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20 Jewish celebrities who died in 2023
(JTA) — Jewish communal mourning was defined in large part this year by Oct. 7. But other notable losses occurred throughout the year, of people who have left outsized legacies on politics, the arts, sports and everything in between.
In chronological order, here is a selection of obituaries of 20 of the most famous Jews who died in 2023.
Dick Savitt
Dick Savitt at the Wimbledon Championship, July 6, 1951, in London. (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Savitt became the first Jewish tennis player to win both the Australian Open and Wimbledon, in 1951. He also became the first Jewish athlete to appear on the cover of Time magazine, at a time when his Jewishness was looked down on by many in the blue blood sport. He died on Jan. 6 at 95.
Burt Bacharach
Composer Burt Bacharach (left) and lyricist Hal David hold Oscars they won for “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” at the Academy Awards, April 7, 1970. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
The legendary singer and songwriter — behind hits as big as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” — came from a secular New York family and didn’t talk much about his Jewish identity. But Bacharach was seen as a Jewish icon by many in the industry. In the words of avant-garde pioneer John Zorn, he was “one of the great geniuses of American popular music — and he’s a Jew.” He died on Feb. 9 at 94.
Richard Belzer
Richard Belzer attends the 90th birthday of Jerry Lewis, April 8, 2016. (John Lamparski/WireImage vis Getty)
The comic actor’s career didn’t hit its stride until he was about 50, when he started his long-running role as detective John Munch — a character thought to be Jewish who became one of the most well-known on TV, in both “Homicide: Life on the Street” (1993–1999) and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (1999-2013). Obituaries largely omitted the fact that he was Jewish — and Jewish fans took notice. He died on Feb. 20 at 78.
Judy Heumann
Disability rights advocate Judith Heumann sits for a portrait in Washington, D.C., May 11, 2021. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The “mother of the disability rights movement” spent decades fighting discrimination and bias from the local to the federal level, eventually advising the State Department. Much of her activism, Heumann said, was inspired by her parents’ experiences fleeing Nazi Germany and her drive to pursue tikkun olam. She died on March 4 at age 75.
Chaim Topol
Israeli actor Chaim Topol as Tevye in the movie “Fiddler on the Roof,” directed by Norman Jewison, 1971. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
What are the most iconic Jewish film performances of the 20th century? Topol’s star turn as Tevye in the film adaptation of “Fiddler on the Roof” ranks among the top of that list. The Israeli first played the role on stage in London after fighting for his country in the 1967 Six-Day War, giving the character a Zionist-tinged masculinity that remains the story’s best-known performance. He died on March 9 at age 87.
Margot Strom Stern
Margot Stern Strom, the founder of Facing History & Ourselves, speaks to educators in 1990. (Courtesy Facing History & Ourselves)
While growing up in 1950s Tennessee, Margot Strom Stern recalled that “bad history” — including racism, antisemitism, parts of the Civil War and the Holocaust — was left out of schools. Her pioneering Facing History & Ourselves curriculum helped bring Holocaust history into classrooms for the first time in a structured, comprehensive way, in all 50 states and 100 countries around the world. She died on March 28 at 81.
Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter
Pictured left to right: Nancy Aucone, Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, and granddaughter Chloe Schachter at the Wedding Salon of Manhasset. (Courtesy Ilana Schachter)
Before the popular TLC series “Say Yes to the Dress” brought the Kleinfeld Bridal brand to the attention of more than 1.5 million households across the United States every week, a Holocaust survivor named Hedda Kleinfeld revolutionized the bridal industry, bringing it to life with European designer gowns. She died on March 29 at 99.
Seymour Stein
Seymour Stein with David Byrne and Madonna in 1996. (KMazur/WireImage/Getty Images)
The Talking Heads, Madonna, The Cure, Aphex Twin, Ice-T — those are just a few of the pioneering acts that the record executive Seymour Stein helped propel to fame. The Sire Records founder frequently mentioned his Jewish Brooklyn roots, writing in his memoir that he found camaraderie with fellow Jews in the industry, like Lou Reed. He died on April 2 at 80.
Mimi Sheraton
Mimi Sheraton’s books include “1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die.” (Eric Etheridge/Workman Publishing)
The first woman to serve as The New York Times’ chief food critic wrote over a dozen books, including a classic history of an iconic Jewish food: “The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World.” She also wrote about her own Jewish upbringing and her observations on the evolution of Jewish cuisines over the second half of the 20th century. She died on April 6 at 97.
