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A Jewish diplomat tells his story in PBS documentary about the Iran hostage crisis
(New York Jewish Week) — After a “traditional, religious” Jewish childhood in Brooklyn where he attended yeshiva, Barry Rosen fell in love with Iran.
Rosen was 22 when he joined the Peace Corps and set out on a two-year stint in Iran in 1967. There, Rosen felt deeply connected to the people and culture of the country — he loved the food, the clothing, the language, and the sights, sounds and smells.
“I was told by members of the Peace Corps that Jewish kids did very well in Iran,” Rosen says at the beginning of “Taken Hostage: The Making of an American Enemy,” a new two-part documentary on PBS that explores America’s role in the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. “I felt to a certain degree that there was a warmth there that I could see in my own family. There was a sense of kinship that I felt for Iranians.”
Twelve years after first arriving in Iran, however, Rosen, would become one of the 52 hostages attached to the American embassy in Tehran who were held by Iranian college students for 14 terrifying, pivotal months. When he returned as a press attaché for the US Embassy in 1979, the country he loved was on its way to becoming the oppressive religious republic it is today.
That year, its citizens staged a revolution and overthrew the corrupt, American-backed shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to make way for Ayatollah Khomeini, the Muslim cleric and “supreme leader.”
In November, 1979, students took control of the American embassy and demanded the shah return from exile to be tried for his crimes. Pahlavi, who had always maintained strong relations with the United States, was in New York for cancer treatment.
Barry and Barbara Rosen have spent the last four decades reliving the trauma of their experience while also advocating for hostages worldwide. (Frankie Alduino)
“It’s a story of perseverance,” Rosen told the New York Jewish Week in a Zoom interview from his apartment in Morningside Heights. “You look back and you say, ‘oh my God was that me? Was that us?’ It was so long ago but also the pain of it is very self-evident and it is still near in many ways.”
As a hostage in Iran, Rosen faced mock executions, days in complete darkness — what he calls “modern state-sponsored terrorism.”
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, his wife Barbara Rosen found herself at the center of media attention as she advocated for her husband’s release. She and their two young children, Alexander and Ariana, woke up every morning to an onslaught of press ready to exploit her every move, though she had no information about Barry or the situation in Iran.
“It is part of my DNA. I feel personally responsible [to tell my story],” Barry said, sitting beside Barbara. “I was the first member of this honorary group of hostages taken by Iran and I feel that we owe every hostage something so that they can escape that horror.”
“Taken Hostage” tracks America’s connection with the politically volatile Iran, beginning with a 1953 coup d’etat to depose Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, organized in part by the CIA. The shah consolidated power, modernized the country and maintained strong relationships with the West, especially the administration of President Jimmy Carter, but maintained a fearsome and dictatorial reputation among the citizens of Iran.
The documentary traces the story of the revolution and the establishment of power by Khomeini, who undid the Westernization of the previous decades and declared the country the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Along with Rosen, the documentary features Gary Sick, who was a member of the National Security Council at the time and discusses what it was like to navigate the hostage crisis from inside the White House. Foreign correspondents Hilary Brown and Carole Jerome describe risking their lives to report on the crisis from Tehran.
Rosen was one of three Jewish hostages, and though Barbara did not publicize his Judaism out of fear for his safety, American synagogues and Jewish organizations managed to send him mail.
After a year in captivity, Rosen appeared to the public via broadcast and wished his family a Happy Hanukkah. “I really wanted to make sure the American Jewish community knew that I was safe,” he said.
The hostages were released on the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on Jan, 20, 1981. The settlement unfroze nearly $8 billion of Iranian assets, terminated lawsuits Iran faced in America, and forced a pledge by the United States that the country would never again intervene in Iran’s internal affairs.
Barbara and Barry Rosen at a welcome parade in New York City. (Courtesy Barry Rosen)
Returning stateside was complicated for Rosen, who suffered from PTSD and had to separate his love for Iran from the experience of what had happened to him.
