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With Israel at war, what counts as a worthy Jewish cause?
(JTA) — Moving Traditions is a small Jewish organization with an unusual name and a mission that can be hard to describe on one foot. Working through synagogues, Hebrew schools and its own programs and curricula, it helps Jewish kids navigate their teen years in healthy, safe, appropriate and socially conscious ways.
When the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 threw the Jewish world into crisis, Moving Traditions created curricula to help teachers and teens talk about the conflict. And its CEO, Shuli Karkowsky, ordered up a “worst-case scenario” plan in case some of her reliable funders decided to hold back on their support and direct more money to Israel.
“We need to be humble and realize that we are an organization that serves North American teams. And so I don’t think we can put ourselves out there as the people who are going to be solving the Middle East crisis,” she said earlier this week.
To her relief, at a time when the Jewish philanthropic community is mobilizing around the war, her funders said they are going to “make the pie bigger”— that is, continue supporting groups like hers and expanding their giving in Israel.
As they have during previous crises in Israel, American Jews are pouring dollars into Israel to support people displaced by the war, to bolster nonprofits whose employees are headed to the front and, in a newish twist, to defend both Israel in the court of public opinion and Jews abroad who are seeing an uptick in antisemitism.
Jewish Federations of North America has raised $638 million among its network of local Jewish community chests. UJA-Federation, the largest of these, has so far allocated more than $38 million for work on the ground in Israel. Israel Bonds said it sold more than $200 million worth of bonds in the week following the Hamas attacks.
Jewish nonprofit execs celebrate this outpouring, but are quietly anxious. As priorities shift to the defense of and support for Israel, what will happen to the bottom line of the schools, social services agencies, cultural centers and other Jewish institutions that don’t have an obvious Israel portfolio?
An adjacent question is one of discretion, even tact: With many nonprofits dependent on the end-of-the-year gifts that allow donors to claim tax benefits, should they go ahead with their own fundraising appeals and perhaps attach their “asks” to the current crisis?
“What irks me particularly is an emergency campaign now when they’re not related to the crisis,” said Andres Spokoiny, the president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, speaking generally. “If you’re a school that is not affected by the crisis, just tell the truth that despite the crisis, you need to continue operating, and that having a strong community means that institutions and organizations like yours need to be strong and healthy.”
Spokoiny, whose organization’s “How You Can Help” Israel page lists “trusted agencies and nonprofits,” has been recommending to the private foundations and philanthropists under his organization’s umbrella that they give “above and beyond,” supporting their traditional grantees as well as the emergency campaigns for Israel. “Otherwise,” he said, “you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Hundreds gather for a pro-Israel rally in Philadelphia’s Independence Square, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Oct. 16, 2023. (Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia)
Spokoiny also knows that the pot of funds allocated for Jewish giving is not bottomless. He is hoping the current crisis serves as a “wake-up call to the many Jewish donors that give, you know, token gifts to the Jewish community and huge gifts to their alma mater or to the hospital to give more to Jewish and Israeli causes.”
Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, recommended a similar approach in a recent essay in eJewish Philanthropy. Finestone prefers “yes, and” to “above and beyond,” and he also calls on Jewish donors to divert more of their secular giving to Jewish causes.
“Yes, we absolutely need to support Israel and Israelis. We need to contribute mightily to the multitude of needs Israel has,” he writes. “But unless philanthropy steps up in the U.S. as well, there is a genuine chance that much of the organizational structure we have spent generations building will be stretched to its limits.”
Normally, the San Francisco-based Jim Josephs Foundation funds Jewish education in the United States. (70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company, has been a grantee.) In an interview, Finestone said he wrote the article partly in response to colleagues and friends who called him in recent weeks unclear where to send their donations.
“They ran the risk of being forgotten,” he said of the Jewish organizations that don’t directly serve Israel. “And please God when this is over, and we know there’s going to be a long tail both literally and psychologically, we’re going to turn back to our camps, and to our synagogues, and to our JCCs and we’ve got to make sure that they’re there, or else the fabric of Jewish life that we’ve built over the years has the potential to crumble.”
Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, says the outpouring for Israel has been inspiring, but also worries that the shift toward what he calls, in a Facebook post, “defensive, protective, and supportive” causes will come at the expense of “foundational” and “constructive” philanthropy.
Foundational giving, he said in an interview, is about “keeping the lights on in the synagogues and Jewish institutions that do the core work of Jewish life. Deeply unsexy.”
As an example, he points to the flood of giving that is expected in response to the pro-Palestinian and antisemitic activism on college campuses. “Jewish students feel vulnerable on college campuses, so dollars are going to go to, quote, unquote, fighting antisemitism on campus,” said Kurtzer. “But there’s another set of dollars that Hillels need right now: They have record turnout for students coming to Shabbat dinner over the past month. They’re looking for foundational dollars so they can support [that] or provide counseling services, whatever students need.”
Constructive giving, meanwhile, is about developing new ideas. “What would be the next major play for college students,” asks Kurtzer, “that can help them build resilience and knowledge and relationships and all of the stuff that might grow out of a moment of crisis like this?”
Past crises have shaped Jewish priorities for generations. In response to the Six-Day War in 1967, American Jews donated more than $100 million — close to $1 billion in today’s dollars — in a little over two weeks. Six years later, when the Yom Kippur War punctured Israel’s aura of invulnerability, American Jews contributed $700 million in emergency aid, or $6.4 billion in today’s money. Both wars also cemented Israel as a central component of American Jewish identity, politics and philanthropy.
At the time, however, Israel was still viewed as a developing country, the historian Lila Corwin Berman points out. “For quite a while, Israel has been economically a fairly well-to-do nation and hasn’t needed American Jewish dollars in the same sort of fundamental way,” said Corwin Berman, the chair of American Jewish History at Temple University. As Israel prospered and the military threats against it appeared to recede, donors’ priorities shifted to the American Jewish “intermarriage crisis,” which led to the creation of the Birthright trips for young people and a push for affordable Jewish day schooling.
UJA-Federation of New York led a rally in support of Israel and calling for the release of Israeli hostages, Manhattan, Nov. 6, 2023. (Luke Tress)
Corwin Berman acknowledged that Israelis still have genuine needs — for example, those who lost their homes and loved ones in the Oct. 7 attacks. But she notes that money going into less material needs — like the fight against antisemitism — will ultimately shape Jewish priorities, perhaps in unexpected or unwelcome ways. Some on the Jewish left have already complained that many groups fighting antisemitism have a right-wing agenda, while others worry that too many groups are fighting the same fight.
“The concern that I have about putting lots and lots of money into this fight against antisemitism is that it might develop a very, very blunt set of tools to use,” said Corwin Berman, who has written a critique of what she calls the “American Jewish Philanthropic Complex.” “I would say the tools at this point lag well behind what would be required to deal with an extraordinarily complex phenomenon.”
UJA-Federation, for example, is allocating $600,000 to responding to antisemitism on campus, normally a sizable allocation if only a fraction of the money raised for the emergency campaign. Mark Charendoff, the president of the Maimonides Fund, said the board of his grantmaking organization is also focusing on fighting antisemitism, along with what he calls the “internal refugee crisis” — Israelis displaced and traumatized by the war — and “strategic communications,” or advocating for Israel to politicians and the public.
Charendoff said the Maimonides board does not intend to cut back on any of its current grant-making, which supports education and issues-oriented programs in North America and Israel, like Hadar Institute for Jewish learning, an L.A.-based organization that encourages Jewish filmmaking and the fund’s own journal of ideas, Sapir. But that they do intend to focus on “anything that we can do to respond to the current crisis. We should be looking for those options on both sides of the ocean. And this would be over and above our current budget,” he said.
And yet he knows that pivoting to new priorities can come at a cost in attention to other needs.