Jerry Springer
Jerry Springer appears on his eponymous syndicated talk show, Dec. 17, 1998. (Getty Images)
Before hosting the most popular tabloid-inspired talk show in the country, Jerry Springer had a promising political career, serving as mayor of Cincinnati in 1977. Much of his family did not survive the Holocaust, but his German parents escaped to London, where he was born in a tube station in 1944. He died on April 27 at 79.
Sheldon Harnick
Lyricist Sheldon Harnick poses for the animation movie “Aaron’s Magic Village,” circa 1995. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
While Topol was the public face of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Sheldon Harnick was the lyricist behind the scenes of the show’s legendary songs. “We hoped with any luck that it might run a year,” Harnick said in 1981. “We were totally unprepared for the impact the show would have literally around the world.” He died on June 23 at 99.
Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin seen in 2007. (Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
The son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn knew he would be a movie star at age 5. Over a nearly seven-decade career, Alan Arkin imbued comic roles with pathos and serious roles with a touch of sardonic humor. He died on June 29 at 89.
Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens performs as Pee-wee Herman in Chicago in 1983. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
The man behind Pee-wee Herman, one of the most bizarre and iconic on-screen characters of the 20th century, had a father who flew key missions as a pilot in Israel’s war of independence. At the height of his fame in 1987, Paul Reubens acknowledged that his act built on the Jewish comedians who came before him, including vaudevillian Eddie Cantor. He died on July 31 at 70.
Nechama Tec
University of Connecticut sociologist and historian Nechama Tec’s 1993 book “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” was adapted for a 2008 film directed by Edward Zwick. (Jewish Women’s Archive)
As a member of one of only three Jewish families from Lublin, Poland, to survive the Holocaust intact from a prewar population of some 40,000, Nehama Tec became a historian whose book about a group of partisan Jews in Belarus who successfully defied the Nazis was made into the 2008 blockbuster film “Defiance.” She died on Aug. 3 at 92.
Phil Sherman
Cantor Philip Sherman (Courtesy of Sherman)
Cantor Philip Sherman’s biggest audience might have been for his part as a judge on the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.” But his most prominent role was as one of New York’s most in-demand mohels, performing, by his own estimate, more than 26,000 circumcisions during his 45-year career. He died on Aug. 9 at 67.
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein at a Senate Select Committee hearing at the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, July 12, 2023. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
For decades before she was scrutinized for remaining in the Senate despite clearly diminished health, Dianne Feinstein was a Jewish trailblazer. She championed gun control as mayor of San Francisco in the wake of Harvey Milk’s murder and later became a women’s rights leader as the longest-serving Jewish senator from California. She died on Sept. 23 at 90.
Louise Glück
Louise Glück speaks at the 2014 National Book Awards in New York City, Nov. 19, 2014. (Robin Marchant/Getty Images)
The acclaimed poet won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020 for “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Louise Glück didn’t talk much about her Jewish roots, but she turned to the Bible for occasional inspiration; one critic wrote that her Jewishness was “bound up with how she interprets canons both secular and sacred.” She died on Oct. 13 at 80.
Ady Barkan
Ady Barkan attends the Los Angeles Supports a Dream Act Now! protest at the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein in Los Angeles, Jan. 3, 2018. (Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images)
Ady Barkan, an Israeli-American lawyer and child of two Jewish academics in Boston, became one of the country’s most visible progressive activists for single-payer health care shortly after being diagnosed with ALS in 2016. His name was invoked in a Democratic presidential debate in 2019, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren cited his personal story as an example of the shortfalls of private insurance. He died on Nov. 1 at 39.
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger and Golda Meir in Israel, Feb. 27, 1974. (AFP via Getty Images)
One of the most prominent secretaries of state of all time was reviled by just as many who worshiped his influential policy legacy. Henry Kissinger once said his Jewishness had “no significance” for him, but that part of his identity would play a part in his relationships with leaders ranging from Richard Nixon to Golda Meir. He died on Nov. 29 at age 100.
Norman Lear
Norman Lear attends the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Ceremony honoring Marla Gibbs on July 20, 2021 in Hollywood, California. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
The sitcom king — whose shows included “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Sons” and “The Jeffersons” — had as decorated a resume as any TV producer. But Norman Lear’s work is now also remembered as pioneering social commentary, inspired in part by the antisemitism he experienced as a child. He died on Dec. 5 at 101.
