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Rabbis, teachers, survivors: 18 Jews whose deaths diminished our communities in 2022
(JTA) — All year long, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports about the deaths of Jewish newsmakers in our community. To close out the year, we wanted to turn our attention to people who may not have been such household names but whose stories deserve to be remembered.
Here, with the help of readers who shared the names of people they are remembering, we recall 18 Jews who shaped their local communities and made a difference in the lives of those close to them. They include rabbis whose impact extended for decades, teachers who inspired generations of students and activists who were working to build a better world. May their memories be a blessing.
Harriet Bograd
A champion of emerging Jewish communities in far-flung places.
Harriet Bograd, center, her husband Ken Klein, left, and daughter Margie on a visit to the Sefwi Wiawso Jewish community in Ghana in an undated photo. (Courtesy Kulanu, Inc)
Harriet Bograd, who as president of the nonprofit Kulanu supported emerging Jewish communities in Africa, Asia and other places far beyond the usual centers of Jewish life, died on Sept. 17 in a Manhattan hospital. She was 79. A Yale-educated lawyer and a stalwart at the West End Synagogue, she was inspired by a visit in 2004 to a remote village in Ghana, where about two dozen families considered themselves Jewish. In the years to come, she and Kulanu would provide support to emerging Jewish communities in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Guatemala, the Philippines and more. She once said of her work at Kulanu, “after the Holocaust and the decimation of Jewish communities in Arab lands, the idea [is] that we’re establishing Jewish communities that have their own richness and variety.”
Henry Berg-Brousseau
Transgender activist from Kentucky
Henry Berg-Brousseau (Courtesy Human Rights Campaign)
Henry Berg-Brousseau grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and studied history, political science and Jewish studies at George Washington University, where he was a founding member of an LGBTQ+ fraternity. He had recently gotten a major promotion at the Human Rights Campaign when he died by suicide in his Arlington, Virginia, home, on Dec. 16 at age 24. “Henry spent his life working to extend grace, compassion and understanding to everyone but especially to the vulnerable and marginalized. This grace, compassion and understanding was not always returned to him,” his mother, the Kentucky state legislator Karen Berg, wrote in a statement that criticized lawmakers who advance anti-LGBTQ views. She added, “He was doing work that was important to him to make the world a more accepting place. At 24 years old. he had finally found a community but that could not undo the brokenness that he already felt.”
Rabbi Simcha Krauss
Orthodox advocate for women’s rights
Rabbi Simcha Krauss speaks at a dinner hosted by Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi in his honor on Feb. 5, 2014. (Courtesy Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi)
Rabbi Simcha Krauss, a leading figure of Modern Orthodox Judaism who was a forceful advocate for women’s rights within Orthodoxy, died Jan. 20 at 85. Krauss’s efforts, which included creating a rabbinical court to support “agunot” — women whose husbands refused to divorce them — frequently earned him scorn from traditionalists within Orthodoxy. But many others saw him as a “gentle giant” who wielded his years of study and experience to fight for women’s rights in Jewish law. Krauss was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1948. Coming from a long line of rabbis, Krauss studied at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, and later studied with the Modern Orthodox luminary Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. Krauss led the Young Israel of Hillcrest for 25 years. During his years in Queens, Krauss taught Talmud at Yeshiva University and began to get more involved in issues related to the role of women in Orthodoxy. He moved to Israel in 2005, and in 2014 came back to New York to found the International Beit Din, or religious court, to work on agunot cases. “Some say it is a modern revolution,” he told the Jerusalem Post. “I say that’s the way you should do it.”
Rabbi David Weiss Halivni
A survivor and scholar who teased out the many voices of the Talmud
Survivor and Talmud scholar Rabbi David Weiss Halivni was associated with Columbia University for 35 years. (Chaim Meyersdorf/Wikimedia Commons)
Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, the Talmud scholar and Columbia University professor, died June 29 at age 94. A Holocaust survivor and refugee raised in Sighet, Romania, he earned his doctorate and taught for many years at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, until leaving the institution in 1983 over its decision to ordain women rabbis. He later became dean of the rabbinical school of the Union for Traditional Judaism, a movement created by rabbis and scholars who similarly broke with the Conservative movement. In works like his multi-volume opus “Mekorot u’Mesorot,” or “Sources and Traditions,” he galvanized the world of Talmud study by treating Jewish text as a living, mutable conversation across generations, as opposed to a static document. Halivni’s approach to learning was the “corollary to loving the text so much that you just had to understand it to its fullest, whatever tools would enable you to do so,” wrote Rabbi Ethan Tucker in an appreciation.
Moris Albahari
A remnant of a Ladino-speaking past
Moris Albahari, shown in a documentary about his story called “Saved by Language,” was a pillar of Sarajevo’s Jewish community. (Courtesy of Brian Kirschen)
Moris Albahari was 11 when the Ustaša, Bosnia’s Nazi collaborator force, came to deport him and his large family to Jasenovac, the country’s equivalent of Auschwitz. A former teacher working as an Ustaša guard in the town of Drvar, where the train stopped, warned Albahari’s father, David, about their destination, and David was able to help his son escape from the train. Because Moris knew Ladino, the Jewish language that is mixture of medieval Spanish, Hebrew, Aramaic, Turkish and other languages, he was able to speak with the Italian soldier who saved him. Ladino would save him several more times before the end of the war, but afterwards, with most of Sarajevo’s Jews dead or forever dispersed, he spoke the language largely at home. At one point the director of Sarajevo’s airport, Albahari was a leader within Bosnia’s Jewish community. “It is a terrible loss, especially for Sarajevok,” said Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew and scholar of Ladino in Israel. “We’re not speaking just in terms of prominent members of the community, we’re speaking in terms of family members.”