What was waiting for Rosen was “a huge outpouring of love and support from everyday people in the United States,” he said. “I think that was the most joyful part of it. There’s no doubt about it that everybody in the United States thought they knew me. At least in New York, it seemed as if American New Yorkers looked at me as a New Yorker who went through the pain. So I think that was a tremendously helpful and healing thing.”
Both Rosens were disappointed with the behavior of the United States. “It was an embarrassment of the foreign policy establishment. They wanted to wipe it out immediately,” Barry recalled. “They never held Iran accountable for what it did.”
“There was so much that each of the people needed to do to heal, and then after a year, there was never any follow up on any kind of medical or psychological investigation,” Barbara said. “We were both very disappointed in our own government and the way we were treated.”
Barry went on to a career in research and education — he conducted a fellowship at Columbia University doing research on Iranian novelists, served as the assistant to the president of Brooklyn College, and eventually was named the executive director of external affairs at Teachers College at Columbia.
The Rosens, who now have four grandchildren, wrote a book about that period in their lives.
“Personally, I don’t like going back and thinking about it or reflecting on this. It wasn’t a very happy time. It was a difficult time in my life,” Barbara told the New York Jewish Week.
But the documentary, the Rosens said, manages to tell the story of the crisis while reminding viewers how deeply personal it was for those involved. It’s a lesson the Rosens have taken with them as they watched and experienced similar crises over the last few decades, from the war in Ukraine to unrest in Iran over the death in September of a woman who was detained for breaking the hijab law.
“All history is a personal event. Each thing that happens is happening to people,” Barbara said. “It was a story of people being plucked out of their normal jobs, their diplomatic life, the security of just feeling that you’re safe. All of a sudden, you’ve lost all of that. You’re tied up in a chair for a month and not allowed to speak to somebody. Families here had no idea what’s happening to their loved ones in Iran.”
“It’s easier for human beings to think about the abstract issue rather than the personal issue. Get into personal issues, people start to walk away, they feel uncomfortable,” Barry added.
Despite everything, Barry still feels an attachment to the culture and people of Iran that he experienced in his early twenties, calling himself a “child of divorce” between the United States and its former ally, a relationship that he said he doesn’t see improving in his lifetime.
He also continues to tell his story because of his lifelong work with hostage victims around the world. Currently, there are three American hostages and more than a dozen international hostages in Iran. Barry works with Amnesty International, Hostage USA and Hostage Aid Worldwide to advocate for their release.
“I want to make certain that the American government and the American people stand by all those who were taken by Iran and all governments that take hostages, whether it’s China, Russia, Venezuela — but for me, especially Iran,” he said. “I say this because I really feel the need to make this an important issue. The American public needs to understand this very well. People’s lives are being taken away.”
“Taken Hostage,” an “American Experience” documentary, will air on PBS in two parts on Nov. 14 and 15. The film is also available to stream on pbs.org.
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Peace for Land, Not Land for Peace
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the 45th Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit in Kuwait city, Kuwait, Dec. 1, 2024. Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS
“Land for peace,” the mantra since Camp David, has brought the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a dead end, with Palestinian militias remaining active despite the promise of statehood. It’s now time to reverse this broken policy into “peace for land,” where Palestinian acceptance of Zionism earns them territory to govern themselves. A version of this model is being tested in Gaza as part of President Trump’s peace plan. Its success is imperative. Its failure risks more of the same.
“Land for peace” is outdated — it belongs to 1967, when a fledgling Israel sought Arab recognition. The late Defense Minister Moshe Dayan delivered his famous statement after Israel took the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Sinai from Egypt. To his offer, the Arabs responded with the famous “three nos” from the Khartoum Arab League summit.
Israel has come a long way since 1967, growing from a young nation seeking acceptance to a confident and strong one whose friendship is now sought after. When Saudi Arabia was on the cusp of securing a normalization deal with Israel, in 2023, but then slammed on the brakes by inserting a Palestinian state as a prerequisite, a senior Israeli official told a small gathering, in confidence, that “Israel has lived 77 years without normalization with Saudi Arabia, and can afford another 77 years.”
