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At one New Jersey Jewish school, four families mourn relatives killed in Israel
(JTA) — On the Monday morning after the deadly Hamas attack near the Gaza border, administrators at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford, New Jersey spoke to every grade and asked students how many of them had family in Israel.
Nearly every one of the school’s 420 students said they did, even beyond what Head of School Steve Freedman calls the “sizable minority” of children from Israeli families, either expats or the children of diplomats and others living temporarily in the United States, who attend the school.
And as the reports of the dead and missing rolled in from Israel, what came next was grim and perhaps inevitable: At least four families in the tight-knit community had a relative among the 1,300 Israelis killed in the surprise attack on Oct. 7 and the military clashes that followed. Three of those relatives were among the 260 people mowed down during a desert music festival near Kibbutz Reim. They included Sigal Levi, 31, a social worker who attended the festival to counsel troubled kids who might have been drawn to the party, and Ben Uri, 31, a cannabis entrepreneur and tech consultant who volunteered with a group that heals battlefield trauma through yoga.
Tal Eilon, 46, the cousin of a Schechter family, was a member of the security team at Kibbutz Kfar Aza who was shot and killed in a gun battle with Hamas members.
[For capsule portraits of those victims and others, click here.]
“It’s heavy,” said Freedman. “It’s very hard to do normal school because everyone’s so distracted. We understand that our children deserve normalcy, and to be able to learn and play and have fun, and because the faculty is amazing, we’re doing that.”
An Israeli flag flies outside the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford, New Jersey, March 30, 2022. (Courtesy SSDS Communication)
The northern New Jersey day school’s experience is hardly unusual among Jewish schools in North America, where the faculty and the kinds of families who send children to private Jewish schools often have strong personal and family connections to Israel. (This reporter’s children attended the Bergen Schechter over a decade ago.) A former teacher at Talmud Torah of St. Paul, Minnesota, Noi Maudi, 29, was killed at the music festival, as was Ben Mizrachi, 22, a graduate of Vancouver’s King David High School.
And the connections go beyond casualties. Omer Neutra, 21, who joined the Israeli army after graduating from The Schechter School of Long Island in Williston Park, New York, is missing and feared to be among those taken hostage by Hamas. Freedman said that at least 10 New Jersey Schechter alumni now living in Israel have been called up for the fighting. The father of a first-grader was returning to Israel to serve with his unit. One teacher’s aunt “by marriage” is missing and is presumed to be among the nearly 200 hostages taken by Hamas. The family learned about her capture on social media, Freedman said.
Among the grieving relatives at Schechter is Rona Lotan, who has a daughter in the seventh grade. Lotan, whose parents are Israeli but who was raised in the United States, remains close with her mother’s first cousin, Revital Herman, from the Palmachim kibbutz in central Israel. Herman’s son, Idan, 26, an engineering student, was killed along with his girlfriend Eden Naftali, 23, at the music festival.
Idan Herman, an engineering student killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on a music festival in southern Israel. (Courtesy Rona Lotan)
Lotan, 46, recalled a harrowing few hours on social media, where Herman’s family initially reported that their son was missing. The family was called to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva to identify what authorities originally thought was Idan’s body. “It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity,” she said. Unsure whether to feel relieved or cheated of the closure they sought, the family did not have to wait long before learning that Idan was elsewhere in the hospital and had suffered fatal wounds.
Lotan is asking people to donate in Idan’s memory to Zahal Shalom of Bergen County, which brings wounded Israeli veterans to the United States on rehabilitation tours. The organization spoke to eighth-graders at Schechter this past May.
Freedman said the school is putting together parents’ groups for those who need help finding ways to talk about the war with their children. Each day since the Hamas attack, meanwhile, the school gathers for an assembly for support and morale-boosting.
“What do we tell our children? How do we allay their fears?” said Freedman. “That’s our job here and that’s been a journey.”
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The post At one New Jersey Jewish school, four families mourn relatives killed in Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.