Sasha Vasilyuk was surprised to be named a finalist for the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, wondering if the judges were going to honor an author whose “last name isn’t Jewish, and whose main character avoided being Jewish.”

Nevertheless, her debut novel, “Your Presence Is Mandatory,” won the $100,000 prize for a story inspired by her father’s father, a Jewish soldier in the Red Army who was captured by the Nazis during World War II. Under the Soviets, being taken prisoner was treated not as a tragedy but as a betrayal. Because POWs bore the stigma of treason, her grandfather never spoke to the family about spending much of the war as a forced laborer.

He also hid his Jewishness from his often antisemitic comrades and, for obvious reasons, from his German captors.

Although she didn’t intend “Your Presence Is Mandatory” as a “Jewish” book, it has found an audience among Jewish readers — many of whom have approached Vasilyuk to share their own families’ buried histories. 

“I think it’s important to be able to talk about those Jews, the non-Jewish Jews, whose story is just as valid as those who did get to eat challah and have menorahs and celebrate and really participate in it, because they could,” Vasilyuk said in an interview. 

Vasilyuk was looking forward to accepting the award in July at a ceremony in Jerusalem at the National Library of Israel, a co-sponsor of the prize; the ceremony was postponed after Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities and threw the region into further turmoil.

Instead she will receive the prize at a private ceremony in New York on Sept. 3; on Sept. 8, she’ll take part in an in-person and online discussion of the book with two former Rohr prize winners, Atlantic staff writer Gal Beckerman and the journalist and literary detective Benjamin Balint. The New York Jewish Week event will take place at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan.

“As Jewish communities worldwide face renewed threats and dangerous distortions, it is especially meaningful to recognize writers who confront these challenges with honesty, depth and imagination,” said George Rohr, in announcing the prize named after his father, a developer, philanthropist and book lover whose family fled Germany when Sami was a boy.

When Vasilyuk set out to write the novel, she wasn’t only piecing together the fragments of a family story. She was giving voice to a little-known chapter of Jewish and Soviet history — one that still reverberates 80 years later.

Through the grandfather figure, called Yefim in the novel, Vasilyuk explores secrecy, survival and the costs of silence. Growing up she was told that her grandfather, a retired geologist, had fought for the war’s duration and “made it all the way to Berlin” in 1945. She drew on a letter, discovered by his widow after he died, in which he confessed to the KGB that he spent much of the war as a forced laborer; she filled in the rest with research and survivor testimonies.

“These were real people,” she said. “Even if I fictionalized Yefim, I wanted the book to honor their reality.”

Vasilyuk’s debut novel, “Your Presence Is Mandatory,” is the 2025 winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Those real people include as many as a half million Jews who served in the Red Army, according to Yad Vashem; between 80,000 and 85,000 Jewish Red Army soldiers ended up in German POW camps, and fewer than 5 percent returned home. “It was incredibly difficult to find records about Jewish POWs,” Vasilyuk, who has an M.A. in jour­nal­ism from New York Uni­ver­si­ty and whose nonfiction work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and other outlets. “It was a group neither the Germans nor the Soviets wanted to acknowledge.”

The Soviet narrative cast prisoners of war as weak links, shirkers who sat out the fighting. Western audiences, by contrast, often see POWs through the lens of honor and sacrifice — like John McCain, who was lionized for his resilience during his years in captivity. Vasilyuk wanted her novel to speak to both worlds. For Soviet-born readers, the shame is instantly recognizable. For Western readers, the story is a revelation.

“Jews had this deeper dilemma, because they were stuck between two totalitarian regimes, neither of which had a fondness for them,” she said. While many Jews found refuge in the Soviet Union during the war (“A lot of my friends are alive today because of that,” she said), the postwar years were marked by an intense peri­od of anti­semitism under Stalin.

“There’s a huge tragedy in that,” said Vasilyuk. “I grew up in a place that tells you from the moment you’re born, through children’s songs and poems, that you live in this place of brotherhood, where all of these nations are united in their common belief and cause.”

Born in Ukraine and raised between there and Moscow until she was 13, Vasilyuk absorbed her family’s Jewishness in fragments. Her father was given a Ukrainian surname for his safety; the family’s Jewish name disappeared. Although her father’s non-Jewish mother worked at a Jewish relief organization after the war, her grandfather — whom she would would visit on family trips to Ukraine — never celebrated holidays nor spoke openly about his ethnic identity.

It was Vasilyuk’s own mother, born Jewish, who brought Jewishness into her childhood: taking her to a Purim party when they lived in Moscow and sending her to Jewish summer camps before and after the family emigrated to Northern California. In San Francisco, Vasilyuk started a magazine for Russian-speaking immigrant teens, sponsored by the local Jewish family and children’s service, and first visited Israel when she was 16.

Still, an absence lingered. “I couldn’t help but wonder how my own identity would have been different if I had carried my grandfather’s Jewish last name,” she said.

Growing up in Ukraine and Russia, Sasha Vasilyuk knew her grandfather as a World War II vet­er­an and a retired geol­ogist. Only later would she learn about his real experiences in the war. (Courtesy Sasha Vasilyuk)

For Vasilyuk, the complicated legacy of what the Soviets called the “Great Patriotic War” informs the current war in Ukraine, launched by an authoritarian Russian president intent on restoring lost Soviet glory. She finished her manuscript in February 2022, just before the Russian invasion. “By erasing memory, by silencing people for generations, you end up with a historical hole that can easily be filled by politicians such as Putin and weaponized for a new conflict,” she said.

In writing the book, she worried most about how Soviet-born readers might receive it. “I thought they might tell me I got everything wrong. Instead, they’ve told me it made them ask questions they never dared to before,” she said.

At 42, with two children and a life straddling Ukraine, Russia and the United States, Vasilyuk is already at work on her next project — a novel about the post-Soviet immigrant experience. This time, she says, she wants to step away from World War II and examine how identity, nationalism and memory continue to collide today.