Rachel Brodie
A “master Jewish educator” whose influence was vast
Rachel Brodie (Courtesy of J. The Jewish News of Northern California)
Rachel Brodie was unassuming and humble yet through her work as an educator had a vast influence on the Jewish community in the Bay Area of California, where she lived, and beyond. Brodie was the co-founder Jewish Milestones, an educational resource for Jewish lifecycle ceremonies that launched in 2004 as The Ritualist. She also served as “chief Jewish officer” at the Jewish community Center of San Francisco, a position created just for her, from 2011 to 2016. “To be in Rachel’s presence was to be illuminated by her wit, her laughter, and her fierce and tender heart,” wrote the founders of the Jewish Studio Project in Berkeley, where she had been a senior educator. “To learn with her was to be stimulated, delighted, and transformed.” Brodie, 55, died on April 11 after falling at her home in Berkeley.
Rabbi Steven Sager
“Leader, mentor, poet” in North Carolina and beyond
Rabbi Steven Sager at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina, in 2017. (Courtesy Anna Carson DeWitt)
When Rabbi Steven Sager died May 15 at 71 after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer, he was mourned not only by his family and his congregants at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina, from which he retired in 2011 after 32 years, but by a rabbinic and Hebrew poetry community spanning the globe. “Steve was a beautiful and deep human being,” the Israeli poet Rivka Miriam wrote. “I generally do not believe in translation, especially translation of poetry. It seems to me that every language has an inner secret that cannot be transposed into another vessel. Yet, when Steve translated my poems I had a different feeling — I felt he entered an inner layer, one that lies beneath any language, a layer carrying a hidden code.”
Nate Geller
Devoted to building stronger Jewish communities
Nate Geller, at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey. A colleague’s daughter made the “Nate” sign, which he took home and hung on his mantel. (Courtesy)
Nate Geller died on Jan. 24 at age 63, after a struggle with leukemia that he faced with characteristic humility, faith and optimism. His death was a blow to his colleagues at 70 Faces Media (JTA’s parent company); to his synagogue community in Teaneck, New Jersey; and to the Jewish communal world to which he had dedicated his life since graduating from the Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service at Brandeis University in 1983. In the hours after his death, chat rooms and email boxes filled up with loving tributes to Nate, remarkable for their consistency: Friends and colleagues remarked on his gentleness, his passion for Jewish learning, his commitment to Israel, his willingness not just to hear but to listen when a colleague kvelled or kvetched. Most of all, they remembered his devotion to his family: his wife Lyn Light Geller, herself a gentle and passionate force among “Jewish professionals,” his grown children Aliza, Ariana and Koby, Koby’s wife Talia, and their kids, Annaelle and Judah. Said one colleague and fellow congregant, “There is an enormous Nate-shaped void in the world now.”
Hedi Fried
A voice for Holocaust remembrance in Sweden
Holocaust survivor Hedi Fried stands between Sweden’s culture minister and handball player Linnea Claeson during a counterprotest against a neo-Nazi demonstration in Stockholm, Aug. 25, 2018. (Pontus Lundahl/AFP via Getty Images)
Born in 1924 in Sighet, in what was then Hungary and is now Romania, Hedi Fried survived Auschwitz and settled in Sweden, where she became a psychologist and advocate for Holocaust survivors. She created Cafe 84, a salon for survivors in Stockholm, and spoke widely about her experiences during the Holocaust, gathering some of the most common exchanges in “Questions I Am Asked About the Holocaust,” published in English in 2019. “Your solidarity was boundless and no question too difficult to answer. You were brave, generous, dedicated and extremely wise,” Christina Gamstorp, the director of Stockholm’s Jewish museum, wrote in a remembrance. “Now your voice has fallen silent but not your message. It lives on in everyone who met you, in your texts, books, films and your belief that man is still good — and that it is possible to build a society free from antisemitism and racism, which threaten our entire existence.” Fried, who had three children, died in November at 98.
Rabbi Sy Dresner
The “most arrested rabbi in America”
Rabbi Martin Freedman, right, and Rabbi Israel Dresner,center, are taken to the Tallahassee city building where they were charged with unlawful assembly after they and 10 other “Freedom Riders” were arrested attempting to eat at the Tallahassee airport in June 1961. (Getty Photos)
Rabbi Israel “Sy” Dresner, who demonstrated with Martin Luther King Jr. and was sometimes called the “most arrested rabbi in America,” died Jan. 13. He was 92. A Freedom Rider in the 1960s, Dresner built a career as a social justice-oriented Reform rabbi who was active in the fight against the Vietnam War and was a vocal opponent of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Dresner was born on the Lower East Side in 1929 to an Orthodox family and grew up in Brooklyn, where his father ran a delicatessen. He attended yeshivas as a child but went on to become a Reform rabbi after serving in the Korean War and working on a kibbutz in Israel. “We came as Jews who remember the millions of faceless people who stood quietly, watching the smoke rise from Hitler’s crematoria,” he said after an arrest in 1964 outside a segregated motel in St. Augustine, Florida. “We came because we know that, second only to silence, the greatest danger to man is loss of faith in man’s capacity to act.”
