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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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Israeli tourists could soon be required to show 5 years of social media history to enter the US
(JTA) — Israelis seeking to visit the United States could soon be required to submit five years of social media history, according to draft regulations published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this week.
The regulations would apply to tourists from 42 countries, all allies of the United States, that are enrolled in the government’s Visa Waiver Program that allows passport holders to visit for up to 90 days without a visa.
Israel was first designated into the Visa Waiver Program by DHS in September 2023. The same year, Israeli tourism to the United States reached 376,439, followed by 417,077 in 2024, according to Statista.
The proposed regulations come as the Trump administration seeks to tighten borders. In April, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it would scrutinize the social media accounts of people applying to immigrate and international students for “antisemitic activity.” But the regulations mark a shift toward examining the records of people who are trying to visit, not move to, the United States.
In response to a question from a reporter Wednesday about whether the new requirement would cause a “decline in tourism,” President Donald Trump demurred.
“No. We’re doing so well,” Trump said. “We just want people to come over here, and safe. We want safety. We want security. We want to make sure we’re not letting the wrong people come enter our country.”
The new regulations would overhaul the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, an online application that tourists included in the Visa Waiver Program have recently been required to submit before entering the country.
It was not immediately clear how tourists would submit their social media history under the proposed regulations, or even what such a request could constitute in an era when people maintain many social media accounts and post prolifically on them.
The DHS notice began a 60-day period for public comment on the regulations this week. A spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement that the notice was preliminary.
“Nothing has changed on this front for those coming to the United States. This is not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe,” the statement read. “The Department is constantly looking at how we vet those coming into the country, especially after the terrorist attack in Washington DC against our National Guard right before Thanksgiving.”
The Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members by a suspect who is an Afghan national triggered several restrictions on immigration by the Trump administration. The suspect entered the country legally and has not been publicly alleged to have had a social media track record that might have elicited alarm.
The potential regulation comes as Israeli soldiers have faced scrutiny for their posts on social media during the war in Gaza, with some soldiers fleeing countries they have visited that are less friendly than the United States to Israel over the threat of potential war crime inquiries.
The post Israeli tourists could soon be required to show 5 years of social media history to enter the US appeared first on The Forward.
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6 hostages murdered in Gaza lit Hanukkah candles in captivity, newly released footage shows
(JTA) — Two months after they were taken hostage, and eight months before they would be murdered, the Israelis who would later be known as the “Beautiful Six” were herded into a new section of the Hamas tunnel where they had been held.
There, their captors took hours of video of the young adults as they lit a makeshift menorah, sang traditional Hanukkah songs and, after being prompted, offered holiday greetings to the camera.
“Where are the sufganiyot?” asked Eden Yerushalmi.
“We’re waiting for Roladin in the land [of Israel],” joked Hersh Goldberg-Polin, referring to one of the most prominent purveyors of Hanukkah donuts in Israel.
The other hostages — Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lubanov and Carmel Gat — sit with their fellow captives. Sarusi appears visibly distressed as he makes the blessing over the candles, and the cameraman captures wrenching comments as the six young adults sing the song “Maoz Tzur.”
Goldberg-Polin explains that there are six verses in the song, “one for each time they tried to kill us and failed.” Yerushalmi responds, “We need to add another verse.”
In another video, Lubanov is instructed to shave the heads of his fellow male hostages. While shaving Danino, he recalls the movie “The Pianist,” set during the Holocaust, and says he is like a barber in that setting.
“This situation is not that far from the Holocaust,” Danino replies, looking at a mirror that a third person, possibly from Hamas, is holding up.
Some of the footage appeared intended to fuel the kind of hostage videos that Hamas released intermittently during the war, but Hamas never put it out. Instead, the footage was recovered by the IDF about three months ago during a raid on a hospital in Khan Younis and was delivered to the families of the hostages about six weeks ago, according to YNet News. It was released publicly on Thursday.
The video adds to accounts that many of the hostages sought to maintain Jewish practices and traditions while in captivity, though it is the first to suggest that such practices might at times have been facilitated or coerced by their captors.
“Lighting Hanukkah candles in that dark place captures the essence of the Jewish spirit: light prevailing over darkness,” the hostages’ families said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“Hamas filmed these videos as propaganda, but the humanity of the beautiful six shines through this footage. It is stronger than any terrorist organization. These videos bear witness to evil and failure. The entire world must see our loved ones in these moments, their unity, strength, and humanity even in the darkest times. They were taken alive, they survived in captivity, and they should have come home alive,” the statement continues. “Nothing will bring our loved ones back to life. Only bringing the truth to light, only genuine accountability at the national level, can bring justice and healing to all our hearts.”
