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At event inspired by The Moth, yeshiva graduates drop the mic on their haredi Orthodox upbringings
(New York Jewish Week) — One spoke of using binoculars to watch TV through a neighbor’s window. Another talked about an abusive rabbi. Another said that, as a student, he would draw swastikas when he was upset — but he didn’t know what they looked like, so he wound up repeatedly writing Z’s in his notebooks.
A series of graduates of New York yeshivas gathered Tuesday night to talk about what they described as their often harrowing, sometimes humorous experiences growing up. As children and young adults, they studied in the kinds of haredi Orthodox schools that were at the center of a high-profile investigation by the city’s Department of Education.
The investigation ended late last month after eight years with a report that said 18 of the city’s yeshivas do not sufficiently teach secular studies such as math, English and science.
Tuesday’s event, called Yeshiva Stories, was run by Yaffed — the nonprofit that has taken a leading role in pushing for greater oversight of the yeshivas — and was inspired by The Moth, the popular live storytelling series. Most of Tuesday’s speakers spoke in loosely-connected vignettes, and most were critical of the broader haredi Orthodox world in addition to the yeshivas.
“I gotta be a little honest here — I went to the Footsteps gala dinner,” said one speaker named Tzvi Cohen, referencing an organization that offers assistance to people who choose to leave haredi Orthodox communities. “I drank a lot of wine, and the next day I was told that I agreed to do this. So, much like my secular education growing up, I don’t know if it actually existed.”
On Wednesday morning, just over 12 hours after the event, Yaffed detailed its response to the results of the city’s investigation at a press conference outside the Tweed Courthouse in lower Manhattan, which houses the Department of Education. The group announced that it filed a petition with the department on Wednesday to try to force government officials to “re-look at the schools that were deemed compliant” with state education standards during the investigation.
The investigation found that five schools were considered compliant because they were affiliated with high schools that meet state approval. The schools that the city judged to be failing now need to come up with plans for improvement. It is unclear what repercussions await if they do not.
“I call upon New York City’s education leadership to address the humanitarian crisis — one of many — currently taking place, conclude the investigation into failing Hasidic schools and give my grandchildren and their peers a taste of the American Dream,” said Beatrice Weber, Yaffed’s executive director, on Wednesday.
In all, it was a whirlwind 24 hours for the group whose complaints with the city more than eight years ago opened the investigation.
Tuesday night’s event attracted around 50 people — mostly yeshiva graduates or their friends as well as other Yaffed supporters, such as longtime New York State Assembly member Deborah Glick, who represents part of lower Manhattan — to a small arts space called City Lore in the East Village. The night was meant to bring out the individual stories of those affected by what Yaffed describes as neglectful and at times abusive yeshiva leaders. (Yeshiva administrators and their advocates say the schools turn out successful graduates and offer a quality education that is rooted in the haredi communities’ religious values. Some have accused advocates for secular education of harboring bias against haredi Jews.)
“When you actually hear [peoples’] stories, that’s what you realize, oh, like, this is real,” said Weber, who has performed at Moth events.
Libby Pollack, who has a YouTube series on “Advice and awareness about growing up with religious fundamentalism and coping in the ‘afterlife’ transition,” was one of the speakers. In addition to using the aforementioned binoculars in her Hasidic Williamsburg household, she spoke of trying to hack into nearby radio signals and secretly listening to non-religious music — which she said elders in her community called “jazzy music.”
“If you listen to jazzy music, it would come home to you when you get married,” she said. “When you’re standing under the huppah… and you only want to think holy thoughts, the last thing you want is for jazzy music to come up.”
She also told a story about going on a Birthright trip in her early 20s, after her transition out of the Orthodox community had started. She went out one night with some of the people on the trip and described not knowing how to dress or what the word “club” meant — besides being the word for a weapon meant to hurt people.
“It’s a verb? It’s an activity? So what happens, do people beat each other up?” she said.
Not all the stories were lighthearted. Many spoke of physical or emotional trauma perpetrated by their teachers and Hasidic “royalty,” or prominent members of their communities. Jay Fishman, a 25-year-old software engineer who attended the event and grew up going to a yeshiva until he was 15, said the event featured a good balance of humor and seriousness.
“So many people hear about these stories, but just in the news, right?” Fishman said. “It’s very kind of disassociated. I feel like this was good to humanize people.”
He added, “For me, I grew up with this. I know what it’s like, I know the human part of it. So many other people realize it’s bad, but you can’t really connect it in a way.”
The last storyteller was Ari Goldman, the former New York Times reporter known for his years on the religion beat. He grew up Modern Orthodox, but his parents opted to send him to a haredi Orthodox yeshiva. It was on the 90-minute subway rides each day from home in Jackson Heights, Queens, to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that he learned to love reading newspapers, he said.
Goldman is married to Shira Dicker, who handles public relations for Yaffed and planned the event. He said the event — which Weber hinted could be the first in a series, though plans are still in early stages — struck him as a unique platform on a scale he had not seen before in his reporting on Orthodox Jews in New York.