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The post 20 Jewish celebrities who died in 2023 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Antisemitism Is Alive and Well’: Swastika Graffiti at Dartmouth College Shakes Jewish Community
Swastika graffitied outside of Jewish student’s dormitory at Dartmouth College. Photo: Screenshot/X.
An unknown person or group graffitied a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party, outside the dormitory of a Jewish student at Dartmouth College — at least the second such incident at an elite US college during the early weeks of fall semester.
“This act of bigotry and targeted harassment at a person’s home will not be tolerated on our campus,” Dartmouth president Sian Beilock said in a statement on Wednesday, noting that both the local police force and the college’s own security department are investigating the incident. “Antisemitism has no place at Dartmouth. Acts of bigotry — and all forms of hate — are deeply hurtful and stand in direct opposition to what each of us is working so hard to create at Dartmouth. This is not who we are.”
The graffitiing of a swastika as a method of intimidation and expression of hate on the campus came as a shock to Dartmouth’s Jewish community and stands out for being perpetrated only days before Jews across the US and the world observe Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
“With Jewish high holidays around the corner, our community feels the impact of this crime even more profoundly,” Ruby Benjamin, a Jewish Dartmouth student and president of the campus Chabad, told The Dartmouth, the college’s official student newspaper. “In a time that should be marked with joy, we are forced to look hatred in the eye. While we are disgusted by yesterday’s events, we are not afraid. Today, as always, we stand together as a strong community.”
Another Jewish student and Hillel International affiliate, Jacob Markman told the paper, “This just shows that antisemitism is alive and well, and that it is something we need to take seriously and address.”
The incident came about a week after an unknown person graffitied antisemitic messages inside the Weinstein residence hall at New York University.
Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire, has seen this kind of incident before.
In April 2023, someone carved a swastika into dirt on The Green of Dartmouth College, a a five- acre, grassy common space at the center of the school’s campus. Three years earlier, in 2020, a former student, Carlos Wilcox, vandalized a public menorah on campus by shooting it with a pellet gun during the 2020 Hanukkah holiday. The 20-year-old Bronx, New York native also shot the windows of several college buildings, causing $1,500 in damage in total. Wilcox, who managed to dodge a hate crime charge and was charged with felony criminal mischief, was expelled from the college and banned from campus.
In April 2022, according to The Dartmouth, he reached an agreement with the prosecutors of Grafton County, where Dartmouth is located, under which the charges against him were dropped in exchange for his paying the college $2,ooo in damages, completing 100 hours of community service, and attending substance abuse counseling. Wilcox was also ordered to meet with Dartmouth Chabad Rabbi Moshe Leib Gray and other members of the campus community.
Throughout the process, he maintained his innocence, claiming that another student, Zachary Wang, shot the menorah and that he only purchased the pellet gun and witnessed the incident.
Dartmouth has also been the site of extreme anti-Zionist activity.
In May, a pro-Hamas group which calls itself the “New Deal Coalition” (NDC) commandeered the anteroom of the Parkhurst Hall administrative building but limited the demonstration to business hours, as its members went home when it was shuttered at 6 pm. Before leaving the building, however, the group contributed to injuries sustained by a member of Beilock’s staff and an officer of the school’s Department of Safety and Security officer, according to The Dartmouth.
During the unauthorized demonstration, the agitators shouted “free, free Palestine,” words shouted only recently by another anti-Israel activist who allegedly murdered two Israeli diplomats outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC.
The following day, the group at Dartmouth defended the behavior, arguing that it is a legitimate response to the college’s rejection of a proposal — inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — to divest from armaments and aerospace manufacturers which sell to Israel and its recent announcement of a new think tank, the Davidson Institute for Global Security, which it claims is linked to the Jewish state.
“We took this escalated action — one deployed several times in Dartmouth’s history to protest against apartheid — because Dartmouth funded, US-backed Israel has been escalating its genocidal assault on Palestine,” the group wrote. “In an effort to ‘dialogue,’ a group of students, staff, and faculty, and alumni spent months drafting extensively researched 55-page divestment proposal … How did the college respond? They rejected divestment on every single criteria and, the day after, announced that they are reinvesting in colonial genocide with the launch of the Davidson Institute for Global Security.”
The statement concluded with an ambiguous threat.
