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How a curator and a rabbi joined forces to keep a piece of Boston’s Jewish history alive
The most striking artifact in the Judaica collection at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts isn’t from Yemen or Galicia, or any other far-flung Jewish community that’s long since dispersed; it’s from Chelsea, Massachusetts.
The magnificent wooden Torah ark is just shy of 12 feet tall, and until 1999 it was the centerpiece of the Orange Street Synagogue, in Chelsea, a suburb that once teemed with so much Jewish life it earned the nickname ‘Little Jerusalem.’
But with American synagogues now closing at a record pace, the arks and facades and stained glass windows that testified to American Jewry’s dynamism face an unsettled future.
Indeed, to make the short hop from Chelsea to northeast Boston, the MFA’s ark took a rather scenic — even biblical — route. There’s a last-gasp reprieve as destruction looms; an extended stint in a wilderness of sorts (Texas); and a healthy sprinkling of rabbinic wisdom.
All the same, it illuminates an often forgotten chapter in Boston’s Jewish story.
A thriving Jewish enclave
Around the turn of the 20th century, tens of thousands of mostly eastern European Jewish immigrants arrived in Chelsea, transforming a provincial Protestant outpost into a chiefly working-class center of Jewish cultural, religious and economic life. By 1920, it had between 15 and 20 synagogues; a Hebrew School that graduated over 400 people a year; and dozens of clubs and organizations that held their meetings in Yiddish.
One of its more well-known inhabitants was Sam Katz, a Galician immigrant who was, for a time, Massachusetts’ pre-eminent woodcarver. Katz was born in 1884 in Veshnevets, modern Ukraine, and emigrated to the US in 1910. He lived briefly in New York before settling in Greater Boston, where, even though he lacked formal training, he built an estimated 24 synagogue arks during the 1920s and 30s. “These immigrant wood carvers, in general, learned from their father and their grandfather,” said Simona Di Nepi, curator of the MFA’s Judaica collection.
Still, Katz found his own style. “When I see vine leaves and grates and these kinds of lions,” Di Nepi told me, pointing to a pair of gilded lions affixed to either side of the MFA’s ark, “I know that it’s Sam Katz.” Perched on top of the ark is a bald eagle, jostling for position with a Torah crown. Taken together, said Di Nepi, the sculptures are a kind of shorthand for the burgeoning Jewish-American culture Chelsea represented. Indeed, this is one of the gallery’s abiding themes: the various ways artists have combined age-old Jewish iconography with time- and place-specific motifs.
The ark needs a hero
By 1950, Jewish Chelsea had entered a terminal decline. Many of its inhabitants had moved to tonier Boston suburbs like Brookline or Newton, propelled by improving socio-economic mobility, though the construction of the Tobin Bridge between 1947 and 1950 also pushed out some 250 families and effectively split the Jewish community in two. In early 1999, the Orange Street Katz Torah ark closed for a final time, its fate uncertain.
That’s when rabbi David Whiman, a congregational rabbi in nearby Newton, and an avid Judaica collector, stepped in.
Whiman salvaged the ark alongside a small crew of friends. A small screen in the gallery plays grainy footage of Whiman in an oversized white T-shirt, smiling broadly. Though the Orange Street shul pews are empty, and the work laborious, Whiman and his group appear noticeably upbeat. The opportunity to preserve such an invaluable link to Chelsea’s Jewish past is, clearly, a happy one. (Whiman, rabbi emeritus at North Shore Synagogue, did not respond to an inquiry.)
Whiman kept the ark with him as his rabbinical career took him first to Houston, where he stayed for the better part of decade, and, later, to Syosset, Long Island. And then, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he emailed Di Nepi. He had heard the MFA was establishing a permanent Judaica collection. “He initially said, ‘I’m a collector, and you can have anything you want,’” Di Nepi recalled. In 2022, she went to Syosset, and was immediately taken with the ark. “There were other things that I might have been interested in,” she said, “but this was so much a Boston story — a local story.”
