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Brooklyn Hebrew charter school welcomes children fleeing Ukraine
(New York Jewish Week) — When the fire alarm went off at Hebrew Language Academy in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, most of the students knew the routine: They lined up behind their teacher and got ready to calmly leave the building. They were familiar with the mandatory fire drills, a regular part of American school life.
But for some of the children — recent arrivals from Ukraine — the drill was a frightening experience. They crouched on the floor and put their hands over their heads. “We had students that thought it was an alarm or an explosion and they took cover as we were leaving the building,” said Daniella Steinberg, the head of the school.
The Hebrew Language Academy, one of three Hebrew charter schools in New York, accepted more than 60 Ukrainian students at the start of the 2022-2023 school year. The refugee children are adjusting to not one but two new languages — English and Hebrew — and to a whole new way of life, far from the devastating war that has engulfed their home country.
The initiative was started at the end of the last school year by Valerie Khaytina, chief external officer at Hebrew Public, the national movement of Hebrew charter schools, who is herself a Ukrainian with ties to a family fleeing the war-torn country. She was looking for a way to help her acquaintances and others who had to flee Ukraine since the start of the war, so she promoted the school on social media groups geared towards refugees.
Lesya Rybchynsky and her twins, Stefania and Mykola, were the first Ukrainians to enroll at the school. When, halfway through the semester, the family moved to Forest Hills, Queens, and then to Ukrainian Village — an immigrant enclave near Manhattan’s Washington Square Park — they insisted on staying at the school. “No Mommy, we don’t want to leave school,” Rybchynsky remembered them telling her.
Rybchynsky shared her positive experience on social media. “This school is the best,” she said. “They helped my children with everything. With food, clothing, computers.” Her posts on social media brought in a wave of other Ukrainian families that had just come to New York and were looking for a school.
“Even today, we had a new student register,” Steinberg said when she spoke to the New York Jewish Week in October. “As soon as they come, we take them.”
Since then, the school has enrolled several new families and is still accepting students.
To make sure they were prepared for the new students and their needs, the school had to make some structural changes: Nina Henig, special education teacher and a native Russian speaker, was promoted to a new role as the director of the multilingual learners department. She was thrilled to take the job.
Most of the Ukrainian children did not come to the school speaking English. However, many of them speak multiple languages, and have some knowledge of the English alphabet — “sometimes more than you would expect,” said Michael Moore, English teacher and founder of the multilingual learners department.
Henig and Moore pull the students out of their regular classes at least once a day to work with them in small groups. “A lot of it is just survival English, initially,” said Moore. “You’d have to be there. It involves a lot of body language.”
The American students at the school, from kindergarteners to eighth-graders, have been a big help in supporting their Ukrainian classmates. “There’s been no sort of culture shock on either side,” said Moore.
Two older students even volunteered to help the new children with their classwork during lunch. “We’re really, really proud of our kids,” said Steinberg. She recalls seeing the students trying to communicate with each other through Google Translate while waiting for the bus. “It’s been a really beautiful thing to watch.”
But English is not the only new language the Ukrainian students are learning: The charter school also teaches modern Hebrew. Opened in 2009, the Brooklyn school was the first established by the Hebrew Charter School Center (now known as Hebrew Public), a network founded by hedge funder Michael Steinhardt and others (in an effort that predated accusations that Steinhardt propositioned and made sexually inappropriate remarks to women in his role as a philanthropist).
Most of the Ukrainian children did not come to the Hebrew Language Academy speaking English, but many of them speak multiple languages and have some knowledge of the English alphabet. (Annika Grosser)
As schools that are publicly funded but privately managed, the Hebrew charters do not provide religious instruction but teach Hebrew language and also offer instruction about Israeli history and culture. The school was diverse even before the influx of Ukrainian children: In 2021, 70% of its 600 students were Black, 20 percent were white and 8 percent were Hispanic and other.
“It kind of gives everybody an opportunity to jump in together,” said Steinberg. “Definitely levels the playing field a little for many.”
