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Why does Syria suddenly need its last practicing Jew? It needs America.
In what used to be Syria’s old Jewish quarter, Bakhour Chamntoub, a 76-year-old tennis-playing bachelor, lives as the last practicing Jew in Syria and the de facto leader of Syria’s six-person-strong Jewish community.
Life has changed for Chamntoub since the highly oppressive Assad Regime fell in December 2024. Under Assad, he and the rest of Syria’s remaining Jews kept a low profile. Now, Chamntoub has become something of a local celebrity.
The Palestinian children in his neighborhood routinely knock on his door asking for tennis balls. One Muslim resident of Damascus said he calls Chamntoub “uncle.” And these days, he regularly hosts reporters, tourists, and academics in his home – something he says would have been impossible under Assad. Members of the Israeli media now call him their “No. 1 Jew,” he said.
When he walks in the street, neighbors greet him warmly. “‘Shalom, boker tov, shabbat shalom,’ everybody says to me!” he shared gleefully during a video conversation from his patio in Damascus.
As Syria seeks sanctions relief, foreign investment, and international legitimacy after decades of dictatorship, outreach to Jews has become a way for the new government to signal its newfound tolerance to the West. And it seems to be working. This week, President Donald Trump announced plans to remove Syria from the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list for the first time since 1979.
But not everyone is on board. Several Syrian minority groups in the U.S. have been campaigning against lifting the remaining sanctions, fearing the government will persecute minorities once it secures Western support. Their concerns are not unwarranted: there have been several attacks on minority communities since the government’s rise to power, including some reportedly involving Syrian authorities.
A long history of decline
For years, Chamntoub has been the sole caretaker of Jewish life in Syria. He knows which Jewish families once lived in which homes, which of Syria’s 22 synagogues are still standing, and where generations of Syrian Jews are buried.
When a member of the community dies, Chamntoub is responsible for overseeing the burial process. Bodies of Jewish community members are taken to a Muslim burial office to be washed and prepared, before Chamntoub takes them to the Jewish cemetery. There, they are buried, though there are not enough Jews in the country to make a minyan, the minimum quorum of 10 Jewish men required by Jewish law to conduct communal religious services mandated for Jewish burials.
Syria’s Jewish community is among the oldest in the world, dating back more than 2,000 years. At its height, it numbered roughly 100,000 people, with communities concentrated in Aleppo and Damascus, but waves of persecution and political upheaval led to a mass exodus of Jews from Syria. Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Jews faced deadly pogroms and restrictions on emigration under successive Syrian governments. Many who attempted to leave the country were imprisoned, tortured or killed.
In 1992, when then-Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad finally permitted Syrian Jews to emigrate, thousands left en masse for Brooklyn, New Jersey, Israel and Mexico.
Chamntoub, who was born in 1950, witnessed almost every chapter of the community’s decline. He also lived through the reign of Hafez al-Assad’s son, Bashar al-Assad, a brutal leader who used chemical weapons on his own people to suppress dissent, and oversaw a 14-year-long civil war that resulted in the death of 400,000 Syrians.
In December 2024, Chamntoub found himself in the center of a new chapter of Syrian Jewish history after opposition forces toppled the Assad regime. Leading the charge was Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda member who is now the self-appointed leader of the new Syrian government and trying to prove his days of terrorism are behind him. He dons a suit and goes by his birth name rather than the pseudonym he used during his time in al-Qaeda, al-Jolani. He speaks of making peace with his neighbors (Israel among them), and has expressed interest in bringing exiled Jews back to Syria.
This fall, al-Sharaa met with a group of Syrian American Jews in New York – though they avoided the topic of Israel. He has even appointed a designated official within the government whose job it is to engage with Syrian Jews in the diaspora.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the strategy is not new. During the Assad era, Syria’s ambassador to the United States in the early 2000s, Imad Moustapha, cultivated relationships with Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, attending bar mitzvahs and community events in hopes of easing Syria’s isolation.
“The charm campaign by Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, is clearly a continuation of the same strategy,” Landis said.