The problem is that the Saudis are still hung up on the old days, when their country was the biggest, wealthiest, and most influential. In 1981, when Riyadh first proposed the “two-state solution” according to the principle of land for peace, the Saudi population was six million — one-sixth of what it is today. Global oil prices were skyrocketing, Saudi GDP per capita was among the highest in the world, and surpluses allowed the kingdom to buy enormous influence.
But today, Saudi Arabia needs to sell every barrel of oil at around $96. The 2025 global market price hovered around $65. Riyadh funded a significant portion of its expenditures through borrowing. Its deficit ballooned to $65 billion or 5.3 percent of GDP. And if Venezuelan oil comes back online — and maybe Iran’s too — the Saudis will find it extremely hard to balance their books.
If the Saudis don’t transform their economy to services, the very social contract of the Saudi kingdom will start shaking. To keep it stable, populism — in terms of Islamism and antisemitism — will be the most effective tool, thus pushing Saudi Arabia further away from peace.
And yet, the Saudis still believe that peace with Israel, along the lines of “land for peace” and without the Palestinians agreeing to Jewish nationhood, is a reward to the Israelis, who, for their part, are not lured by the Saudi offers and counter by offering “peace for peace” that serves the mutual interests of both countries.
But as long as the Saudis hang on to the antiquated “land for peace,” and as long as Palestinians — alongside Qataris, Turks, and the Muslim Brotherhood crowd in general — hide their hate toward Zionism behind the “two-state solution,” peace will not come. The order for peace must be reshuffled.
First comes Palestinian and general Arab endorsement of Zionism — that is, the acceptance that Israel is the country of the Jews on their land. This means that, if there is ever a two-state solution that mandates Jews pull out of the Palestinian state, it also means that all Arabs live under Palestinian rule and that the Palestinian leadership relinquishes what it calls the “right of return.”
Once it is established that Palestinians and the Arabs understand they cannot use demographics as a Trojan Horse to undermine Jewish sovereignty, peace becomes within reach.
And once the 8 million Jews of Israel are reassured that the 493 million Arabs are not out to get them and take away their state, the rest becomes administrative detail: Palestinians will be able to govern themselves within delineated territory that does not even need a barrier with Israel, just like any two states within the US or the EU.
This is what peace looks like, and it can only be the result of “peace for land,” not “land for peace.”
As for Saudi Arabia, if it signs “peace for peace” with Israel, not only will its economy have much better chances of transforming into services, but its newfound friendship with Israel becomes an asset for Palestinians. If Israel trusts the Saudis, and the Saudis guarantee that Palestinians have come to terms with Zionism and want to live at peace with a Jewish state, then we’re almost near the finish line.
It is unfortunate, however, that the Saudis seem to be going in the opposite direction. They’re taking the Palestinians with them and wasting more time on top of all the decades wasted because of unrealism, populism, and the hope of one day seeing Israel go away.
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Facing backlash after accusing Israel of genocide, Scott Wiener steps down as Calif. Jewish Caucus co-chair
(JTA) — Scott Wiener, the California lawmaker who earlier this month announced that he believed Israel had committed “genocide” in Gaza, is stepping down as a leader of the state legislature’s Jewish caucus.
Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco, has been a co-chair of the caucus since 2023. He is currently running for Congress.
In a statement released Thursday, he attributed his resignation from the caucus’ leadership position to both his campaign and the backlash over his Israel comments. He will remain a member of the caucus after he steps down as its chair on Feb. 15.
“Last fall, I suggested stepping down but was asked to stay to provide continuity of leadership during a difficult time for the Jewish community,” Wiener said. “Now, my campaign is accelerating, and my recent statements on Israel and Gaza have led to significant controversy in the Jewish community. The time to transition has arrived.”
Wiener’s accusation of genocide, made Jan. 11 in a video posted to social media, came days after he declined to answer a question on the topic during a televised debate, spurring a backlash from pro-Palestinian voices.
His statement on Israel elicited its own criticism. Five local and national Jewish groups issued a statement saying that while they recognized Wiener’s support for the Jewish community and his own experiences of antisemitism, they were “deeply disappointed” in his video statement.