For Vasilyuk, writing is both reclamation and contribution. “Maybe telling my grandfather’s story,” she mused, “is my way of giving something back to the Jewish community, and of reclaiming my own heritage.”

A couple in a suburb of Atlanta are facing consequences after being accused of yelling antisemitic slurs at the father of an Israeli soldier who was killed in 2023.

Mark Bouzyk has been fired after he and his wife were taped lobbing insults at David Lubin, the father of Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin, a lone soldier who was stabbed to death by a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Jerusalem on Nov. 6, 2023.

Lubin  told Atlanta News First that the incident began earlier this month as he was distributing stickers honoring his daughter’s memory.

“When I heard her say, your daughter deserved to die and called me a kike, that’s when I walked across the street,” he said.

In a video of the confrontation posted on X by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism, Anna Bouzyk, can be heard telling Lubin that his daughter went to Israel “to kill.”

“You are calling yourself a kike, you know what you are. You know what you are better than me,” Bouzyk can be heard saying alongside her husband, Mark, who periodically joined in the altercation.

“You are a corrupt politician with a daughter in the IDF that went there to kill, and she was killed maybe by friendly fire because the Israeli soldiers they kill each other all the time, and you know very well,” continued Bouzyk.

Bouzyk later confirmed to Atlanta News First that she had called Lubin the derogatory term prior to the filmed confrontation, telling the outlet, “I don’t regret what I said, and I’ll it say a million times again.”

She blamed Lubin — who ran unsuccessfully for Georgia State Senate in 2024, aiming to unseat a politician who did not sign onto an antisemitism bill — for the interaction.

“He started calling me a Jew hater. He started calling me names, so I called him a kike,” Bouzyk told the outlet. “He was provoking me. He was putting his phone in my face. He didn’t have the right to do that, because I went to talk to him about vandalizing.”

Lubin told the outlet that he heard in Bouzyk “that same hate that happened during the Holocaust towards Jews.” He is also considering involving the police, according to the outlet.

Tensions between the neighbors in Dunwoody, Georgia, had been building since last year, when Anna and Mark Bouzyk allegedly posted pro-Palestinian signs in their front yard. On one sign posted this month that read “Stop Funding War Criminals,” the word “kikes” was written 24 times.

Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch condemned the signs in a post on Facebook last week, writing that they were “deeply disturbing and offensive.” She later updated the post thanking a local resident for convincing the homeowners to remove the signs.

Mark Bouzyk has since been fired from his job as the co-founder and chief scientific officer at AllaiHealth, an AI-driven patient medical history platform, the company announced on Thursday.

“We are deeply disturbed and disheartened by the video circulating involving Dr Mark Bouzyk,” CEO Robert Boisjoli said in the statement. “The behavior displayed in that footage is reprehensible, completely inconsistent with our values, and has no place in our organization or society.”

The incident joins another recent attack on the family of an American who moved to Israel to join its army. In St. Louis, a hate crime inquiry was opened by local police after three cars were set ablaze and “Death to the IDF” was written outside of the home of a family whose son recently completed two years serving in the IDF.

As a rabbi with a love of fashion, Loehmann’s — the iconic off-price retailer — has always held a special place in my heart. That’s why my Jewish self was giddy upon hearing of its pop-up reopening in Deer Park, just five minutes from my hometown on Long Island.

After rearranging my schedule to be there on opening day, I shlepped out to Long Island on a Friday (never a great idea!) and made it there within an hour of the store’s grand reopening. On a breezy summer morning, the step-and-repeat was out, the fluorescent lights were blazing, and salespeople were scurrying to get those 50%-off signs just right.

I placed my black handbag on the floor to peruse a rack of animal-print jackets, when an older woman gave me the unmistakable Bubbe stare and muttered, “You shouldn’t do that.” I was home.

Loehmann’s, which closed in 2014, was never just about bargains. It was about the chorus of unsolicited advice, with the communal dressing room as its sanctuary. Under the merciless glare of fluorescent lights, grandmothers, mothers, and strangers alike weighed in on your outfit options — whether you asked or not. You could always count on someone’s Bubbe in the corner telling you that skirt was too short, that shade was too harsh, and that you could do better.

From a young age, shopping there with my mother and grandmothers (Bubbe and Grandma), I can still recall the smell of that fitting room: part new clothes, part mildew, and part Bubbe’s perfume. It was also an introduction to aging. No sag was left unseen. Long before Facebook fed me wrinkle-serum ads, Loehmann’s gave me a front-row seat to the realities of gravity.

Many women found that pursuing Loehmann’s bargains and trying on designer outfits at a more reasonable price was the ideal American experience. It embodied the promise of the Goldene Medina — the Yiddish phrase describing a golden land where the streets were paved with gold (this was, of course, before the age of “quiet luxury”).

For me, Loehmann’s wasn’t only cultural — it was spiritual. One of my last major purchases at Loehmann’s was a kittel — the traditional white cloak worn on the High Holidays. The racks didn’t contain an official kittel but that white Romeo & Juliet couture jacket was practically begging to be one. (I even went back to buy a second one just in case something happened at the dry cleaner!). Each year I stand on the bimah leading prayers, literally clothed in Loehmann’s. In that dressing room, faith and fashion became stitched together.

Last week, when I heard about the reopening, I couldn’t resist asking on Instagram whether it should, in fact, count as a Jewish holiday. The comments section exploded and thousands of memories poured in. Women recalled shopping with their mothers, their grandmothers, their best bargains, and the outfits that launched their careers.

My playful question quickly became something bigger: a collective discourse on Loehmann’s. The whole thing felt quite Talmudic. Just as the rabbis once asked, “Mai Hanukkah? What is Hanukkah?” at the start of a sugya (Talmudic passage) — and answered not with a simple definition but with layers of debate and memory — so too did my post spark ritual and nostalgic conversation.

