Uncategorized
He could have avoided persecution in Nazi Germany — he got bar mitzvahed instead
When Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws on Sept. 15, 1935, being a Jew suddenly meant losing citizenship and the basic rights that came with it. But that same week Gerd “Pips” Phillipsohn — born to a German-Jewish father and Aryan mother — chose to embrace his Jewish identity with a bar mitzvah.
The Nuremberg laws stipulated that a Mischling — a child with one Aryan parent and one Jewish parent — born before September 1935 was considered to be a citizen of the Reich. However, once Pips became a bar mitzvah, he forfeited that status and was considered a full Jew.
Pips, who miraculously survived the Holocaust and became an immigrant success story in America, is the subject of Half-Jew — Full Life by Georgette Bennett. Bennett, a sociologist and founder of the humanitarian organization the Multifaith Alliance, first met Pips, her mother’s cousin, in New York in 1952, when she was five years old and straight off the boat from France with her parents, both Holocaust survivors. When Bennett’s father died one year later, Pips became her father figure for the rest of her life.
Before he died in 2015, Pips gave her recordings of his sessions with a psychiatrist and the permission to write a book about his story, which she did in painstaking detail that makes the reader feel like they, too, have known Pips their whole life. Although Bennett knew much of Pips’ story already, the process of writing the book gave her a new perspective.
“It wasn’t until I read through the transcripts of all of his audio tapes that the story developed much more meaning to me because yes, it was in his own words, but in the kind of detail that even stunned his psychiatrist,” Bennett told me in an interview. “I understood him in a whole new way.”
Born in Berlin in 1922, Pips was raised by two fairly non-religious parents; his mom went to church at Christmastime and his father attended synagogue only for the High Holy Days. It was antisemitism that actually pushed Pips towards embracing his Jewish identity. Bennett writes that when Pips was six, his religion teacher’s assertion that Jews were Christ-killers prompted him to stop attending the class. After Jews were banned from German youth groups, he joined a Jewish youth organization instead. His whole life was suddenly Jewish and he thought that becoming a bar mitzvah would help him fit in socially — plus, he knew he knew his parents would buy him a new bike.
Pips later fell in love with a childhood friend, Ilse Rosenthal, and went into hiding with her after her family was given a notice of deportation. After a few months on the run, they were caught by the SS and separated. Pips eventually ended up at Grosse Hamburger Strasse, a prison and deportation site, and Ilse was sent to Auschwitz where she died.
Although Pips’ prison was known as the last stop for Jews bound for Auschwitz, he managed to survive through the end of the war.
“Not only did he suffer persecution at the hands of the Nazis, he lost everything,” Bennett said. “But they saved his life on several occasions.”
Prisoners were forced to work, and Pips once fixed windows for a woman he referred to in the tapes as Frau Heim, an employee in the Gestapo’s records department. When she learned he had been chosen to be deported to Auschwitz, she slipped his file behind a filing cabinet so the order couldn’t be processed.
But despite this and other occasional acts of kindness, prejudice never ceased. After Frau Heim saved his life, Pips witnessed her playing happily with her dog next to a truck full of Jews bound for Auschwitz. Bennett told me that Heim wasn’t “completely oblivious to what’s happening to these people” and had “zero empathy” for most Jews. But she knew Pips had an Aryan mother.
“When it came to him, she had a lot of empathy,” Bennett said. “She didn’t really see him as a Jew.”
While imprisoned, Pips met Olga, a Transylvanian deportee who escaped the death march from Auschwitz, and they married in 1945. Two years later, they immigrated to the United States, where Pips Americanized his name to Gerald Phillips. In just under two decades, Pips went from waiting tables in the Catskills to being a partner in Globe Photos, one of the largest picture agencies in the world at the time. The couple became wealthy enough to live at 860 UN Plaza, where fellow residents included Robert Kennedy, Truman Capote and Angela Lansbury.
Despite surviving impossible odds, Pips never considered himself a remarkable person.
“I think he may have been judging himself in relation to other people who achieved great things, who raised children,” Bennett said. “He didn’t see himself as having done any of those things.”
Regardless of whether or not Pips considered his life extraordinary, Bennett believes it holds important lessons.
“It’s a story about how a normal society can descend into the worst kind of autocracy and brutality,” Bennett said. “It’s a story about identity and the price that we pay for our identity.”
“It’s also about denial, you know, our ability to be in denial as we see the world collapsing around us,” Bennett added. “We see a lot of that going on today.”
Bennett noted that when Pips watched Brownshirts march down the street and heard that Jews were banned from working in the press, he wasn’t able to process the implications this had for him or his family.
“He was a very self-centered guy, which I think was part of his secret to survival,” Bennett said. “He never saw himself as a hero. And I don’t see him as a hero either. He saw himself as a survivor.”
Half-Jew — Full Life will be published by Skyhorse Publishing on January 27.
The post He could have avoided persecution in Nazi Germany — he got bar mitzvahed instead appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
IDF Soldier from Connecticut Killed in Southern Lebanon Combat
Sgt. Moshe Yitzhak Hacohen Katz. Photo: courtesy.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces announced on Sunday morning the death of Sgt. Moshe Yitzhak Hacohen Katz, 22, originally from New Haven, Connecticut, who was killed during combat operations in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
According to the military, Katz was killed in a rocket attack targeting Israeli forces operating during efforts to expand a security zone in southern Lebanon. The IDF said the strike occurred overnight between Friday and Saturday, during a large-scale barrage aimed at units deployed in the area.
