hostages.

For dozens of families who learned since last Passover that their loved ones had been killed on Oct. 7 or in captivity, this year will be the first to mark the holiday with dashed hopes.

“How can we celebrate such a holiday while 133 people are still without their freedom, still waiting to be liberated?” the grandson of one such hostage, Chaim Peri, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last year. In June, Peri was revealed to have died in February; he was buried in Israeli in August after his body was retrieved.

“There’s something perverse about even going through the motions of celebrating a holiday of freedom from captivity when our only son is not free and is in the worst form of captivity that any of us can imagine. It feels completely inappropriate,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin said last year. Her son Hersh was killed in captivity in August.

This year, Goldberg-Polin spoke about Passover on a podcast hosted by Dan Senor. “I think this year there is one question and one question only, which is: Why are they still there?” she said.

She alluded to a tradition practiced by some Jews to flagellate themselves with green onions at the seder to mimic the whipping endured by the ancient Israelites.

“We have actually an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the seder, because the whole point of Passover is it is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we ever experienced,” Goldberg-Polin said. “And how can we do that this year when we know that there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive — alive and in the worst, most horrific bondage that we can picture? How?”

Two planes carrying members of Congress as well as the released Israeli hostages Keith and Aviva Siegel clipped wings on the taxiway at Reagan Washington National Airport on Thursday.

The two American Airlines jets were taxiing when their winglets came into contact at the Washington, D.C. airport. No injuries were reported on the planes.

Also on the planes were a number of U.S. representatives from New York and New Jersey, including Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat, and Ritchie Torres, perhaps the most outspoken pro-Israel Democrat in the House.

The Siegels, who were both taken hostage by Hamas, on Oct. 7, 2023, were on one of the planes, according to a social media post by Ynet News. Aviva was released in a November 2023 ceasefire and Keith, an American-Israeli, was released more than a year later, in the ceasefire that ended last month.

The couple have become vocal advocates for the release of the remaining hostages, and were visiting Washington D.C. in part to speak at the American Jewish Committee’s Washington diplomatic seder on Wednesday night ahead of Passover. In his remarks, Keith Siegel urged President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume negotiations and broker a deal to return the remaining 59 hostages, 24 of whom are thought to be alive.

“During my captivity, I spent most of my days longing for my family, wondering what they were enduring and how each day was unfolding for them,” Siegel said in his address. “Now, my greatest priority is to cherish every minute with them and to fight for the return of the 59 hostages who are still kept captive. I cannot begin to heal until all 59 hostages are home.”

The couple told Ynet that they were startled by the incident, “but are continuing the mission.”

A group of 27 Jewish organizations and synagogues have filed an amicus brief voicing their support for Rümeysa Öztürk, the detained Tufts University doctoral student, the latest in a string of Jewish voices objecting to her arrest.

The brief calls antisemitism a “persistent scourge” and says that fighting it is “laudable,” but adds, “arresting, detaining, and potentially deporting Öztürk does not assist in eradicating antisemitism.”

It continues, “The government instead appears to be exploiting Jewish Americans’ legitimate concerns about antisemitism as pretext for undermining core pillars of American democracy, the rule of law, and the fundamental rights of free speech and academic debate on which this nation was built.”.

Öztürk, a Turkish national and fifth-year doctoral student at Tufts, was arrested by ICE last month while walking on the street. Öztürk had written an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio Rubio defended her detention by arguing that she was a part of a student protest that was “creating a ruckus” and harassing students on campus.

Her detainment was one of a string arrests of pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses, including Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University who is set to have a pivotal court hearing Friday.

The Trump administration has also frozen hundreds of millions of dollars of funding from a string of elite universities. Hundreds of student visas have also been revoked; in many cases the administration has cited the international students’ pro-Palestinian activities and said the actions are part of its fight against antisemitism.

Jewish groups have increasingly voiced concerns about the campus crackdown and its implications for civil liberties. Öztürk’s arrest in particular has sparked objections, including from a pro-Israel student group at Tufts.

The amicus brief said the Trump administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on campuses recalled authoritarian regimes its signatories’ ancestors had left behind.

“To watch state authorities undermine the same fundamental rights that empowered so many Jewish Americans is chilling; to know it is being done in the name of the Jewish people is profoundly disturbing,” the brief stated.

Signatories included a range of liberal and progressive Jewish organizations, including the liberal Israel lobby J Street, the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, the progressive Jewish group Bend the Arc, the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and congregations in New York City, Los Angeles, the Boston area, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Oren Manor likes to boast that he was a Deni Avdija fan before it was cool. 

Manor, an Israeli sportswriter, has been following Avdija since he was a 16-year-old playing in Maccabi Tel Aviv’s youth program. He wasn’t surprised to see the small forward, now 24, have a breakout year this season with the Portland Trail Blazers. 