Eli Evans
‘Poet laureate of Southern Jews’
Eli Evans, seen here in a picture from a trip to Israel in the 1970s, was “equally at home in New York.” (Courtesy Josh Evans)
Born in 1936 in Durham, North Carolina, where his father would become the first Jewish mayor and his mother the founder of Hadassah’s first chapter in the South, Eli Evans remained tied to his native home despite spending his adult life in New York City, where he was a prominent grant-maker whose giving fueled the creation of “Sesame Street” in both the United States and Israel. He wrote several memoirs about Southern Jews and also included the South in his philanthropy, which he pursued at multiple foundations according to an activist philosophy that helped launch the Children’s Defense Fund, seeded the South with Black lawyers who became local civil rights leaders and built ties between Israeli and Egyptian scientists after their countries made peace in 1979. “Eli was a Southern gentleman who interacted with the Jewish establishment and strengthened American Jewish life, without losing his Southern Jewish soul,” said Brandeis University professor of American Jewish history Jonathan Sarna. “It was a privilege to have known him.” Evans died July 26 in Manhattan of complications of COVID-19, after a period of declining health.
Sheryl Grossman
A lifelong advocate for people with disabilities
Sheryl Grossman was a Jewish disability activist. (Screenshot from 2021 JDAIM Interview Series at Towson University)
Sheryl Grossman stood small, at just 4’3″ and 48 pounds, but in the world of Jewish disability advocacy she loomed large, as both the founder of a Facebook group for people living with Bloom’s Syndrome and as a board member of Yad Hachazakah, the Jewish Disability Empowerment Center. She died March 28 at age 46, the result of a Bloom’s Syndrome-linked cancer. “I don’t think anyone will ever know just how much work Sheryl did during the pandemic to help Jewish communities support their most vulnerable neighbors who were in the hospital or isolated at home with COVID,” said Shoshana Finkel, a law student who met Grossman when she was an intern at the American Association of People with Disabilities. “She didn’t feel the need to share her accomplishments; that was never what the work was about for her.”
Dara Goldman
A professor of Spanish and Jewish studies in her prime
Dara Goldman was a professor of Spanish and Jewish studies at the University of Illinois. (Courtesy U of I)
Dara Goldman was preparing for graduation at the University of Illinois, where she was a professor of Spanish and chair of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, and for the American Jewish Historical Society conference, when she died May 13 of a heart attack. She was 51. A graduate of Columbia and Emory universities, Goldman produced scholarship so diverse that she was affiliated with eight units within the University of Illinois; most recently, she was researching Jewish cultural production in Cuba, where she brought resources for the Jewish community during her research trips, and co-edited a volume on 21st-century Jewish writing. “With her characteristic wit, she would often joke that she was a Jewish woman who took a wrong turn at diaspora,” said a remembrance published by the university. “But jokes aside, she could be at the same time a Jewish woman from New Jersey and an adopted daughter of Puerto Rico and Cuba, two cultures that she knew intimately and loved very deeply. … The echoes of her inimitable, hearty laughter will resonate within our halls for a long time.”
Yaakov Shalev
A beloved family man whose story was Israel’s
Yaakov Shalev, seated third from right, helped organize Iraqi Jews’ exodus to Israel. (Courtesy Asaf Shalev)
“When I arrived for a visit with family in Israel in my early twenties, my septum piercing outraged nearly everyone at our Shabbat morning gathering. Even my younger cousins badgered me to remove it. It took my elderly grandfather, Yaakov Shalev, to quiet everyone down and declare that I am his same beloved grandson, with or without the piercing.
“Calm, open-minded, steadfast, Saba Yaakov, as we called him, passed away peacefully in February at age 92 in Holon, with his five children at his side. He spent his last few hours listening to the melodies of his youth in Baghdad, the music of giants such as Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, and Fairuz.
“Saba Yaakov helped organize the exodus of Iraqi Jewry to Israel in 1950 and then enlisted in the Israeli military as an airplane mechanic. He taught himself how to build houses and became a successful contractor in the 1960s. But he soon decided the stress was too much and opened a shop in south Tel Aviv where he fabricated canvases for Israeli artists and framed their paintings. He kept the shop running for more than 40 years, going to work every day until he was in his eighties.” — Asaf Elia-Shalev, JTA reporter
Trude Feldman
A journalist who specialized in Yom Kippur interviews
Trude Feldman interviews Jimmy Carter in the White House in 1978. (Jimmy Carter Presidential Library)
The daughter of a rabbinical family, Trude Feldman launched her career covering the 1961 trial of Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she put her training as a Hebrew teacher to use by teaching the language to the Nazi’s lawyer. (She also taught Hebrew to famed converts Sammy Davis Jr. and Elizabeth Taylor, and to Paul Newman on the set of “Exodus.”) But it was in her coverage of American presidents that Feldman truly made her mark, becoming famous for scoring presidential exit interviews and Yom Kippur interviews, which she would pitch as an opportunity for redemption. That’s what got her the first interview with Bill Clinton after he copped in 1998 to yes, having sex with that woman. The mainstream media mocked her for her softballs — “Saturday Night Live” once did so in a sketch — but those close to her understood their value. “The joke, however, was on everyone else,” her nephew, Rabbi Daniel Feldman, wrote in a remembrance. “Paired with her signature persistence, her style more often elicited not puff but profundity, more sincerity than sugar. The unique access she earned — baffling to some, understood to the astute, acknowledged by all — yielded memorable results.”
