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A new symbol at some Passover seders: an empty seat for Evan Gershkovich, Jewish journalist jailed in Russia
(JTA) — Shayndi Raice, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Israel, is hoping that Jews around the world dedicate a portion of their Passover seder this week to one of her colleagues, currently detained in a Russian prison.
“This Passover, please consider setting a place at your Seder table for @evangershkovich,” Raice tweeted on Sunday. “As you celebrate freedom, join us in demanding freedom for Evan.”
The call — echoing a tactic used in the 20th-century campaign for the freedom of Soviet Jews — grew louder on Monday as it was shared by prominent personalities from tech journalist Kara Swisher to the former chief rabbi of Moscow to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of New York City’s Central Synagogue, who said she would be leaving an empty chair at her own seder in honor of Gershkovich, a Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.
Gershkovich, 31, has been charged with espionage, in a move that human rights organizations are decrying and the Biden administration is fighting. He was arrested Wednesday while he was dining at a restaurant in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 800 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.
The Wall Street Journal has denied the allegations against Gershkovich, who pleaded not guilty during a court appearance last week, according to Russian state and international media. He reportedly has not been able to speak to an attorney representing him while he is held in the notorious Lefortovo Prison, whose past inmates include the famous Soviet Jewish dissident Natan Sharansky.
Gershkovich is the first American journalist since the Cold War to face spying charges in Russia, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. People charged with espionage are almost always convicted in Russia, according to the New York Times.
“Let him go,” President Joe Biden said Friday about his message to Russian authorities in Gershkovich’s case, using a phrase that itself is redolent of the Passover story and the Soviet Jewry movement.
The arrest has propelled Gershkovich to the front lines of deepening tensions between the United States and Russia. It has also drawn attention to Gershkovich’s background as the child of Jews who fled the Soviet Union — and renewed questions about whether people like him can be safe in Russia today.
“He cares a lot about his identity as a Jew, and especially his identity as the son of Soviet Jewish immigrants,” his college roommate Jeremy Berke told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I think that was a large part of why he wanted to go back to Russia.”
Gershkovich was born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union who left in the late 1970s, when the Communist state briefly opened the gates to emigration for some of its Jewish citizens.
His father is from Odessa — today in Ukraine — and his mother is from St. Petersburg, Time Magazine reported. According to an account published by the Wall Street Journal, the only outlet to which his family has spoken, his mother fled Russia using Israeli documents with her mother, a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, after hearing rumors that Jews were going to be deported to Siberia.
Gershkovich grew up speaking Russian at home in New Jersey, where he graduated from Princeton High School before heading to Bowdoin College in Maine. After college, he got a job first at the New York Times before moving to Moscow in 2017 to report for the Moscow Times, an English-language news organization that has been a launching pad for multiple high-profile Russia reporters. His reporting there included coverage of Hanukkah celebrations in Moscow. He was hired by the Wall Street Journal in 2021.
His mother told the Journal that Gershkovich had become more interested in his Jewish identity while in Russia, taking her to a synagogue that she had been warned as a child never to enter. “That’s when Evan started to understand us better,” she said.
“Part of his mission was to not only explain Russia to a Western audience, but to really kind of pierce the bubble and tell the stories of Russians themselves, which was something he was able to do, because he’s fluent in Russian,” Berke told JTA.
He said his friend sought to tell “stories that weren’t necessarily just the purely kind of economic stories that you saw coming out of the country, but that were really about what the people were doing — you know, people in synagogues, people in nightclubs, like all aspects of Russian society.”
Like many foreign journalists, Gershkovich left Russia in February 2022, after Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine and turned overnight into a pariah state that intensified its crackdowns on dissenters. But he returned later in the year on the longstanding assumption that foreigners would be insulated from the harsh treatment that Russian journalists can face.
“By detaining the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Russia has crossed the Rubicon and sent a clear message to foreign correspondents that they will not be spared from the ongoing purge of the independent media in the country.” said the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and let the media work freely and without fear of reprisal.”
