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Can a Tree of Life memorial ‘end antisemitism in our lifetime’? Its new CEO hopes so.
(JTA) – The foundation overseeing the planned memorial for the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh has selected its first director, and her aims are nothing less than the total end of antisemitism.
Carole Zawatsky, a longtime veteran in Jewish nonprofit leadership, was announced as the first new Tree of Life CEO Tuesday. Her appointment came as the nonprofit overseeing the planned memorial revealed its grand plans for what its leadership hopes the space will become in the aftermath of the 2018 shooting that left 11 people dead.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in our lifetime, we could eradicate antisemitism?” Zawatsky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I think if we don’t work toward ending antisemitism in our lifetime, and we turn away from the rise of antisemitism, we stand no chance of achieving that goal.”
There are dozens of Holocaust museums and other American institutions that already work toward eradicating antisemitism; Zawatsky herself worked at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., when it first opened, creating public education programs that toured the country. But, she says, “for the most part, we were talking about things that were in the past and, most significantly, that didn’t happen on American soil.”
To that end, Zawatsky said, the reinvisioned Tree of Life can play a central role: as a place-based museum and memorial of the shooting, that situates the horrific events of that day in a larger continuum of American antisemitism, gun violence, extremism and hate speech. The emotional pull of the location itself, she hopes, will go a long way toward educating visitors: “There is no other institution in American Jewish life built on the site where history actually happened. In and of itself, that’s incredibly powerful.”
Zawatsky’s other roles with Jewish institutions have included nine years as CEO of the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C., as well as stints with the JCC of San Francisco; the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Cleveland; the Jewish Museum in New York; and, for much of the past year, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
She is new to Pittsburgh, but notes that antisemitic attacks have a way of bringing geographically disparate Jewish communities together: “When I was the CEO of the Edlavitch DC JCC and JCCs were getting bomb threats, I never thought, ‘That’s not me, that was Delaware, that was New Jersey.’ That’s all of us. I think as a Jew in America, this is our history because it’s everyone’s history.”
Ending antisemitism is a central aim of the pitch behind Remember Rebuild Renew, the fundraising campaign for the synagogue redesign and antisemitism museum. Tree of Life has secured more than $6 million from the state of Pennsylvania for the project, and recently hired a team of lobbyists to seek out federal funding opportunities as well. Zawatsky declined to share further budget details but said many private funders had expressed interest; she said she would soon be hiring staff.
The synagogue hired world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to design the new complex, which will function as a combined memorial, museum and house of worship. In previous statements the organization had pushed to begin construction in 2023, with the facility opening the following year, but Zawatsky said solid dates for the project are “premature.”
The new organization will also continue to serve as an active congregation for Tree of Life synagogue members, including survivors of the attack, meaning that the congregation’s spiritual and lay leaders are also part of the conversation as it reinvents itself as a memorial. This excites Zawatsky, who believes the combined space “does truly what the notion of a space of learning, a beit midrash, does.” The building has not reopened since the shooting.
Asked whether she was concerned the new project would attract unwanted attention from “dark tourists” or extremists, Zawatsky said the Tree of Life team is “working with security experts.”
Even beyond its lofty educational goals, there are other challenges ahead for Tree of Life. The shooter is scheduled to go on trial in April, a period that Zawatsky acknowledges will be “very painful, very difficult, and the role of the Tree of Life and all of us involved in it is to help to, in any way we can, ease the pain of that experience.”
Whether ending antisemitism is an achievable goal, the potency of Tree of Life as a symbol of its dangers will continue, and its new leadership hopes to make the landmark an educational opportunity.
“One of the most powerful ways to deliver a message to tell a story is through an object,” Zawatsky said. “There is no more powerful object in the United States of America than the Tree of Life.”
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The post Can a Tree of Life memorial ‘end antisemitism in our lifetime’? Its new CEO hopes so. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from Israel, the first to make the journey in years
(JTA) — On Thursday, 240 members of India’s Bnei Menashe community arrived in Israel, marking the latest convoy of immigrants brought as part of a government-backed effort to relocate the entire community.
The flight, which landed at Ben Gurion Airport, was welcomed by a delegation including Israel’s aliyah minister and the chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel. It was the first of three flights expected over the next two weeks that will bring roughly 600 members of the Bnei Menashe community.
Under the operation, titled “Wings of Dawn,” the government expects to bring 1,200 members currently living in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur to Israel by the end of 2026, and 4,800 more — the rest of the community — by 2030.
“Members of the Bnei Menashe community bring with them unconditional love for the State of Israel, and through family reunification, the heart of Israeli society as a whole is expanded,” Doron Almog, the chairman of The Jewish Agency, said in a statement. “Our responsibility is not only to receive, but to accompany, embrace, and create for them a foundation of opportunity, belonging, and future.”