Indeed, most U.S. sanctions on Syria were lifted in May of 2025, due in part to lobbying in Washington by an American Syrian Jewish organization called the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation. Its leader Henry Hamra, the nephew of Syria’s last chief rabbi, has been the face of efforts to involve the Jewish diaspora in conversation about Syria’s future.
Through it all, Chamntoub never seriously considered leaving Syria, even as family members emigrated to the U.S. and Israel. He says he never felt like an outsider in the country. He enjoys living in his parents’ home among fruit trees and birds whose songs often drowned out the virtual conversation from his patio. He also enjoys his girlfriends in Syria, whom he says he can’t bear to leave.
He cleans his home for Shabbat every Friday, and prepares a meal to commemorate each Jewish holiday, though he says it is hard to get in the holiday spirit alone.
He also keeps kosher, a Herculean task in Syria. For years, Chamntoub ate a vegetarian diet, relying on a rabbi in Turkey to smuggle him kosher meat from time to time. Then, in 2018, he met a 24-year-old Syrian Jew living in Brooklyn named Joe Jajati.
Jajati was born in Syria and left the country at age 2. His grandfather was the head representative of the Jewish community in Syria and, according to Jajati, met frequently with then-President Assad.
Jajati always hoped to visit his birth country, and decided to make the trip after learning there was a Jewish man who remained there.
“I just wanted to meet him. I wanted to hear what he had to say,” Jajati told me.
The two met in Damascus and connected instantly. “After that, we became like best friends,” said Jajati, who has returned several times over the years, always with a suitcase full of kosher meat for Chamntoub.
After the Assad regime fell, Jajati felt the moment was ripe to change the way Syrians think of Jews, and the way Israelis and Americans view Syria.
‘We don’t represent the radical point of view’
Alongside Chamntoub, Jajati started the Syrian Mosaic Foundation, an organization that hopes to revive Jewish life in Syria and promote a more pluralistic future for the country. Chamntoub heads its Syria branch, working alongside Muslim and Christian staff, including Palestinians.
One of the foundation’s main initiatives is bringing delegations of Jews to Syria under armed government escort. The delegations are intended to foster relationships that were impossible under Assad.
Participants often include reporters and academics, among them David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel, and Dr. Susanna Heschel, the head of Jewish studies at Dartmouth.
After visiting the University of Damascus, Heschel brought a Syrian exchange student she met there to Dartmouth. She hopes he will be the first of many.
“I want to expose these young [Syrians] to Judaism, Jewish history, Zionism,” she said. “They don’t know anything. How could they? Nobody’s teaching that at the university.”
Jajati says the reason the new Syrian government supports this work is clear. “They want to show, not just the Jews, but the world that, ‘Look, we’re good now, we’re not what people think we are.’”
When the delegations come, they often stay at the Inana Hotel, a complex of homes that once belonged to Joe Jajati’s family. It sat empty for years until it was purchased and turned into a hotel by a Muslim family – a common fate for the property of Jews who fled Syria.
Maysara Al-Zoubi, a Mosaic staff member whose family owns the hotel, said he joined the organization in hopes of helping attract Western investment to Syria.
“You have to give investors a good example that we don’t represent the radical point of view,” he said. “We wanted to wash the image of the radical society, and to give another good image to bring these investors to the country.”
Critical to that, he said through a translator, is the work the Mosaic Foundation is doing to bring Jews back into the fabric of Syrian society.
In March, the organization restored its first synagogue, the El Frenj synagogue in Damascus. Last month, a group worked to clean up the tombstone of Rabbi Nissim Indib, the former head Rabbi of Syria. Indib is best known for having recited the Shema prayer with Israeli spy Eli Cohen before his execution.
With the help of Syria’s new police chief, Mosaic also managed to gain possession of several Jewish artifacts that were stolen and put on the black market in the midst of the chaotic fall of the Assad regime.
And this week, the organization began work to renovate Syria’s main Jewish cemetery.
‘They didn’t have exposure to Jews’
Jajati and Chamntoub also hope to impress upon Syrians a different view of Jews than was forced upon citizens under Assad.