“Storytelling is a big thing now,” he said, referring to The Moth. “I think it’s been adapted to the Yaffed culture around this.”
He added, “And I love what Beatrice said at the end — you tell your story and it empowers you.”
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Drexel University Professor Stole Signs From Synagogue, Police Say
Illustrative: People pass a cluster of signs outside a pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
A Drexel University professor allegedly participated in a mass theft of items from a synagogue in a suburb outside Philadelphia, a local NBC affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Mariana Chilton, 56, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel, has been accused of stealing pro-Israel signs from the Main Line Reform Temple in Lower Merion Township, traveling there from her neighborhood of residency, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Chilton allegedly drove the getaway car while two other accomplices, Sarah Prickett and Sam Penn — who is from New York — trespassed the synagogue and absconded with the loot.
“We are just taking them because we feel like it is a representative of genocide,” Chilton told law enforcement after being caught in the act, the report stated. She then, after offering to “just put them back,” refused to identify herself and comply with other lawful orders.
Video evidence provided by a local resident placed Chilton and her accomplices at the scene of the crime, and a Main Line Reform Temple official identified the signs recovered from her car as the temple’s property. That was enough for law enforcement to charge her with several offenses, including conspiracy and theft. She is also charged with driving without a license and not registering her vehicle.
Drexel University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Experts have told The Algemeiner in the past academic year that while the conduct of anti-Zionist students should be reported on, the role of faculty in fostering and engaging in antisemitic acts should be closely scrutinized. Last semester, anti-Zionist faculty attached themselves to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations, sometimes breaking the law by preventing officers from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who violated school rules.
Chilton’s case is unlike any other reported in the past year, however. While dozens of professors have been accused of abusing their Jewish students and encouraging their classmates to bully and shame them, none are alleged to have resorted to stealing from a Jewish house of worship to make their point.
Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April.
Since the 1960s, he explained, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.
“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Cites Biden Clash With Netanyahu Over Iran as Proof of President’s Mental Fitness
US President Joe Biden hosts the 2023 Teacher of the Year event at the White House in Washington, US, April 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Amid growing concerns over US President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, key White House officials are suggesting his foreign policy discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including a clash over how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented military attack on the Israeli homeland earlier this year, serve as evidence that he is still capable of leading from the Oval Office.
Biden and Netanyahu engaged in a heated back-and-forth in the immediate aftermath of Iran launching a massive missile and drone salvo at Israel in April, according to a new report by the New York Times. The US and other allies helped Israel shoot down nearly every drone and missile. The attack caused only one injury.
However, the Times revealed that while Netanyahu initially wanted to respond to Iran in a forceful way, Biden threatened to withhold US support in the event of a major Israeli retaliatory strike, arguing it would risk sparking a regional conflict in the Middle East.
“Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East,” the Times reported. “‘Let me be crystal clear,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.’”
“Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks,” the report continued. “‘You do this,’ Mr. Biden said forcefully, ‘and I’m out.’ Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.”
Israel’s military response was small and appeared aimed at minimizing the risk of escalation.
The Times report, headlined “Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome,” came on the heels of Biden delivering a widely-panned presidential debate performance last Thursday against former US President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance, which oftentimes appeared incoherent and muddled, set off alarm bells in Democratic circles, sending the president’s allies scrambling to extinguish concerns over his age and mental acuity.
While highlighting rising concerns, the news story also noted instances in which, according to aides, Biden appeared coherent and capable, citing the exchange with Netanyahu and his handling of the Iranian missile attack more broadly as one such example.
However, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Times that they are unsure whether Biden could hold his own against adversarial foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.
On Wednesday, the White House directly attributed quotes to Netanyahu in which the Israeli premier reportedly said he found Biden “very clear and very focused” during his visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. According to a White House spokesperson, Netanyahu also reportedly cited the “more than a dozen phone conversations, extended conversations with President Biden” as evidence of the commander-in-chief’s vitality.
“Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.”
During its first direct attack on Israeli territory, Iran in April launched roughly 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Leading up to the attack, Iranian officials had promised revenge for an airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria that they attributed to Israel. The strike killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a widely designated terrorist organization, including two senior commanders. One of the commanders allegedly helped plan the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the incident.
“After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. ‘Take the win,’” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response that effectively ended the hostilities,” the article added.
Days later, Israel responded to the Iranian aggression by launching a modest missile attack on an airbase near Isfahan. The Jewish state sought to show that it could effectively target key strategic locations in Iran while not escalating the conflict any further. Netanyahu insisted on launching a retaliatory attack against Iran, arguing that ignoring the Iranian strikes would incentivize more attacks against the Jewish state.
IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran is waiting for “the opportunity” to launch a new round of strikes against Israel, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, potentially boosting Netanyahu’s argument that a smaller response would invite further attacks.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
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