New legislation banning child marriage in Washington, D.C., was signed into law last week following advocacy by a coalition including Unchained At Last, a Jewish-led organization that opposes underage marriage.

The new act establishes the marriage age as 18 in Washington, D.C. with no exceptions. It was signed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and became law recently following a 30-day congressional review.

The law closes loopholes that allowed children aged 16 or 17 to be married with parental consent. According to data collected by Unchained at Last, 110 minors in D.C. were married between the years 2000 and 2023.

“Thank you, D.C., for standing up for girls and banning an archaic human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.” said Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, in a press release.

Reiss, who is a survivor of what she describes as a forced teenage marriage in a haredi Orthodox community, has been a staunch advocate for ending child marriage nationwide. The press release said her group worked with the Washington, D.C. Coalition to End Child Marriage, which also lists Unchained at Last among its partners.

“We’re trying to solve a problem that most people don’t even know exists,” Reiss told JTA in 2023. “Most Americans have no idea that child marriage is legal in the U.S. Child marriage is a nightmarish legal trap.”

Unchained At Last garnered attention in 2023 after it debuted a PSA-style teaser for a fake reality show highlighting child marriage. At times, including during a 2018 fight over child marriage in New Jersey, the group’s advocacy has met opposition from other Jewish activists who have sought to maintain permissions for underage marriage. The New Jersey child marriage ban eventually passed.

The capital now joins a tally of 13 states and two U.S. territories that have banned child marriage outright. Ten more have laws pending that would eliminate the practice.

BERLIN — Keren Kesselmann felt alone. Her male colleague in a Frankfurt Jewish communal institution had been making sexual advances, despite her rejections. One day the colleague cornered her in the workplace and forcibly tried to kiss her.

She ran to a female colleague. “’I can’t take this anymore,'” she said. “And then I told her what had happened, and she said, ‘Oh, you too?’”

Recalling the saga that unfolded two years ago, Kesselmann said, “And that’s how it came out.” Ultimately, after several women testified privately, the man was fired.

In some ways, the series of events played out exactly as advocates for swift and certain responses to sexual misconduct would have wanted. But Kesselman and others believed Frankfurt’s Jewish community could have done even better.

She shared her account with a local Jewish activist group called Or Tamid, Hebrew for eternal light, which was pressuring Frankfurt’s organized Jewish community to adopt policies to protect potential victims of abuse. Their advocacy dovetailed with strategizing that was already underway in the community.

The result: In December, the umbrella organization that governs Frankfurt’s Jewish institutions became the first in Germany to open a third-party reporting and counseling hotline for employees — 400 in all.

Local Jewish leaders say credit is deserved for the launch of the hotline, which a local law firm is operating.

“I think it’s great that the Jewish community was reacting,’” said Avichai Apel, one of Frankfurt’s two Orthodox rabbis, “and that we have such an organization like Or Tamid, who are open to hear, open to deal, and open to support people in such a situation.”

The new hotline is unusual if not unprecedented for local Jewish communities, said Rabbi Mary Zamore, who as the executive director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, a Reform Jewish organization, has led a push for improved handling of sexual abuse allegations in  that movement’s American institutions.

“Those who advocated and the leaders who have created an outside help center with outside third-party support have created a very powerful tool, one that should be studied by other communities,” Zamore said.

The new hotline is unique among Germany’s 103 organized Jewish communities, each known as a “Gemeinde.” But a national Jewish organization, the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany, or ZWST, is developing plans for an abuse reporting system that would start small but could serve a much broader constituency.

Laura Cazes, a spokesperson, said the plans will also include efforts to prevent abuse before it happens.

“It is obviously important that organizations and communities learn from it,” she said about abuse allegations. “Those things, if they’re not being dealt with, obviously at some point — they will cause a huge mess.”

The Frankfurt Jewish community board decided to open the center with outside help after handling cases like the one Kesselman brought on its own, according to director Jennifer Marställer.

It “was a heavy burden,” she said, both “for the people dealing with it [the abuse] and from the employer side.”

At the same time, several local Jews heard about the abuse allegations and were frustrated by what they believed was inaction and opacity by the community’s leaders.

“I am not normally a very activist person,” said Daniela Shemer, a community member whose children attend its schools. “I felt I cannot look away and wait for someone else to deal with this.”

Shemer, a professional musician, joined with attorney Haleli Shomer Shalom, who has dealt professionally with the topic of sexual harassment and abuse; fellow musician Roglit Ishay; and Niels Gerhardt — Ishay’s husband and the only non-Jewish member — to form Or Tamid. They met with community leaders to push an agenda of support for victims and zero tolerance for abusers.

“I demanded answers in a very harsh way,” said Shomer Shalom. “I wanted to understand what happened — as a mother, as a lawyer, as a person, as a human being, as a Jew, as any title you put on me. I did not accept this story to be covered up.”

Both Or Tamid’s leaders and representatives of the gemeinde acknowledge that relations between them were initially tense, as Or Tamid pressed for aggressive action.

“But we built it up, and we want to maintain this positive relationship,” said longtime board member and recently elected gemeinde co-chair Marc Grünbaum. “We listen, and it registers.”

A breakthrough came when Or Tamid held a community meeting where group members recounted incidents, including that of one woman who quit her role at the Jewish community after a colleague whom she reported for sexual harassment confessed but kept his job. The others remained anonymous, but Kesselman rose to identify herself after her story was shared.

“I was proud of her,” Apel said. “I know that it’s a very difficult thing for a person to stand up and to go public.”

The number of stories shared at the meeting convinced Elishewa Patterson, a local attorney and Jewish community member, that there was a real problem. “After I heard how many women came forward, I could accept the fact that this was actually true,” she said. She later advised the community on its legal obligations to employees.