Gershkovich had most recently reported on Russia’s declining economic position and was reportedly in Yekaterinburg reporting on the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary force, and Nizhny Tagil, a factory town where Russian tanks are made.
Wagner’s owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, joked about Gershkovich and other journalists being found in a mass grave or a torture chamber when reached by the Daily Beast last week. Prigozhin said he had not known about Gershkovich’s arrest at that time.
Julia Ioffe, a fellow Russian-American Jew and journalist, said after Gershkovich’s arrest that the Kremlin takes criticism from people of their background differently than from other journalists.
“Although he was born in the U.S., his parents were immigrants from the Soviet Union, Jewish immigrants,” Ioffe told CNN. “There is a sense in Moscow, especially in the foreign ministry and in the Kremlin, that people of this background — my background — they are particularly sensitive to … our criticism. They feel that it is a different kind of betrayal.”
WSJ’s Evan Gershkovich, detained in Russia for espionage, is about the age @juliaioffe and I were when we met as Moscow reporters. We spoke today about what Gershkovich is facing, particularly as a reporter whose family fled the Soviet Union and how Russia is ‘banking’ hostages. pic.twitter.com/gsUbZz2N0q
— Alex Marquardt (@MarquardtA) March 30, 2023
The former chief rabbi of Moscow who fled Russia shortly after the invasion of Ukraine last year suggested that Russia had targeted Gershkovich because of his identity.
“He just happened to be Jewish, right?” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt sarcastically tweeted last week.
Goldschmidt has emerged as a prominent critic of the Russian government after leaving the country last year, saying that as a prominent rabbi he faced pressure to support Putin’s war.
“When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community,” he told the Guardian in an interview late last year.
Gershkovich is not the first American to be arrested in Russia amid rising tensions between the countries. Last year, the basketball star Britney Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison on drug charges, then traded to the United States in exchange for the release of Victor Bout, a Russian convicted of dealing arms.
In a social media post this weekend, Griner called on the United States to “continue to use every tool possible to bring Evan and all wrongfully detained Americans home.”
The Wall Street Journal has made Gershkovich’s reporting free and produced a video highlighting his importance as a journalist. Meanwhile, Gershkovich’s Jewish supporters are putting their own spin on the campaigns to raise awareness of Gershkovich’s plight and lobby for his release.
“Dear friends, if you are in shul this weekend, please say an extra tefillah for the release of @evangershkovich, a @WSJ reporter and son of Soviet Jewish immigrants, who was detained this week by the Russian government,” tweeted Chavie Lieber, a Wall Street Journal reporter, last week. (Lieber was a JTA reporter in 2012 and 2013.)
On Monday, Raice’s call for a place at Passover seders for Gershkovich was being shared widely.
“A worthy endeavour. However, Evan is not the only political prisoner in Russia and Byelorussia. Thousands of people are being held in prisons in Russia and Byelorussia, among them Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara Murza, Ilya Yashin and others, many, who are of Jewish descent,” Goldschmidt, the former Moscow chief rabbi, tweeted. “We should remember all of them, when we celebrate freedom at the Seder table Wednesday evening!”
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The post A new symbol at some Passover seders: an empty seat for Evan Gershkovich, Jewish journalist jailed in Russia appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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JD Vance: ‘There’s a difference between not liking Israel’ and antisemitism
(JTA) — Under fire over antisemitism within the Republican Party, Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that “the single most significant thing you could do to eliminate anti-semitism” is reducing immigration to the United States.
Vance also laid out his attitude about criticism of Israel, tweeting, “I would say there’s a difference between not liking Israel (or disagreeing with a given Israeli policy) and anti-semitism.”
Vance made the comments on X while responding to a journalist who had shared an essay by the Jewish commentator Yair Rosenberg expressing concern about antisemitism among younger Americans.
“Research suggests America is becoming more anti-Semitic because its young people are becoming more anti-Semitic,” Rosenberg had written. “This finding flies in face of folk wisdom that prejudice is the province of the old and will die out with them. That may be true of some bigotries, but anti-Semitism is not one of them.”