“These people were closed off to the whole world the past few years,” Jajati told me. “They really didn’t have exposure to Jews under the Assad regime.”
Since the new government took power, the economic situation for most Syrians has worsened, with 90% of Syrians living in poverty. During Ramadan, Mosaic distributed hundreds of kilos of meat to non-Jewish residents from Chamntoub’s home in Damascus and at a mosque in Quneitra, the province bordering Israel that has seen repeated Israeli incursions since the Assad regime fell.
Mirna al-Rached, a Christian resident from Damascus, trekked to Chamntoub’s home for assistance.
“Bakhour put the meat neatly and gently in the bag, giving with a very nice smile on his face,” she recalled.
“It breaks the monotonous narrative that we always hear about the Jewish people,” she added. “You don’t know anything about them, except what you hear from the news, you know, the whole image about the Jewish people, about their racism, about wars, all the negative things.”
In April, after a Jewish person was reportedly threatened by a Hezbollah actor in Damascus, Mosaic installed solar-powered lights and cameras in the old Jewish Quarter as a security measure. But Jajati knows the move will benefit non-Jews living in the neighborhood as well. Years of economic collapse and electricity shortages have left many Damascus streets pitch black at night.
Now, the company that installed the lights and cameras for that project has committed to helping the organization rebuild synagogues in Syria.
“That would be the first time someone contributes with us, and it’s a Muslim Syrian company,” said Jajati, who has thus far funded Mosaic’s initiatives himself.
But many in the Syrian Jewish diaspora in the U.S. are skeptical of the engagement.
Mourdi, a member of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn said he remains deeply suspicious of the new government. He asked to be identified only by his first name in case he ever pursues a property claim in Syria.
Mourdi left Syria at 24 and said his family’s home and store, like those of many Syrian Jews, were transferred through fraudulent court proceedings after they fled the country. He believes the only way for the new government to earn the community’s trust is by voiding those transactions and restoring confiscated property.
“They want to show the world that they are close to the Jews, that they want them to come back, but nobody’s gonna come back,” he said.
“You want the Jews back? Make an executive order: Any Jewish property that was sold through the court is unacceptable. And after that, I’m gonna show you, 80% of our community is gonna go back to get their property,” he said.
He pointed to an episode after al-Sharaa took power in December 2024, when the new president reportedly reclaimed his own family’s former home, which had been occupied by another family under the Assad regime.
“This is my family’s house, and we have many memories here, so we’d like it back now,” al-Sharaa reportedly told the occupants before they vacated.
Mourdi said he raised the issue of property restitution with American advocates working with the new government, but never received a response.
“For us, Syria is like somebody who died,” he said. “If you try to wake him up, it’s not gonna work. But some people think, ‘No, we can bring him back.’”
Chamntoub also has reservations. While he welcomes the fact that Jews can once again visit Syria, he worries the government’s outreach will end there.
Jewish property has been seized by the state, he said. And while he is grateful for the greater freedom to express his religion and opinions publicly, he fears the government has little interest in hearing them. He briefly considered running for a seat in Syria’s legislature but ultimately decided it would be pointless.
“If I can’t express my opinions frankly… I’m not interested in being in the assembly,” he said.
Though Chamntoub has become the public face of Syria’s tiny Jewish community, the Syrian government has yet to recognize him in any official capacity.
“Everyone in the world considers me the leader of Syria’s Jewish community,” he added, “except the Syrian government.”
Neither Chamntoub nor Jajati have any delusions that they will manage to bring the Jewish community back to Syria. While Jajati says many American Syrian Jews have told him they’re interested in visiting the country, no one has plans to settle there.
“There’s no Syrian, forget about Jews, there’s no Syrian that is living in America wants to go back to live in Syria,” said Jajati.
“My dream is that it becomes like the Emirates, like Dubai,” he added. “The reality is, I hope it doesn’t become another Libya. All Syrians have to do their part so that we don’t let it get there.”
Chamntoub answered instantly when asked if he thinks the six Jews remaining in Syria will be the last: “For sure.”