Now, Marställer is grateful that Or Tamid held the community meeting and demanded an outside complaints office.

The entire experience of trying to handle these situations without outside help “was hard. It was really hard,” she said.

“I know we made mistakes with the communication and towards the employees after everything was solved,” she added. “That’s why it’s also good that there is somebody from the outside who can write a report and is not biased in any direction.”

With the new reporting center, employees can reach out anonymously and can get legal help and psychological counseling. The community will receive a report every three months on the number and type of calls coming in.

“We only get to know of any eventual problem if the person getting in touch with them wants to have the Jewish community know it,” Marställer said.

Victims alleging abuse are still coming to Or Tamid for help, said Shomer Shalom — but she said she hopes that will change soon. “We’re hoping that this new office will gain the community members’ trust, and that Or Tamid won’t be needed,” she said.

Seeking outside, neutral help is essential, Zamore said. “All of our Jewish communities, no matter where in the world, are very inbred, intertwined communities. Under normal circumstances, that is one of our great strengths,” she said. “But in the case of holding members of our communities accountable for creating great harm, it is a great stumbling block.”

For Kesselmann, the reporting center comes too late to address the abuse she faced. But now that there is one, she has advice for her fellow Frankfurters.

“Don’t wait” to seek help, she said. “I waited far too long. I was afraid that it would affect my work. Yes, I was really afraid. … I didn’t know who I could talk to about it. I couldn’t talk about it at home. I couldn’t talk about it at work. It’s better to go there sooner, and talk openly.”

When I arrived at the emergency room with mysterious abdominal pain, the first thing they did was hand me a pen. 

As I stood at the registration desk, the pain was getting worse still — I knew I had to puke again. But there were forms to fill and information to provide. I jotted down my name and address, and I obliged as they told me to pose for quite possibly the worst photograph of my entire life.

The pain was hard to bear — I distinctly felt like there was a cinder block in my lower abdomen but, unable to recall eating any bricks or concrete, I ruled that out. 

But I was taken aback by what happened next.

Once I was officially admitted to the hospital, I was led to a different, painfully fluorescent room, where they needed more information about me. They clipped a pulse oximeter onto my finger, took my blood pressure and then took some actual blood. I stood on a scale. They asked for my height and I said, “five-nine” — the searing pain, which was expanding to my lower back, eclipsed my urge to say “five-nine-and-a-half.” 

Finally, I was led to a bed. Lying in it brought no pain relief — but a woman in scrubs holding an iPad approached. I thought: Could this be my savior? Does her iPad have the answers? Does she know what’s wrong with me?

No. There were no answers, just more questions, though these ones were of the optional variety. She asked for my marital status; “Single,” I said awkwardly as my girlfriend looked on. The nurse tapped silently on the iPad.

And then she asked: “Religion?”

I thought maybe my abdominal pain had somehow disrupted my hearing. I didn’t answer right away as questions raced through my brain: What should I do? Am I supposed to tell her I’m Jewish? Maybe she’s Jewish? What if I told her? What if I didn’t? 

“Why?” I asked, maybe a bit defensively.

I felt distinctly uncomfortable — a discomfort that was separate from the one caused by what I’d later learn was a millimeters-wide kidney stone straining its way through my ureter. 

Since I was very young, I’ve had this notion that it’s good to be suspicious if I’m ever asked to identify my religion. In addition to my familiarity with Jewish history — i.e, millennia of Jewish persecution — I’d also heard horror stories from childhood friends. People like my former classmates at a Jewish day school in Toronto: Legend has it that a man on the street had asked if they were Jewish, then offered them cash after they lied and said “no.” (Scared, they ran off into, of all places, a falafel shop.)

On an intellectual level, I knew my suspicion about revealing my Jewish identity was at least somewhat ridiculous. Here I was on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a city home to one million Jews, inside a hospital named after a Jewish guy. (That’s right: Financier Sanford Weill, of NY Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center fame, was once a Jewish kid in Brooklyn.)

My misgivings were even a bit out of character: I’m more than happy to identify myself as a Jew — I am literally a staff writer for the New York Jewish Week. It’s on my LinkedIn and everything. 

But lying in a hospital bed, being asked by someone I’ve never met holding a mysterious tablet synced up to a whole network of information invisible to me — well, I didn’t want to answer. Why? Well, famously, not everybody likes Jews! Even here in New York City, there were 345 anti-Jewish hate crimes last year, making up more than half of the city’s total hate crimes.

I tried to reason with myself — after all, I was in the hospital, a place of health and safety. But in a world transformed by the October 7 attack and the global rise in antisemitism, hospitals have horror stories, too: I thought about the Australian nurse who was charged after a viral video showed her threatening to kill her Israeli patients and boasting about refusing to treat them. (I’m not Israeli, I reminded myself, but still.) And I remembered how, recently, American Jewish leaders have raised concerns about antisemitism in the health care sector in the United States.

Maybe I wasn’t being unreasonable, I figured. So I opted not to answer. My thoughts kept racing as the nurse tapped some more on the iPad, then moved on. And after about 10 hours of tests — and eventually passing the stone — so did I.

In the following days and weeks, though, as I replayed my emergency room visit in my head, I realized I was still curious: Why did they ask me for my religion? And should I have answered? 

Friends had different theories. Some said it was to know which type of religious official to summon in case I died (how comforting!). Others posited that it was purely for tracking demographics.

So I asked around at a bunch of NYC hospitals; some of them didn’t have a response. But according to a spokesperson for NYU Langone: “Hospitals like ours typically ask about religion so that we can be attentive to a patient’s cultural and spiritual needs, such as dietary preferences, traditions (such as offering candles for the Sabbath), or if they ask for a member of the clergy to assist in counseling or prayer.”