The Bnei Menashe, based in India, identify as descendants of the “lost tribe” of Menasseh, a claim that has earned backing in Israel but has been disputed by researchers. They began immigrating to Israel in the late 1980s with the help of an Israeli rabbi, undergoing formal conversions to Judaism upon arrival. A different organization took over their immigration process two decades ago but drew criticism from both the right — because the Bnei Menashe’s status as Jews was uncertain — and the left, who accused the government of bringing the them to stoke settlement in the West Bank.
A total of 4,000 members of the community have immigrated to Israel under previous government plans, with the most recent arrivals arriving in 2020.
Among those on the first flight in the new wave were young families, who will be brought to absorption centers in Nof HaGalil, a city in northern Israel, and reunited with family members who previously moved to the country.
Many of those family members join the Israeli army and work in fields where the country has a labor shortage. The reinvigoration of the immigration effort comes as labor shortages have been exacerbated by post-Oct. 7 limits on Palestinian labor, increasing Israel’s reliance on imported workers.
Back in India, the region where the Bnei Menashe live, Mizoram, experienced spasms of ethnic violence in recent years, causing some members of the group to become displaced and its synagogues damaged. But until relatively recently, many harbored little expectation that Israel would hasten to open its doors.
Then, in November, the Israeli government approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring all remaining Bnei Menashe community members in India to Israel by 2030. Lawmakers said they aimed to reunite families and repopulate Israel’s north, which had been devastated by years of rocket fire from Lebanon.
The latest operation was supported by a host of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups, including the World Zionist Organization, The Jewish Federations of North America, Christians for Israel and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
“We are making history as we bring the entire Bnei Menashe community to Israel,” Ofir Sofer, the Israeli minister of aliyah and integration, said in a statement. “Today we welcomed the first flight of olim from northern India with great joy and excitement. I thank Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Smotrich, who embraced the initiative I led — an initiative that will unite the entire community in the State of Israel.”
The post 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from Israel, the first to make the journey in years appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine, Russia Swap 193 Prisoners of War Each in US, UAE-Facilitated Exchange
Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) react after a swap, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at an unknown location in Ukraine, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov
Ukraine and Russia conducted a prisoner of war swap on Friday, sending back 193 captured personnel each in an exchange both sides said was facilitated by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
“It is important that there are exchanges and that our people are returning home,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a post on Telegram.
His chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and Russia‘s defence ministry said the US and the UAE had assisted with the exchange.
Russia and Ukraine have conducted many prisoner swaps over four years of war, exchanging thousands of captives in total.
Zelenskiy said some of the returned captives, who included soldiers, border guards, and police, had injuries, while others had faced criminal charges in Russia.
In Ukraine, returning captives streamed off buses, many draped in their country’s flag and overwhelmed with emotion.
“It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m home, I was in captivity for three years … our Ukrainian sky, our trees — this is happiness,” said Serhiy, a soldier, who gave only his first name.
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Main Suspect in Syria’s Tadamon Massacre Arrested, Ministry Says
Residents gather in a street after Friday prayers to celebrate the arrest of Amjad Yousef, a key suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, in Tadamon, Syria, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Friday it had arrested the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, one of the worst acts of violence attributed to the former government of Bashar al-Assad, in which 288 civilians were killed.
The ministry released footage of Amjad Yousef’s arrest in the Al-Ghab Plain area of Hama province in western Syria, near his hometown. Yousef had been hiding there since the overthrow of Assad at the end of 2024, a security source told Reuters.
US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack welcomed the arrest in a post on X, calling it an important step towards accountability for atrocities committed during Syria’s war.
DOCUMENTING THE MASSACRE
Yousef, 40, a former member of military intelligence under Assad, was thrust into the spotlight in April 2022 when the UK’s Guardian newspaper published videos provided by two academics that they said showed him forcing blindfolded civilians to run towards a pit in the Tadamon neighborhood of southern Damascus before shooting them.
Annsar Shahoud, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Holocaust and Genocide Center and one of the academics, spent four years documenting the massacre.
Posing as an online fangirl, Shahoud gained Yousef’s trust and ultimately obtained his confessions both on video and audio recording.
Reuters was unable to reach Yousef for comment as he has been taken into custody.
The massacre is one of the most egregious documented incidents of violence attributed to the Assad government during the 14-year bloody war that began in 2011.
After Assad’s fall at the end of 2024, civilians, media outlets and international organizations went to the site of the massacre to inspect it and interview witnesses. Locals refer to the site as “Amjad Yousef’s Pit.” It has been marked on Google Maps as “The Site of the Tadamon Massacre.”
Ahmed Adra, a Tadamon resident and a member of the neighborhood committee, said victims’ families had been celebrating in the streets since morning.
“We will take white roses and plant them at the site of the massacre and tell the victims that their memory is alive and that justice is being served,” he told Reuters.
Shahoud said she now felt safe with Yousef in custody, but added the path to justice in Syria was unclear and did not include all perpetrators.
“I feel safe now, despite the distance, because I always felt for years that this person was after me,” she told Reuters.