After a heavy silence, he burst into laughter and cracked a joke to his translator that he might need to marry all of his girlfriends to change that.
The translator explained: “He said he will have to marry like 10 women at the same time!”
The post Why does Syria suddenly need its last practicing Jew? It needs America. appeared first on The Forward.
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The secret Jewish history of Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton, the musician, actor and philanthropist died Aug. 25 at the age of 80. A Christian known for her Christmas output, she nonetheless connected to Judaism through a cause dear to her heart: literacy.
In a “By the Book” interview, Dolly Parton told The New York Times that a copy of the Bible is always on her nightstand, next to a “daily devotional book.” In her memoir “Songteller,” Parton explains, “I’m not that religious, but I’m very, very spiritual. I grew up in very religious surroundings. I grew up with a Bible background, and I’m glad I did.”
Parton’s knowledge of the Jewish Bible is evident in several of her most beloved songs, including “Coat of Many Colors” and “The Master’s Hand.” The song “Coat of Many Colors” is based on Parton’s own childhood growing up in relative poverty and draws upon the story of the biblical Joseph. Parton sings, “As she [her mother] sewed, she told a story from the Bible she had read / About a coat of many colors Joseph wore….”
In “Songteller,” Parton recounts, “My mom made me this little coat. In order to make me proud of that little coat, I know now, she told me the story about Joseph from the Bible and his coat of many colors. So I thought, ‘Well, if it’s from the Bible, and Joseph was an important person, it has to be very special and important.’ Then when I went to school, the kids did not see that. They just made fun of my little coat. I had seen so much more in that coat than what Mama had sewn, things sewn into my body, my soul, my everything. Mama had made it and told the story and made it all seem so real. It was so mind-warping and heart-shattering to me when they made fun of it. In my mind, I thought I looked just like Joseph. But the kids didn’t, and it crushed me.”
Her song “The Master’s Hand,” written in 1971, displays Parton’s deep immersion not only in the Five Books of Moses but also in the Writings — specifically, the Book of Daniel. The song begins by recounting the familiar story of Noah thusly:
In the days before the flood
The world grew wicked and corrupt.
But Noah was a good man,
And the Lord unto him came.
And He said to Noah, “Go build an ark.”
Noah did, and the sky got dark,
And a great flood destroyed everything.
Except for Noah and his wife
And their three sons and their wives
And a pair of every kind of creature
Walkin’ in the land.
And the people mocked.
And they made fun.
But ol’ Noah worked ’til it was done,
’Cause he was holding to the Master’s hand.
After the song’s refrain, it continues with the lesser-known story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, three figures from the Book of Daniel. The three are thrown into a “fiery furnace” after refusing to bow down to an image of Nebuchadnezzar II, the king of Babylon. Rewarded for their loyalty to God, the three miraculously survive the fire. Or, as Dolly Parton puts it:
Three Hebrew children in days of old
Were marched into the fiery coals,
’Cause they would not deny the Lord,
Would not obey command.
And the furnace roared like a mighty storm,
But the Hebrew children saw no harm.
The flame was smothered by the Master’s hand….
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
Had no fear of the fiery coals,
’Cause they were holdin’ to the Master’s hand.
“I know my Bible stories, like the ones I mention in this song,” Parton writes in “Songteller.”
Parton’s charity, the Imagination Library, a program with free books for children was the inspiration for Harold Grinspoon’s PJ Library, which provides Jewish-themed books to young readers.
“I’m always honored when my Imagination Library inspires others,” Parton said.
While Dolly Parton’s musical roots are in country and gospel, by the mid-1970s, with her career at a standstill, she was ready to reach a larger audience. Two Brooklyn-born Jewish men played essential roles in helping Parton make the leap from Nashville to mainstream pop stardom. Parton gives full credit to Sandy Gallin, one of the most successful talent agents from the 1970s through the 1990s, for helping her to achieve “crossover” success in music and to expand into TV, movies and even a theme park.