Aha! This was comforting. In other words, they weren’t inputting my name on a secret database called “PATIENTS TO TARGET.” 

As a New York-Presbyterian Hospital spokesperson told me via email: “During the registration process we offer our patients the option of sharing their religious affiliation to help us provide the best, most personalized patient experience, including access to specialized resources and considerations, including a variety of chaplaincy services,” they wrote, specifying that sharing religious affiliation “is completely voluntary.”

Nonetheless, the spokesperson’s mention of chaplaincy services piqued my interest — after all, I associated hospital chaplains with reading last rites to patients on their deathbed. And according to Rabbi Ben Varon, a chaplain at NYU Langone Hospital Brooklyn, that’s not an unusual association to make.

“Here and there, I walk in and introduce myself and [people are] like, ‘Oh no, what’s wrong?’” Varon told me. “And I reassure them right away, ‘There’s nothing wrong. This is one of my units, I make rounds. And I’m just here to provide emotional support and see how you guys are doing today.’”

In his role as a chaplain, Varon said that giving patients “any amount of peace or comfort that I can is a win.” Sometimes he sees patients during his rounds, while other times a medical professional refers patients for him to see. While many hospital staffers aim to provide physical healing, Varon said that chaplains are there to help on an emotional and spiritual level, which “are very integral aspects of people’s lives, of their healing journeys.”

When I told Varon about my recent reluctance to disclose my Jewish identity at the hospital, he responded that I’m not the only one. “Whether that’s like, deep-seated trauma or fear, or whatever the reason might be — it’s hard to say exactly, but I think there’s something there,” he said.

He noted that Russian Jews seem especially reluctant to identify their religion (NYU Langone Brooklyn is located in South Brooklyn, near neighborhoods with large Russian populations). “I think Russian Jews have a very wide spectrum of their relationship to their faith,” he said. “What it meant for them to be Jewish in the Soviet Union, and how that comes out for them now, living in America — I think there’s definitely something there.”

Looking at the census of patients in units he’s covering, Varon noted that the religion on many of their files is listed as “none” — the same thing that’s written on mine, presumably.

But Varon pointed out that his support, like helping patients reflect on their experiences or talking through a diagnosis, is equally applicable to secular or non-religious patients — or even non-Jewish ones. Many times, he said, his work involves simply being a presence beside a patient who is suffering or lonely. “Sitting with someone is a holy thing, in my opinion,” he said.

Ultimately, in the ER, I didn’t feel the need for a chaplain’s presence: I had my girlfriend by my side and my parents on FaceTime. But suppose I’d been alone and could’ve used the comfort — would they have sent a chaplain if I’d identified my religion? I wouldn’t have known to ask. (“A lot of Jewish patients have said to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know something like this existed,”’ said Varon.) 

Now that I understand why hospitals ask patients about their religion, I don’t think I’ll hesitate to answer the question the next time I’m in the hospital.

Unfortunately, another hospital visit is likely in my future: A CT scan taken during that long and painful night indicated that I have yet another kidney stone that needs passing. It could be tomorrow, or three years from now — it’s anyone’s guess. But when that day comes and I’m back in a hospital bed, my words being typed into an iPad as I face question after question, I’ll look forward to telling them I’m a five-nine-and-a-half Jew.

The far-right French leader Jordan Bardella spoke to applause at an Israeli government conference, in a landmark moment for the head of a party that was led for years by an antisemite.

In the speech, Bardella condemned antisemitism and anti-Zionism. He also emphasized the key messages of his party, National Rally: combating Islamism and restricting immigration to France.

The presence of Bardella, along with other far-right European politicians, has brought controversy to the event, an international conference on fighting antisemitism hosted by the Diaspora Ministry. Jewish leaders across Europe have long opposed the far right; prominent American and European leaders pulled out of the conference in protest.

That controversy did not appear to mar Bardella’s speech at the event, which was received with applause. Speaking in French with English translation, Bardella condemned antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and mentioned visits in recent days to the sites of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacres, as well as to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. He cited “a time of relentless war in the face of barbarism, which is also our fight.”

“We should suffer no ambiguity to fight against antisemitism,” he said at the beginning of his speech. “In the face of the disturbing resurgence of anti-Jewish hatred throughout Europe and the world, and in the face of terrorism that intends to destroy our lives and our values, we French believe more than ever in the imperative need for our nations to unite their voices and join forces in this fight.”

He blamed immigration and Islamism — along with the political left — for the rise in antisemitism in Europe.

“In the schools of the French republic, in some areas, the teaching of the Holocaust has become literally impossible, such is the extent to which the immigration policy pursued over the last 30 years has upset the great balances of our nation,” he said. “Since Oct. 7 in particular, in France and in Europe, we have been witnessing the deadly honeymoon between Islamism and the extreme left. One provides the fanatics, the other institutionalizes evil, provides the excuse of victimization and the appearance of a good conscience.”

He added at the end of his speech, “We need to be clear-headed enough to confront the Islamist threat. It is both your enemy as well as our most existential threat.”

He did not mention antisemitism on the far-right, for which his party had long provided a home. National Rally was formerly the National Front, founded and led for much of its history by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of Holocaust denial. Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, has sought to distance the party from that antisemitic legacy, changing its name and expelling her father. She pivoted from demonizing Jews to fighting against radical Islam and immigration.

Some French Jews support National Rally, which has seen increasing success in recent years. But the country’s leading Jewish organizations remain wary of it.

And some warm feelings may remain toward Jean-Marie Le Pen. When he died in January, Bardella eulogized him in a social media post, writing that “he always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty.” Le Pen’s grandaughter Marion Marechal, who has more enthusiastically embraced his legacy, was also invited to the conference.

Israel’s Diaspora minister, Amichai Chikli, has defended the conference agenda even as it has come under widespread criticism. On Thursday, speaking from the stage, he issued an apology — to the European politicians.