Harlene Winnick Appelman
A revolutionary leader in Jewish education
Harlene Winnick Appelman in an undated photo provided by the Covenant Foundation.
Born in upstate New York, Harlene Appelman’s career in Jewish education took off in 1982 when she became the director of family life education at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. There, she pioneered interactive Jewish learning, bringing children out of dry frontal settings into a more tactile experience of Judaism. After joining the board of the Covenant Foundation, which funds and promotes Jewish education, in 1994, she became its director in 2005 and held that role until 2021, allowing her to influence a generation of Jewish educators. Many of them mourned her death at 75 on Aug. 18; the cause was cancer. “I am one of an entire congregation of Jewish educational leaders who Harlene mentored, supported, prodded and constructively critiqued, promoted, and made feel special,” wrote Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, in an online remembrance. “I hope that in her memory, I will find ever new ways to help more Jewish rabbis and educators feel seen, heard, capable, and motivated.” This month, the Covenant Foundation initiated a new prize, in Jewish family education, in Appelman’s honor.
Tom Tugend
An indefatigable journalist
Tom Tugend in his Los Angeles home, Aug. 3, 2021. (Jacob Gurvis)
Tom Tugend was 13 when he and his family left their home in Berlin in 1939. He was 97 when he died Dec. 7 in Los Angeles, where he had lived for most of his life. In the intervening decades, he fought in the U.S. Army and the Israel Defense Forces; covered Jewish news for a wide array of publications, including JTA; and enjoyed 66 years of marriage during which he and his wife raised three daughters. “His authenticity came through to anyone who knew him,” said one of them, the journalist Alina Tugend. “He was a hero to many people.”
Judah Samet
A two-time survivor of antisemitic terror
Judah Samet stands next to his portrait, part of Luigi Toscano’s “Lest We Forget” project at the University of Pittsburgh in 2019. (Photo by Hector Corante, courtesy of Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh)
Judah Samet became a national face of Pittsburgh’s 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting because he survived: He had been running late that day, so was not inside the building when 11 of his fellow congregants were murdered. Months later, he was President Donald Trump’s guest to the State of the Union address. The experience was both very different Samet’s childhood in Hungary, where he was born in February 1938, and in some ways similar. As a young child, Samet was forced by the Nazis from his home and shipped with his family first to a labor camp in Austria and then to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After a stop in Israel, he moved to Pittsburgh in the 1950s, ultimately joining his father-in-law’s jewelry business there and remaining a committed community member until his death at 84 on Sept. 27.
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Mozambique’s only synagogue has been keeping Judaism alive in the country for a century
Inside the Honen Dalim synagogue in Maputo, Mozambique, a security team of men in suits wearing colorful kippot swept the inside of the small chapel, while members and visitors milled about on the lawn outside. Security had to be thorough; the president was coming.
For the rest of the city, it was a normal day. The sidewalks near the synagogue were crowded with vendors selling clothes, fruit and candy. Across the street, students hung out in the courtyard of the technical college the Instituto Comercial de Maputo. But for the city’s small Jewish community, it was a momentous occasion.
On June 11, Honen Dalim celebrated the centenary of the synagogue, which was officially inaugurated on Aug. 29, 1926. Congregation leaders and government officials gave speeches. Camera crews from three different TV stations — including the Mozambican state news channel — crowded in the small chapel to capture every moment.
Lay leader Marcos Vaena told me that celebrating the synagogue is not just about the building, but what it represents for Mozambique’s Jewish community, which consists of only a couple dozen families.
“It’s a sense of pride and historical heritage,” he said, adding that the synagogue has endured “profound changes in society — the liberation struggle that the country went through, the independence movement — and it still remains.”
It hasn’t been easy to keep the synagogue alive for a century, but Honen Dalim’s small congregation has persisted without a permanent rabbi or any local Jewish institutions to rely on.
Maputo is a multicultural city with a history of religious partnership, and the celebration’s 100 attendees were a diverse mix of government officials and community members. Among them were the country’s Christian president, Daniel Chapo, whose election in 2024 was marred by accusations of corruption and fatal clashes between security forces and protesters. Across the aisle, sat the German ambassador to Mozambique Ronald Münch and Sheik Aminudin, the President of the Islamic Council of Mozambique. Manuela Soeiro, Honen Dalim’s longest member and “the mother of Mozambican theater,” spoke about being involved with the synagogue since in the 1940s.
Longtime lay leader Samuel Levy gave an opening speech in Portuguese on the spirit of religious tolerance in Mozambique. Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, chief rabbi of the African Jewish Congress, which supports Jewish communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and AJC president Nahum Gorelick recited from Psalm 92 — which describes the fruitful life granted to those who are devoted to God — in Hebrew and English. The crowd sang “Hosi Katekisa Afrika,” a Tsonga version of a hymn meaning “God Bless Africa.” Around 50 more people watched on Zoom.
“This date is much more than a chronological milestone,” Chapo said in his speech. “We recognize, with appreciation and admiration, the enduring presence of the Jewish community in the religious, historical, and cultural fabric of our country, Mozambique.”
A long Jewish history
Although the synagogue is 100 years old, the presence of Jews in Mozambique dates back even further. Levy, a New York-born lawyer who has been part of the congregation since the ‘90s, told me the oldest grave in Maputo’s Jewish cemetery, located a few blocks from the synagogue, dates back to 1899.