In many ways, Henig has been the main point of contact for the Ukrainian students and their families. When the school bell rings, the Ukrainian students run up to her and tell her with excited voices about their day in Ukrainian or Russian (about 68% of Ukrainians speak Ukrainian as a first language, and about 30% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language) — with one exception: a little boy who is scared of the school bus and usually gets nervous and quiet at the end of the school day. He and his sister have been living in a shelter in the Bronx and have had to commute three hours every day to get to the school. Their mother does not feel comfortable sharing their names.
“They are not living in good conditions,” said Henig. The family has since moved in with friends because they were not able to stay at the shelter any longer.
Henig has been trying to assist wherever possible and started collecting clothing donations for them. At the end of the school day, she picks the boy up at his classroom, takes him by the hand and leads him downstairs. In the hall leading to the buses, he stands in his oversized shirt that matches the dark circles under his eyes and waits for his sister to get out of class. But when the other Ukrainian students show up, his face lights up.
Helping the students adjust to their new environment is not an easy process. “I think the greatest challenge is the trauma that they have experienced,” said Steinberg.
Such trauma can be triggered in everyday situations, like a mandatory fire drill. The teachers had a faculty meeting with an expert on post-traumatic stress and tried to prepare the Ukrainian students by explaining the drill to them beforehand, but some of them still went down to the floor and put their hands over their heads.
“It kind of breaks our hearts,” said Steinberg. “Things that we can’t fix overnight and things that we feel a little bit powerless over and sad for them.” Professional expertise was needed. The school decided to hire a social worker from Ukraine to provide at-risk counseling and other emotional support to the Ukrainian children, three days a week.
With all the stress and trauma that the children have been through over the last months, it is a rewarding experience to see them opening up to their new environment. “I was worried that they wouldn’t be happy. But they are and they are excited to come to school,” said Steinberg. “It’s just the kids starting to feel comfortable, starting to speak English, starting to talk to us, where at the beginning they were so afraid. Those are the moments we’re trying to hold on to.”
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Police Chief in UK Retires After Facing Scrutiny for Banning Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv Fans From Soccer Match
WMP Chief Constable Craig Guildford speaking before the Home Affairs Committee on Jan. 6, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
West Midlands Police (WMP) Chief Constable Craig Guildford retired on Friday effective immediately after increasing public scrutiny and revelations over his use of “exaggerated or simply untrue” intelligence to justify a ban prohibiting Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans from attending a match late last year.
Simon Foster, the police and crime commissioner of WMP, announced Guildford’s retirement in a formal statement delivered outside Birmingham’s Lloyd House, which is the headquarters of the West Midlands police force. Guildford will collect his full pension after three decades of service. Foster thanked Guildford for his service and said he welcomes the chief constable’s decision to retire. He added that Guildford’s stepping down is in the “best interest” of the police force and the local community.
Guildford’s retirement follows the decision of the Birmingham City Council Safety Advisory Group, based on the recommendation of West Midlands Police, to ban traveling Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans from attending the Europa League soccer match between Aston Villa and the Israeli team on Nov. 6, 2025, at Villa Park in Birmingham due to “public safety concerns.”
The announcement also comes just two days after British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the British Parliament that she has lost confidence in Guildford. The minister said she came to the conclusion after receiving a “damning” and “devastating” report by Sir Andy Cooke, his Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, on Wednesday that revealed several failings by the WMP force in relation to its recommendation to ban Maccabi soccer fans, including “misleading” public statements and “misinformation” promoted by the police.
Foster acknowledged on Thursday that the police forced faced “understandable intense and significant oversight and scrutiny.”
“The findings of the chief inspector were damning. They set out a catalogue of failings that have harmed trust in West Midlands Police,” Mahmood said in a statement following Thursday’s announcement. “By stepping down, Craig Guildford has done the right thing today … Today marks a crucial first step to rebuilding trust and confidence in the force amongst all the communities they serve.”
