This Passover, as Miss Israel, I found myself in Times Square surrounded by protesters holding signs that read “No Kings.”

I came for a peaceful pro-Israel photoshoot, wearing my Star of David crown — the first ever designed by a beauty queen — but the moment I stepped into the crowd, everything changed.

I suddenly found myself surrounded by hundreds of anti-Israel protesters. People looked at me — at my crown, at my Miss Israel sash — and warned me to be careful showing Jewish symbols. I felt it too. The tension was real. It became a question of safety — do I leave, or do I stay?

I was born in Jerusalem, but have lived in the US for many years. And I will always be so proud to be an Israeli and a Jew.

In that moment, I asked myself: Ma Nishtana — what is different this year in New York, as antisemitism rises more than it ever has before?

Looking around, I thought about the Passover story, where there are two sources of power: Pharaoh and God.

Pharaoh had control, authority, and power over the Jewish people, but his power had limits. He could not stand against God.

In my early education in Jerusalem, in a Bait Yaakov school, I learned a simple truth — God is the King of all kings. That belief has carried the Jewish people through history.

That moment became my lesson of Passover in modern life.

The Jewish people did not leave Egypt when they felt safe or ready. They left with faith. They stepped into the unknown — vulnerable, exposed — and still moved toward freedom.

And here we are in 2026, at a time when antisemitism is rising in New York and all over the world, when being visibly Jewish brings tension.

So I made a choice — not to hide, but to be visibly Jewish without fear, wearing my Star of David crown in one of the most public places in the world.

From Jerusalem, where I was raised, to Times Square, where I stood that day, we end the Passover Seder each year with the words: “L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim Habnuya” — Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.

We do this because Jewish identity has never depended on comfort — it has always depended on the choice to stand tall for our beliefs and our faith.

Ayelet Raymond is Miss Israel, Miss World Influencer, and Miss World International — the social media personality @KosherBarbie, and a proud voice for Israel.

A Jewish friend of mine made what I thought was an interesting observation the other day. We were chatting about world affairs, and he pointed out that to those who hate Jews, we are all Israelis — that those who carry out antisemitic attacks on Jews in synagogues or at Jewish gatherings, be it in Europe, North America or Australia, make no distinction between Jews and Israelis.

In fact, the distinction between Jews and Israelis has always been a blurred one in the Arab/Muslim world. The original 1988 Hamas policy document, for example, mentions Jews, not Israelis.

One of the October 7 attackers boasted to his parents in a phone recording found after the Hamas attack that he “killed Jews”: “Your son killed Jews … Mom, your son is a hero.” And antisemitism, including Holocaust denial and genocidal threats, has been a cornerstone of Iranian government policy for decades.

A the same time, it occurred to me that when it comes to demographics, a growing majority of the world’s Jews are in fact Israelis.

According to the Israel Central Bureau of statistics (CBS), the world Jewish population is about 15.7 million — still one million less than the pre-Holocaust number. (The numbers can vary, depending on the criteria used to define who is a Jew, but these figures are generally reliable).

Close to one half of the Jews in the world, 7.2 million out of a total Israeli population of over 10 million, now live in Israel. If we add the thousands of Israelis who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union who are not halachically Jewish, the number is even more impressive.

Moreover, the CBS also notes that virtually all of the growth in the world Jewish population is taking place in Israel. This is because the Jewish fertility rate in Israel is much higher than for Diaspora Jews.

Much of what I have said so far is not new. But what is rarely mentioned is the fact that a growing proportion of the Jewish Diaspora is now made up of Israelis.

As in all democratic societies, Israeli citizens are free to come and go, and emigration has always been a feature of Israeli population statistics, even during pre-state Mandatory Palestine. A report by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, notes that one million Israelis (Israeli nationals, and their children, including those born abroad) now live outside Israel. Two thirds live in the US and Canada, the remaining third in Europe.

While substantial numbers have emigrated to the UK and Germany, others have made their way to smaller countries, countries in which Jewish numbers had been declining because of low birth rates and emigration. Israelis now represent close to half of the Jewish population of Norway and Finland and over 20% of the Jewish communities in Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain and Denmark.

Yet, here is the strange thing. These numbers are somewhat fluid. Some Israelis return, even after an absence of several years. For example, in 2025, 24,500 Israelis returned to Israel. This urge to return is particularly evident during time of war, a period of maximum personal risk. Why? According to Dan Perry of The Jerusalem Post, this need to return during war is based on a mixture of patriotism and Zionist messaging.

I think there is a simpler explanation, especially now. At a time when Jews are under attack everywhere, Israel is the only place where they can fight back.

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.

The political climate is hardly favorable for a new national park centered on racial justice.

President Donald Trump this week called for sweeping budget cuts to the National Park Service and, in January, for the removal of slavery-related exhibits he said portray American history in a “woke manner.”

Yet a campaign to establish a national historic park honoring Julius Rosenwald — the Jewish philanthropist who funded schools for rural Black communities during the Jim Crow era — is pressing ahead.

Dorothy Canter, who launched the campaign in 2018, sees an opening for the park to finally become a reality. In February, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced legislation to create the Rosenwald National Historic Park, backed by seven Democratic co-sponsors.

But advancing the bill out of committee — much less to President Trump’s desk — will require Republican support. At a time when even the mildest celebration of diversity can be deemed an excess of the “woke” left, Canter is betting that Rosenwald’s story will be the exception.