The ark bore the scars of nearly 20 years in storage. “All the attached pieces were in a box,” Di Nepi said. “And the wood had marks all over it.” Over six months, the MFA’s Conservation department, led by Christine Storti, restored the ark’s original flourishes: On top, an eagle and a torah crown; just below, two golden lions and three Magen Davids; and, in the middle, two gilded hands of Kohanim clasped together in prayer. Di Nepi then placed the renovated ark on a bimah-esque plinth, where it remains today, resplendent in the dim gallery light.
For every rescued Torah ark, however, are dozens that couldn’t overcome the demographic and cultural changes that have reshaped American Judaism during the past half-century. “There used to be a high demand for Torah arks,” Di Nepi said. “But now, we have the inverse situation, where there is mass demand for finding homes for arks that are closing.”
The Sam Katz ark is therefore a monument to a community that’s largely slipped from view. Yet there’s one fragment of Jewish Chelsea that’s proved remarkably durable. The glass light bulb Katz hung from the ark more than a century ago still works, Di Nepi told me, though she and Storti opted against displaying it, given its obvious fragility, and commissioned a replica. I am nevertheless consoled by the thought that somewhere in the Museum of Fine Arts’ storage there’s a tiny piece of Jewish Chelsea, waiting to shine again.
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Nearly 90% of Turkish Opinion Columns Favor Hamas, Study Shows
Pro-Hamas demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey, carry a banner calling for Israel’s elimination. Photo: Reuters/Dilara Senkaya
About 90 percent of opinion articles published in two of Turkey’s leading media outlets portray the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in a positive or neutral light, according to a new study, reflecting Ankara’s increasingly hostile stance toward Israel.
Earlier this week, the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute released a report examining roughly 15,000 opinion columns in the widely read Turkish newspapers Sabah and Hürriyet, revealing that Hamas is often depicted positively through a “resistance movement” narrative portraying its members as “martyrs.”
For example, Turkish journalist Abdulkadir Selvi, writing in Hürriyet, described the assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as “a holy martyr not only of Palestine but of Islam as a whole” who “fought for peace,” while portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the new Hitler.”
JPPI also found that most articles in these two newspapers took a neutral stance on the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, offering almost no clear condemnation of the attacks and failing to acknowledge the group’s targeting of civilians.
Some journalists even went so far as to praise the violence as serving the Palestinian cause, the study noted.
In one striking example, Hürriyet published an article just one day after the attack, lauding the “resistance fighters” who carried out a “mythic” assault on the “Zionist occupying regime” and celebrating the killings.
In other cases, some journalists went as far as to portray Hamas as treating the Israeli hostages it kidnapped “kindly,” denying that the terrorist group had tortured and sexually abused former captives despite clear evidence.
“There was not the slightest indication that the Israelis released by the Palestinian resistance had been tortured,” Turkish journalist Hilal Kaplan wrote in Sabah, denying claims that the hostages had suffered brutal abuse.
“They all looked exactly the same physically as they did on Oct. 6, 2023, more than a year later,” he continued.
Prof. Yedidia Stern, president of JPPI, described the study’s findings as “deeply troubling,” urging Israeli officials not to overlook the Turkish media’s positive portrayal of Hamas and denial of its abuses.
“We must not normalize incitement and antisemitism anywhere in the world – certainly not when it comes from countries with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations,” Stern said in a statement.
According to the study, nearly half of the columns expressed a positive view of Hamas, while approximately 40 percent took a neutral position.
The analysis also found that around 40 percent of opinion columns mentioning Jews or Judaism contained antisemitic elements, with some invoking “Jewish capital” to suggest global power, while others compared Zionism to Nazism or depicted Jews as immune from international criticism.
For instance, two weeks after the Oct. 7 atrocities, Turkish journalist Nedim Şener wrote in Hürriyet that global Jewish capital and control over media and international institutions had brought the United States and Europe “to their knees,” allowing Israel to carry out a “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
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ADL appoints former head of embattled Gaza aid foundation to its board
The Anti-Defamation League named Rev. Johnnie Moore, who led the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to its board of directors last week.
Moore became the public face of the foundation over the summer as it faced blame for hundreds of Palestinian civilians being killed while attempting to access aid at distribution centers that critics said were risky and inefficient.