In 1977, Gallin convinced Parton to record a song called “Here You Come Again,” written by the Jewish husband-and-wife songwriting duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. He brought in another Brooklyn native, Gary Klein, to produce the song and the album of the same name. The single cracked the Top 20 Pop Album charts and spawned her first Top 10 pop hit; the album was her first to sell millions. (Incidentally, her pop success didn’t come at the cost of her country credibility; the song sat atop the Country Singles chart for five weeks.) The song also garnered Parton her first-ever Grammy Award, for best female country vocal. Over the next few years, Klein produced a number of other hits for Parton.
But for Gallin, it didn’t end there. He convinced Parton to open the “Dollywood” theme park in Tennessee, and the two co-founded a production company, Sandollar, among whose many successes were the Steve Martin film “Father of the Bride” and the hit TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The producers won an Academy Award in 1990 for their AIDS documentary, “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.” Gallin also produced the Parton-starring movies “Rhinestone” and “Straight Talk.” Parton commemorated her friendship and loyalty to Gallin by writing “Sandy’s Song,” sung to the tune of “Greensleeves.”
In “Songteller,” Dolly Parton writes of Gallin, “We were so close and our relationship was so loving. We were from two completely different worlds, but we just clicked, somehow. He was just one of those friends that you find who you just know are going to be your friend forever.” For a time, the two even shared an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. After Gallin died in 2017, Parton told an interviewer, “Nobody could quite get how the Christian Southern girl and the New York Jewish boy could have so much in common. But it was real.”
PJ Grisar contributed to this article.
The post The secret Jewish history of Dolly Parton appeared first on The Forward.
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A tourist’s guide to the vanished Jewish quarter of Warsaw
פֿאַרן חורבן האָבן אין וואַרשע געוווינט אַן ערך 370 טויזנט ייִדן — די גרעסטע ייִדישע שטאָט אין אייראָפּע און די צווייט גרעסטע בכלל נאָך ניו-יאָרק.
נאָך דער מלחמה איז די שטאָט און אירע ייִדישע אײַנוווינער, ווי באַוווּסט, געוואָרן איין גרויסע חורבֿה. דאָס גאַנצע רײַכע ייִדישע לעבן איז געוואָרן שטויב און אַש. אָבער אַ דאַנק די דיגיטאַלישע אַרכיוון, קען דאָס אַמאָליקע ייִדישע לעבן אין וואַרשע ווײַטער עקזיסטירן אין דעם מענטשלעכן דמיון, און מע קען עס ווידער אויפֿלעבן אין אונדזער תּקופֿה. אַ מענטש קען זיך פֿאַרטיפֿן אין די אַמאָליקע וואַרשעווער ייִדישע צײַטונגען, זיך פֿאַרלירן אין דער רײַזע אויף דער צײַטמאַשינקע, און זיך פֿאָרשטעלן אַז מע געפֿינט זיך אין וואַרשע אין 1938.
דאָס איז פֿאַקטיש דער רושם וואָס בלײַבט נאָכן דורכבלעטערן בני מערס נײַ בוך אויף העברעיִש, „מורה דרך: ורשה היהודית 1938“ (אַ וועגווײַזער צו דער ייִדישער וואַרשע, 1938), אַרויס אין 2025 בײַם מאגנס-פֿאַרלאַג. דער געדאַנק הינטער דעם בוך איז גאָר אייגנאַרטיק און אומגעוויינטלעך: צו שרײַבן אַ בוך הײַנט צו טאָג וואָס איז צונויפֿגעשטעלט ווי אַ בוך פֿאַר טוריסטן וועלכע ווילן באַזוכן דעם ייִדישן ייִשובֿ אין וואַרשע אין 1938; און דער „מחבר“ פֿונעם וועגווײַזער איז אַ וואַרשעווער ייִד פֿון יענע יאָרן, וואָס ווענדט זיך צו די דעמאָלטדיקע לייענערס.