“So long as you fund actively imperialistic violence, we will continue to hold you accountable,” it said. “There is only one solution! Intifada! Revolution!”
Amid these disturbances, the Dartmouth administration has declined to legitimate the claims of anti-Zionists who demand a boycott of Israel.
A week before the demonstration, Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) unanimously rejected a proposal imploring the school to adopt the BDS movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
“By a vote of nine to zero, [ACIR] at Dartmouth College finds that the divestment proposal submitted by Dartmouth Divest for Palestine and dated Feb. 18, 2025, does not meet criteria, laid out in the Dartmouth Board of Trustees’ Statement on Investment and Social Responsibility and in ACIR’s charge, that must be satisfied for the proposal to undergo further review,” the committee said in a report explaining its decision. “ACIR recommends not to advance the proposal.”
A copy of the document reviewed by The Algemeiner shows that the committee evaluated the BDS proposal, submitted by the Dartmouth Divest for Palestine (DDP) group, based on five criteria regarding the college’s divestment history, capacity to address controversial issues through discourse and learning, and campus unity. It concluded that DDP “partially” met one of them by demonstrating that Dartmouth has divested from a country or industry in the past to establish its moral credibility on pressing cultural and geopolitical issues but noted that its analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lacks nuance, betraying the group’s “lack of engagement with counter arguments.”
ACIR added that DDP also does not account for the sheer divisiveness of BDS and its potential to “degrade” rather than facilitate “additional dialogue on campus.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Michigan Mayor Says Resident ‘Not Welcome’ in City After Objecting to Street Sign Named After Terrorist Supporter
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud speaks at a press conference in Dearborn, Michigan. Photo: Screenshot
A City Council meeting in Dearborn, Michigan erupted into controversy last week after Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat, told a local resident he was “not welcome” when the man objected to renaming a street sign after an Arab-American journalist who has praised internationally designated terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The honorary sign in question recognizes Osama Siblani, founder of The Arab American News, a bilingual weekly that has served Dearborn’s Arab-American community for more than four decades. Supporters praise Siblani for amplifying Arab and Muslim voices in US media. However, critics argue that his past remarks regarding terrorist groups make the recognition inappropriate.
At last week’s meeting, Edward “Ted” Barham, a Christian resident of Dearborn — a heavily Muslim city known for being a hub of anti-Israel sentiment — objected to the sign and accused Siblani of backing Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are designated as terrorist organizations by the US government.
“I feel like having that sign up there is almost like naming a street Hezbollah Street or Hamas Street,” Barham said.
“Hezbollah bombed the embassy in Beirut, including many Americans. I just feel it’s quite inappropriate,” Barham continued, likely referring to Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks at the Beirut International Airport, killing 241 American service members and dozens of French soldiers.
“He talks about how the blood of the martyrs irrigates the land of Palestine,” Barham added.
The resident explained that, as a Christian, he wanted to encourage peace and closed by quoting Jesus: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Hammoud intervened during Barham’s remarks, accusing him of spreading bigotry against Muslims in past online videos.
“Although you live here, I want you to know that as mayor, you are not welcome here,” Hammoud said. “The day you move out of this city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out.”
The mayor called Barham “a bigot, and you are racist, and you’re an Islamophobe,” before telling his constituent to figure out how to live with the sign.
“The best suggestion I have for you is to not drive on Warren Avenue or to close your eyes while you’re doing it. His name is up there, and I spoke at a ceremony celebrating it because he’s done a lot for this community,” Hammoud said.
Hammoud has established himself as an especially outspoken critic of Israel who has repeatedly condemned Israel’s military operations against Hamas, accusing the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” in Gaza and an “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, a brutal onslaught that started the current Gaza war, Hammoud condemned the Jewish state as a “racist apartheid system that criminalizes Palestinian existence.”
The mayor’s comments, captured on video, have since sparked debate. Critics say they reflect intolerance toward dissenting views, while supporters argue Hammoud was standing up against anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The street sign in question, located on Warren Avenue, was approved earlier this month by the Wayne County Commission, not the Dearborn City Council. County officials, including Council President Michael Sareini, attended an unveiling ceremony where Hammoud praised Siblani as a voice of the Arab-American community for more than 40 years.
