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These 12 Jewish feminist trailblazers, all over 80, had dinner together last night
(New York Jewish Week) — On Wednesday evening at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown, hundreds of New York’s leading philanthropists, healthcare executives and businesspeople gathered for the New Jewish Home’s “Eight over Eighty” gala — an annual event put on by the senior healthcare and rehabilitation agency that honors extraordinary New Yorkers over the age of 80 “who personify the value of aging well into our 80s and beyond.”
But of all the VIPs in the room, there was one table in particular — Table 13, right in the center of the room — that may have embodied that spirit better than any other: Seated around it were 12 of New York’s most accomplished Jewish women, all 80-plus, who have had an outsized influence on politics, journalism, publishing, activism, business and, above all, feminism.
Writer and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin — one of the evening’s honorees — organized the group, which she dubbed the “Table of Amazing Women.”
“I see a lifetime of my own reflected in the table because they all come from different parts of my life,” Pogrebin said.
There was photographer, musician, author and wife-of-Alan Arlene Alda, 90; attorney and former Democratic district leader Jane Bevans, 82; the co-founder of the National Organization for Women, Muriel Fox, 95; literary agent Jane Gelfman, 84; the award-winning journalist and urban affairs specialist Roberta Gratz, 82; founder of First Women’s Bank and NY Women’s Foundation, Sarah Kovner, 88; former Manhattan borough president and global ambassador of American Jewish World Service Ruth Messinger, 82; artist and financial advisor Annie Navasky, 83; TV producer Gale Robinson, 83, interior designer Judith Schlosser, 92 and literary agent Phyllis Wender, 89.
“It just hit me,” Pogrebin told the New York Jewish Week when asked what inspired her to assemble the all-star table. “They said you can have one table. I said I’m going to make it meaningful. I’m going to make it symbolic.”
Pogrebin, of course, is the founding editor of Ms. Magazine and the publication’s Foundation for Women, as well as the National Women’s Political Caucus. She’s well acquainted with awards — she won an Emmy for her work on “Free to Be… You and Me,” the ground-breaking children’s book, record and television special; was inducted into the Manhattan Jewish Hall of Fame, and received a Yale University Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.
Still, Pogrebin, who recently published “Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy,” knew she wanted to mark the latest honor by celebrating the important women in her life who helped her, along with countless other women, forge her path at a time when it wasn’t clear where, and how, a path could be cleared.
And yet, finalizing the list wasn’t easy. “I had to prune,” Pogrebin said. “If I could have, I would have filled another table.”
“I felt very bad because I didn’t include a 100-year-old friend,” she added. “I think that I wanted to, just in a small way, celebrate admitting your age, owning your age, and coalescing around the idea of being youthful at any age.”
Pogrebin’s invited guests — though honored and excited to be included — weren’t particularly surprised their friend came up with such a creative way to celebrate the occasion.
“Leave it to Letty,” journalist Gratz told the New York Jewish Week.
Looking around the table, Gratz said she certainly felt a sense of accomplishment. “We’ve all done it,” she said. “Imagine that, despite everything we faced. That feels great. I’m glad to be here.”
“I thought it was a great idea,” said Messinger, who was New York City’s first woman mayoral candidate and serves as president of AJWS from 1998 to 2016. “I had the privilege of being honored here a couple of years ago. When Letty wrote, I would not have necessarily come back. But then Letty said, ‘What if we got a whole table together?’ I thought ‘OK, that’s a great idea.’”
When asked, Messinger offered this advice to current and future generations: “Pursue justice, organize and remember that you’re not required to complete the task, but you can’t refuse to participate,” she said, paraphrasing Deuteronomy 16:20 as well as Pirkei Avot, a classic collection of Jewish wisdom.
Fox, the NOW co-founder, also noted the important role Judaism played in shaping her path and that of her peers. “Judaism has always given women a special role, strong women,” she said. “Certainly in Judaism, we learned about overcoming adversity and overcoming opposition.”
Thinking back on the progress she and her tablemates made, Fox said that her appeal for future generations is that they “carry the torch.”
“There’s still so much to do,” she said.”People sort of thought it was all done. We’ve learned that isn’t the case.”
But Fox added there are many reasons to be proud, as well as optimistic. “We have to be inspired by the fact that so much was accomplished — we changed the world, really, in a very short time,” she said. “In the old days, women couldn’t get credit cards. The ads said ‘Help Wanted Male’ or ‘Help Wanted Female.’ Landlords could say, ‘I don’t rent to women.’ Employers could say ‘We don’t hire women.’ We changed all that in our lifetime.”
As the women chatted over cocktails, it became crystal-clear that they not only changed the world but still wake up every day committed to their causes.
“I really believe activism keeps you young. If you become passive, if you feel hopeless, and if you feel the problems are too big, you’re going to age,” she added. “You’re going to become pretty limp. Not just in terms of politics, in terms of being alive to the moment, of being interested in young people [when you’re old] and, when you’re young, being interested in old people. Not ruling anybody out of your life.”
The New Jewish Home, formerly known as Jewish Home Lifecare, runs nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and senior housing in the five boroughs and Westchester Cunty. The other honorees of the evening were three-time Grammy winner Ron Carter; feminist author Erica Jong; conductor Eve Queler; inventor Sanford “Sandy” David Greenberg; former president and CEO of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, Dr. Billy E. Jones; founding partner of Trian Fund Management, Peter May; former president of the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York, Bruce McIver and the founder of TAG Associates, Stanley Pantowich.
David Remnick, editor in-chief of The New Yorker, hosted the gala, which raised $1.3 million, according to a spokesperson. Some of the funds, the spokesperson added, will be directed towards a new program dedicated to aiding older adults in the LGBTQ+ community.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.