But now, Manor is far from alone on the Avdija bandwagon. As Avdija — the lone Israeli in the NBA — has one great game after another, Manor has gotten a laugh out of the lengths Israeli newspapers will go to highlight his success. 

“Every media group in Israel, sports or no sports, will have a daily headline about something Deni did,” he said. “‘Oh, you won’t believe the prestigious list Deni is on, click here.’ And then you go down, you find out he finished sixth in the voting for top player in the west in the month of February.”

Avdija’s season, however, is no joke — and neither is the Deni-mania sweeping Israel. For a nation at war, grappling with a hostage crisis and riven by protests, the success of a hometown boy, 7,000 miles away in Oregon, is something everyone can unite behind. 

“He is the story, and he’s a much bigger story now as his numbers are much, much bigger,” said Manor, who has lived in Portland for 15 years. “But he carries a very big weight on his shoulders, and his personal success with Israelis always translates to national pride. And when you’re at war, you want pride.”

To put Avdija’s numbers in context: Before joining the Trail Blazers, he had averaged a solid if unspectacular 9.8 points per game over his four seasons with the Washington Wizards. 

In his past 16 games, however, those stats have ballooned to 24.9 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. This season, he has had eight 30+ point performances and his first two career triple-doubles. Overall, he’s averaging a career high of 16.9 points per game this year. 

His success hasn’t saved Portland, which is due to miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year. But it has buoyed his Israeli and Israeli-American fans fans.

“As an Israeli basketball player, he’s the best I’ve seen, and many people think he’s going to be the greatest Israeli player of all time,” said Moshe Halickman, who covers basketball for the popular Sports Rabbi website. “He’s the top Israeli NBA player we ever had. Omri Casspi really did something big by being the first Israeli in the NBA, but Deni is turning into a star in the league.”

There are sportswriters like Manor, Halickman and the YouTuber Pini Barel, whose social media sometimes resembles an Avdija highlight reel. And then there are fans like Yaakov Tzedek, 32, of the coastal town of Or Akiva, who compensates for the 10-hour time difference between Israel and Portland by watching Avdija over an early breakfast. 

“I do watch all the Trail Blazers games, usually live or very close to live broadcasts,” said Tzedek — a commitment that entails turning on the game at 5 a.m. Tzedek, who runs a media company among other business ventures, also manages a Facebook page for Israeli fans of Avdija. 

“I actively follow the [Blazers], mainly because of Deni,” he said. “Honestly, it’s just really fun and exciting to watch. I wouldn’t say it’s life-changing, but it definitely brings a lot of pride to Israel and gives us some joyful, quiet moments — especially in a year like this, when things have been so difficult here.”

Halickman said the signs of Avdija’s celebrity status in Israel are everywhere — from his 2021 sponsorship deal with the Israeli version of corn flakes to a newfound job description: the bar mitzvah gift of choice for jet-setting Israeli boys. 

“In Israel, there was a trend, like around 10 years ago, that Israelis who had a bar mitzvah … went on trips to watch Lionel Messi for Barcelona’s soccer team. And the new trend is kind of turning into Israelis flying to watch Deni play,” Halickman said. “It’s amazing also to see how Deni treats the Israeli crowd. He’s taking pictures, autographs, speaking to them.”

That was the case even before Oct. 7, 2023. During previous conflicts back home, Avdija drew Stars of David on his shoes to express his support for Israel. He also shared Hanukkah with his teammates, spoke at the Wizards’ Jewish Heritage Night and attempted to grow the NBA’s popularity in Israel. 

Since the Hamas attack that began the war in Gaza and sparked a global surge in antisemitism, Avdija has become even more vocal about his national pride, telling one Israeli outlet that he “tried to do what I could to bring some pride to Israel through basketball and my efforts off the court.” A few weeks after Oct. 7, Avdija hung around the court postgame, with an Israeli flag draped around him, as fans sang Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. Avdija has also been spotted with the flag displayed in his locker.

Avdija’s following has grown steadily since his days as a teenage star for Maccabi Tel Aviv. He’s a three-time Israeli League champion and helped lead Israel to back-to-back FIBA U20 European Championship titles in 2018-2019, winning the tournament’s MVP award in 2019. He remains the captain of the country’s senior national team today.

Halickman remembers watching from the stands in 2018, as a 17-year-old Avdija scored 11 points off the bench for Maccabi Tel Aviv in a season-opening win over Maccabi Ashdod. Last year, Halickman traveled to D.C. to cover two Wizards games.