“Unfortunately, Senator Wiener’s newly stated position is both incorrect and lacks moral clarity,” said the groups, which included the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Bay Area, the American Jewish Committee and a local Holocaust education center.
“The devastation throughout this war — including the loss of life in Gaza and Southern Israel — has been felt by us all,” they added. “Yet framing this conflict in reductionist and inflammatory terms fuels further hostility toward our community.”
Others went further, calling for him to step down from or be forced out of his leadership role. “Scott Wiener has no business being co-Chair of the CA Legislative Jewish Caucus,” tweeted Sam Yebri, a Persian Jewish pro-Israel attorney and influencer from Los Angeles.
Now, those who criticized Wiener’s comments are hoping that his resignation will turn down tensions.
“I hope @Scott_Wiener‘s decision to step down will allow our community, the @CAJewishCaucus, and the Senator himself the ability to move beyond this painful and divisive moment,” tweeted Tye Gregory, the CEO of the San Francisco JCRC, on Thursday. He praised Wiener’s support for legislation his organization backs and said he would look forward to working with Wiener during the legislative session.
The saga comes as support for Israel has plummeted among Democratic voters. Weiner is running to fill the seat being vacated by Nancy Pelosi, a staunch supporter of Israel, and both of his competitors in the Democratic primary have long backed the claim, which Israel and the United States reject, that Israel’s actions in Gaza during its two-year war with Hamas amounted to genocide.
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OneTable reimagines Shabbat dinner program amid safety concerns, layoffs and budget crisis
(JTA) — When the Shabbat-dinner nonprofit OneTable slashed a quarter of its staff last month, it wasn’t only because of a budget crisis.
It’s true that fundraising was way down. But the group was also responding to what it sees as important shifts in how Jews gather, citing its growing sense that Gen Z is less likely than others to want to open doors to their home.
Now, OneTable is revealing a raft of new pilot programs and policies, including a move away from its defining practice of subsidizing dinners; a new policy barring anti-Israel events; a renewed focus on young Jews; and a shift toward partnerships with emergent Shabbat “clubs” to lift the burden and risk of hosting at home.
“In this world right now, the idea of welcoming something, someone into your home is scary to people,” said OneTable’s new CEO, Sarah Abramson, who joined the company in May. “All of these things are actually creating barriers to people wanting to host in their homes, and so we know that we need to bring OneTable out into the world.”
At the same time, the group is centralizing its operations. While the 14 layoffs took place across the company, Abramson said OneTable had focused in part on field managers, who served as regional liaisons with hosts and potential hosts.
“If a person in that community really saw that field manager as the face of OneTable, and for whatever reason, did not feel like that person spoke to them or was not aligned with their Jewish values and how they want to Shabbat, then often they would kind of discount OneTable,” she said.
The changes come as Israel looms large over Jewish nonprofits, influencing fundraising and engagement while also at times laying a minefield, especially for younger Jews who are increasingly divided in their sentiments.
OneTable says the number of people participating annually in Shabbat dinners it supports doubled after Oct. 7, 2023, in keeping with a “surge” of Jewish engagement that many organizations observed following Hamas’ attack on Israel. Before the resulting war in Gaza, 42,000 people a year were attending OneTable dinners. After, the number reached 80,000, according to the group.
But the group struggled to keep pace when it came to fundraising. In 2024, OneTable ran a deficit of more than $900,000, spending about $10.6 million while bringing in just over $9 million in contributions, according to their tax filings that year. That represented a sharp decline in funding from 2023, when the organization reported nearly $12 million in contributions and ended the year in a surplus.
“In full transparency, our philanthropy has not kept pace with the volume,” Abramson said.
Prior to joining OneTable, Abramson worked as the executive vice president for strategy and impact at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Boston’s Jewish federation. There, she oversaw grantmaking as well as the nonprofit’s $60 million post-Oct. 7 Israel emergency fund.
As Jews across the United States flooded funds like that with nearly $1 billion, concerns quickly emerged about whether the donations would supplant other giving. The answer at OneTable, at least, appears to be yes, Abramson said.