Many comments were joyful, even liturgical. One person declared, “This is a blow-the-shofar kind of day,” while another called it “holy and sacred.” Others insisted it should absolutely count as a Jewish holiday — maybe even a national one.

But the dressing-room memories dominated. People swapped recollections of the “murky odor” and the treasures they unearthed inside, along with the unsolicited opinions that always came with them. Some admitted they were “still traumatized” by the fitting rooms, while others laughed about the secrets revealed there — like the mom who discovered her daughter’s belly ring under those fluorescent lights. One woman even confessed that she once got so stuck in a dress that the saleslady had to cut her out with scissors.

Still other stories were tender, even profound. A woman remembered every single bat mitzvah dress she bought at Loehmann’s. Another recounted dashing in with her toddler in a stroller, finding a $55 suit for a second interview, and landing the job that made her the first female lawyer in her firm after twenty-five years. Someone else shared that her last shopping trip with her mother, before she went into hospice, was to Loehmann’s — a memory she still treasures. Several described the line of dutiful fathers camped out at the store’s entrance, waiting with the other men while wives and daughters scoured the racks.

Loehmann’s, it turns out, was always more than bargains — it was a gathering ground for humor, unsolicited wisdom, identity, and cultural belonging.

I would be remiss not to report on my purchases. In truth, I walked out empty-handed — though I did linger over a pair of sparkly platform sneakers. Even at 50% off, however, justifying a $975 Back Room price tag would take nothing short of divine intervention.

Still, my return to Loehmann’s was a true Shehechiyanu moment, fluorescent lights and all. The communal dressing room — may its memory be a blessing — has not returned, but in its place stood drapey grey portable stalls bunched together, hopefully ready to spark a new chorus of criticism, advice and communal camaraderie.

A large Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn is requiring parents to prove they are registered to vote before the new school year begins — in an unprecedented policy that comes as a democratic socialist and critic of Israel leads New York City’s mayoral race.

In a brief letter to families this week, Magen David Yeshivah, a flagship institution of the city’s Syrian Jewish community, framed the requirement as a way to strengthen civic engagement and safeguard communal interests.

“We trust that our parent body understands that this policy stems from and reflects our school’s commitment to ensuring that our community plays an active role in shaping the policies that affect us all every day,” the letter said. “Registering to vote is a small but critical step toward protecting the future of our yeshivot and our broader community.”

School officials did not respond to questions from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about how the policy will be enforced or why it was introduced now.

But the move appears to be a response to the prospect of an election victory by frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist with pro-Palestinian views, who is feared and opposed by right-wing and Orthodox Jews in the city.

Magen David Yeshivah is located in the Gravesend section of South Brooklyn, a hub of New York City’s Sephardic Jewish community. The area largely voted for Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election; among those registered as Democrats who voted in June’s mayoral primary, the vast majority cast ballots for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a bid as an independent but lagging behind Mamdani. (The incumbent, Eric Adams, did not run in the primary but is running in November, as is a Republican, Curtis Sliwa.)

One of the figures behind the school’s new policy is local politician Joey Cohen-Saban. Cohen-Saban, who has been exhorting New Yorkers to oppose Mamdani, is a Democratic party official in Brooklyn and chief of staff to State Sen. Sam Sutton who narrowly lost a recent bid for Assembly in a district that includes Gravesend. He didn’t follow through after offering to give an interview.

The principal of the elementary school at Magen David Yeshivah, Ezra Cohen-Saban, is among 50 rabbis in the Syrian Jewish community who recently signed a declaration attaching existential stakes to the mayoral election.

“This appears to be part of an organizing effort to ensure that the Jewish community votes in large numbers this November, especially in light of the perceived threats of having Zohran Mamdani as mayor,” said Jeffrey M. Wice, a professor at New York Law School who specializes in election law.

Wice said that acting through private schools is a “smart move” for Orthodox voter turnout efforts, calling it “a new and unique concept.”

Federal and state laws bar anyone from coercing others to vote, and public schools likely cannot condition enrollment on voter registration, but private schools have the freedom to set such a requirement, according to legal experts.

“This may or may not be a good idea, but there is no legal issue here,” said Samuel Issacharoff, a professor of constitutional law at New York University. “The state could not coerce them in this way but private organizations such as private schools can do what they wish.”

Magen David Yeshivah’s freedom to enact its policy is not absolute. It cannot condition enrollment on parents’ choice of political party, steer their votes toward particular candidates or penalize them for refusing to vote.

“They have to be careful but if it is done in an entirely objective, fair, non-discriminatory manner, I think the school can withstand any kind of a legal challenge should one occur,” Wice said.

The New York State Board of Elections said it could not weigh in.

“New York State Election Law does not speak directly to this specific issue,” spokesperson Kathleen McGrath said in an email. “We have not heard of this situation or policy, so we would not comment further. An interested party could certainly seek a formal/advisory opinion from Board Counsel if more guidance is desired.”

The stakes in the mayoral race are unusually high for New York’s Jewish community. City Hall exerts enormous influence over issues central to Jewish life, from yeshiva regulation and funding for private school security to the city’s approach to policing hate crimes and navigating tensions over Israel and Gaza that play out on local streets.

For Orthodox Jews in particular, whose schools and institutions often depend on city partnerships, the outcome could shape daily life in tangible ways. At the same time, many non-Orthodox Jews see the election as a chance to advance progressive priorities on housing, immigration and policing.

The sharpest fault line, however, runs through Mamdani’s outspoken criticism of Israel and embrace of the boycott movement, which have led many Jewish leaders and activists to accuse him of antisemitism — a charge he rejects.

Magen David Yeshivah’s policy lands amid a flurry of Jewish get-out-the-vote efforts in New York, including the Jewish Voters Action Network’s peer-to-peer registration push, Jewish Voters Unite’s canvassing across Jewish neighborhoods, the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition voter-information and reminders, and the progressive Jews for Racial & Economic Justice’s “The Jewish Vote” pledge and voter guide.