Some of the talk about Avdija takes on a touch of the hyperbolic. Manor compared Avdija’s build and athleticism to that of NBA legend LeBron James. Both players are 6-foot-9, and both, Manor explained, embody what’s known in basketball as a “tweener” — a player is both fast and strong enough to play multiple positions

“Very early, when he was about 15 or 16 years old, people realized he’s gonna be a basketball player, a professional basketball player,” Manor said. “All of the other functions of character — the leadership, the confidence, the chutzpah to go and argue with the refs on every other call he doesn’t get — he always has in him. Now it’s just really popped because of the circumstances.”

Avdija’s breakout comes during an era of Jewish basketball excellence. On Monday, the University of Florida’s Todd Golden became the first Jewish coach to win March Madness since 1988. University of Michigan star Danny Wolf, himself an Israeli-American, is expected to declare for this summer’s NBA draft, where he could be a first-round pick. So could Israeli Ben Saraf, who is playing professionally in Germany.

They would join a growing Jewish NBA roster that includes Avdija, Sacramento Kings big man Domantas Sabonis — who is converting to Judaism and having his own stellar season — and G League prospect Amari Bailey.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch,” Tzedek said. “Hopefully, they’ll be on different teams so we can enjoy watching them compete and support each other.”

As for Avdija, the work isn’t done. Halickman said the real goal is to reach the NBA playoffs, something Casspi never did in 10 seasons in the league. The Wizards made the postseason in Avdija’s rookie year, but he was injured.

“That’s the next goal for Deni,” Halickman said. “He’s doing amazing things personally right now, but what we want to see is really something successful that he’ll do with a team, and I think he’s in the right direction. He’s only 24 years old. Long career ahead, promising team, so there’s a lot to look forward to.”

The friendship between Kurush Mistry and Sarah Reines is an unlikely one.

Mistry, 45, made headlines in November 2023 for covering up “kidnapped” hostage posters with anti-Israel ones. A viral video of the Upper West Side incident — which was published by a number of news outlets online — drew widespread ire and got him fired from his job as a Wall Street analyst.

Reines, meanwhile, is an associate rabbi at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, where advocacy for the Israeli hostages in Gaza has been part of the congregation’s mission since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The incident could have made the pair into adversaries. But something else happened: Mistry sought to make amends with the Jewish community, beginning a path of repentance, known as teshuvah in Hebrew, that ultimately brought him to Reines’ office. Over the past 14 months, the two have developed a “deep friendship,” in Mistry’s words, characterized by honest and civil discussions about a subject that often lends itself to heated arguments and the fracturing of relationships.

And now, on Saturday evening, Mistry will be attending Reines’ Passover seder at her Upper East Side home.

“The seder is all about sharing ideas, questioning perspectives, debating, and it’s very hard to do that today,” said Reines, 56. “And I feel like my relationship with Kurush is a really powerful example of how that is possible.”

Inviting Mistry to sit at her 18-person seder table was important to Reines, who “wanted him to know that I consider him an important part of my circle,” she said. The rabbi also pointed out that she likes having people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds at her seder, as it invites people to “come to repeated words and rituals with fresh eyes and ears.”

Mistry and Reines first met over Zoom in January 2024 while Mistry was visiting his home country of India. Mistry had been living in New York City for nearly 20 years, but following the backlash to the viral video — in which he told the Jewish American man recording him to “go back to your country” — Mistry decided to “step away and reflect” with his family for a couple months in India.

“The first few days [after the incident] were very challenging,” Mistry said. “I believe that my personal details had been leaked somewhere online. Therefore I was receiving threatening phone calls, text messages. I even got physical mail with some sort of white powder in it.”

Mistry wanted to make amends and give people “a better sense of the person that I am, despite my actions that night,” he said. So he reached out to a Jewish woman he knew professionally, who put him in touch with Reines. And following their introduction over Zoom, the two made an appointment for Mistry to visit her office at Temple Emanu-El.

“I remember feeling like, if he can walk into — you know, Temple Emanu-El is intimidating to anybody,” Reines said of Emanu-El’s grand Romanesque Revival building, which is one of the world’s largest synagogues. “So that he could come into that space and walk into my office, that felt like a sign that he was really coming with a sense of contrition and a willingness to be open.”

For Mistry, his many months of “honest and respectful, and sometimes painful” discussions with Reines have broadened his perspective, he said. (Mistry’s former wife, Shailja Gupta, was also embroiled in the incident, but the couple has since divorced.)

“I would say that my concern for the plight of people I believe are suffering or oppressed is no less than it was at the time of the incident,” he said in a phone interview Thursday morning. “But I have a better appreciation for other people’s suffering, and that I shouldn’t cancel one out to appreciate the other.” (In the viral video, he had covered a hostage poster with a flyer that read, “Israel is an apartheid state and commits genocide.”)