“First and foremost, I want to thank our friends and allies, especially our friends of the European Parliament, who have chosen to come to Israel during wartime,” Chikli said, according to the Times of Israel. “I apologize for the lies spread against you by those who slander the State of Israel worldwide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sixty years after he first began serializing it in the Yiddish press, and 42 years after publisher Alfred A. Knopf acquired the book, “Sons and Daughters” — the last novel by the late, great Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade — is landing in bookstores this week. 

To call it “long-awaited” is an understatement. 

How the novel came to be published in English translation is a story of family intrigue, literary detective work and dogged creativity on the part of its translator and editors. 

The result, a sprawling 600-plus-page book about a rabbi in 1930s Lithuania and the different paths taken by his children, is “quite probably the last great Yiddish novel,” the critic Adam Kirsch writes in an introduction. Dwight Garner, in a New York Times review, calls it “a melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny.”

“We could not have let this die. It had to be out there,” said the book’s translator, Rose Waldman, in an interview. “It had to be available to the English speaker.” 

Waldman was hired in 2015 to translate a manuscript that had already taken a circuitous route from Grade’s typewriter to the cluttered rooms of his Bronx apartment to the limbo of probate law. Grade, who died in 1982 at 74, was highly regarded — although never as widely known to English readers as rival Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. What was perhaps his best-known book — “Rabbis and Wives,” drawing on his memories of the pious, Jewish, vanished Vilna of his youth — appeared in English only the year he died. A memoir, “My Mother’s Sabbath Days,” was published four years later. 

In 1983, Knopf signed a contract with Grade’s widow, Inna Hecker Grade, for what was then called “The Rabbi’s House.” Inna, notoriously protective of her husband’s legacy, worked with a translator and editors on a few chapters of the book but then retreated into obstinate silence. Until her death in 2010, she rebuffed publishers and scholars who sought access to Grade’s manuscripts, correspondence and works in progress. 

The Grades left no heirs, and in 2013 the Bronx public administrator named the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the National Library of Israel as executors of the Grade estate, and YIVO inherited his papers. The ensuing treasure hunt led to the discovery, in 2014, of a 148-page Yiddish galley that Waldman assumed was the finished novel later to be called “Sons and Daughters.” Instead, as she realized after a year’s work on the translation, the novel was incomplete. According to material uncovered by Yehuda Zirkind, a graduate student at Tel Aviv University, she had been working on what Grade had planned as the first volume of a two-volume work.

Piecing together the second volume involved a dive into the YIVO archive, where Waldman found more chapters that Grade had serialized in the Yiddish newspapers Tag-Morgn Zhurnal and Forverts between 1965 and 1976. Waldman got to work translating these installments and knit them together into the just-published opus. 

A happy ending? Not quite – in fact, “Sons and Daughters” had no ending at all. Grade had left the saga unfinished at his death. Eight years after first seeing the original manuscript, Waldman was poring through YIVO’s digitized archive when she found a typed outline by Grade sketching his ideas for a conclusion. She includes those pages in a translator’s note. 

Finished or not, “Sons and Daughters” is a vivid, Tolstoyan examination of what Kirsch calls “a family struggling with the meaning of Jewishness in the twentieth century.” The pious small-town rabbi, Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen, is tormented by his children’s choices: One son has fled to Switzerland where he studies secular philosophy and marries a Christian woman; another son yearns to join the Zionist, secular “halutzim” settling the land of Israel. His daughters too seem to have inhaled the fumes of modernity, and struggle under the expectations of arranged marriages and circumscribed lives as the wives of rabbis. 

Grade (pronounced GRAH-duh), whose mother and first wife were killed by the Nazis, fled his native Vilna in 1941 and eventually made it to Moscow, where he met Inna. The two arrived in New York in 1948. Although Grade had left Orthodoxy to pursue a literary career, he couldn’t help but circle back to a world that was obliterated during the Holocaust. In recreating that world — and showing how it was under pressure from modernity and antisemitism even before the rise of Nazism — Grade was determined to, as he wrote a friend, “immortalize the great generation that I knew.” 

On Wednesday I Zoomed with Waldman and the book’s editor, Todd Portnowitz. We spoke about the challenges of translating an admired stylist, how Grade’s memories shaped his writing, and why the story of a Jewish family fractured by faith and possibility still resonates today. 

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

I want to ask about translating a writer of Grade’s stature, but first, Rose, I want to ask how you came to be a Yiddish translator in the first place.

Rose Waldman: I’m a native Yiddish speaker, because I was born Hasidic. Yiddish is my first language. I started doing translating in grad school, and I loved it, and I just got into it. 

Translating the work of Chaim Grade was kind of a dream. When they offered this to me, I couldn’t believe it. I had actually been running after Jonathan Brent [the executive director of the YIVO Institute], asking, “What’s happening with the estate?” And then, out of the blue, they just offered this to me. I feel very privileged.

Are there particular challenges in trying to capture Grade’s voice? 

Waldman: This is not just with Grade, but with every Yiddish writer, the loshn-koydesh, the Hebrew words, are used very often interchangeably. And then how do you show that in English? Grade was very learned. He had the yeshiva background, and he uses a lot of these words and Biblical verses. I tried to retain the flavor and, in some cases, we ended up using the Hebrew words, transliterated. 

But I will say that Grade’s Yiddish is very familiar to me. He has what we would call in our community a haimish Yiddish, homie or like one of us. Even if he was not Hasidic — he was a Litvak — his Yiddish felt very, very comfortable to me. 

The book had to be pieced together, in a sense, from the original manuscript, serialized chapters in the Yiddish press, perhaps from Grade’s notes. Todd, what’s the challenge in editing a book like this and making sure it’s coherent and has its own integrity? 