UJA-Federation of New York, the city’s Jewish federation, says it has observed renewed interest in local activism and is supporting dozens of groups in get-out-the-vote initiatives in the city. Its voter registration and mobilization work has an “emphasis on hard-to-reach communities such as Russian, young adults, Haredi and Sephardic,” a spokeswoman told JTA this week.

Maury Litwack, the CEO of Jewish Voters Unite, said in a statement that Magen David Yeshivah’s approach reflected the moment’s pressing needs. Though officially nonpartisan, Litwack’s group is widely seen as part of the effort to curb Mamdani’s rise.

“The Jewish community across the country is waking up to the importance of voting, and we’re going to see more creative approaches to registration and turnout until we reach 100% participation,” Litwack said. “Elected officials who have taken the Jewish vote for granted can no longer afford to do so.”

Reactions on the Jewish right were mixed: Shabbos Kestenbaum, an activist who sued Harvard University over antisemitism, urged other institutions to adopt the policy, while Elliot Resnick, a former Jewish Press editor pardoned by Trump for his role at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, argued that schools should not “play parent to parents.” Stephanie Neta Benshimol, a Trump supporter and pro-Israel advocate, said she was against “using children as pawns,” though she emphasized that in her home, all who could vote would.

Leaders of the Sephardic-Syrian Jewish community are presenting voting not as a civic choice but as a religious imperative. In a sweeping new declaration, signed by more than 50 rabbis from New York and New Jersey including Ezra Cohen-Saban and two teachers at Magen David Yeshivah, they describe registering to vote as a Jewish legal and moral responsibility on par with prayer, charity and Jewish education.

“This is not optional. It is a mitzvah,” the statement says, warning that the upcoming elections will shape Jewish identity, safety, and institutions for years to come.

Like Magen David Yeshivah’s new enrollment policy, the rabbis’ letter does not mention any candidate by name. Instead, it frames the upcoming election in broad terms — a “turning point” for the community.

Other leaders, however, are speaking more directly. In a fiery sermon posted to Instagram, Rabbi Shlomo Farhi urged congregants to abandon what he characterized as a culture of apathy around voting, dismissing excuses such as the fear that voter registration would lead to jury duty or the increased likelihood of tax audits.

“We should be embarrassed of the fact that there is an antisemite who hates Israel,” Farhi said. “You have the chance to stop it, and if you did nothing because of some selfish reason, I don’t care what it is, shame on you.”

Jackie Hajdenberg and Joseph Strauss contributed reporting.

This story has been updated since publication to remove a portion of a statement from Jewish Voters Unite that was sent in error.

The head of the militant pro-Israel group Betar USA will be permitted to attend this fall’s World Zionist Congress as a delegate, months after the congress had barred him from the position over his “aggressive, hateful tone and vulgarity.”

An appeals tribunal within the congress ruled Thursday in favor of Ronn Torossian, the combative public-relations executive who encourages Betar’s followers to engage in street actions — against not only anti-Zionists, but also other Zionists who disagree with the group’s tactics and approach to advocacy. 

“The AZM Tribunal reverses … the preclusion of Mr. Torossian from serving as a delegate on the ZOA Coalition slate,” the unanimous decision reads, according to a copy provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Torossian. 

The document’s authenticity was confirmed to JTA by a member of the ruling tribunal, who declined to comment further. Two tribunal members recused themselves.

The case hinged on Torossian’s conduct during a months-long feud between himself and Shai Davidai, a Columbia University professor and pro-Israel activist who had campaigned on behalf of a rival slate. In its ruling the tribunal said that Torossian’s private correspondence with Davidai, while “inappropriate,” should not count against his ability to attend the congress. 

Public statements that Torossian and Betar USA had made against Kol Israel, the opposing slate, were also not grounds for removal because, the tribunal said, they had focused on the issues.

The ruling means Torossian can attend the 39th World Zionist Congress meeting in late October and speak on behalf of his slate, the right-wing ZOA Coalition, as the congress debates how to allocate $5 billion in Israeli government funds. 

The ruling also tamps down on what had been growing pushback to Betar USA’s rhetoric and tactics from within the pro-Israel movement, where stridently Zionist voices have joined more liberal ones, alongside the Anti-Defamation League, in calling the operation extreme and unhelpful to Jews. Earlier this year the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group, had security remove Torossian from one of their meetings after attendees said he barged in uninvited as a means of challenging the ADL.

Betar presents itself as a new incarnation of the early Revisionist Zionist militia of the same name led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and claims to have sent the Trump administration lists of pro-Palestinian protesters to be deported.

Torossian told JTA he was “pleased with this decision” and vowed to attend the congress — something he had previously said he would do even if the initial ban was upheld. 

“We will not be silenced. Betar and Jabotinsky’s followers will arrive with the ZOA at the Congress organized and ready to defend revisionist traditional Zionism from those who seek to subvert it—from radical activists to so-called ‘Tikkun Olam’ Reform voices who distort Zionism for progressive agendas,” Torossian wrote in an email. “These same circles have empowered anti-Israel figures like Zohran Mamdani and normalized woke antisemitism across the West.”

He added that he would continue to pursue charges against his opponents in a different venue: a local beit din, or rabbinical court.

Israeli professor Shai Davidai outside of Columbia University, April 22, 2024. (Luke Tress)

Davidai did not immediately respond to a JTA request for comment on the ruling. In a statement to JTA, Kol Israel said it was “disappointed by the Tribunal’s decision, which fails to reflect the spirit of the election rules.”

Accusing Torossian of targeting candidates “with bullying and blackmail,” the statement continues, “There is no excuse for the shameful smears and threats directed at us. Such harmful behavior should carry serious consequences, but has now been given a free pass by the Tribunal.”