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EndJewHatred Hosts NYC Rally in Support of Iranian Protesters, Other Jewish Groups Express Solidarity
Protesters gathered outside the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York City on Jan. 15, 2026. Photo: #EndJewHatred
#EndJewHatred, the international grassroots civil rights movement, hosted a rally outside the office of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York City on Thursday night to express solidarity with Iranians amid the crackdown on anti-government protesters in the Islamic Republic.
Demonstrators from various faiths held American, Iranian, and Israeli flags, while some others held signs that read “Free Iran” and “Jews for a Free Iran.” Rallygoers also chanted in English “Free Iran” and in Farsi, “This is our last fight, Pahlavi will return,” referring to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran. Pahlavi is in exile in the US, but many Iranians support his return to become the leader of Iran. The exact level of support for Pahlavi is difficult to gauge.
Protesters on Thursday also chanted in Farsi “Long Live Shah. Welcome Reza Pahlavi,” as well as “Death to the dictator,” and “Khameni is a murderer,” in reference to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The rally included a performance by Iranian Jewish Ghazal Mizrahi and speeches by several faith leaders, including Pakistani-American Muslim women’’ rights activist Anila Ali. Michelle Ahdoot, the director of programming and strategy at #EndJewHatred, is a first generation Iranian-American whose parents, husband, and in-laws were all born in Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution and forced to flee the country.
“It was a flourishing democracy pre-1979,” Ahdoot said of Iran. “What is it now is not PL … We are here tonight, an interfaith showing, people from all different backgrounds, all of us here to restore democracy. All of us united with the same message: The ideology that is there [in Iran] kills, and we won’t stand for it anymore.”
“To speak up is our responsibility. It is time to raise our voices and stand with the people of this world. To stand with humanity. Enough is enough. Down with the Islamic regime,” said Mizrahi in a speech during the rally. “Bring back the beautiful Iran. The country of color, of lively spices, of rich cultural music. It’s time to bring back our country.”
The protests that erupted in Iran on Dec. 28 initially focused on economic issues – including inflation, unemployment, and low wages — but quickly morphed into demonstrations against the country’s Islamist, authoritarian regime, political corruption, and lack of freedom and human rights in the country. Two sources, including one inside Iran, told CBS News on Tuesday that at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people have been killed by authorities in Iran during their crackdown to quell nearly three weeks of protests.
Several Jewish groups around the world have voiced support for the Iranian people amid the anti-regime protests. The American Jewish Committee urged “all people of conscience” to stand in solidarity with Iranians and called on the Iranian regime to be held accountable for its violence against protesters.
“Millions of Iranians are courageously demanding a better life, basic dignity, and a more peaceful future. These brave individuals are risking everything to confront a radical Islamist regime that has brought repression, suffering, and terror to its own people, the region, and across the globe,” the AJC said. “The international community has a moral responsibility to act in solidarity with the Iranian people and to advance a safer region and a more peaceful Middle East.”
“My thoughts are with the people of Iran who are protesting a brutal and repressive regime,” said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “May all those who have taken to the streets remain safe,”
Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) CEO Sacha Roytman said the world “must not look away this time” at the Iranian government’s “brutal suppression of its own people.”
“What we are witnessing is not just an internal political crisis, it is a human rights catastrophe of a global magnitude,” he added, in a released statement. “We stand with the Iranian people fighting for their freedom … It menaces anyone who believes in human liberty, dignity, and the right to live without fear … We look forward to a future where the people of Iran enjoy the freedom that is their right and they so richly deserve. May it come soon.”
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Baruch College Receives $75K Donation for Antisemitism Research
Protesters gathered at CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez’s office under the mantra ‘End Jew Hatred’ to protest growing antisemitism within CUNY and their campuses on Sept. 12, 2023. Photo by Meir Chaimowitz/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect.
The Antisemitism Studies Laboratory at Baruch College, a new initiative by the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center to study the rise of “contemporary antisemitism,” has received a $75,000 gift from the AddressHate nonprofit organization, the school announced on Thursday.