Todd Portnowitz: You know, many editors touched this over the years. Ash Green bought it back in the ’80s. It migrated over to Altie Karper, who was running Schocken, and then came to me in about 2022, when Rose had already produced a full translation. They reached out to me because I had done lots of translation work. I don’t know Yiddish, but they thought maybe I can take a look at this draft with Rose and just polish it up. 

For people who aren’t familiar with what an editor does, can you explain the process and your working relationship with Rose and the text? 

Portnowitz: Rose and I kept in close touch over the last two years, working on the pages together. I approached it the way I’d approach what I call the third draft of a translation. You’ve got that first draft where you’re sticking with the original and just kind of getting it on the page. The second draft is where you’re reworking the language, but keeping the original present so that you can make sure everything’s accurate. And then the third draft is where you cut the umbilical cord with the original text and make sure it really works in English. I just gave Rose as many suggestions as possible about how to turn sentences around, to keep it flowing.

It was really just a pleasure to become part of the Grade story. I went in as a novice and came out really embracing him, his literature, his whole project. 

Waldman: I will say that without Todd’s editing, there is no way it would have looked close to this. It became so much more smooth and so much more beautiful.

Why is Grade important? Why would you suggest a reader in 2025 read this book written in the 1960s and ’70s about the world of the 1930s? 

Waldman: All the stuff that he writes about is still really relevant today — specifically, of course, for the religious Jewish community, because they’re struggling with the exact same issues that the characters and his stories are struggling with. But it’s also all about family, and when your kids go off in different directions, or when things happen that you didn’t expect, and then just the typical universal issues: sicknesses and sibling rivalry and the uncle you don’t like.

Of course, the antisemitism trope is still relevant. You think, okay, so that was the 1930s and we’re living in a whole different world. We’re not really. 

Portnowitz: Strip away Lithuania, Judaism at that time, take away all the context, and you’d still have a book about human relations, interpersonal relations, children going in their own directions, trying to make a buck and trying to find spiritual answers. I think they’re all kind of looking for fulfillment in their own way.

Zionism is also a big part of the book. The youngest son wants to go to Palestine. And the way it was looked at during that time before the war was very different than it is now. You know, the father is dismayed that his son is going to go there.

Waldman: I think he’s also very good at reading people and finding little things that make some people tick. His descriptions of people can be really funny. You look at it and you think, “Oh, I know someone like that.”

How do you think the Holocaust shapes Grade’s approach to the material? Again, he’s writing 30 years after the fact, when he knows the ultimate fate of these communities, even though that is not mentioned in the book. Does that awareness emerge in the writing? 

Waldman: When I started translating it, I was sure that this novel ends with the Holocaust and with the characters being led off to Auschwitz. Of course, it doesn’t end that way. But the more I got into it, the more I realized that Grade was never — although I can’t know for sure — going to mention the Holocaust. But the knowledge of what is to come is very much there. It has real weight in the book. 

“Sons and Daughters” is about a world that was lost completely. Many of the post-Holocaust books are about the Holocaust, how people died, and the miracles of those who survived. “Sons and Daughters” is about how they lived, not how the Jews died. No one does it as beautifully as Grade. And I think for that alone, it’s worth reading. 

Days after Yeshiva University announced that it would recognize a club supporting LGBTQ students, its president said the values espoused by a typical “Pride” club are “antithetical” to the school.

Rabbi Ari Berman also claimed that the Modern Orthodox school’s decision to allow an LGBTQ club, after years of fighting in court not to recognize one, did not represent a reversal. He apologized for how the school had initially communicated the announcement.

“I deeply apologize to the members of our community — our students and parents, alumni and friends, faculty and Rabbis — for the way the news was rolled out,” he wrote in an email to students Tuesday. “Instead of clarity, it sowed confusion. Even more egregiously, misleading ‘news’ articles said that Yeshiva had reversed its position, which is absolutely untrue.”

For years, in keeping with Orthodoxy’s prohibition against homosexual relations, Y.U. fought in court to avoid giving official recognition to the YU Pride Alliance, a student LGBTQ group. In 2022, the school announced its own group to support LGBTQ students, which Pride Alliance leaders rejected.

Last week’s announcement said all litigation had ended and that the students would run a new Y.U.-approved group called “Hareni.” The student leaders celebrated the decision, and advocates for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews said the announcement was a significant step for queer recognition in Orthodox spaces.

Berman’s letter countered both of those ideas.

He framed the new club as a continuation of the group founded by the administration in 2022, rather than the Pride Alliance. And he rejected the idea that Orthodoxy approves of LGBTQ clubs.

“The Yeshiva has always conveyed that what a Pride club represents is antithetical to the undergraduate program in which the traditional view of marriage and genders being determined at birth are transmitted,” he wrote. “The Yeshiva never could and never would sanction such an undergraduate club and it is due to this that we entered litigation.”

He added that “the Hareni club has now been established to support students who are striving to live authentic, uncompromising halakhic lives, as previously described.” He wrote that the new club will operate “in accordance with halacha,” or Jewish law.

“Last week, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against YU accepted to run Hareni, instead of what they were originally suing us for, moved to end the case, and the case has been dismissed,” he wrote.

Hareni’s leaders aren’t portraying the settlement as a retreat. In a press release sent after it was announced, the club called the agreement a “landmark step” that constituted “a significant advance for LGBTQ+ students and their allies.” It said Hareni was a new club that could “publicly use ‘LGBTQ+’ in its communications” and that would independently select its leaders.

“By recognizing Hareni as an official student club, the university affirms the importance of providing a safe and supportive space for LGBTQ+ students,” the press release said. “This resolution ensures that all students can fully participate in campus life while respecting the university’s values and traditions, demonstrating that Jewish and LGBTQ+ identities can coexist within a welcoming academic environment.”