“Human beings only have so much bandwidth,” he said. “And on both sides of the ocean, our staff are single-mindedly focused on the current crisis, obviously. Which means that we’re not focused on new opportunities, new ways of engaging in the elements of our portfolio that are not related to or not affected by the war.”
Karkowsky, at Moving Traditions, said her organization doesn’t intend to do significant fundraising around the emergency in Israel, but that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer to a Jewish world in crisis.
“I do think there’s an enormous need for work with North American Jewish teens right now who feel confused and lonely,” she said. “They’re not sure what their political opinions are, or they do and they feel abandoned by their friends, or they do and they disagree really strongly with their parents who are coming back and saying, ‘How do I connect with my kid who’s saying things I really don’t agree with?’ So I do think there’s a small role for us to play as part of the work we would be doing anyway.”
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The post With Israel at war, what counts as a worthy Jewish cause? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters
An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman denied killing anyone when she appeared in court on Thursday, less than a week after a Jewish woman and her two daughters died when she crashed her car into them at a crosswalk.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court via a video stream from her room in NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the hospital following Saturday’s deadly car crash.
After the crash, Yarimi told first responders she was “possessed” and believed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was following her. She has made similar claims about being pursued by the CIA on social media several times in the past, The Algemeiner previously reported.
Yamini, who is also Jewish, faces a slew of charges that include three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault.
“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after Saturday’s crash, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella. “I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now … Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart.”
“People are out to get me,” added the single mother. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”
Nocella called Yamini a flight risk and asked the judge that she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations, as reported by the Daily News. Judge Jevet Johnson agreed with Nocella and ordered Yamini to be held without bail. Nocella said prosecutors are prepared to present grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration is “committed” to taking more action to prevent traffic violence and deaths following the fatal car crash that killed Natasha Saada, 35, along with her daughters Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was injured in the crash and is still being hospitalized in critical condition.
Adams’ office announced on Wednesday that there were 41 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2025 — 24 fewer than last year and the second fewest since they started being recorded by the city. Despite the decline in traffic deaths, Adams admitted that more work needs to be done to keep New Yorkers safe on the streets, as evident by Saturday’s deadly car crash.
“In order to make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to be safer at every level — including on our streets,” he said in a released statement on Wednesday. “Our administration’s investments in intersection safety improvements, treating traffic violence as the serious crime that it is, and our expanding automated camera enforcement are all helping ensure we’re leading the way toward a safer future for all New Yorkers — whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists.”
“We understand there is more work to do, as evidenced this past weekend’s tragic crash in Brooklyn because one lift [sic] lost to traffic violence is one life too many, but our administration remains committed to reducing traffic violence as much as any other form of violence,” Adams added.
On Saturday afternoon, Yarimi crashed her car into an Uber and then slammed into four members of the Saada family as they were trying to walk across the street at an intersection on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.
Yarimi was speeding at the time of the incident, “probably doing close to twice the speed limit,” and “ran a red light” just before the crash, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed on Wednesday while speaking to Eyewitness News. Yamini was also driving on a suspended license and has accumulated almost 100 parking and camera violations, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets.
“It actually exceeds just being reckless, it’s almost being wanton, we’re not going to tolerate that,” Gonzalez told Eyewitness News. “Her vehicle had been ticketed many times by red light cameras and speed cameras, that car was a frequent violator of both speed laws and red-light laws, and there is no excuse for running a red light.”
Saada and her daughters were buried in Israel this week. Four-year-old Philip remains at the hospital for his injuries and is facing “tough straights,” Gonzalez said. “We expect him to make some kind of recovery, but it’s going to be a long road for him.”
The boy lost one of his kidneys during treatment at Maimonides Medical Center, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “It’s heartbreaking,” Lander said after he visited the home of the Saada family, according to the New York Post. “He’s still in critical condition. He lost one kidney but they are hopeful about his prognosis.”
Five people in the Uber hit by Yarimi’s car suffered minor injuries.