“The environment is not the best, obviously, but this is a story that should appeal to anyone,” Canter told the Forward. “This is a positive story. Nobody can say it’s DEI.”

Rosenwald’s Legacy

Rosenwald was born in Springfield, Illinois, the son of German-Jewish immigrants. At 16, he dropped out of high school to pursue the family clothing business.

In 1895, he invested $37,500 in Sears, Roebuck & Company — a decision that would ultimately make him one of the wealthiest men in the United States in the early 20th century.

But guided by the Jewish value of tzedakah, he gave much of that fortune away. In 1911, he met Booker T. Washington, the formerly enslaved founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a training center for African American teachers. Washington urged Rosenwald to invest in Black education in the South.

Rosenwald would go on to help fund nearly 5,000 schools for Black students across 15 states. By 1928, one in three Black students in the rural South attended a Rosenwald school. Alumni of Rosenwald schools would include congressman John Lewis, poet Maya Angelou and civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

Canter, a retired biophysicist and national parks enthusiast, first learned about Rosenwald as an adult through a documentary — and was struck that this story of Black-Jewish cooperation was not more widely known.

“I knew that there was not one national park unit among the more than 400 that commemorated the life and legacy of a Jewish American, or told the story of Rosenwald schools,” Canter said. “And I can tell you that today, almost 11 years later, that is still the case.”

There are national historic sites and monuments honoring Jewish Americans, including the Rosenwald family home and the David Berger National Memorial. But a national historic park — a designation that often spans multiple sites and has greater cultural cache — has yet to honor a Jewish American.

Part of Rosenwald’s relative obscurity, Canter said, stems from his own philosophy. Rosenwald embraced a “give while you live” approach and did not believe in permanent endowments, requiring that the Rosenwald Fund spend all of its money within 25 years of his death.

That approach has yielded severe financial challenges decades later. Today, only about 10% of the more than 5,000 Rosenwald school structures remain, according to Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Trust placed Rosenwald schools on its 2002 list of America’s 11 most endangered historic places, warning of an “urgent crisis of erasure, abandonment and deterioration.”

Many of the schools were built in rural areas that have since been abandoned, Leggs said, adding that the buildings were made of wood that has slowly decayed. The loss is personal for him: Upon researching the history for his job, Leggs discovered that both of his parents attended Rosenwald schools in Kentucky.

“It was a transcendent moment for me,” he said, “because I remember being at a school building that was literally vanishing history.”

The surviving schools have mixed ownership, Leggs said. Some act as local community centers, while others operate as commercial or office spaces, such as the Caldwell Rosenwald School in Huntersville, North Carolina — today, home to Burgess Supply, a carpet store.

A bipartisan issue?

In the final days of his first presidency, Trump gave a significant boost to the campaign for a Rosenwald national park.

He signed the Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools Act into law, directing the Department of Interior to conduct a study assessing the feasibility of establishing the park. Eight Republicans had cosponsored the bill, and it passed with broad bipartisan support.

The study “resulted in positive findings,” concluding that the San Domingo School in Sharptown, Maryland, met all the criteria for a national park and recommending that Congress create a grant program to support the preservation of additional Rosenwald schools.

But Republican backing for a national park honoring Rosenwald’s legacy now appears to have waned.

The Forward called and emailed the three Republicans who cosponsored the 2020 bill and are still in office. None responded to the Forward’s question about their position on Durbin’s bill to establish the Rosenwald park.

A White House spokesperson directed the Forward to the national historic site at the Rosenwald family home but declined to say whether Trump was supportive of the national park commemorating Rosenwald schools.

Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, went so far as to send a letter to President Joe Biden in 2024 expressing his support for “the expedited designation of a Julius Rosenwald And Rosenwald Schools National Park.”

His office did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.

Nor did the office of Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina who previously advertised his support for the restoration of Rosenwald schools in his state. “Booker T. Washington helped build thousands of schools for Black children, advancing impactful educational opportunities throughout the South,” he tweeted in February 2024. “With the restoration of Rosenwald School, his legacy lives on in South Carolina. #BlackHistoryMonth”

‘A story for our time’

Durbin’s bill arrives just as the agency that would create a park faces drastic proposed cuts: Trump this week proposed funding for the already understaffed National Park Service be reduced by $736 million, or 25% of its budget.

Meanwhile, the president has sought to recast historical narratives at existing parks. In January, Trump ordered the National Park Service dismantle an exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington. Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed the removal of a pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.

Yet Rosenwald’s story doesn’t fit neatly into the culture-war themes that Trump has singled out. Rosenwald himself was a political conservative, a laissez-faire businessman and steadfast Republican who believed in fostering economic self-sufficiency through education.

Dennis Ross, a former Republican congressman from Florida who retired from office in 2019 and has supported the Rosenwald park campaign, told the Forward he sees Rosenwald’s story as one conservatives should embrace.

“I’ve heard the argument that this is a way of trying to backdoor DEI. I totally disagree and take issue with that. This is showing what American history is all about,” Ross said. “If you were to dwell on the oppression of slavery, then maybe that argument might work. But I think the important thing is to look at the transition, the evolution from slavery to success.”

Canter is also optimistic, and said she plans to meet with a Republican senator — she declined to provide a name — whose staff has expressed interest in the park. As to whether Trump would sign the bill: She hopes the campaign will have the opportunity to put it on his desk.

“People with different backgrounds and cultures were able to come together, work together, find common ground and move this country forward,” Canter said. “So if that isn’t a story for our time, I don’t know what is.”

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