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As a child of survivors, I see my parents in every Ethiopian immigrant to Israel
(JTA) — Recently, I watched a mother reunite with her son for the first time in 41 years.
On May 9, I was part of a delegation of the Jewish Agency for Israel that accompanied Ethiopian olim (immigrants) from Addis Ababa to Ben Gurion Airport and new lives in Israel. The mother had made aliyah in 1982 as part of Operation Moses, when Ethiopian Jewish immigrants trekked for weeks through the Sudan, hiding out from authorities in the daytime and walking by moonlight, to reach Israeli Mossad agents, who were secretly facilitating their transport to Israel.
But the son, due to family circumstances, was left behind. And here she was on the tarmac, praying and crying, and the embrace they had when the now grown man walked down the stairs, that depth of emotion after decades of waiting and yearning, was something that I will never forget.
The Ethiopian Jewish community dates back some 2,500 years, from around the time of the destruction of the First Temple. We know that they have always yearned, from generation to generation, to be in Jerusalem. Most of the Ethiopian Jews emigrated to Israel during the 1970s and 1980s and in one weekend in May 1992, a covert Israeli operation, dubbed Operation Solomon, airlifted more than 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel over 36 hours. Those coming today are being reunited with family members who came during one of these earlier operations.
On my four-day trip from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I listened to the stories of incredible perseverance, and of heartrending suffering, among Ethiopian Jews — our brothers and sisters. Close to 100,000 of them have made their way to Israel over the past 40-plus years, fulfilling this community’s centuries-long quest to come to Israel.
I heard about the Ethiopian Israeli who, as a 15-year-old, marched through Sudan with his family and lost three of his siblings to starvation. I heard the stories of families waiting, for months or years, for that moment of aliyah, as clandestine negotiations among government negotiators dragged on. It was so powerful to hear of the sacrifices they made and how strong the dream was, and is today, of coming to Jerusalem, to Israel.
RELATED: How Israel’s Falash Mura immigration from Ethiopia became a painful 30-year saga
And I thought of my own family’s journey — a different time, under different circumstances. But also a Jewish journey of perseverance, suffering and, for the fortunate among us, survival.
My parents were born in Poland in the 1930s. During World War II, my father and his family survived in a Siberian labor camp and then in a remote part of Poland. My mother’s family managed to get work papers, but her father did not have them. He survived the war by hiding under the floorboards of a barn on a farm where they were living. The woman who owned the farm did not know they were Jewish, so it was a harrowing day-to-day existence.
But my mother and father survived, managed to make it to liberation, and eventually came to the United States. They were first sponsored by the Birmingham, Alabama, Jewish community, and then made their way to New York and New Jersey, where our family has built a new life. We now have fourth-generation children growing up here in New Jersey, and we feel so fortunate for the lives we have.
Here is the essential difference from their story and mine: For my family, there was no state of Israel. Many members of my family perished in the Holocaust. There was nowhere for them to go.
This drives what I do. Today, everything has changed because we have a state of Israel, and we have a Jewish Agency that ensures that Jews can make aliyah and helps them make new lives in Israel.
Last year, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I traveled to Poland and stood at the border as thousands of Ukrainian refugees streamed across. I was standing only a few miles from where my grandfather hid under the floorboards of that barn about 80 years earlier. Back then, there was no one there to protect my family, no one to do anything for them. And here I was in 2022 standing amid a massive array of aid agencies, and the very first thing these refugees saw — whether they were Jewish or not — were signs with the Star of David, marking the Jewish Agency, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and other Jewish groups.
While there has been significant hardship and struggle for the first generation of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, it was incredibly inspiring for me to meet members of the second generation — those who made the trek as children or teenagers in the 1980s and ’90s — who are now Israeli adults in positions of leadership and significant responsibilities. We heard from Havtamo Yosef, who immigrated as a young child from Ethiopia with his parents, and then watched his father become a street sweeper and his mother a housecleaner while he was growing up. Now he heads up the entire Ethiopian Aliyah and Absorption services for the Jewish Agency, ensuring that there are stronger absorption procedures, better education and firmer foundations for better lives for these new immigrants than there ever was for his family.