The slate adds, “At a time when Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are facing horrific antisemitic attacks, those who sow division within our community damage their own credibility and empower our enemies.”

The ZOA Coalition that includes Betar received 3.6% of votes cast in the United States during this spring’s elections, according to the American Zionist Movement’s latest “preliminary” results, and will have a proportionate number of delegates at the congress. The election was marred by several allegations of voter fraud among other parties; some, mostly Orthodox-aligned slates have been found guilty of fraud and have been banned from the congress.

In its new ruling, the tribunal acknowledged that Torossian had engaged in “inappropriate or even threatening” spats with Davidai. But, the judges ruled, private communications should not be held to the same standards as campaigning or public commentary. (JTA has viewed many private WhatsApp exchanges between the two men, in which they slung frequent personal attacks at each other.)

The tribunal also found nothing wrong with a selection of four public comments made by Torossian or Betar USA that it reviewed, because it said those statements were attacking Davidai as an individual, rather than Kol Israel. Davidai voluntarily stepped down as a Kol Israel delegate in February.

“Moreover, although the tone and substance of some of the comments were vulgar and not civil, many of these tended to focus on issues and not on a particular slate,” the verdict reads.

Actions and images from Betar US and its allies since its formation in 2024 include (from top-left, clockwise): a button associated with the original Beitar group; messages on a truck driven outside Washington, D.C., during a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu; a masked Betar member planning to disrupt a pro-Palestinian protest; a brass-knuckle menorah shared on Betar social media; Betar former executive director Ross Glick knocking on Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s office in Capitol Hill; Betar member Jakob Schanzer spraying over a pro-Palestinian mural in New Orleans; and singer Matisyahu endorsing Betar. (Collage by 70 Faces Media)

Betar USA is active on social media, where it frequently posts incendiary pro-Israel comments and memes. In the past these have included remarks like “We demand blood in Gaza,” video of men hurling abusive language at mosques, and demands for the Israeli government to bar left-wing Jews from entering the country. 

Its posts seem to be gaining influence: In May, a federal judge overseeing a campus protester’s deportation case ruled that the case “seems to have been almost exclusively triggered by Betar Worldwide.”

While a growing number of Jewish voices — including Davidai — have criticized Israel’s conduct in Gaza, Betar has instead egged them on. On Wednesday the group’s X account posted, in Hebrew, “If you will it there is no Gaza!” — a meme riffing on the famous remark by Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, accompanied by an apparently AI-generated image of Herzl in an IDF uniform overseeing destruction in Gaza. (In a reply, Betar said the post was intended “to share the normal Israeli perspective.”)

Betar USA has not been shy about publicly going after the Kol Israel slate, either, calling its members “lying hypocrites” in a May post. In a July post the group urged all its rival’s delegates to resign while Torossian fought the congress ruling.

The World Zionist Congress tribunal stated that it “should not be viewed as condoning any of the communications, or Mr. Torossian’s choice of language or any of Mr. Torossian’s conduct.” It also urged the organization to find new ways to discourage conduct similar to Torossian’s in the future.

The Zionist Organization of America, a right-wing group whose namesake coalition includes Betar USA, also celebrated the ruling in a statement to JTA. In their remarks, both ZOA and Torossian said their central issue with Davidai was not personal but policy-related: namely, an essay Davidai penned last year in which he said he would “refrain from buying products manufactured beyond the 1967 armistice line,” a stance ZOA disagrees with.

“Criticizing the positions of a member of another slate is allowed under the election rules,” ZOA director Mort Klein wrote in a statement.

Torossian has long maintained that his group’s full-throated encouragement of bloodshed in Gaza, and backing of far-right Israeli ministers, is more in line with mainstream Zionism than other American Jewish groups. Even as he gloated over the tribunal’s ruling, he framed the intra-Jewish debate over Israel in a way that many others would likely agree with.

“There is a major disconnect between the American Jewish community—particularly its liberal, Ashkenazi segments—and the political realities in Israel,” he wrote.

When Rabbi Tanya Segal landed an apartment at 12 Jozefa Street in Krakow a decade ago, she was thrilled.

Segal knew that the building had appeared in the movie “Schindler’s List,” that it had once housed a rabbi and a Jewish house of study, and that the Jewish family that owned it in the 1940s was murdered in the Holocaust. She set out to create a pulsing heart of Jewish life where it had been extinguished.

“It was an open house,” said Segal, a Moscow native and Israeli citizen who, as the founder of the Beit Krakow congregation, is the first woman to work full time as a rabbi in Poland. Sometimes she hosted services, seders and Shabbat meals from her apartment.

“Everybody knew where I lived, where you can come, where you can ask to meet,”  she said.

Then, last month, Segal was forced to move out, under police supervision. She had been evicted at the behest of a Polish bureaucrat charged with stewarding the building. In what watchdogs say is an extreme outcome of Poland’s lack of a Holocaust restitution law, the building is officially “ownerless,” leaving tenants in perpetual limbo.

”Poland remains the only member state of the European Union that has not passed national legislation to provide restitution or compensation for private property seized during the Holocaust or nationalized by the postwar Communist regime,” Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

While some Jews who were stripped of property during the Holocaust have been able to reclaim them or obtain compensation under what Taylor’s organization said were “narrow technical circumstances,” there has never been a broad and transparent effort at restitution like those undertaken in other countries.

The courtyard of 12 Jozefa Street: At left, in 2024 at the heart of the Kazimierz Jewish historic district of Krakow, and at right in a photograph taken in 1943, during the Holocaust that killed Jews living in the building. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Image / Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Not only has WJRO been fruitlessly pressing successive Polish governments for decades to address the issue, the situation has actually grown worse, Taylor said.

He noted that the Polish government passed a law in 2021 that “prevents challenges to administrative decisions older than 30 years — even if those decisions were made without legal basis or in gross violation of the law,” Taylor said. The new law blocked countless ongoing claims from moving forward.