But the ADL described the foundation, which was created with support from the U.S. and Israeli governments, as a “historic effort to provide nearly 200 million meals for free to the people of Gaza,” in a press release.
The ADL’s leadership has become more protective of Israel in recent years as it has shifted away from its historic work on civil rights issues unrelated to antisemitism. That change included a 2017 reworking of its governance structure, which had been run by a committee of several hundred lay leaders, to a more traditional nonprofit board.
The United Nations reported in August that 859 Palestinians had been killed near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, mostly by the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders said that the centers had “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty” with children being shot and civilians crushed in stampedes.
Moore’s role involved defending the organization. He blamed Hamas and the United Nations for causing mass starvation in Gaza and presented the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the best means of distributing food to civilians without allowing it to be diverted to militants.
“Hamas has been trying to use the aid situation to advance their ceasefire position,” Moore said during a July presentation to the American Jewish Congress.
The foundation shut down in December.
An evangelical leader and former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump’s with no background in international aid prior to his work with the foundation in Gaza, Moore brings a Christian perspective to the ADL’s board at a time when evangelicals are increasingly divided over Israel and antisemitism. “As a Christian, I consider it a responsibility to stand alongside ADL in this critical moment for the Jewish community and for our nation,” he said in the statement announcing his appointment.
He was appointed alongside Stacie Hartman, an attorney and lay leader based in Chicago, and Matthew Segal, a media entrepreneur who former President Joe Biden named to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. They join a mix of philanthropists and business leaders, including Jonathan Neman, the CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen, and Max Neuberger, the publisher of Jewish Insider.
The post ADL appoints former head of embattled Gaza aid foundation to its board appeared first on The Forward.
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Man Charged With Hate Crime for Car Ramming at Chabad Headquarters in Brooklyn
Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Police in New York City charged a man on Thursday with a hate crime and other charges after he allegedly rammed his car repeatedly into Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
The suspect, 36-year-old Dan Sohail, has been charged with attempted assault as a hate crime, reckless endangerment as a hate crime, criminal mischief as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment as a hate crime, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny announced at a press conference on Thursday.
“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution,” Kenny explained. “This is a synagogue, it was clearly marked as a synagogue, he knew it was a synagogue because he had attended there previously.”
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is an influential force in Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world. The iconic 770 Eastern Parkway building in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn became the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement in 1940.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is leading the investigation into the car ramming.
Sohail is a resident of New Jersey and has no criminal history in New York City, Kenny said. The vehicle he allegedly used on Wednesday night was registered under his name and, earlier this month, Sohail attended an event at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“We believe that he was in Brooklyn last night to continue this attempt to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community,” Kenny said. Sohail was due in court on Friday.
Footage from the incident showed Sohail drive his vehicle multiple times into the rear door of the 770 Eastern Parkway building in Crown Heights, according to Kenny, who added that the suspect stepped out of his vehicle, removed several blockades from his path, and cleared snow away from a sidewalk before ramming into the building.
Later, when talking to police, Sohail claimed his foot slipped and that he lost control of the car because he was wearing “clunky boots,” Kenny said. No injuries were reported and the damaged synagogue door is currently being repaired, according to Yaacov Behrman, head of public relations at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“It is clear the incident was intentional,” Behrman added. “The attacker removed the metal bollards that typically block the ramp and protect the entrance shortly before driving into the building. The bollards have since been restored.”
The car ramming took place the same day as the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson being chosen as the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday night that the incident “underscores a painful and undeniable reality: acts of hate, intimidation, violence, and antisemitic aggression are no longer isolated incidents or abstract threats.”
“Condemnation alone is insufficient. Real deterrence requires prompt, decisive action by the justice system — through swift prosecution and meaningful consequences — to discourage further incidents and ensure public safety,” he said. “As this incident occurred while the anniversary of the beginning of the Rebbe’s leadership was being observed worldwide, we reaffirm our faith that the world is meant to be refined — not ruled by fear or force, but cultivated as a place of moral clarity, responsibility, and goodness. We remain committed to that vision, even in the face of events such as this.”
The ramming incident occurred amid an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.