Founded in April amid a global surge in antisemitic incidents not seen since World War II, the Antisemitism Studies Lab will study, among other things, how antisemitism is fostered on social media. It has raised nearly $500,000 to date, a figure which Baruch College says is indicative of strong support for its mission.
“The environment for Jewish students and communities — in New York and around the world — has changed dramatically in the digital age,” AddressHate founder Joshua Laterman said on Thursday in a statement. “Baruch College has been a leader in taking this reality seriously, not only by studying antisemitism as a historical and social phenomenon, but by examining its dynamic in this fast evolving era of new media.”
He added, “Our investment in the Antisemitism Studies Lab and the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center is part of our effort to break the code of hate before it breaks us.”
Baruch College is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system.
CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez thanked Laterman, saying, “This gift will help our faculty and students analyze the dynamics and effects of digital hate with rigor, and, equally important, translate that scholarship into practical ways to strengthen campus safety, intellectual discourse, and cross community understanding. That’s what an education at Baruch College is all about.”
Founded in 1919, Baruch College in many ways stands as a tribute to the success of Jewish assimilation in America. Its namesake, Bernard Baruch served as an adviser to US President Woodrow Wilson and led the War Industries Board during World War I. Baruch was also a close friend of Winston Churchill, who faced down Hitler alone while waiting for US assistance to stop the Nazi leader’s aggression in the lead up to and early years of World War II.
The CUNY system is the alma mater of many other Jews whose scientific and cultural achievements helped create the “American Century.” That list includes vaccine developer Jonas Salk (City College), comedian and actor Jerry Seinfeld (Queens College), and Irving Kristol (City College) — whose political commentary played a key role in shaping the US conservative movement, in part by excluding antisemitic elements of the political right.
However, in recent years CUNY has been a key player in the campus antisemitism crisis.
In 2025, a professor told The Algemeiner it contains elements that are “virtually Judenrein,” and in 2022, Jewish students said they were threatened with strangulation and pressured to say that Jews are racially white people who cannot, and have not, experienced oppression.
“I witnessed a Jewish student get told by the professor in front of our whole class to get her whiteness in check,” a Jewish student and witness to the events told The Algemeiner, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation. “The professor basically said, you can’t be a part of this kind of conversation because you’re white and you don’t understand oppression.”
Last year, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which represents over 30,000 CUNY staff and faculty, passed a resolution which falsely accused Israel of war crimes and other affronts to humanity, including “genocide” and “apartheid,” and called for the union to divest its pension plan of holdings linked to “Israeli companies and Israeli government bonds no later than the end of January 2025.”
That was not the first controversial resolution passed by the CUNY faculty union. In 2021, during a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas, it voted to approve a defaming statement which accused Israel of “ongoing settler colonial violence” and demanded the university “divest from all companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.” Doing so set off a cascade of events, including a mass resignation of faculty from the union, the founding of new campus Jewish civil rights groups, and a major — ultimately unsuccessful — lawsuit which aimed to abolish compulsory public sector union membership.
In November, a City College graduate student disrupted an interfaith event by exploding into a prolonged rant in which he called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
“I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” the student, Abdullah Mady, who is also purported to be a local imam, bellowed before challenging the religious bonafides of Muslim students in the audience. “If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
Mady uttered other pronouncements drawn from the jihadist tradition of radical Islam.
“I’m talking about the elite, the filthy rich, the ones that continue to steal from people as we speak today. Those are the ones that deserve their tips to be cut off,” Mady said. “Sharia … stands against the oppressor. When sharia is implemented, pornography — gone. Alcohol industry — gone. Gambling system — gone. Interest is gone, which is what they use to enslave you.”
Widely criticized for not appearing to combat antisemitism before it became a system wide conflagration, Rodriguez told the US Congress in June that “we are committed to constant vigilance against antisemitism.” He also announced a robust policy agenda which includes a climate survey, an enhanced system for reporting hate crimes, and new training programs on antisemitism prevention and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.