Global events have always shaped Honen Dalim’s story. Levy said some of the earliest Jews migrated to Maputo due to the Witwatersrand Gold Rush that began in 1886 and helped develop Johannesburg, South Africa. Maputo — known then as Lourenço Marques, after the Portuguese explorer — was critical in the export process due to its coastal location, making it an ideal location for Jewish merchants.
Early Jewish arrivals came from around the world — including Morocco, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and Portugal, which ruled Mozambique from 1505 to 1975 — often by way of South Africa. In 1906, they established themselves as a community under the name Honen Dalim — meaning “He who is charitable to the poor” — and prayed in each other’s homes.
During the Second Boer War in South Africa, which lasted from 1899 to 1902, the chief rabbi of Johannesburg, Joseph Herman Hertz, was expelled for his pro-British leanings and opposition to the government’s restrictions on Jews and Roman Catholics. During his years-long expulsion — the next time he came to South Africa, it was as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom in 1920 — he spent a few days in Lourenço Marques and encouraged the Jews there to finally build a synagogue.
Levy said the “community waxes and wanes” but that many hundreds were there during the Second World War. Because Portugal was a neutral country, Mozambique was a place where European Jews could find refuge, although they didn’t have full economic freedom and suffered from religious segregation.
Manuela Soeiro, who founded the first Mozambican theater troupe Mutumbela Gogo in 1986, told me at the centenary celebration about her experiences being a Jew at a Salesian Catholic boarding school in the ‘40s and ‘50s. When the nuns saw her hug her Jewish grandfather, they made her and her two sisters sleep in a cold bathtub as punishment for engaging with “the devil.”
After World War II, many Jews immigrated from Mozambique to South Africa, which was experiencing an economic boom.
The Jewish community took another hit when, in 1975, Mozambique gained independence from Portugal due to the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique’s (FRELIMO) successful guerilla campaign. A communist government led by President Samora Machel took over and restricted religious practice.
“All of the religious buildings, not only the synagogue — mosques, churches, everything — was expropriated by the government,” Levy told me.
The majority of the Portuguese in Mozambique left, some by force and some by choice, and many Jews were among those who emigrated. The country was hit hard by economic destabilization. Concrete shells of building projects abandoned by Portuguese builders after independence dot the city skyline.
Only two years after independence, the country’s socialist and anti-communist factions waged a civil war that ravaged the country for 15 years. Honen Dalim’s synagogue fell into disrepair and became a warehouse for the Red Cross.
The synagogue’s address ties the building both to the country’s colonial and post-independence eras. Avenida 24 de Julho — July 24th Street — was named after the date in 1875 when Portugal took full possession of Maputo. Exactly 100 years later, on July 24, Machel nationalized almost every sector of Mozambican society.
Revitalizing the community
Nuno Soeiro remembers his mom Manula continuing to look after the synagogue, along with his uncles, even though they weren’t allowed to practice religion there in the communist era.
“Some people from the American embassy, they used to do some lessons,” Nuno Soeiro told me, saying they went to embassy officials’ houses to observe Jewish holidays.
In 1989, the synagogue had an unexpected savior: Alkis Macropolous, a Greek, and not Jewish, businessman. His Jewish colleagues in Johannesburg encouraged him to help preserve the building. He ensured that the dilapidated structure was not torn down and arranged for an ad to be placed in the paper asking for any remaining Jews to claim the synagogue — and they did. The defeat of the communist government in 1990 — which was replaced by a presidential republic — allowed religious communities to be active again.
When Samuel Levy arrived in 1993, the synagogue didn’t have enough people for a minyan and wasn’t having official services, but on Saturday afternoons, Jewish and non-Jewish members gathered together to sing folk songs. Although it wasn’t a traditional service, Levy found it spiritually fulfilling.
“Those songs were maybe the most simplest prayers I’ve ever heard,” Levy told me. “But also the deepest.”
For Larry and Diane Herman, Conservative Jews from Detroit who arrived in Maputo in 1999, practicing Judaism without a large community was nothing new. Larry’s work as an economist took them around the globe, including to Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and Uganda.
“We were the center of the Jewish community in Ouagadougou from 1975 to 1977, which simply means the three or four or five other Jewish Peace Corps volunteers,” Larry told me.
The Hermans took on leadership roles and Diane put together a spiral-bound siddur for services that includes prayers in Hebrew, English and Portuguese. They wrote a prayer for Mozambique based on the prayer for the country found in many U.S. prayer books. Levy also led services, even while away.
Natalie Tenzer-Silva, who moved from South Africa to Mozambique with her family in 1993, told me Levy would send cassette recordings of Kol Nidre when he couldn’t be there to lead High Holiday services himself.
“He would blow the shofar over a cell phone or send a recording of it,” Tenzer-Silva said. “He really is the pillar, making sure that we have all the writings and the readings and all of that ready for the holidays and for the Friday nights.”
The Hermans were the only Shabbat-observant and kosher members of the synagogue at the time. To buy kosher food, they went to Johannesburg, often bringing things back for the congregation. These imports were critical around Passover, when the Hermans hosted seders at their home, sometimes for as many as 50 people.
Not big enough to have a full executive board or leadership team, the synagogue members had to set their own guidelines.
“We sat for like four hours trying to hash out the rules,” Diane Herman said.
“When you already don’t have a minyan of Jews, let alone males, and you’ve got all these intermarried couples, what do you do about the spouse? And what do you do about these people who aren’t Jewish at all, but want to participate?” said Diane. “We hashed out how to create a community there. It was fascinating.”