In response to the letter, the group struck the same tone.

“Hareni is excited to begin its work supporting LGBTQ students and allies,” it said in a statement Wednesday. “We look forward to sharing club protocols soon and working with the entire community to make the club a success.”

Rachael Fried, executive director of Jewish Queer Youth, which has provided support to the Pride Alliance, called Hareni a huge step forward and pushed back on Berman’s letter.

“The idea that Pride and halachic observance are inherently in conflict is not only inaccurate, it’s harmful,” she said in a statement. “Pride, at its core, is about self-worth, collective dignity, and being able to exist without shame. It is absolutely possible for someone to live a proud, meaningful, and halachically observant life.”

She added, “When we reduce queer identity to a single incomplete narrative, we do a disservice to the fullness of our Jewish community and the values we claim to uphold.”

TEL AVIV — As an American immigrant to Israel, Lital Friedman knows a thing or two about pancakes — including that Israel’s crepe-style versions don’t often stack up favorably against the fluffy style popular in the United States.

But she didn’t make the trip from Jerusalem to the American-style pancake pop-up in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market for culinary reasons. She came because Keith Siegel’s Pancake House honors the former hostage long known for his Shabbat-morning tradition of making pancakes for his family.

Keith Siegel was released from Gaza last month after 484 days in captivity.

“Like all of us, I’ve been following the hostages since the beginning of the war and this is another way to support them,” said Friedman, who moved from Boca Raton, Florida, years ago. “There’s so much sadness around this, so when there’s a celebration, you want to be part of it.”

Siegel’s recipe first drew attention when it was published in a cookbook compiled by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum last year. His daughter, Shir, began posting to her 45,000 Instagram followers each Saturday about how much she missed her dad’s pancakes. Soon, people started tagging her in their own pancake photos. By the time Siegel was freed, she was receiving hundreds of pancake pictures every weekend.

Last month, the pancake movement exploded when Shir asked Israelis to cook pancakes in honor of her father’s return. The post went viral, and his recipe appeared in newspapers across the country.

The pop-up aims to harness the public affinity for Keith’s pancakes to help support him and his family — including his wife Aviva, who herself was held hostage for 51 days before being freed and devoting herself to advocating for his release — as they settle into a new normal, far from their longtime home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

While the government offers released hostages some support, families have increasingly crowdfunded to cover unmet needs. So for the two-day lifespan of the kosher-certified shop, all proceeds from the pay-what-you-wish menu are going to the Siegel family’s rehabilitation fund. And a rotating team of Israeli pastry students and top chefs volunteered their time to cook and serve the fluffy confections.

On Wednesday, the pop-up’s first day, the line snaked around the corner. Shir addressed the crowd, telling them how touched her father had been when he heard how many people had been making his pancakes every Shabbat. But she reminded them that the Pancake House wasn’t just about the food — or even about her father. Its mission, she said, was to raise awareness for the 59 hostages still held in Gaza.

The shop features a large poster calling attention to the plight of Gali and Ziv Berman, twin brothers who are the only remaining living hostages from Kfar Aza. And Siegel himself wore a shirt featuring Matan Angrest, with whom he spent time in captivity, as he sat at an outdoor table and watched the fanfare.

Siegel said he had dreamed of pancakes several times a day while in captivity, along with other good memories of his family. The recipe is the same one his late mother, Gladys, made for him growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Gladys died just 60 days before his release.

“Mom was an excellent cook and baker,” he said. “And most of all, a wonderful human being.”

Food is in Siegel’s family: A son, Shai, is the co-owner of an acclaimed chain of hummus restaurants. But Siegel emphasized that he isn’t a “food specialist,” saying that for him, the joy of eating goes far beyond taste.

“I don’t know if something needs more salt or not,” he said. “For me, enjoying food is about more than the taste — it’s the environment, it’s being with the people I love.”

As he spoke, Siegel was constantly approached by well-wishers seeking selfies or the chance to share a few words. One woman, Varda Ben Ami, told him how happy she was to see him home and wished him luck in his recovery. She later said in an interview that meeting him in person gave her goosebumps.

“After seeing poster after poster of him for so long, seeing him in real life is just really emotional,” she said, tearing up.

At one point, two young girls exclaimed that they were eating the best pancakes they’d ever tasted, prompting a wide grin from Siegel.

At a nearby table, Friedman, polishing off a vegan pancake topped with strawberries and whipped cream, agreed with the assessment.

“These are the best pancakes I’ve had in Israel,” she said, before adding wryly, “Though I’ve never actually had pancakes at a restaurant before. It’s not really a thing here.”

Siegel noted that the pancakes could easily be made vegan — he had been vegan for six years before being taken hostage and hoped to return to it one day. But the secret to their fluffiness, he said, was buttermilk. He pulled up an image of a Tnuva product on his phone that he said was the closest approximation to American buttermilk.

Celebrity chefs including Karin Goren, Haim Cohen and Ofer Ben Natan contributed custom toppings to the pop-up. But for Siegel, the best pancake topping remains the standby from his childhood in the United States: simple maple syrup.

Central Park’s Wollman Rink, which is named for a philanthropic Jewish family, is back in the news.

The city is embarking upon a “politically charged” search for a new operator for the popular ice skating rink, which generates $13 million in revenue for its current operator, the Related Companies. As Crain’s New York Business reports, President Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, is reportedly competing against Related, one of the city’s largest real estate developers, for a lucrative, 20-year contract to operate the rink, starting in 2027.

Famously, the Trump Organization renovated the then-decrepit rink in 1986, and operated it from 1987 until 2021, when it was known as Trump Wollman Rink. Trump frequently boasted about the successful project on the campaign trail in 2016: As Curbed reported, “‘Remember the Wollman Rink in Central Park?’ Trump asked in Iowa during the primary, speaking to a crowd that only vaguely knew what he was talking about. ‘They couldn’t do it. I knocked it up in four months.’”