While there was no Israel for my family when we were refugees, there were — in Birmingham, Alabama; in Hillside, New Jersey; and everywhere along the way of my family’s journey — people who thought outside of themselves, who cared and took care of my relatives. This is my legacy and what motivates me today.
So when I stood on the tarmac at Ben Gurion earlier this month, I cried tears of sadness at the long family separations and tears of joy that today this Jewish journey continues, from Ukraine and Russia and Ethiopia to Israel. Today, there is a place to go and a people to welcome Jews on that tarmac, with an Israeli flag, a smile and a warm embrace, and a promise of better lives in freedom.
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This Toronto street corner has been a site of anti-Zionist activism for months. Police just opened a hate crime investigation.
The Toronto Police Service hate crimes unit is investigating teacher Abbas Hamze for remarks about “Zionists.” Canadian Jewish groups, including the Jewish Federations of Canada’s advocacy arm and B’nai Brith Canada, have called his speech, which went viral online, “blatant antisemitism.”
Hamze’s remarks invoked antisemitic tropes, accusing “Zionists” of performing “black magic” as well as raping and killing children. He spoke at the intersection of Bathurst and Sheppard, in the heavily Jewish Toronto neighborhood of Bathurst Manor – Clanton Park.
According to his LinkedIn, Hamze works as an instructor at several Canadian colleges in the area, including the University of Niagara Falls and Georgian College. He does not specify what he teaches.
Hamze could not be reached for comment. The University of Niagara Falls and Georgian College did not respond to requests to comment, and the Toronto Police declined a request for comment.
UNF issued a statement addressing Hamze’s remarks, distancing the university from the instructor’s statements and stating that they have “zero tolerance for discrimination, hate, harassment, or any conduct that threatens the dignity and well-being of others.” They announced that they are “launching an internal investigation” into the matter.
In his speech, Hamze claimed that “British colonizers have planted this cancerous, false Zionist state of Israel … right in the heart of Islam.”
Later — wearing a keffiyeh and reading from his phone into a megaphone emblazoned with the Lebanese flag — the instructor repeated numerous antisemitic conspiracy theories, including the debunked idea that Jews have caused or deserved centuries of persecution.
“The Zionists have never had a country of their own because of their mischief,” Hamze said. “They are the most kicked-out people in the world who are making black magic and horrible things.”
He went on to say that Jewish corruption is “crystal clear in Epstein Island where they have the Jewish leaders from all around the world.” He accused “Zionists” of having “raped, and killed, and ate children at the same time.”
Finally, he unfoundedly blamed the actions of President Donald Trump on “Zionists” who “blackmail” and “control” people.
“That’s why you can see now a guy like Trump who caused this genocide in Gaza kidnaps the presidents of Venezuala, kills the supreme leader of Iran Imam Ali Khamenei, may God sanctify his soul,” he said. “This is because of them, the terrorist Zionists.”
It appears that people became aware of Hamze’s remarks after Casey Babb, an Israel and International Relations scholar, posted a video of him on X.
In a joint statement, Canadian Jewish groups described Hamze’s claims as “antisemitic blood libels that have been used for centuries to justify hatred and violence against Jews.”
The statement says that the intersection where Hamze spoke, Bathurst and Sheppard, has long been a site of “antisemitic harassment, intimidation and provocation, too often under the guise of anti-Zionism,” and called on Toronto’s police department to investigate the incident.
“Allowing this behaviour to go unchecked is to normalize antisemitism as an everyday feature of life in this city,” it stated.
The city’s police have opened an investigation. However, online, some said that Hamze had been speaking at the street corner for months without police intervention.