בעצם איז דאָס גאַנצע בוך אַ שפּיל פֿון „לאָמיר זיך פֿאָרשטעלן“: אַ געשיכטע-בוך וואָס מאַכט זיך פֿאַר אַ טוריסטיש בוך, וואָס גיט פּרטים וועלכע זענען דעם הײַנטיקן לייענער דווקא אומניצלעך. דאָס שטייט אין שאַרפֿער סתּירה מיטן עצם געדאַנק פֿון אַ טוריסטיק בוך וואָס זײַן ציל איז צו געבן ניצלעכע פּרטים וועגן אַ געוויס אָרט. ווי מער שרײַבט אין דער הקדמה: „כּמעט אַלץ וואָס וועט ווײַטער געשילדערט ווערן אין אָט דעם וועגווײַזער עקזיסטירט ניט הײַנט… דאָס שרײַבן פֿון אַזאַ מין וועגווײַזער איז אויף אַ גרויסן מאָס דערמעגלעכט געוואָרן אַ דאַנק דער וועבזײַט ׳עיתּונות יהודית היסטורית׳ [דער היסטאָרישער ייִדישער פּרעסע].“
ווי יעדער וועגווײַזער פֿון דעם זשאַנער, איז דאָס בוך צעטיילט אויף דרײַ קאַטעגאָריעס: אַלגעמיינע קענטשאַפֿט, ניצלעכע אינפֿאָרמאַציע און די טורן. אויף דער ערשטער קאַטעגאָריע, „אַלגעמיינע קענטשאַפֿט“, קען מען לייענען וועגן דער שטאָטס געשיכטע, איר באַפֿעלקערונג, אירע לשונות, רעליגיע, ווירטשאַפֿט, קולטור, ספּאָרט, אַרכיטעקטור, חיות און פֿלאַנצן. למשל, ניט געקוקט אויף אַלע פּאָליטישע, רעליגיעזע און קולטורעלע מחלוקתן צווישן די וואַרשעווער ייִדן, האָבן זיי כאָטש איין זאַך געהאַט בשותּפֿות: די ייִדישע שפּראַך. ווי עס שטייט אינעם וועגווײַזער, רעדט מען אין דער ייִדישער וואַרשע בעיקר ייִדיש, ווי 88.9% פֿון די ייִדישע אײַנוווינער האָבן אין 1931 דעקלאַרירט. און זיי רעדן זייער אייגענעם ייִדישן דיאַלעקט מיט זײַנע אייגענע טערמינען. אַ באַלעבאָס, צום בײַשפּיל, הייסט אַ „וואַרעט“; אַ פֿינצטערער קאָרידאָר איז אַ „שטשאָנקע“; בכּיוון איז „אינאַמישנע“.
אויף דער קאַטעגאָריע „ניצלעכע אינפֿאָרמאַציע“ אינפֿאָרמירט דער וועגווײַזער דעם לייענער אין וועלכער צײַט פֿון יאָר איז ייִדן כּדאי צו באַזוכן וואַרשע (דער ענטפֿער: פֿרילינג און האַרבסט, ווען מע פֿײַערט דעם „חודש פֿון ייִדיש בוך“). צווישן די אַנדערע שאלות: וווּ אײַנצושטיין; וואָס צו עסן און טרינקען, פֿון אייער קיכלעך ביז וואַסער־פּלעצלעךף וויפֿל קאָסטן פֿאַרשידענע זאַכן? (אַ ייִדישע צײַטונג למשל קאָסט צווישן 10 און 30 גראָשן; אַ קילאָ קעז — 1 זלאָטע); וואָס צו לייענען אויפֿן וועג? פֿון וואָס מע זאָל זיך אָפּהיטן? (פֿון די גנבֿים, פֿאַרשטייט זיך) און ווי אַזוי מע קען אָנקומען קיין וואַרשע. מע לייענט אויך וועגן דעם פֿאַרקער אויפֿן וועג, דער פּאָסט, די בענק, דער פּאָליציי, די פֿײַערלעשערס, די ביבליאָטעקן, און נאָך און נאָך.