The quotation caused Vance to respond with a thread that represented some of his most direct and extensive comments on the topic since the Republican Party’s internal divide on antisemitism was thrust into the open following the September assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk. Since then, some in the party have urged a confrontation with antisemitic sentiments that appear increasingly common among younger Republicans influenced by online personalities such as Nick Fuentes.
But Vance, while saying he opposes antisemitism, has not heeded the calls, rejecting claims of surging Republican antisemitism and downplaying expressions of antisemitic sentiment by young Republicans as immaturity.
Now, he says those concerned about growing right-wing antisemitism in the United States are barking up the wrong tree.
“Mainstream journalism is just profoundly uninteresting and lame, consumed by its own pieties. To write an article about the ‘generational divide’ in anti-semitism without discussing the demographics of the various generations is mind boggling,” Vance wrote.
His next tweet was a quote apparently intended as a rhetorical statement of what he sees as a faulty view: “We imported a lot of people with ethnic grievances prior generations didn’t have. We celebrated this as the fruits of multiculturalism. Now we’re super surprised that the people we imported with ethnic grievances still have those ethnic grievances.”
Then Vance shared his conclusion. “The most significant single thing you could do to eliminate anti-semitism and any other kind of ethnic hatred is to support our efforts to lower immigration and promote assimilation,” he wrote. “But these guys won’t do that, because they all lack curiosity and introspection.”
Finally, Vance pointed to a researcher who said his research had found higher antisemitic sentiment among U.S. residents who had been born abroad and Americans whose parents were immigrants.
“As I noted in my post on the topic, foreign-origin is a much better predictor of antisemitism than ideology or age,” wrote Charles Fain Lehman, a a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.
The Manhattan Institute released a report earlier this month finding while most Republicans reject antisemitism, 17% met researchers’ definition of “anti-Jewish Republicans” because of their sentiments.
The report described higher levels of antisemitic sentiment about Republicans under 50 and “New Entrant” Republicans, those who voted for Republicans in national contests for the first time only recently.
“Anti-Jewish Republicans are typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college-educated, and significantly more likely to be New Entrant Republicans,” the report found.
Polls show that anti-Israel sentiment is also rising among younger Republicans, fracturing a consensus in a party that has recently boasted of its staunch support for Israel. Vance’s tweet clarifying that he does not believe anti-Israel sentiment is necessarily antisemitic represents his clearest statement yet about his tolerance for anti-Israel sentiment, coming as he is seen as a likely presidential contender in 2028.
Vance’s comments come as the Trump administration takes aim at immigrants, cracking down harshly on those in the country illegally and seeking to block migration totally from some countries, including from countries such as Iran and Yemen where antisemitic sentiments are prevalent.
Jewish groups have tended to align strongly with pro-immigrant stances, in part owing to a shared Jewish family history as an immigrant class, though those views are shifting. However, HIAS, a Jewish immigrant aid group, has taken a strong stance against the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants and refugees.
The Trump administration has also said it would screen the social media histories of tourists and visa applicants for evidence of antisemitism and has sought to deport some immigrants it alleges are antisemitic, often because of their participation in pro-Palestinian protests.
The post JD Vance: ‘There’s a difference between not liking Israel’ and antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Antisemitism tensions rise as NYC Young Republicans host white nationalists, conspiracy theorists at annual gala
(JTA) — The guest list at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala on Saturday included white nationalists, antisemitic conspiracy theorists and a Jewish City Councilwoman, who ultimately decided not to attend.
Inna Vernikov, a Jewish City Council member who represents a south Brooklyn district with a large Russian Jewish population, did not attend despite being promoted as an “honored guest.” Vernikov, who was one of a few politicians to back out, later suggested on social media that her absence was connected to antisemitism on the right.