In Canada, public incitement of hatred is considered a criminal offense. The Canadian criminal code says that “communicating statements in any public place” that “incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace” is a breach of law, resulting in up to two years in prison.
The post This Toronto street corner has been a site of anti-Zionist activism for months. Police just opened a hate crime investigation. appeared first on The Forward.
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West Elm’s Russ & Daughters merch did something their in-house line could never
Figuring out one’s Judaica vibe can be a challenging endeavor for those of us who don’t have tastes in line with the colorful stained glass or embossed silver aesthetics that tend to dominate the category. Newer designers have introduced some minimalist options, but that’s also not really for me.
But for those of us with a tendency toward the whimsical or kitsch, furniture retailer West Elm is coming to the rescue with two new collections, geared toward the High Holidays and Hanukkah.
There’s a Russ & Daughters collaboration of blue-and-white ceramics, featuring serving platters with handpainted designs such as a fish or latkes, trinket trays with pickles and more fish, simple Delft-colored dinnerware and napkins with little cutlery printed in the corners.
And, separately, in an apparent attempt to capitalize on the Jewish market, West Elm also released a set of their own plates, bowls and tea towels printed with colorful “deli favorites” — pickles, brisket, hamentaschen, black-and-white cookies, and the like.
The concepts are pretty similar; both lean into the idea of decorating plates with food objects that may or may not be the food you actually put on them.
I do admittedly already have a large blue-and-white platter with a fish painted on it that I find charmingly eclectic, and just as suitable for serving foods that are not of the oceanic persuasion as it is for foods that are indeed from the briny deep. So I’m not inherently opposed to the concept. But I don’t feel as good about the in-house West Elm Jewish designs, like a bowl with a sort of mushy depiction of matzo balls at the bottom. Imagine eating anything else out of that. Honestly, imagine eating matzo ball soup out of it. It seems disorienting.
Everyone’s tastes vary, and if you want to eat a salad off of a plate with a colorful brisket sandwich painted on it, be my guest. But I think the Russ & Daughters offering is the better of the options. For the most part, the collection stays on the artful side of kitsch largely thanks to the simplicity of the designs and the color scheme. And, more importantly, the internal logic seems actually Jewish. The pieces are useful — perhaps with the exception of the latke platter — for multiple Jewish occasions. The matchbox with a challah on it may feel a bit random at first glance but it does conjure an image of lighting candles on Shabbat, and there are matching candle holders. The art kind of evokes Marc Chagall.
The West Elm deli hits sets on the other hand — which are separate from their collab with the iconic Lower East Side deli — feel as though they’re screaming their Jewishness. The tea towel mixes together hamentaschen and sufganiyot (or possibly a bagel, it’s hard to tell) on the same piece of cloth, despite the fact that these desserts correspond to different holidays. The drawings are cute, but the overall effect is frantic, like someone dumped every Jewish food they could name onto the same page and sent it off to the printers. It’s giving Target Rosh Hashanah decorations — the sort that have a menorah alongside the apples and honey.
A few years ago, Crate and Barrel had Jewish lifestyle influencer Rebecca Lowin curate a Hanukkah display, but it was done using items the store already carried in white, blue and silver; only the menorah was specifically Jewish. Now, a similar home decor store is creating entire lines catering specifically to Jewish holidays and culture. That’s a sign of an increased mainstream embrace of Jewish culture, and that’s a good thing — it wasn’t so long ago that it wasn’t possible to find much public recognition of the existence of the High Holidays, and every attempt featured a hanukkiah with the wrong number of branches or a loaf of challah for Passover. Today, if Jews want twee merchandise — and no judgment — there’s plenty. There are even Hanukkah gnomes, if your taste runs to that.
But there’s still a dearth of decor that feels elegant and thoughtful, instead of try-hard. Decor that feels actually rooted in Jewishness, instead of like a Jewish gloss on something that’s really for another holiday. The Russ and Daughters collaboration is rooted in actual Jewish history. Even if you don’t like a fish motif as much as me, that’s a step in the right direction.