אויף דער טורן-סעקציע לייגט דער מחבר פֿאָר זיבן מעגלעכע טורן, למשל: אַ טור פֿונעם פּלאַץ גזשיבאָווסקי דורך דער קראָכמאַלנער גאַס – דער צענטער פֿון „דאָס פּלעצל“ (דער ייִדישער אונטערוועלט), פֿון וואַנען עס שטאַמען די דרײַ מחברים פֿון דער זעלבער משפּחה, י. י. זינגער, יצחק באַשעוויס זינגער און אסתּר קרײַטמאַן, און וווּ עס געפֿינט זיך אויך דער באַרימטער סאַסקי-גאָרטן; אַ טור וואָס דערפֿירט דיך דורך דער באַרימטסטער ייִדישער גאַס נאַלעווקעס, דער האַרץ פֿון ייִדישער וואַרשע, וווּ מחמת דער בליִענדיקער עקאָנאָמיע שפּראָצן דאָרט אויף יעדן שריט און טריט נײַע קיאָסקן פֿון זעלצער און אײַזקרעם; אָדער אַ שפּאַציר וואָס גייט דורכן צפֿונדיקן טייל שטאָט, אַרײַנגערעכנט דורך דער אָרעמער סמאָטשע־גאַס, וואָס ניט געקוקט אויף דעם דלות פֿאַרמאָגט זי דעם שיינעם „מעטראָ-קינאָזאַל“. בני מער האָט אַגבֿ מיט 8 יאָר צוריק טאַקע געשריבן אַ גאַנץ בוך וועגן דער סמאָטשע־גאַס (מאגנס, 2018).
„אַ וועגווײַזער צו דער ייִדישער וואַרשע, 1938“ איז אַ וויכטיקער בײַטראָג צום זשאַנער פֿון פּאָפּולערער געשיכטע, וואָס באַנײַט און באַלעבט די אַמאָליקע שטאָט דורך זײַן אויסנעמיקן פֿאָרמאַט. דער העברעיִשער לייענער וועט געניסן פֿון מערס ברייטער קענטשאַפֿט, הומאָר און טאַלאַנט ווי אַ דערציילער. ס׳איז פֿאָרט אומפֿאַרמײַדלעך, אַז בשעתן לייענען פֿילט מען זיך ווי מע דרייט זיך אַרום אין דער וועלט פֿון שדים און ווי מע ווערט געפֿירט דורך אַ „טויטער שטאָט“. דאָס בוך פּאַסט צום בעסטן פֿאַר די לייענערס וואָס זענען מסוגל אַ ווײַלע „צו סוספּינדירן דעם ספֿק“ און זיך איבערגעבן דער פֿאַנטאַזיע.
נאָכן איבערלייענען דאָס בוך, שטעל איך זיך אַליין די קשיא: וואָס פֿאַר אַ ווירטועלע פֿאַנטאַזיע אין דרײַ דימענסיעס וואָלט די אַלמעכטיקע קינסטלעכע אינטעליגענץ געקאָנט שאַפֿן פֿון מערס בוך? אויף אַזאַ סאָרט אויפֿלעבונג דאַרף מען נאָך וואַרטן.
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Can an Oklahoma Senate candidate attract voters with an ad tossing out AIPAC ‘trash’?
(JTA) —Oklahoma grassroots activist N’kiyla Jasmine Thomas is facing off on Tuesday against centrist Jim Priest in a Democratic Senate race that has become the latest litmus test for progressive politics in a conservative stronghold.
The two candidates are battling at the ballot box for the second time this summer after neither of them secured the needed majority to win the June primary contest. Thomas, a nurse who has been vocal against AIPAC, earned 45% of votes in the June five-person matchup, while Priest, a lawyer and ordained minister, accrued 24%.
Both Thomas and Priest would be underdogs in the general election against Republican candidate Rep. Kevin Hern, who swept his primary and clinched the endorsement of President Donald Trump. Oklahoma hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than three decades.
Nonetheless, Tuesday’s runoff will serve as a referendum on the potency of progressivism in a deep-red state, just a week after democratic socialist Angie Nixon knocked out her moderate opponent in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary.