“When Jews come there from other places, they realize if they’re going to give any expression to their Jewish identity, they need to work on it,” Levy said. “If you want your kids to know something, well, you’re going to have to start a Sunday school or really participate in it. If you want the holidays to happen, you’re going to have to organize to import matzo and kosher wine for Passover because we can’t make it.”
Rebuilding the synagogue
Considered one of the poorest countries in the world, Mozambique attracts many people from abroad who work in diplomacy, aid, or international development. As more Jews arrived to work in these sectors, it became clear the synagogue needed physical improvements.
“When I arrived, there were poles supporting the roof,” Tenzer-Silva told me. “And every time we would go to services, if the wind blew, my children would think the roof was going to fall in.”
Larry Herman remembered one Shabbat where a corner did fall in — and another where a rat fell from the rafters.
In 2009, congregant Juliana Becker decided she wanted a bat mitzvah — the first to happen in the country — and turned to Larry for tutoring. A Torah was brought in from South Africa, since the synagogue lacked its own, and 125 people attended from Maputo and from abroad. The event prompted Honen Dalim’s leaders to successfully file for official recognition from the government in 2010, making them the legal owners of the synagogue.
Five years later, in preparation for the bar mitzvah of Tenzer-Silva’s older son, Jordan, the congregation decided to replace the roof. But this could not be done safely without updating the walls and flooring. Tenzer-Silve said what was originally supposed to be a $25,000 bill became more than $120,000.
With help from the local community, and friends and family abroad, Honen Dalim managed to raise the money — just in the nick of time for Jordan.
“The Friday of his bar mitzvah, they had finished painting the walls,” Tenzer-Silva said.
In 2013, Honen Dalim held a rededication ceremony celebrating the rebuild. Ann Harris, then-President of the African Jewish Congress, and Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft gave the congregation a kosher Sefer Torah — something they had lacked before. Other faith leaders and government representatives attended, including then-Minister of Justice Maria Benvinda Levi, who now serves as the country’s Prime Minister and has Jewish ancestry.
Multiple members of Honen Dalim described the environment of Maputo as extremely tolerant and supportive of the Jewish community.
“The entire time I lived in Mozambique, I wore a kippah on the streets and never had any problems,” Larry Herman told me.
Many attribute this respect for religion to the role faith leaders played in dissuading violence during the civil war. A wing of the city’s central church is dedicated to Pope John Paull II, who made a famed visit in 1988 advocating for peace. Ultimately, the Catholic lay movement, the Community of Sant’Egisio, brokered peace. Tenzer-Silva and others remarked that the civil war made people tired of conflict.
Honen Dalim is part of the COREM — the Council of Religions in Mozambique. Its President, Moisés Chiziane, spoke at the centenary event, urging continued coexistence.
“Peace is not built only by the absence of conflicts,” he said. “Peace is built by respect, listening, acceptance of diversity and recognition of the dignity of every human being.”
Levy told me Honen Dalim has hosted a Muslim adult study group at the synagogue to learn about Jewish practices, such as putting on tefillin.
“The people who run the different faith organizations,” Levy said, “they make it an article of faith that they need to actively get along — not tolerate, but learn about the faith of other people.”
In recent years, a branch of ISIS has established itself in the northern part of Mozambique, displacing local residents and leaving other religious groups — and non-affiliated Muslims — fearful of being attacked. But Natalie Tenzer-Silva said that type of extremism has not been seen in Maputo.
“It won’t come down south,” she told me confidently. “People wouldn’t tolerate it.”
A tenuous position
Although the community is still active, members described Honen Dalim as “fragile.” Tenzer-Silva said there could be anywhere “between three and 12 people” at a Friday service — the turnout isn’t big or consistent. They also lack the type of programming that bigger synagogues offer.
“I would like to take my kids to synagogue to learn Hebrew,” Nuno Soeiro said. “We don’t have that.”
Individuals like Levy can help organize lessons for kids like Soeiro’s daughter to be on track to become bar or bat mitzvahs. But the number of people with that type of knowledge is limited.
According to Levy, COVID was “a big blow to the Jewish community.”
“At that point we had Sunday school with eight kids,” he said. “After that, things kind of became a little more tenuous and they’re a little more tenuous today, but we try to keep going.”
The congregation’s reliance on expats also puts it in a delicate position. Synagogue leaders say only around a third of congregants are permanent residents. While some expats find a permanent home in Maputo, others leave due to work or family. After 16 years in Maputo, the Hermans left and now live in Los Angeles. Levy divides his time between Maputo and Dubai, although all three help manage things from a distance.
The recent cuts to USAID programs to Mozambique will likely diminish the number of American Jews who have jobs that require them to move there. And a hidden debt scandal in the mid-2010s that cost the country nearly $2.2 billion broke the trust of investors from around the world who may have sent Jewish employees to Mozambique.
“A lot of the international community withdrew support for many years,” Marcos Vaena said. “It was 10 years of economic crisis.”
Vaena, who grew up in Brazil in a Sephardic family with Turkish roots, first moved to Maputo in 2006 as a UN volunteer for a development program. He left in 2010 to work in other developing countries, but returned in 2024. He told me he saw “a diminished community” compared to the Honen Dalim he’d left behind. He decided to start leading Shabbat services a couple times a month.
“I wanted to make sure that my kids have continued exposure to a Jewish tradition and education,” he said.
It’s not just expats, however, who want a more formal way to be involved in Judaism.