What started as a single meeting in January turned into regular conversations every couple weeks in Reines’ office. “I saw a person who did something they regretted,” Reines said, “and was actually trying to learn from that — grow, rectify.”

She added, “I never once questioned meeting with him. To me it was an honor from the beginning.”

Reines outlined for Mistry the process of teshuvah, which includes confession, regret and a vow not to repeat the misdeed. As part of the process, Reines gave him materials to read about the history of Israel and prejudice against Jews, which Mistry said “definitely enriched my understanding of these complex issues.”

Since the incident, Mistry said he has also made an effort to do more work for Dorot, a social services agency, where he’d already done some volunteering prior to his brush with infamy, helping seniors use technology.

One moment that stood out for Mistry on his path to redemption was in September 2024, when Reines invited him to attend a protest together as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at the United Nations. 

“I took a sign to that protest, which I believe had two parts to it: Stop the killing, bring home the hostages,” Mistry said.

His homemade sign included the colors of the Israeli and Palestinian flags melded together as a symbol of commonality. “I realized, as I was coming back from the protest, that it was cathartic, in a way, because this all started with me making signs,” Mistry said. “And I felt like I was doing this with a lot more thought and deliberation and in a much more balanced manner.”

Mistry added, “Short slogans are very amenable to our short attention span media coverage that we consume nowadays. But as I learned the hard way, they obviously can’t capture nuance, and they are not necessarily productive.”

Reines pointed out that her discussions with Mistry have helped her face shortcomings of her own. “He helped me realize that sometimes when I act emotionally to something like the word ‘genocide,’ I stop being able to absorb concrete information and have conversations,” she said. “Emotion can create walls in one’s own thinking.”

During last year’s Yom Kippur service, Reines delivered a sermon about Mistry and his process of redemption.

As for Passover, Reines said that redemption is “the very point” of the holiday. “It’s like Shabbat but on steroids,” she said. “ We celebrate and behave as if we are living in a liberated world, so that taste of what it would be like propels us forward to work for it.”

This year’s first-night seder will be a little different for Reines, who wrote her own haggadah. In addition to her family, the 18 attendees will include a number of guests who’ve never previously interacted, including a few non-Jewish ones.

Reines invited guests bring a dish that makes them think of their home, or the traditions in which they were raised. Mistry, who has attended two seders during his two decades in NYC, said he was “touched and honored” by the invite. He’s planning to bring a lamb dish he grew up eating — if his mother sends him the recipe in time, that is.

Reines said some parts of the Passover seder feel tough to reckon with in the current moment, like “celebrating freedom when there are hostages being held in Gaza,” she said, as well as saying “Let all who are hungry come and eat when we know there are Gazans and food is being withheld from them.”

Having Mistry at the table is “a sign that things can actually be different,” Reines said, “that there can be movement and growth and possibility.”

In advance of a pivotal court hearing this week in the deportation case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian protest leader at Columbia University, a judge demanded that the State Department lay out its case against him.

Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has done so, in a two-page memo that says “beliefs, statements, or associations” that he deems at odds with U.S. foreign policy interests are sufficient to justify deportation. It does not allege any criminal behavior and instead implies that Khalil’s behavior and statements were “otherwise lawful.”

Instead, Rubio wrote, “The public action and continued presence of ____ and Khalil undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.” (The memo includes the redacted name of another permanent resident facing deportation.)

The memo, first obtained by the Associated Press, cites the same Cold War-era law that Trump officials have pointed to to justify deportations of non-citizen activists who they believe pose a threat to the country’s national security interests.

The memo was filed Wednesday ahead of a hearing set for Friday to determine whether the government can continue detaining Khalil.

Khalil, who is a green card holder, was detained by ICE a month ago, the first in a wave of student activists whom the government has arrested and targeted for deportation. (Most of the people who have been told to leave the country were on student visas, which the State Department has broad latitude to revoke.) His case has sparked widespread protest and has split Jewish groups that, broadly, want to aggressively combat antisemitism but in many cases fear the erosion of civil liberties.

“After a month of hiding the ball since Mahmoud’s late-night unjust arrest in New York and taking him away to a remote detention center in Louisiana, immigration authorities have finally admitted that they have no case whatsoever against him,” two of Khalil’s attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout and Johnny Sinodis, said in a joint statement to the Associated Press. “There is not a single shred of proof that Mahmoud’s presence in America poses any threat.”

Rubio has repeatedly defended the deportation of people he deems Hamas supporters, including in a Senate confirmation hearing prior to his appointment as secretary of state. He has expressed the same sentiments after Khalil’s arrest.

“Now that you got the visa and [are] inside the U.S. and we realize you’re a supporter, we should remove your visa. If you could not come in because you’re a supporter of Hamas, you should not be able to stay. That’s how I view it,” said Rubio at the hearing.