An initial military investigation found that one rocket directly hit an infantry unit from the 890th Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, killing Katz instantly. Three additional soldiers were wounded and are listed in moderate condition.
The IDF said the announcement of Katz’s death was delayed to ensure that all family members, including those in the United States, were properly notified.
The army also said that recent attacks have largely focused on the four IDF divisions operating in Lebanon. In the past 24 hours alone, approximately 250 rockets were launched toward Israeli positions, with 23 crossing into Israeli territory, according to military figures.
Uncategorized
AI-Generated Antisemitic Rabbi Racks Up Millions of Followers with Questionable Financial Advice
i24 News – An AI-generated character known as Rabbi Goldman has attracted millions of followers online by combining old antisemitic tropes with digital-age conspiracy theories. The avatar, presented as a caricature of a New York rabbi, plays off stereotypes of Jewish power and wealth while dispensing unsolicited “financial advice” and conspiracy-laden commentary about global elites.
In his videos, Rabbi Goldman claims that Jews have “known every secret for thousands of years,” weaving age-old prejudice into modern misinformation. Among his assertions: that the moon landing was faked, the US government will soon exert total control over its citizens, and billionaires stage yacht sinkings for insurance fraud—all allegedly foreknown by “the Jews.”
Before being removed on Sunday night, his Instagram account had racked up over 1.5 million followers. Yet the same page remains active on Facebook, which shares an owner with Instagram, with roughly 180,000 followers and thousands of interactions per post. The comments reveal an audience that is genuinely engaged with, and emboldened by, his vitriolic rhetoric.
Rabbi Goldman’s videos follow a simple formula designed to thrive in algorithm-driven ecosystems. They begin with a cryptic slogan implying secret knowledge or hidden wealth — invoking Jews as the keepers of these secrets — to draw viewers in and extend watch time, thus being featured on more people’s feeds. What follows is a cascade of AI-generated, factually dubious monologues, all culminating in a pitch: he can show you how to acquire the same “Jewish wisdom.”
That pitch leads to his website, where a manual titled How to Make and Invest Money sells for $9, and he claims it has been purchased by over 4,000 people. The real product, however, carries a fuller title — How to Make and Invest Money Like the Jews. The 62-page PDF amounts to generic, AI-spun financial advice labeled as “the Jewish method,” occasionally interspersed with random references to the Talmud. Just like the videos, it references how Jews have managed to be successful for thousands of years but offers little backup as to how that can translate to a real-world scenario.
Most of it plays off the stereotype of Jews being financially astute. But some lines, such as “Jews do not day trade… We buy the market — the entire market — and we hold it indefinitely,” remove the mask entirely.
Whether we like it or not, antisemitism thrives online—and platforms’ recent loosening of content restrictions under the banner of “free speech” has only amplified it. Social media has become an ideal environment for grifters to blend prejudice with profit. And that is, to their credit, what the creators of Rabbi Goldman have done.
They have clearly borrowed from the “manosphere” playbook—a cluster of influencers promoting hyper-masculine, materialistic lifestyles infused with misogyny and antisemitism. Like Andrew Tate and similar figures, Rabbi Goldman appeals to disaffected young men who feel alienated by the economy and society in which they live, eager to locate a scapegoat.
In Goldman’s case, the scapegoats are the elites and billionaires. But the framing of the Jews alongside the elites has, by proxy, made them the scapegoat too. By merging coded hatred with generic Instagram-style self-help language, the character transforms antisemitism into a marketable aesthetic.
So essentially, the creator of Rabbi Goldman has found a niche in an emerging market, playing off of antisemitism to sell cheaply produced slop to teenagers. Which is both entrepreneurial and morally awful. But the issue is that social media has bred the ground for this by rewarding shock content and letting antisemitism often go untouched. Even when they deleted his Instagram account, dozens of copycats popped up, including an absurdly ironic German-language version that uses the likeness of British politician Jeremy Corbyn.
And this is what happens when social media companies are reactive rather than proactive. They were chasing shadows after the account became so big. Instead, they need to cut it out at its source, be tougher on antisemitism, and be more vigilant with AI content.
And for social media users, it is hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t anymore. Just try not to get financial advice from an AI rabbi who thinks the moon landing was fake.
Uncategorized
Pezeshkian Clashes with IRGC Over Iran’s War Strategy and Economy
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Deep divisions have reportedly emerged within Iran’s leadership as the war enters its fifth week, with tensions growing between President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a report by Iran International.
The report by Iran International claims Pezeshkian has sharply criticized the military escalation strategy led by IRGC commanders, warning of severe economic consequences if the conflict continues.
He is said to have cautioned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could “completely collapse within three weeks to a month.”
According to the same report, Pezeshkian has called for the restoration of executive and administrative authority to the civilian government, a demand reportedly rejected by IRGC leadership, including Ahmad Vahidi.
Vahidi is said to have pushed back, blaming the current crisis on the government’s failure to implement structural reforms prior to the war and recent protest movements.
Meanwhile, signs of economic strain are becoming increasingly visible across Iran. Reports from several major cities describe ATMs that are empty, out of service, or inaccessible, alongside repeated disruptions to online banking systems.
Public sector employees have also reported delays in salaries and benefits over the past three months.