Supporters of a proposed state law that would stop repeat super speeders in New York have rallied together since the car accident on Saturday, calling for the passage of the bill that they said could have prevented the crash. The legislation would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles owned by repeat reckless drivers, like Yarimi. The device automatically limits the vehicles to within 5 mph of the legal speed of the road. The “Stop Super Speeders” bill was sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Andrew Gounardes.
The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, supports the bill and criticized Adams for not already implementing such measures.
The post Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungary on Thursday announced that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the country welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the capital city of Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest. Instead, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed his Israeli counterpart with full military honors.
GREAT meeting with a GREAT friend, @PM_ViktorOrban. Together, we’re making the GREAT alliance between
and
even stronger! pic.twitter.com/Svphzb61Gn
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 3, 2025
Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, is his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him last year. In February, he made his first foreign trip altogether since the ICC’s decision to the United States, where he met with US President Donald Trump.
As Orban and Netanyahu met to discuss regional developments and bilateral cooperation, Hungarian Minister Gergely Gulyas released a statement announcing that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” from the ICC, which could take a year or more to complete.
After their meeting, Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Budapest’s decision to withdraw from the international court, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”
“I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC,” Saar wrote in a post on X. “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC. FM Péter Szijjártó and I dealt with this matter extensively. The so-called “International Criminal Court” lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for…
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
After the court issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”
During Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”
“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”
After the Israeli leader was welcomed in Budapest, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to reverse its decision and extradite Netanyahu to the ICC to stand trial, calling the decision an “immoral stance that shows collusion with a war criminal who is running away from justice.”
In a post on X, Israel’s top diplomat reiterated his support for Hungary’s decision, arguing that Hamas’s statement only proves the country is taking the correct stance in this matter.
“Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it,” Saar wrote.
“Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called ‘International Criminal Court.’ And that’s the whole story.”
Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it.
Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called “International Criminal Court”.
And that’s the whole story.— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2o23.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must
The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
During the events of Purim, Haman approached King Xerxes I and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So, it is not in the king’s interest to let them live.”
Queen Esther’s solidarity with her dispersed people in Persia, and her profound loyalty to her Jewish identity, saved them from Haman’s genocide and secured their self-defense when she courageously revealed her heritage to Xerxes I.
Today, Israeli Jews are once again fighting for their Jewish and Zionist survival. Since Oct. 7, 2023, this Jewish Armageddon has extended anew to Diaspora Jews, who have felt the past’s chilling draft. Antisemitism has reawakened, infecting non-Jews and Jews alike. Few people contribute to antisemitic attitudes more than “self-loathing” Jews. These “self-loathing” Jews, who cynically reveal only the negative aspects of their Jewishness, believe they can avoid antisemitic attacks if they condemn Israel. But they achieve only self-betrayal, gaining neither acceptance nor respect from those who hate all Jews. Jews are a nation of people who question, not people who answer.
Questions pervade the Jewish mind to such a degree that the adage, “two Jews, three opinions,” has become a common characteristic of Jewish identity. Moreover, the pursuit of an answer often serves as a springboard for further inquiry. For us, as Jews, the ultimate answer, akin to the messianic ideal, remains a distant, undefined future. This traditional perspective has granted Jews a sort of perpetual license to disagree. Jews enjoy engaging in debate with others, but they sometimes find particular delight in debating amongst themselves, which allows their intellects to roam and their sardonic wit to playfully engage with each other’s vulnerabilities, finding humor without causing offense.
This love for discourse, for questioning everything in sight, including Hashem himself, is by no means the only puzzle that makes up our Jewish identity. Another crucial element of our makeup is solidarity. In times of major upheavals, we have always stood together against the masses who rose against us. To our enemies, we Jews — atheists, nihilists, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, religious Zionists, non-religious Zionists, or undecided — look, taste, and feel the same. They care nothing for our ingrained liberalism. Our enemies seek cracks within our communities in order to break us apart and cause irreparable damage.