That all came to an end when former Mayor Bill de Blasio canceled the Trump Organization’s contracts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021. But now, as the city looks to the rink’s future, the Trump family business has thrown their hat into the ring (er, rink).

But who exactly were the Wollmans, for whom the popular rink was — and still is — named?

As it turns out, the Wollmans were a fascinating Jewish family, whose all-American story begins in Prussia.

Family patriarch Jonas Wollman was born in 1824 in Kempen, Prussia (now Germany). He sailed to New York in 1851. Wollman then moved to St. Louis, where he met and married Betty Kohn, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Bohemia, and they headed further west to Leavenworth, Kansas, where they established a successful clothing business that later expanded into dry goods and other items.

Wollman became a United States citizen in 1858, according to records held by the State Historical Society of Kansas, and also founded Leavenworth’s first Reform synagogue, Temple B’Nai Jeshurun, and served as its vice president.

The Wollmans were known for their anti-slavery views, and occasionally were threatened by “pro-slavery forces,” according to the 2015 book “Lincoln and the Jews,” by Benjamin Shapell and Jonathan Sarna. When Abraham Lincoln visited Leavenworth to deliver what some consider his first presidential campaign speech in December 1859, it was reported he either dined in the Wollmans’ home or with the Wollmans at another local abolitionist’s home.

Wollman volunteered to serve in the Union Army in 1864, where he served for two weeks in the Kansas State Militia before being honorably discharged.

Jonas and Betty Wollman had eight children: Rosa, Morton, Henry, Etta, William, Kate, Benjamin and Lillian. Through Etta, they became the great-grandparents of Henry and Richard Bloch — the founders of tax preparation company H&R Block.

Following Jonas’ death in 1905, Betty moved to New York City, where she, and occasionally some of her adult children, lived on West 70th Street in a 22-room apartment across from the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the oldest congregation in the United States, whose building next to Central Park was constructed in 1897. Several of the Wollman children were already living in New York, and extended family would often stay at the large home on the Upper West Side.

Daughter Kate Wolman, born in 1870, was the last survivor of her immediate family. After moving out of the West 70th Street apartment, she moved into the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

In 1949, Kate donated $600,000 toward the construction of the public rink in memory of her parents and four brothers, which was built in 1950. A portrait of her mother, Betty, hangs near the concession stand to this day. (A 1951 New York Times article notes that, although Kate Wollman enjoyed watching the children skate, she herself did not partake in the activity.)

At a Dec. 21, 1950 dedication ceremony for the rink and adjacent playground, New York City Mayor Vincent Impellitteri said Kate Wollman had “added something of real value to our park system.”

“Those children, every day of the week, will thank you for this playground, for this skating rink,” Impellitteri said, adding, “And I’m positive that when they go to their respective churches on Sundays, or on their particular Sabbath day, somehow or another, you will be rewarded, because I’m positive that they will remember you, and the members of your family, in their prayers.”

Kate Wollman died in 1955, and another rink, the Kate Wollman Memorial Rink at Prospect Park (now called the LeFrak Center at Lakeside), built in 1961, is named after her.

The family’s philanthropic efforts were not limited to skating rinks, however. In 1957, the William J. Wollman Foundation — which was set up by Kate — gave out $6.6 million in grants to multiple Jewish hospitals and charitable organizations, including Mt. Sinai Hospital, Maimonides Hospital, the New York Guild for the Jewish Blind, the Jewish Child Care Association of New York, the 92nd St. YM-YWHA, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. According to a JTA report from the time, the grants “virtually exhaust[ed] the foundation’s assets.”

From 1950 to 1980, Wollman Rink was managed by the Central Park “system” — predating the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy — until the need for major repairs became apparent. It closed for several years, before being renovated by the Trump Organization in 1986. (In 1987, the New York Times wrote that Trump reported “a large profit” on the venture, exceeding expectations.)

Just days after the 2024 election, the New York City Parks Department announced that Wollman Rink was looking for a new operator after the contract with Related (which runs the rink in a partnership with Equinox and Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment) expires in 2027. That very same day, Nov. 13, the Trump Organization announced it would submit a proposal to run the rink again.

Not everyone is pleased by this development: In an op-ed published in AMNY on Wednesday, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine — who is Jewish and is running for city comptroller — writes: “A proxy war against Trump’s anti-New York agenda has come to our city’s parkland, and we must not allow Trump to win it.”

Furthermore, as many New Yorkers lambaste Mayor Eric Adams for seemingly cozying up to Trump, any potential deal to operate the rink is being closely watched. As the New York Times wrote earlier this month: “There is no indication that the mayor’s office has advocated for the Trump Organization. But the situation is awkward nonetheless as the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation must evaluate a business owned by a family to which Mr. Adams is seemingly indebted.”

The ice skating rink is now closed for the season. Come Friday, April 4, it will be transformed into a pickleball complex with 14 courts, “the largest pickleball offering in the Northeast,” according to CityPickle.

Kate Wollman never married, nor did she have children. Still, one wonders what she’d make of all this.

With war raging in Gaza and protests rocking the streets of Jerusalem, the Israeli government has passed a key piece of a plan that once sparked turmoil across Israel: the judicial overhaul. 

The protests against the overhaul, which dominated Israelis’ attention prior to Oct. 7, 2023, resumed ahead of the vote early Thursday morning. On Wednesday, thousands massed in Jerusalem, including lawmakers, as Israel’s parliament prepared to pass the law, which increases politicians’ influence over judicial appointments. The tally in Knesset, Israel’s parliament, was 67-1, as the opposition boycotted the vote en masse in protest. 