Those who did attend the gala included a NYYRC member and former George Santos staffer who had posted a video depicting Jews as cockroaches, costing him his job on Matt Gaetz’s news show; politicians from Germany’s far-right party which the country officially labeled an extremist group; Jared Taylor, the editor of a white supremacist website called American Renaissance; and Sneako, the streamer who posts antisemitic content and has said “people are sick of hearing about the Holocaust.”
Meanwhile, avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes said he received an invite and made the trip to New York — even though the New York Young Republican Club said by email on Monday that he “was never formally invited.”
Fuentes was seen lingering outside Cipriani, the upscale restaurant where the gala took place, Politico reported, but did not attend the event itself. He recorded a stream with Sneako following the black-tie affair, saying his invite had been rescinded at the last minute to avoid a potential “revolt.”
Saturday’s gala was held during a moment of growing debate about antisemitism on the right, and as Fuentes’ seemingly ascendant role within the Republican Party has emerged as a source of anxiety among more mainstream Republicans.
The New York Young Republicans Club has generated some of the angst. Just weeks ago, the club’s statewide counterpart disbanded in the wake of leaked group chats in which officials joked about gas chambers, praised Adolf Hitler and used racist, antisemitic and homophobic slurs. (Attendees seemingly referenced those texts on Saturday, according to Talking Points Memo, joking with each other that they were “neo-Nazis.”)
The debate on the right has centered largely around how to deal with figures like Fuentes, who calls Hitler “cool” and has been interviewed by major personalities like Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan.
Republican politicians, including non-Jewish ones such as Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, have scorched Carlson for his friendly interview with Fuentes. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, has drawn scrutiny for not condemning Carlson or Fuentes, and for previous instances of not pushing back against antisemitic conspiracies. Vance also downplayed the leaked texts as “jokes” and said critics should “grow up.” Trump, meanwhile, defended Carlson, saying, “You can’t tell him who to interview.” (He also dined with Fuentes and rapper Kanye West in 2022, but later said he didn’t know who Fuentes was.)
On Sunday, the day after the gala, Vernikov took to X to post about the Republicans’ growing antisemitism problem, saying, “I will DISASSOCIATE myself from any event, individual, or organization whether Democrat or Republican, that welcomes these vile bigots into their mist, defends them or amplifies their voices,” referring to figures like Fuentes, Carlson and Candace Owens.
Antisemitic rhetoric “has fully infiltrated the Democratic Party,” Vernikov wrote on X, adding, “Unfortunately today the same venom has entered corners of the conservative movement and the hard RIGHT WING of the Republican Party.”
Then she named names, writing, “Lunatics like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, who spew bigoted, racist and antisemitic rhetoric, should be condemned and excommunicated from the Republican Party never to be welcomed again.”
Vernikov declined to comment further on the event.
The gala was hosted by Matan Even, an 18-year-old Israeli-American YouTuber known for his pranks, such as crashing a 2022 Game Awards speech to thank his “Reform Orthodox rabbi, Bill Clinton.” Even’s humor, which involved singing the “Spongebob Squarepants” theme song onstage, seemingly did not land. Even is Jewish but has recorded streams with Sneako despite the latter’s use of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Right-wing pundit and activist Jack Posobiec was the event’s keynote speaker, and delivered a fiery speech in which he spoke about Charlie Kirk’s death while holding a rosary.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, was represented at the gala by about 20 lawmakers at the state, federal and EU levels. The AfD has drawn criticism for using slogans similar to the Nazi party’s and was classified this year as a right-wing extremist organization by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.
Rep. Dan Goldman, the Democratic congressman whose district includes Lower Manhattan, where the gala was held, wrote earlier on Saturday that the NYYRC was “rolling out the red carpet for leaders of Germany’s Nazi-cosplaying AfD party.”
“I condemn it in the strongest of terms, as should my New York Republican colleagues,” he wrote. “The AfD and their bigotry is not welcome in NY-10.”
At the gala, a protester wearing a Nazi armband was removed after popping up from his seat and reportedly yelling “I guess we’re all Nazis!” In a video recorded outside after his removal, the protester, who later said he was Jewish, pointed to the Nazi symbol and said, “This is what this event represents,” naming specifically the invitations of Vish Burra — the man who posted a video depicting Jews as roaches — and of AfD officials.