That law was passed while the country was run by the Law and Justice Party, which also criminalized statements suggesting Polish collaboration with the Nazi regime. It returned to power this summer, with a Holocaust revisionist historian at the helm.

Over the years, non-Jewish Poles could apply for the return of properties with relative easy; all they had to do was cross the street and go to court. But for Jewish heirs, strewn around the world, the process “is very cumbersome,” said the country’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.

And when Jews do try to seek restitution, the lack of a comprehensive restitution law gums up the works, he said. He noted that the problem was most acute in Krakow: In Warsaw, where he lives, most property was destroyed during the war, and there was little to reclaim in the way of structures.

A German policeman checks the identification papers of Jewish people in Krakow, Poland, 1941. (National Archives in Krakow)

“In Krakow,” Schudrich said, “everything is standing.”

12 Jozefa Street is a case study in what can go wrong.

Before World War II, it had been owned by Salomon Fendler, who transferred ownership to his daughter, Annie Isenberg. Both were killed in the Holocaust.

It provided a backdrop in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning “Schindler’s List” to a dramatic depiction of what befell nearly all of the neighborhood’s residents. In the movie, Nazis chase Jews from their apartments, throwing their belongings from the balconies into the picturesque courtyard below.

The neighborhood, the Kazimierz district, was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978 because of its density of Jewish sites.

After the end of communism, Poland’s democratic government, founded in the 1990s, placed unclaimed properties — including 12 Jozefa — in the hands of custodians, known as “curators.”

Curators are supposed to protect unclaimed properties but they also have to “seek clarification of the heir’s identity and notify the heirs of the opening of the estate,” said a spokeswoman for the city of Krakow.

In 25 years, no progress was made in that department for Jozefa 12 — even though descendants of the Fender and Isenberg families can be found.

“It was a giant family,” said Marta Kalamar, president of Beit Krakow and of the Foundation for the Center for Progressive and Reform Judaism in Krakow. “And we could find some traces of people, after spending an hour on the Internet.”

But she said the curators are not as motivated or able to find possible claimants.

12 Jozefa Street in the Kazimierz district of Krakow was a set for scenes in “Schindler’s List.” (Screenshot from Google Maps)

“Those curators almost never find those descendants, [and] there is no way to control if they’re effective in it,” she said. “For example, this curator doesn’t know English or Hebrew. How do they find even those descendants? So they are known for being very ineffective in that main thing.”

What the curators are good at, Kalamar said, was managing the properties to keep them full with rent-paying tenants. The original curator at Jozefa 12 leased the apartment some 25 years ago to a Jewish family that would later become members of Segal’s community, she said. They were required to undertake some necessary renovations, which they did, she added. In 2015, Segal sublet the apartment from the family, who have declined to comment publicly.

The first curator was dismissed about six years ago, after Kalamar’s foundation reported he had been carrying out unauthorized renovations of the historic building’s façade, she said.

The replacement curator, Marcin Trzeciak, quickly petitioned the court to bar her foundation from “intervening in this building’s heritage preservation.”

He was unsuccessful in this attempt, but he did manage to have the original lease declared invalid. An appeals court issued the ruling on May 22 and sent its explanation to Segal on July 14.

“In Poland when you find any significant error in the contract, you can invalidate it even 25 years back,” said Kalamar.

She said she wrote to the curator on behalf of her foundation but never heard back.“The curator never responded to any of the letters sent by the rabbi or the foundation, never picked up a phone from anyone nor replied to any email,” she said.

Trzeciak did not respond to JTA’s requests for comment.

Segal had to move out. The eviction took place July 31 without incident, in the presence of police – as requested by the curator, Kalamar added.

“It was really painful, and it was, of course, sad,” said Segal.

Police were dispatched to oversee the eviction of Rabbi Tanya Segal from 12 Jozefa Street in Krakow, Poland, July 31, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Marta Kalamar)

The city spokeswoman said that because Jozefa 12 was transferred to the Municipal Building Authority more than 20 years ago, the city has no information on “who occupies the premises located in this building, nor whether any eviction or enforcement proceedings are pending against the residents.”

She noted that there are many cases of claims on property still open in Krakow.

The Foundation for the Center for Progressive and Reform Judaism in Krakow, established in 2017, is in the process of renovating of a synagogue in a courtyard on the corner of Mostowa Street and Trynitarska Street, three blocks from 12 Jozefa, as a potential permanent home for the congregation.

For now, they rotate between various sites for prayer services. The building on Jozefa Street where the rabbi lived was “very meaningful to us” as part of the rotation, Kalamar said, noting that most of the congregation members “were born in Krakow and feel connected to its Jewish history.”

Like Schudrich, Segal came from abroad to serve in Poland. She left her native Russia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Jews were finally permitted to emigrate en masse, and settled in Israel. There, she received her rabbinical ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2007 and moved first to Warsaw before beginning to build a Reform congregation in Krakow in 2009. She said she had visited Poland occasionally as a student and “really felt this emptiness from the Jewish point of view.”

Today, the community has 30 official members but can draw hundreds on holidays, said Segal, who also serves a Czech Republic congregation. In 2012 she helped officiate at her congregation’s first bat mitzvah ceremony, and she also launched what she called the Midrash Lab, which reinterprets Jewish texts using music, dance, and theater.

Since her eviction, Segal has filed a complaint against the bailiff to the court, “for turning what should have been just a voluntary handoff of a flat to a forced eviction with police assistance,” Kalamar said. “The forced eviction had no legal grounds at that time, as the regulatory deadline for handing off the flat had not yet passed and also the rabbi agreed to hand off the flat voluntarily.”

No date has yet been set to hear the complaint, said Kalamar, who said she is also looking into whether Trzeciak had the court’s permission to seek Segal’s eviction. If not, she said, “we will file a complaint against the curator to the court.”