The fierce debate over the law has been something of a throwback. Throughout most of 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government was focused on enacting legislation to sap the country’s Supreme Court of much of its power and independence. 

The overhaul effort sparked mass protests and civil disobedience across Israel. Critics said it would deal a heavy blow to Israel’s democratic system. Supporters said it would curb an overly activist court that negated the will of Israel’s electorate. 

The government passed another piece of the overhaul plan in July 2023, but the effort — and the protests against it — essentially ceased when Hamas attacked Israel, plunging the country into a hostage crisis and war. In January 2024, about three months after the war began, the Supreme Court struck down the July law.

One year later, in January 2025, the judicial overhaul came back. The new proposal, which is more moderate than the original version, was authored jointly by Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar — who has vacillated in recent years between being a Netanyahu critic and ally. 

The law passed by Knesset changes the makeup of the committee that selects judges, giving more power to lawmakers and reducing the influence of sitting judges.

Previously, the nine-member committee had three judges, two independent lawyers and four politicians — two from the parliamentary opposition and two from the governing coalition. Now, the two lawyers will be appointed by politicians — one each by the coalition and opposition. Effectively, it means the coalition, the opposition and the judges will each hold three seats. It will take effect after the next Israeli elections. 

Critics charge that it politicizes a process that was once based on expertise and professionalism, and weakens the judiciary in a system where there’s already little separation between the executive and legislative branches. Defenders of the proposal say that it rectifies a system in which judges could pick their own replacements. 

The legislative push comes as protesters were already filling Israel’s streets. Days ago, protesters were decrying Netanyahu’s decision to end a ceasefire in Gaza — a decision they said endangered the 59 hostages still held by Hamas. They also protested his government’s moves to dismiss the attorney general and head of the Shin Bet intelligence service — which is currently investigating Netanyahu’s office for illicit dealings with Qatar. 

Protesters railed Wednesday against the return of the judicial overhaul. But even amid war and domestic strife, Netanyahu’s government is newly emboldened and was able to pass the legislation. The vote comes directly after the coalition passed a budget Tuesday, which makes its survival likely until the end of its term late next year. 

“We’re talking about a move that this house should be proud of,” lawmaker Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of the overhaul effort, said on the Knesset floor. “It is attentive and tries to engender that a change like this will happen with the broadest consensus possible.”

He called the protests “marginal.”

Opposition lawmakers joined the protests ahead of the vote, with some opening temporary “bureaus” amid the demonstrations. A fake “Qatari embassy” also arose, a reference to the scandal in the prime minister’s office. 

Centrist leader Benny Gantz warned that the country was nearing civil war. Another centrist lawmaker, Merav Cohen, questioned why the judicial overhaul was moving forward at a time when the country was already strained by war. 

“Is this what Israel needs now?” she said, according to the Times of Israel. “We have hostages in tunnels, soldiers who are putting their lives in danger, reservists being called up for the fourth and fifth time — and the thing that Netanyahu is busy with — is creating control for himself over the judicial system, and dividing the nation at a time when we need to be united.”

B&H Photo, New York City’s iconic, Hasidic-owned camera and video equipment store, is expanding.

Last week, The Real Deal revealed that B&H Photo was the “mystery buyer” that purchased 333 West 34th Street. According to the publication, property records show that an LLC, signed for by Zalman Gottlieb, the financial controller for the camera shop, purchased the 10-story property for $150 million.

That mammoth number is actually a relative bargain: It is $105 million less than global real estate firm Brookfield Properties spent on the 287,000-square-foot property in 2018.

Founded by a married couple, Blimie and Herman Schreiber, B&H Photo originally opened in Tribeca in 1973 and moved into its current “SuperStore” at 420 Ninth Ave., at West 34th Street, in 1997. Like its founders, many of B&H’s employees are Satmar Hasidic Jews — the shop is closed on Saturdays in observance of Shabbat, and kosher candies are available for free at checkout.

Over its 50-plus years in business in New York City, B&H has had brushes with controversy, including allegations of discrimination made by non-Hasidic furloughed employees in 2020.

“After complaining about the company’s handling of the pandemic back in March — including packed indoor prayer services for its ultra-religious Jewish workers — some workers have spotted what look like postings for their jobs online,” the New York Post reported in October of that year. “It’s a position they wouldn’t be in, they suspect, if they were part of the company’s inner circle of Hasidic Jewish staffers, who they say get special treatment.”

B&H Photo did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

As for the new digs, it’s not yet clear what B&H intends to do with the additional 287,000 square feet of space, or what it means for the future of their current location. (The camera company also has executive offices at 440 Ninth Ave.) Once known as the Smith Barney Building, the new building has seen a “revolving door of tenants and owners over the past two decades,” reports local Hell’s Kitchen site W42St.com.

Most recently, the building’s ground floor space was occupied by the flagship NYC location of Sam Ash Music, a musical instrument retailer that went out of business in May 2024, after more than a century in operation.

In perhaps an only-in-New York twist, Sam Ash was also once one of the city’s iconic Jewish businesses: The store was founded in Brooklyn in 1924 by Sam Ash (who was born Samuel Ashkynase in Austria-Hungary) and his wife, Rose. The shop, which eventually expanded to dozens of stores across 16 states, was run by three generations of the Ash family before closing for good last year.

In addition, B&H shares a name with at least two other Jewish establishments in New York City: One is B&H Dairy, a kosher and vegetarian luncheonette in the East Village that — like B&H Photo — is named for its original owners, Abie Bergson and Jack Heller. The other is B&H Barbershop, also in the East Village, which is owned by a Jew from Uzbekistan who chose the initials because it represented “Baruch Hashem,” a Jewish expression that translates roughly to “thank God” or “God bless.”

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