The NYYRC’s Twitter account countered accusations of being “Nazis” by writing that “the only swastika in the room was held by a left-wing freak protester who we forcefully booted from the premises.”
The protester was told to “go back to Israel” by an attendee, who then accepted the swastika banner from the protester and left with it.
Stefano Forte, the club’s president, spoke defiantly about the NYYRC’s partnership with the AfD.
“You want us to denounce the AfD? You want us to denounce our allies? You want us to denounce those that stand with us?” he asked.
“Well here’s a denunciation. We unequivocally denounce the fake news media that distorts the truth to put us in danger,” he said, referring to right-wingers being labelled “Nazis” as leading to assassination attempts on Trump and Charlie Kirk.
Forte also declared that the club was “prepared to endorse” Trump for a third presidential term in 2028, drawing loud applause.
The post Antisemitism tensions rise as NYC Young Republicans host white nationalists, conspiracy theorists at annual gala appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish donors help raise $1.3M for Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim man who disarmed a Bondi Beach attacker
(JTA) — A crowdfunding campaign to support Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim fruit seller shot after disarming one of the men who was attacking a Hanukkah event in Sydney, generated $1.3 in its first day — with the largest donation coming from the American Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman.
Ackman gave $66,000 to the GoFundMe for al Ahmed and promoted the campaign to his followers, tweeting, “This is the verified link for the Bondi hero.”
In a viral video on Sunday, shortly after the attack on Bondi Beach that left 15 killed and over 40 injured, al Ahmed, 43, can be seen crouching behind a car before jumping into action as one of the terrorists shoots a firearm at the Jewish celebration. Al Ahmed, a Syrian-born father of two who was unarmed, then jumped on the attacker from behind, wresting the firearm from his hands.
“In a moment of chaos and danger, he stepped forward without hesitation,” the sponsors of the GoFundMe, Car Hub Australia, wrote on the page. “His actions were selfless, instinctive, and undeniably heroic, taken without regard for his own safety. Early reports indicate he was shot twice in the process while protecting others.”
As al Ahmed’s heroic actions were shared widely on social media on Sunday, he garnered praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
As al Ahmed recovered from his injuries in a hospital on Monday, he was visited by Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, the Australian state that includes Sydney.
“Ahmed is a real-life hero,” wrote Minns in a post on X alongside a photo of him visiting al Ahmed in the hospital. “Last night, his incredible bravery no doubt saved countless lives when he disarmed a terrorist at enormous personal risk.”
Praise also poured in on social media from Jewish leaders in the United States, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim father of two, risked his life to disarm a murderer who was shooting down Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Sydney,” wrote Sanders in a post on X. “Religion must not divide our common humanity. We must stand together and end antisemitism, Islamophobia and all hate — no exceptions.”
For others, al Ahmed’s act of bravery during the massacre appeared to be divine intervention — coming as it did at a time when many Jews feel isolated and abandoned by their non-Jewish allies.
“I’ve been thinking about this man Ahmed and his selfless act of courage, and I can’t help but feel that it as an act of God,” wrote Jewish social media influencer Alana Zeitchik in a post on Instagram. “It is a message that could only have been written by something higher than all of us. Like all actions it has a ripple effect. In this moment of immense grief and fear, his actions repair a painful tear in the collective Jewish soul that so badly needed to be tended to.”
She continued, “He will be cherished and spoken about by our people for generations.”
Among the 34,000 donors to the GoFundMe campaign so far are several who said in notes that they were Jewish and explained why they donated unusual sums, in multiples of $18.
“Ahmed, you are a true hero. As a Jewish supporter, I donated $180 USD because 18 (“chai”) represents life. Your courage embodied that meaning in the most profound way,” wrote Craig Gross. “Thank you for what you did, and may you heal fully and quickly.”
The post Jewish donors help raise $1.3M for Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim man who disarmed a Bondi Beach attacker appeared first on The Forward.