“There’s a regular interest from Mozambicans that are seeking spiritual connection through Judaism,” Vaena said. “But then you need, I think, a more structured process and support for those who are there.”
“There were a lot of people who had been happy to convert, and that just wasn’t possible,” Diane Herman added. “There was no rabbi around.”
“We have a lot of people who were, I call, ‘lovers of Zion’ as opposed to Jews,” Larry Herman told me. “They were some of the biggest supporters.” He recounted what happened when he and Diane lost their fathers. ”Both of us went to the funerals in the United States and came back, and we were in our period of mourning — it was the non-Jews who supported us by coming to every service.”
There is also no mikveh, the ritual bath needed for conversions. Diane said some people go to South Africa for the rite, but they tend to be those with money. In a country where half of all workers earn less than 60,000 Metical a year — less than $1,000 — it’s not a viable option for the vast majority of Mozambicans.
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, chief rabbi for the AJC, occasionally helps the congregation with critical events, but Silberhaft serves nine different countries and cannot be everywhere at once. Tenzer-Silva told me that bringing in a permanent rabbi for such a small congregation would be difficult, especially with the lack of kosher food options. Vaena said he himself has considered seminary training.
“That experience leading the services and being more engaged on a daily basis has really brought me a lot of joy,” he said.
Perseverance
Despite the struggles the community faces, the 100th anniversary ceremony did not feel like a pity party for a dying congregation. Kids ran around the lawn during the reception, which was stocked with bagels and cakes from a kosher caterer in South Africa. Tenzer-Silva’s son Jordan, who’s in his late twenties now, helped usher people at the event and recited “Tzadik Katamar” alongside other synagogue leaders. The younger generation of the synagogue is small, but present.
And those who have moved away don’t really leave Honen Dalim behind. From Los Angeles, Larry Herman serves as the president of the Friends of the Jewish Community of Mozambique, helping garner international support for Honen Dalim. Although he and his wife haven’t lived in Maputo in 10 years, they spoke of it with great reverence.
“It’s a wonderful community,” Larry said. “I’m very proud of it.”
Honen Dalim continues to welcome new members and serve as a place where Jewish visitors can have a home. Members told me that travelers have come from America, Paris, Israel and other parts of the world. For Jews who end up in Maputo — whether for a few days, a few years, or the rest of their lives — Honen Dalim serves as a vital source of community. Several people said they had never been more Jewish than they had been in Mozambique.
“May the next hundred years be of peace, prosperity, and abundant blessings for all,” Chapo said toward the end of his speech. Although his words were practically all in Portuguese, he closed with a message Jews around the world could understand: “Shalom. Shalom. Shalom.”
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More US Jews feel ‘politically homeless’ than ever. What are we to do?
The news that most Jewish adults don’t feel comfortable in either major political party is not a death knell for American Jewish political participation. It’s a rallying cry.
Most American Jews feel politically unrepresented by both parties, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research poll released this week found. That survey only confirms what every conversation I’ve had with Jewish friends lately gets around to: a new sense of political homelessness, combined with fears of increasing antisemitism.
Only 15% of respondents say the Democratic Party supports Jewish people in the United States “extremely” or “very” well, and 41% say it supports them “not very well” or “not at all.” Views of the Republicans are slightly worse — about half say the party doesn’t really support Jews.
What the poll shows is an undeniable slide in both parties on an issue many Jews still care deeply about, Israel, as well as the feeling that too much anti-Israel sentiment bleeds into antisemitism.
The poll found 63% of Jewish adults consider antisemitism an extremely or very serious problem, and 77% say prejudice has increased since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. Only 38% of Americans overall share that level of concern. The gap between how seriously Jews perceive the threat and how seriously the broader public does only compounds our sense that we’ve been abandoned by civic institutions, and no longer fit neatly within the party system.
At first glance, the fact that American Jews feel less attached to either political party isn’t unusual. A growing number of all Americans are turned off by the two major parties, according to a May New York Times poll, which found that 43% of voters were dissatisfied with both parties.
But a major source of party dissatisfaction, the Times poll found, was, yep, America’s relationship with Israel. Among dissatisfied voters, 80% opposed economic and military aid to Israel. That includes 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who said they wanted the party to distance itself from Israel. That’s what Vice President JD Vance meant when he recently said — warned? — that, “Israel’s opinions matter, but fundamentally they are separate.”
So a shrinking share of Americans in both parties supports Israel — while roughly six in 10 American Jews say Israel is central to who they are. That’s the squeeze. No wonder we feel unsupported.
It’s tempting to litigate why this gap exists. You could argue that it’s not fair. You could argue a dozen other countries behave worse than Israel, or that Qatari and Chinese money have poisoned American minds and infected the algorithms, or that the antipathy toward Israel and Zionism has always been and will always be about Jew-hatred.
Still: this is where we are in 2026, and we can’t will the facts away. So where, politically, do Jews turn? How do we pick a lane when they all seem to lead to dead ends?
One option is to leave. In the past, the somewhat glib answer to “where should we go?” if Jews wanted to run away — or were kicked out — was, of course, Israel. American Jews who kept one bag packed by the door — even if figuratively — saw the Jewish state as a refuge.
But our relationship with Israel as it is now is complicated. Putting aside the fact that a country that has weathered years of war and terror is hardly a refuge, American Jews are deeply unhappy with the current Israeli government. The AP poll found that 4 in 10 Jewish adults think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, and that among American Jews, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is more popular than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If there is no flight, there is only fight.