Years of relative peace and prosperity since the Holocaust have allowed us to gather again and engage in countless polemics over the fate of Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. However, we have failed to notice that we are at war again, and that our enemies eagerly exploit the divisions within a nation that comprises only 0.2% of the world’s population. These enemies — radical Islamists and progressive Western leftists who view Jews and Israel as white oppressors and colonizers — avidly listen to Jewish internal squabbles and criticisms of the Israeli government.
Despite the significant progress the Shin Bet and IDF have made in dismantling much of Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure, destroying its complex network of tunnels and command centers, and weakening Hezbollah, in addition to eliminating tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists, many Jews remain critical of, and disagree with, what Israel represents today. Aware of government problems, Israelis desire improvement. However, their rage and almost addictive pattern of anti-government protests have provided their adversaries with more opportunities to exploit perceived weaknesses.
This has resonated with some Jews worldwide. In New York, some Jewish intellectuals have defended “free-Palestine” and pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jewish students, invoking freedom of speech. They appear to have fallen prey to what they perceive as the lies of progressive anti-Zionist media, which systemically omits crucial facts about Israel. This includes the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, and its role in eliminating thousands of Hamas terrorists and dismantling their terror network, which posed a significant threat to Israel (and innocent Palestinians themselves).
These “romantic” progressive Jews also forget that no matter how critical they are of that “brutal” IDF, it is still fighting on their behalf, because it is fighting on behalf of every Jew. Civilian deaths do occur, but they are either unfortunate incidents of war or, more often, a direct result of Hamas’s cruelty, as Hamas terrorists purposefully embed themselves within the civilian population. I once sat at dinner in Israel with a wealthy American Jewish couple who came on a sympathy tour a few months after Oct. 7. Nevertheless, the husband was convinced that the IDF was deliberately killing Palestinian children.
Those were wealthy, educated American Jews who thought they were charitable because they donated to Jewish causes, and therefore, believed they had the right to express their views on everything. This is where I, a Soviet Jew who grew up deprived of Judaism yet targeted by antisemitism, felt differently. To begin with, the husband was completely wrong. Second, in times of existential crisis, we, as Jewish people, must set aside our irresistible urge to disagree and criticize Israel on basic premises such as Israel’s fight to ensure Jews don’t live through a second genocide. The freedom to speak our minds has been ours for thousands of years. We conversed with Hashem, we obeyed Him, we sacrificed for Him, and then we quickly learned to disobey and question Him, even before we began arguing amongst ourselves.
Still, throughout our dotted and punctured history, it wasn’t our tongues or our disagreeable minds that kept our small nation together; it was our solidarity. In solidarity, we walked out of Egypt. In solidarity, tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews came to their promised land as early as the 1920s and began to build from nothing. In solidarity with his orphans, Dr. Janusz Korczak, despite being given the chance to save himself, chose to march with them, hand in hand, through the ghetto to the deportation point, on their way to Treblinka, where they met their final hour. In solidarity with other Jews across the Soviet Empire, Soviet Jews secretly tried to remember who they were, despite years of persecutions and purges.
In solidarity with their Soviet brethren, powerful American Jewry fought for Russian Jews to be able to emigrate to Israel and the United States. One of the main reasons our small nation has not disappeared into the abyss is because, in Diaspora, across oceans, and through impenetrable iron curtains, we never ceased to support one another. We knew we could not afford the luxury of neglecting our faith, traditions, and, most importantly, we could never abandon defending ourselves against our enemies.
Caesar’s “Divide et impera” (“Divide and Conquer”), though a cliché, is particularly relevant here. Seeing fractures within our communities, our enemies have intensified these divisions through incessant anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda and violence. Therefore, only as an undivided people, united by a single purpose — eradicating our enemies and protecting our promised land — do we stand a chance of survival. Perhaps only then will the day come when Jewish people gather on virtual street corners to argue and ask questions to which they seek no answers.
Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.
The post Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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