Whatever happens now, Segal says she will not be deterred in her efforts to grow Jewish life in a city where it neared extinction, even if she has lost the ability for now to teach from an epicenter of Jewish experience: a home in a historic Jewish neighborhood.

For now, she has moved into a small apartment originally purchased for her son, who died during the Covid pandemic. The apartment is also in Kazimierz, but it is too small to host more than two or three guests.

“We will not sit and we will not cry about it. I didn’t sleep a few nights, but it’s OK,” Segal said. “I’m back.”

This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 74 days to the election.

🐝 Social media buzz

• Alisa Roever, a New York socialite with ties to Mayor Eric Adams, posted a message that appeared to blame Jews for Mamdani’s primary win on Thursday.

• “My dear Jewish family,” she said on her social media pages. “Stop calling me and complaining. NYC the largest Jewish after Israel! Jews own real estate, banks, media. Mamdani taking over the city your fault. It is slap in your face that you are not strong anymore Get together and get the city back!” Roever co-founded the charity Angels Helpers with Adams’ brother, Bernard.

• This may be the least of the mayor’s problems. Adding to a swirl of criminal cases, corruption charges were launched against several of his associates and supporters on Thursday. And don’t forget that his ally Winnie Greco handed a CITY reporter a potato chip bag stuffed with cash this week. The New York Times has since reported that was not an isolated incident, spotting other envelopes of cash handed out at Adams’ rallies.

• Cuomo jokingly had potato chips handed out to reporters at a press conference on Thursday, saying, “Sometimes a bag of potato chips is just a bag of potato chips.” Of course, he made sure to post the video on X as part of his social media rebrand.

🚨 Fact-check update

• After we fact-checked what Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said about Mamdani on CNBC, host Andrew Ross Sorkin issued his own clarification on air.

• Greenblatt “made a point of saying that Zohran Mamdani had not met with any mainstream Jewish institutions,” said Sorkin, who is Jewish. “The truth is, and I didn’t know this in the moment, but he had actually visited a whole number of synagogues.”

• The ADL told us Greenblatt meant that Mamdani did not visit any Jewish organizations after the primary. He gave Sorkin the same explanation, though the host noted accurately that no “time element” was mentioned on air. He added, “I don’t know about the extent of all of this, and by the way, I would welcome Zohran Mamdani to come on this airwave.”

🔭 The view from New York City

• We covered the triumph of Omar Fateh, a young democratic socialist who has drawn comparisons to Mamdani, in his bid to unseat Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Fateh won the endorsement of Minnesota’s Democratic party in July.

• But yesterday, party officials revoked the endorsement. They cited “substantial failures” at the chaotic convention, which saw technological and procedural issues.

• Fateh’s campaign said the unusual move of stripping an endorsement represented the “disenfranchisement of thousands of Minneapolis caucus-goers and the delegates who represented all of us on convention day.”

• Frey, who is Jewish, said he was “proud to be a member of a party that believes in correcting our mistakes.”

An international hunger monitoring group says portions of Gaza now meet its standards for declaring a famine, crossing a threshold that it said had not previously been reached.

The declaration on Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system adds to a contested field of claims about hunger in Gaza, with pro-Palestinian voices warning for nearly the entire length of the Israel-Hamas war beginning in October 2023 that mass starvation was imminent and Israel and its defenders contending that sufficient aid has entered Gaza to sustain civilians, despite temporary blockades and rocky distribution efforts.

The IPC report says a recent increase in aid, which followed a widespread outcry about hunger in Gaza, is not enough to stem the crisis.

“The complete halt of humanitarian and commercial food deliveries in March and April, followed by critically low volumes through July, coupled with the collapse of local food production has led to extreme food shortages,” the group said in its report. “While 55,600 metric tonnes of food entered Gaza in the first half of August, this remains largely insufficient to offset the prolonged deficits.”

Israel quickly rejected the determination. “If famine = falling prices + 300 daily aid trucks + open aid routes Gaza must be the first famine in history marked by abundance,” tweeted the Israeli office responsible for aid in Gaza, called Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories or COGAT. It alleged that the IPC had lowered its standards for declaring famine in order to smear Israel.

The IPC is a tool used by a consortium of food insecurity experts who monitor conditions around the world and advise the United Nations and other entities about what they learn. The report says the group’s conclusions about what is happening in Gaza were constrained by limited access and information about some portions of the enclave, home to about 2 million Palestinians.

Its declaration applies to a region that includes Gaza City, which the Israeli army is preparing to enter. The group said other portions of Gaza still face widespread hunger challenges and are projected to enter famine conditions by the end of September.

Some skeptics of claims about hunger in Gaza had cited the lack of an official declaration of famine as evidence that conditions were not as extreme as some claimed, and as viral photographs of emaciated children and lines at aid stations would seem to suggest.

The price of food staples in Gaza skyrocketed in recent months, offering evidence of scarcity, and President Donald Trump said he believed there was “real starvation” in the enclave, pressing Israeli officials to send more aid. Israel says the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has risen steadily.

This week, celebrity chef Jose Andres visited Israel and Gaza, where his World Central Kitchen nonprofit has distributed food for most of the war. He expressed sympathy for sympathy on both sides of the conflict — and clarity about conditions in Gaza.

“There is hunger in Gaza,” Andres told the Times of Israel. “I don’t know how much, but there is hunger in Gaza. And we need to make sure there’s no hunger in Gaza.”

When people think of Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate for NYC mayor, what first comes to mind is likely his signature red beret, which he’s been wearing since he founded the citizen-patrol group the Guardian Angels back in 1979.

But what people might not realize is that he’s the proud father of two Jewish sons — and in participating in Jewish ritual with them, Sliwa’s beret has taken on a secondary function.

“I have the biggest kippah in the world,” Sliwa joked in a recent sit-down interview. “When I go to a Catholic church — as a Catholic, I know you gotta take your beret off.”

He added, “I’ve never had to worry about that in a shul or a synagogue.”