Unlike Nixon, Thomas is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She has, however, openly identified with socialist policies, while her opponent, Priest, calls himself a moderate.
Neither candidate has a wealth of political experience. Priest, 70, made a failed bid for Oklahoma attorney general in 2010 and was previously the CEO of two nonprofit organizations. His campaign priorities center on reducing the cost of living, making healthcare more accessible and inspiring confidence in government.
Thomas, meanwhile, is a 31-year-old citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, who says she represents “the next generation of leaders.” Among her key focuses are women’s health and safety, civil rights and LGBTQIA+ protections. She has also repeatedly pledged to never take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Although the pro-Israel lobby has not been involved in this race, a November social media reel showed Thomas pulling a giant red trash bin, adorned with the labels “AIPAC Funds” and “Corporate PAC Funds.” Alongside the reel is a caption that reads, “Just taking out the trash.”
“I am a sole grassroots candidate,” she said in the reel. “And we are not accepting AIPAC or corporate PAC funds. It’s garbage.”
Asked about her rhetoric on AIPAC, Thomas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “My concerns have NEVER been about Jewish people, Judaism, or Israel’s existence,” saying that she instead prioritizes human rights, civilian lives and the accountability of all governments.
Some voters see it differently. David Howman, a 30-year-old Jewish banker in Tulsa, said that although he’s “a fairly progressive Democratic voter,” he considers Thomas’s usage of AIPAC to be “a pretty cheap political tactic.”
“It’s kind of like a little grenade you get to toss out in there,” Howman told JTA.
“If AIPAC were funneling a bunch of money into the Jim Priest campaign, maybe that’s a conversation that is worth having,” he added. “But they’re not even touching this race.”
Though Howman voted for Priest in Tuesday’s runoff, he noted that a different candidate, Troy Green, was his favorite in the June primary.
When asked at a Saturday debate about Israel’s military actions, both candidates confirmed their belief in the existence of a “genocide” in Gaza. Only Priest, however, linked the word to Israel, while Thomas connected it to the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Priest recognized that Hamas “committed atrocities,” noting that “they kidnapped people, they killed people, they tortured people” and that “they should be held accountable.” But he also deemed Israel’s retaliation “disproportionate to the threat.”
“In response, Israel is committing genocide,” he said, accusing the Jewish state of preventing medical supplies and food from getting to people.
Expressing skepticism about both one-state and two-state solutions, Priest declared that “what’s needed is a 24-state solution,” in which the whole Middle East unites “in something like the Abraham Accords.”
The Priest campaign did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Thomas, meanwhile, emphasized that “we can be for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we can be against Netanyahu and what he is doing.”
“He is committing genocide. He is absolutely murdering children,” Thomas said. “We have to stop providing funding for these wars.”
She also backed the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, noting that the U.S. should “not be on the side of another country that we don’t even have any ties to, outside of allyship.”
Thomas had previously refrained from using the word genocide in public statements, instead expressing “solidarity with Palestine” and calling for an end to “unconditional funding of Israel’s military.”
In her response to JTA’s request that she clarify her stances on AIPAC and Israel, Thomas provided a lengthy written statement.
“I stand with my Jewish brothers and sisters against antisemitism, hate and discrimination in all forms,” she said, referring to Judaism as one of the “most enduring faith traditions.”
Reiterating remarks she made at the debate, Thomas noted that “two things can be true at the same time,” and advocated for both the security of the Jewish people and a willingness to criticize “any government, including the current leadership of Israel.”
Thomas also voiced support for a two-state solution, explaining that “both Israelis and Palestinians deserve the opportunity to live in peace, security and self-determination.”
“When I discuss political influence or organizations, my focus is on the broader role of money, lobbying, and special interests in our political system, not on any one religion or community,” she added.
Regardless of who comes out victorious on Tuesday, Howman said that many Democrats will be heading to the ballot box this November with a pessimistic outlook.
“That’s kind of the challenge that we have here in Oklahoma,” he added. “There’s definitely a sense of defeatism on the Democratic side.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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