We will never forgive and we will never forget how our hostages were treated by Hamas in Gaza.
Despite the horrific torture and humiliation, our brave and courageous hostages never lost hope, and even continued to light Hanukkah candles to bring light into a world of darkness. pic.twitter.com/wv3PSnbQZk
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) December 11, 2025
The release of the footage has renewed grief over the murder of the hostages, which closely followed the collapse of ceasefire negotiations in July 2024. Some of the hostages, including Goldberg-Polin, who lost an arm on Oct. 7, had been on the list for release had a deal come together. Since then, Israeli officials have counted the hostages, whose bodies were retrieved soon after they were killed, among those rescued by the Israeli military.
“What heroes,” Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, told Channel 12, according to the Times of Israel. “Six young luminous people who did everything right and they stayed alive and they did their part, and for us to claim we brought them back, in bags, bags of children to their parents, please don’t count Hersh among the people you saved.”
News of their deaths triggered mass protests in Israel opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to reach a deal the month before. In September 2024, Netanyahu issued an apology to the hostages’ families.
The video comes as the body of the last remaining hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili, has yet to be returned to Israel, two months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that required the release of all of the remaining hostages. Twenty living hostages and 27 deceased hostages, most but not all killed on Oct. 7, have since been returned.
The video appeared to be taken months before the group of six were killed in Hamas captivity in Rafah on August 29, 2024, shortly after the collapse of ceasefire negotiations with Hamas that could have led to the release of some of them.
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How Montana teachers use a Hanukkah kit to teach students who’ve never met a Jew
In Montana, students across the state — from Hutterite colonies to Native American reservations — are learning about Hanukkah in school: playing dreidel, lighting candles, and reading a picture book that tells the true story of Billings residents who united against antisemitism.
That’s thanks to the Montana Jewish Project, which is in its third year of distributing 50 “Hanukkah curriculum boxes” to public school teachers around the state, many in rural areas with few to no Jewish students in their classrooms. Teachers who sign up for the box receive it free of charge.
“A teacher at a school with a large Mennonite population went out of her way to email us and say, Thank you so much. This resonated so much with my students,” said Rebecca Stanfel, executive director of the Montana Jewish Project. “It makes a lot of sense, because the lesson plan is really about accepting everyone in your classroom, whatever their faith tradition.”
Montana, home to the most hate groups of any state and a Jewish population of a few thousand, tends to be the subject of alarming headlines: “Neo-Nazis urge armed march to harass Montana Jews” and “Jewish man attacked in Montana by self-proclaimed Nazi on Oct. 7,” most recently.
But the state has also been a national model for how to effectively push back against hate. In 1993 in Billings, neo-Nazis threw a brick through a 6-year-old Jewish boy’s bedroom window, which was displaying a menorah. In response, the Billings Gazette printed a full-page picture of a menorah for readers to cut out and tape to their windows. Thousands posted the menorahs to show solidarity.
So when it came to teaching Montana’s students about Hanukkah, Stanfel knew she wanted to go beyond the Maccabees and include that local story — one that counters common stereotypes about Montana as a white Christian nationalist safe haven. Each Hanukkah box includes a copy of The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate, which recounts the Billings story, along with suggested discussion questions.
One prompt asks students: “What would you have done if you were in Billings at the time? Would you have encouraged your family to display a menorah? Why or why not?”
Heather McCartney-Duty, a fifth grade teacher at an elementary school in the city of Choteau, population 1,700, knows of three Jewish students at her school — and they’re all siblings. That made it all the more important to teach about Hanukkah, she said, both to educate non-Jews and help her Jewish students feel included.
With the help of Montana Jewish Project’s box, she read her students the picture book, taught them to play dreidel, lit candles, decorated the classroom in blue and white, and even displayed a “mensch on the bench.”
“The news stories that hit out of Montana are, Oh, the Unabomber. Oh, the Freemen. What crazy thing has Montana done today?” McCartney-Duty said. “So to have this massive effort towards pushing back against hate and pushing back against bullies, it’s very significant to kids that it happened in Montana.”
Another teacher using the Hanukkah box, Courtney Hamblin, is adapting the lesson for her older students at a high school in Billings. She’s coupling the story with watching the PBS documentary Not in Our Town and reading newspaper archives about the display of solidarity.
That lesson will prepare her students to read Night by Elie Wiesel in the coming months, she said, helping them become more familiar with Jewish references in the book.
To her, the Billings story shows students “that something local can become national,” Hamblin said. “I’m trying to teach them that little acts of kindness can balloon into these big things.”
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