The post West Elm’s Russ & Daughters merch did something their in-house line could never appeared first on The Forward.
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Sephardic and Mizrahi groups accuse New York Magazine of erasing Middle Eastern Jews. The editor-in-chief agreed to a meeting.
As editors of New York Magazine dug in their heels this week, defending the magazine’s viral “Habibi City” package published earlier this month, 14 Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish organizations delivered an open letter on Monday night, accusing the magazine of erasing Middle Eastern Jews from its coverage.
On Tuesday, Editor-in-chief David Haskell invited them to meet in September, saying he wants the magazine’s coverage to reflect the multitude of perspectives in the region.
In addition to asking for a meeting, co-signers of the letter, convened by JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), asked the magazine to acknowledge what they call the package’s exclusionary framing and provide more representative coverage of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews going forward.
The dispute centers on the magazine’s August issue about the city’s burgeoning Southwest Asian and North African cultural scene known as SWANA. The package explores restaurants, cafes, cultural collectives and dance parties, tracing much of their growth to the war in Gaza that followed theHamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Out of that resistance,” the magazine writes, “a cultural ecosystem started to bloom.”
This week, the magazine published a statement standing by its use of the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, adding that “accusations of antisemitic intent were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming scholarly consensus, and that its use would be allowed in our pages.”
The open letter did not address the use of that term. Instead, it addressed the article’s framing.
The package describes membership in SWANA community in political terms.
“To be in SWANA community,” one article says, means “embracing a set of shared beliefs: that Palestinians deserve human rights. That what happened in Gaza in the aftermath of October 7 constitutes a genocide. That social justice and social welfare override capitalist concerns.”
The same article describes the place of Israelis within SWANA culture as “complicated,” in part because of the term’s “political framework.”
It also says SWANA New Yorkers “face xenophobia, Islamophobia and Zionism” in the city — language that drew particular ire from the coalition and online critics.
According to the letter, New York Magazine’s framing turns SWANA from a geographic and cultural identity into an ideological one, excluding many of New York’s Jews from the Middle East and North Africa unless they reject Israel — the country where many of their families found refuge after fleeing persecution and discrimination elsewhere in the region.
“A Mizrahi Jew whose grandparents were born in the region, expelled from their country of origin, and who carries the region in her language, liturgy, and kitchen belongs only upon disavowal of the movement through which her family survived,” the letter reads.
As the letter puts it, for a great majority of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to be represented “as we actually are” means representing them as Zionists.
The letter also faults the package for invoking Oct. 7 repeatedly without acknowledging the atrocities committed that day and erasing the region’s non-Muslim populations.
“When we read ‘Habibi City,’ we immediately saw that this wasn’t something one organization should answer alone,” Sarah Levin, JIMENA’s executive director told the Forward. “The feature made claims about who belongs in contemporary Middle Eastern and North African and ‘SWANA’ communities in NYC, so the response needed to come from the breadth of the communities being written out.”
After she read the package, she began contacting other Sephardic and Mizrahi organizations about writing an open letter. Within four days, all 14 organizations had signed on.
“Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, North African and Sephardic communal organizations almost never act in concert, and they’ve united around one argument,” Levin said.
Signatories include the American Sephardi Federation, the Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
Levin said the groups had little difficulty reaching consensus. “When the argument is, ‘We exist, and we will not be defined out of our own region,’ there isn’t much for our communities to debate.”
What concerned Levin most, she said, was the size of New York Magazine‘s audience and cultural reach. The Pulitzer Prize-winning bi-weekly magazine boasts reaching 1.8 million readers each week.
“When a magazine that shapes American culture tells millions of readers that belonging to the Middle East requires renouncing Zionism, that is not a small thing,” Levin said. “That is why we responded the way we did.”
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