That’s what former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was doing in Tel Aviv this week with a speech in which he called for a “fundamentally new and different approach” to U.S.-Israel relations. He was not fighting against Israel, but fighting for his party — the Democrats — to demand more of it. He talked about his emotional ties to Israel — something the majority of American Jews share — as well as his critiques.
And it’s why sharp criticism of his speech came from both sides of the aisle. On the right, Jonathan Tobin at JNS called the speech a recycling of “the persistent delusion of failed policies,” and Peter Savodnik at The Free Press wrote that Emanuel “bows to the left.” Meanwhile, the left accused Emanuel of placing too much blame on the Palestinians for corruption and intransigence, and for trying to stake out a pro-Israel position within the Democratic Party.
Emanuel didn’t pick a lane, which is why people who hold such disparate ideologies are all upset with him. Instead, he carved a new one. He embraced a politics so critical of Israel that it would have been anathema in mainstream Democratic circles until very recently. That’s not a bad thing. His idea — which is really an idea promoted by the progressive pro-Israel lobbying group J Street — is that the U.S. should push Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab nations toward a “23 state solution” that recognizes Palestinian rights and integrates Israel fully into the Middle East. As far-fetched as it seems now, it is also more pragmatic and optimistic than anything the far left or right have to offer.
Emanuel showed one option for how to decouple support for a strong, secure Israel from support for the disastrous direction in which the country’s leaders are taking it. He showed how to love Israel as an American Jew, warts and all. His position is highly critical of the country’s current leadership and direction — as are the majority of Israelis, by the way — but out of concern for its security and democracy, not out of objection to its existence. It’s a position that recognizes the rights of all peoples between the river and the sea to security and self-determination. It moves beyond blame to solutions.
The right response to American Jews’ sense of political abandonment is for candidates who care about our community — and despite our dismay, there are many — to pivot, like Emanuel, to making creative cases for the future. Come with a vision, come with a plan, come with a path that offers the chance of a better life for the millions of Jews and Arabs who live there and aren’t going anywhere. Come with a pitch that shows American Jews that the full complexity of our concerns matters, and that your parties are capable of adapting to meet this moment.
That’s the fight that has to happen. Don’t wait for a lane to open. Pick a party, and start opening one.
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UK Jewish groups express concern as the likely next PM criticizes Israel over Gaza
(JTA) — Andy Burnham, who is on track to become Britain’s next prime minister following Keir Starmer’s resignation last month, apologized for his party’s handling of the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas mass killings in Israel, saying that it should have done more to push for a ceasefire and called for exerting greater pressure on the Jewish state today.
His comments prompted a joint response from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, which said they had contacted his team to express “significant concerns” about his remarks.
Burnham made his comments in a video statement on Thursday in response to questions from the public. Burnham is likely to become the next prime minister after gaining the overwhelming support of sitting Labour members of Parliament. To date no one has challenged him for the party’s leadership ahead of a July 17 deadline.
“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that,” he said. He added that he supported further sanctions on Israelis involved in the violence in Gaza, measures to ban trade with Israeli settlements and restrictions on arms licenses to Israel, saying there was “increasing evidence that war crimes appear to have been committed.”
He also condemned increased antisemitism in Britain, and said that tackling antisemitism did not contradict holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to account.
His comments came as lawmakers across the political spectrum have pushed for increased condemnation of Israel and sanctions on the country.
“The unbearable suffering in Gaza is a scar on our collective conscience,” Burnham said. “The killing of innocent Palestinians, including children,” was “completely unacceptable,” he added, declaring that Britain had to do more to “put pressure on the Israeli government.”
He described the country as “too slow to call for a ceasefire” and that “we must now do more to strengthen our approach” as “Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement killing innocent Palestinians.”
In their response, the Board and JLC said they shared “concern for the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” but stated that the conflict “cannot be understood without reference to the role of Hamas not only in launching the conflict but in perpetuating the war through the holding of hostages, war-fighting entirely from within the civilian population, and [their] ongoing refusal to cede power and disarm, in line with the 20 point peace plan.”
They added that the conflict also could not be understood without reference to Hamas’ regional backers and allies, including Iran and Hezbollah. Burnham addressed none of this in his comments.
Burnham did, however, reiterate his condemnation of Hamas, describing the Oct. 7 attacks as “monstrous,” stressing that he denounced them “as strongly today as I did in the immediate aftermath.”
He said that he also condemned “the increase in appalling antisemitic attacks here in the U.K. and those who seek to divide our communities by targeting Jewish people.”
“I felt first-hand the anxiety in our Jewish community and the very real threat they face,” the former mayor of Greater Manchester said, referring to the Yom Kippur 2025 attack on the city’s Heaton Park synagogue in which two people were killed.
The Board and JLC welcomed Burnham’s “zero tolerance approach to antisemitism” and affirmed his assertion that “there is no contradiction between fighting antisemitism and disagreeing with actions of the Israeli government.”
However, they said, “Antisemitism cannot be confronted without addressing all its drivers,” arguing that in Britain that includes “Islamist, far left and far right extremists who go beyond criticism of the Israeli government to a place of hatred directed at Jews and Israelis.”
Their joint statement pointed out that Burnham knew “first hand the links between hatred of Israel, antisemitic extremism and deadly violence against British Jews,” adding that, “in a country in which antisemitism has become more normalized, more extreme and more violent, we call on our leaders to show the utmost care in their rhetoric in relation to the conflict.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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