Sliwa, who is polling ahead of incumbent Eric Adams but behind Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, has appeared in Jewish spaces as a two-time mayoral candidate and a public figure over the years. On Tuesday, for example, his beret doubled as a kippah when he visited Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway to commemorate the anniversary of the 1991 Crown Heights riots, which he dispatched his group to help quell.

But Sliwa, a Catholic of Polish and Italian descent, has entered Jewish spaces in his private life, too — perhaps most significantly for the bar mitzvahs of two of his sons, in 2021 and 2024.

“I liked being with my boys on an important day in their life,” Sliwa said.

The sons’ mother, Melinda Katz, is the district attorney of Queens County; Katz and Sliwa, who lived together but were never married, separated in 2014. (Sliwa, who is married to his fourth wife, has an older son as well.)

“Melinda said, ‘You know I want to raise them Jewish.’ I said, ‘I don’t have a problem with it,’” Sliwa recalled.

Sliwa added that the kids went to a Jewish preschool: “The kids need to know who they are, they’re going to be Jews. There’s no escaping it, their last name is Katz — the tribe of Katz, right?”

Sliwa said the boys were given their mother’s last name to honor her late father, David Katz, who founded the Queens Symphony Orchestra in 1953. Melinda Katz did not respond to a request for comment.

In a mayoral race where antisemitism and Jewish security have been major areas of focus — Adams is seeking to run on an “EndAntiSemitism” ballot line, Cuomo has called antisemitism “the most important issue” of the campaign and Zohran Mamdani has been scrutinized for his views on Israel — the Republican Sliwa appears to be the candidate with the closest familial ties to Jews.

New York City mayoral candidates Scott Stringer, Curtis Sliwa and Brad Lander attend a memorial event for seniors who died during the Covid pandemic in nursing homes, March 23, 2025, in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of the borough of Brooklyn. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Sliwa is not the first non-Jewish Republican to have Jewish descendants. President Donald Trump has Jewish grandchildren, a fact that has endeared him to some Jewish Republican voters and at times insulated him from allegations of antisemitism.

Sliwa, too, has faced accusations of antisemitism in the past — and has mentioned his Jewish sons amid the backlash. In a 2018 speech he warned residents of the city’s suburbs that Orthodox Jews were trying to “take over your community” and are a drag on the tax system.

“We’re not talking about poor, impoverished, disabled people who need help. We’re talking about able-bodied men who study Torah and Talmud all day and we subsidize them,” he said. “ll they do is make babies like there’s no tomorrow and who’s subsidizing that? We are.”

When Sliwa ran for mayor three years later, the comments resurfaced and drew a backlash. “My two youngest sons have been raised Jewish. They need to read this?” he said in a video in which he did not apologize or disavow the comments but did offer to meet with Orthodox Jewish leaders. “To say to themselves, my father is an antisemite? Come on, even my worst critics out there would recognize that’s a shanda,”

In 2024, he told Haaretz that antisemitism is “in the DNA” of non-Jews. But in his recent interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Sliwa said he had “used the wrong term” when speaking to Haaretz. In fact, he said, his intention was to say that a “cloud of antisemitism” often gets “fed into the minds of people” who aren’t Jewish — and that he believed it was a regrettable dynamic.

Whether having Jewish children will help Silwa with Jewish voters in November remains to be seen.

“We’re a minority,” said Rabbi Adam Mintz, who leads a Modern Orthodox congregation on the Upper West Side. “Any connection to Judaism is good for us.”

But Mintz, who said his congregation includes both Republicans and Democrats, cautioned against attributing too much significance to Sliwa’s Jewish family.

“It’s cool that he’s running for mayor and he has Jewish children. You may say, ‘Maybe he’s more sympathetic’ – you have no idea,” he said. “You’ll never know the true answer to that question, like how you’ll never know how Trump gets along with his Jewish grandchildren.”

Mintz also noted that many Jews from more observant Orthodox communities — those that tend to vote for Republicans more often — are “not going to like blended families.”

Sliwa said he was happy to support his sons being raised Jewish — though when it came time for their bar mitzvahs, there was one problem: Sliwa said that Katz’s Conservative synagogue would not allow him to stand on the bimah as a non-Jew.

“The Conservative rabbi and cantor were very nice about it,” Sliwa said, but he wanted to have a bigger role than sitting in the audience. “So then I had the private conversation with Melinda: ‘I’d really like to be up at the bimah. I don’t know what they’re saying when they’re repeating their lessons, but I’d like to be up there. I think they would like me to be up there, too.’”

A 2019 Queens Jewish Link article said Katz belonged to the Forest Hills Jewish Center, a Conservative congregation. Her father, who died in 1987, is buried in the Forest Hills Jewish Center’s plot of Montefiore Cemetery in Queens.

The Conservative movement has been wracked by tensions over the inclusion of interfaith families, with some congregations barring non-Jewish family members from some forms of ritual participation. FHJC did not respond to questions about its policies. In an email to JTA, FHJC’s executive director, Donna Bartolomeo, wrote, “While we are unable to comment on a particular bar mitzvah, The Forest Hills Jewish Center as a community embraces families of all forms and includes parents of all faith backgrounds in Bnei Mitzvah celebrations.”

In the end, the bar mitzvahs were held at the Reform Temple of Forest Hills in Queens. Melinda Katz is currently a member, according to Rabbi Mark Kaiserman, who presided over both sons’ bar mitzvahs.

At his older son’s bar mitzvah, which was held at the synagogue with a Zoom audience amid COVID-19 restrictions, Sliwa read from the English translation of the service’s Torah portion, Parashat Behar. At his younger son’s bar mitzvah, he opened the ark and was part of the procession that carried the Torah around the sanctuary.

“You know, they pick up on Christianity just because it’s the majority,” Sliwa said of the two sons he shares with Katz. “But they’re proud Jews.”