“Eighty thousand participants requires so much more philanthropic support at a time where, rightly, philanthropic support for the Jewish community was directed towards Israel, and really thinking about other priorities,” she said.
Gali Cooks, the president and CEO of Leading Edge, a nonprofit that provides training, research and support for Jewish nonprofits, said that there was also a “tricky confluence right now of rising demands and rising costs” within the Jewish nonprofit sector.
Cooks said that, across the sector, nonprofit leaders were realizing that they have to “think smaller and bigger at the same time” — as OneTable says it is doing.
“Within each organization, leaders are trying to achieve more focus and clarity and streamlining toward the mission,” said Cooks. “But between organizations, they’re striving for more collaboration, more partnerships, shared infrastructure, and shared planning. That’s true in the conversation about talent, board excellence, and leadership development, but I think it’s also true about things like antisemitism, security, Israel engagement, and more.”
The changes underway at OneTable include formalizing a stance on Israel for the first time. Earlier this month, the organization added a list of its “core commitments” to its website that included a section outlining drawing a hard line against anti-Israel advocacy.
“We do not formally partner with, or support, any organization, Shabbat dinners, or gatherings that call for Israel’s destruction or in any way question Israel’s right to exist,” the section reads. “We do not fund dinners that align with any political party or candidate.”
At the same time, the group is aiming to stoke Israel talk at the Shabbat table. The group has a new partnership with Resetting the Table, a Jewish nonprofit that teaches dialogue skills, to “allow our Shabbat tables to become nuanced places for hard conversations,” Abramson said during a presentation about at the Jewish Federations of North America annual conference in November.
“We also are doing a lot of pilots based on research that enable the skill of hard conversations for Shabbat,” Abramson told JTA. “For example, we have a pilot right now with Resetting the Table, helping a lot of our hosts think through, how do you actually have deep, meaningful conversations, often about Israel, but not only, particularly in the American context right now.”
For some, the changes mark an unhappy end to OneTable as a respite for young Jews from the pitched ideological divides over Israel that increasingly characterize Jewish experiences.
Alexis Fosco, a former OneTable employee, posted on LinkedIn last month in an announcement of her departure that she was “frustrated at Jewish funders withdrawing from diaspora-focused work, leaving the staff who are already subsidizing their causes to absorb the impact.” She indicated that she had not been among the laid-off workers.
“I keep thinking about how funding-driven scope creep takes hold,” continued Fosco. “It’s heartbreaking and spiritually exhausting to pour yourself into an organization and walk away realizing the work no longer aligns with what you set out to build or believe in.”
Three former field managers did not respond to JTA requests for comment.
Abramson said the nonprofit’s new initiatives would be rolled out as pilots over the coming year. But even if the tests are temporary, they mark a significant shift for the nonprofit that has long been synonymous with underwriting the costs of serving Shabbat dinner at home. Hosts have historically received $10 stipends for each registered guest at their OneTable dinners.
An analysis of host patterns found that a small number of repeat hosts were racking up disproportionate subsidies.
In September, after one former OneTable host posted about their dismissal from the program on Facebook, Dani Kohanzadeh, OneTable’s senior director of field, told JTA that it had let go of just under 50 hosts in one week. But she said that the decision was not primarily financial.
“It’s not about balancing the budget,” said Kohanzadeh. “We didn’t make this decision based on the financial cutoff, it’s based on the overall experience with our support.”
Now, Abramson said the organization plans on rolling out alternative incentives for hosting Shabbat, including a “point” system in which points can be exchanged for prizes including, potentially, trips to Israel and elsewhere.
“OneTable’s model really works for a lot of people … so we want to ensure that people who are finding a lot of meaning and financial support through nourishment continue to be able to choose that, we won’t be taking that away,” she said.
Abramson said the company was also shifting away from its recent focus on older Jewish adults to center its programming on younger Jews.
“OneTable was founded as an organization designed to provide Friday night Shabbat experiences for young adults,” she said. “This is really going back to our roots and ensuring that we are evolving the way in which young adults want to be reached.”
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