During a 2022 “Nakba Day” rally, Silbani urged Muslim Americans to continue to “fight” for the Palestinian cause, encouraging some to even take up arms against Israel. “Nakba” is the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
“Believe me, everyone should fight within his means. They will fight with stones, others will fight with guns, others will fight with planes, drones, and rockets, others will fight with their voices, and others will fight with their hands and say, ‘Free, free Palestine!’” Siblani said in 2022.
Siblani has defended his comments, telling the Daily Mail that his words were a call for justice, not violence. “‘People have the right to fight occupation and oppression by all necessary means and it is justified and accepted under international law. I said here in America we fight with our words of support for free Palestine,” he said, adding that thousands of residents have praised the street sign as recognition of his decades of community work.
“I stand firm on my opinion of people’s right to fight oppression and occupation by all means as they seek their freedom and sovereignty including the Palestinian people,” Silbani continued.
Siblani has also defended Hamas, the terrorist group which slaughtered roughly 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as “freedom fighters.”
At a Ford Community and Performing Arts Center rally in 2023, Siblani defended Hamas as “not a terrorist organization.”
“The terrorist is Benjamin Netanyahu and his government,” he said during the rally, referring to Israel’s prime minister.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Siblani also told a crowd chanting “death to Israel” at a September 2024 rally in Dearborn that Hezbollah will “take care of the job” by destroying the Jewish state. He later threatened to send Israeli Jews “back to Poland.”
Dearborn, home to one of the largest Muslim and Arab American populations in the US, has long been a focal point for debates over identity, politics, and Middle East issues. In the two years following the Hamas-led massacres in Israel, Dearborn has transformed into a tinderbox of protests and demonstrations signaling opposition to the Jewish state.
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‘Never Forget’: ADL Files Oct. 7 Lawsuit Against Hamas, Iran, North Korea
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Ammar Awad via Reuters Connect
A legal effort to hold the perpetrators of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel is being mounted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its partners, which on Thursday filed a major lawsuit in US federal court against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a slew of state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran and North Korea.
“The victims of the Oct. 7 massacre deserve justice, accountability, and redress,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to do that by holding those responsible for the carnage accountable, from the the state sponsors who provided the funding, weapons, and training to the terrorist organizations who carried out these unspeakable atrocities.”
The suit is made possible by federal laws, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Anti-Terrorism Act, allowing for the kin of the victims of terrorism to sue those who contributed to their murders. It seeks damages, compensatory and punitive, for the dozens of plaintiffs who brought the action while aiming to expose the funding networks which facilitate mass atrocities and destabilization of the societies subjected to them.
“The world must never forget what happened on Oct. 7. Our son’s life was senselessly cut short,” said David and Hazel Brief, the parents of Yona Brief, whom Hamas fatally injured during its onslaught. “We believe it is critical that those responsible for the horrific terror inflicted that day are held accountable in a court of law, to ensure the record is clear as to who helped support, plan, and carry out the violence that day. We are hopeful that this type of litigation will help prevent attacks like these in the future, so that no other families have to go through losing a loved on as a result of such violence.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, invaded neighboring Israel and massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians, injured thousands more, and kidnapped over 200 hostages. In the days following the tragedy, the brutality of Hamas’s violence shocked the world as numerous eyewitnesses and victims shared accounts of rape, torture, beheading, and the mutilation of the bodies of the deceased.
In March 2024, the United Nation said in a report commissioned by the Representative of the Secretary General that Hamas likely committed mass acts of gang-rape and torture against women during the massacre and continued to abuse women whom it imprisoned. The report came amid a volley of attacks by anti-Israel agitators, who discredited the testimonies of rape victims, attempting to bury them under counter accusations of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
“Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment was also gathered,” the report said, as previously reported by The Algemeiner and other outlets. “It also said that the research team “found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”
The previous month, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel issued a report detailing harrowing accounts of Hamas’s sexual violence. In 35 pages, it recounted numerous sexual assaults reported by Israel women, several of which were perpetrated in the presence of their loved ones. Some women were killed after the act, some during it. Hamas terrorists also desecrated the bodies of victims they murdered, mutilating their genitalia, and they raped men.
Hamas’s violence and mission to destroy Israel has inspired hatred across the world, triggering a wave of antisemitic hate crimes, perpetrated by anti-Zionists, in the US unlike any seen in the country’s history.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
According to an FBI report issued last month, antisemitic hate crimes are occurring at record-setting rates. Even as hate crimes decreased overall, the report said, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Also, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
“Leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on,” Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said in a statement when the FBI report was released.. “Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.