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Can a Tree of Life memorial ‘end antisemitism in our lifetime’? Its new CEO hopes so.
(JTA) – The foundation overseeing the planned memorial for the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh has selected its first director, and her aims are nothing less than the total end of antisemitism.
Carole Zawatsky, a longtime veteran in Jewish nonprofit leadership, was announced as the first new Tree of Life CEO Tuesday. Her appointment came as the nonprofit overseeing the planned memorial revealed its grand plans for what its leadership hopes the space will become in the aftermath of the 2018 shooting that left 11 people dead.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in our lifetime, we could eradicate antisemitism?” Zawatsky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I think if we don’t work toward ending antisemitism in our lifetime, and we turn away from the rise of antisemitism, we stand no chance of achieving that goal.”
There are dozens of Holocaust museums and other American institutions that already work toward eradicating antisemitism; Zawatsky herself worked at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., when it first opened, creating public education programs that toured the country. But, she says, “for the most part, we were talking about things that were in the past and, most significantly, that didn’t happen on American soil.”
To that end, Zawatsky said, the reinvisioned Tree of Life can play a central role: as a place-based museum and memorial of the shooting, that situates the horrific events of that day in a larger continuum of American antisemitism, gun violence, extremism and hate speech. The emotional pull of the location itself, she hopes, will go a long way toward educating visitors: “There is no other institution in American Jewish life built on the site where history actually happened. In and of itself, that’s incredibly powerful.”
Zawatsky’s other roles with Jewish institutions have included nine years as CEO of the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C., as well as stints with the JCC of San Francisco; the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Cleveland; the Jewish Museum in New York; and, for much of the past year, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
She is new to Pittsburgh, but notes that antisemitic attacks have a way of bringing geographically disparate Jewish communities together: “When I was the CEO of the Edlavitch DC JCC and JCCs were getting bomb threats, I never thought, ‘That’s not me, that was Delaware, that was New Jersey.’ That’s all of us. I think as a Jew in America, this is our history because it’s everyone’s history.”
Ending antisemitism is a central aim of the pitch behind Remember Rebuild Renew, the fundraising campaign for the synagogue redesign and antisemitism museum. Tree of Life has secured more than $6 million from the state of Pennsylvania for the project, and recently hired a team of lobbyists to seek out federal funding opportunities as well. Zawatsky declined to share further budget details but said many private funders had expressed interest; she said she would soon be hiring staff.
The synagogue hired world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to design the new complex, which will function as a combined memorial, museum and house of worship. In previous statements the organization had pushed to begin construction in 2023, with the facility opening the following year, but Zawatsky said solid dates for the project are “premature.”
The new organization will also continue to serve as an active congregation for Tree of Life synagogue members, including survivors of the attack, meaning that the congregation’s spiritual and lay leaders are also part of the conversation as it reinvents itself as a memorial. This excites Zawatsky, who believes the combined space “does truly what the notion of a space of learning, a beit midrash, does.” The building has not reopened since the shooting.
Asked whether she was concerned the new project would attract unwanted attention from “dark tourists” or extremists, Zawatsky said the Tree of Life team is “working with security experts.”
Even beyond its lofty educational goals, there are other challenges ahead for Tree of Life. The shooter is scheduled to go on trial in April, a period that Zawatsky acknowledges will be “very painful, very difficult, and the role of the Tree of Life and all of us involved in it is to help to, in any way we can, ease the pain of that experience.”
Whether ending antisemitism is an achievable goal, the potency of Tree of Life as a symbol of its dangers will continue, and its new leadership hopes to make the landmark an educational opportunity.
“One of the most powerful ways to deliver a message to tell a story is through an object,” Zawatsky said. “There is no more powerful object in the United States of America than the Tree of Life.”
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The post Can a Tree of Life memorial ‘end antisemitism in our lifetime’? Its new CEO hopes so. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump said Congress “is becoming antisemitic” and warned about what he said was the fading influence of the “Jewish lobby” and “Israeli lobby” in an address to his Jewish supporters at a White House celebration marking the third night of Hanukkah.
During his remarks, the president also honored the victims of the recent Hanukkah terrorist attack in Australia and joked with his largest Jewish benefactor about her bankrolling a third presidential run prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
“My father would tell me, the most powerful lobby that there is in this country is the Jewish lobby. It is the Israeli lobby,” Trump mused. “It is not that way anymore. You have a lot of people in your way. They don’t want to help Israel.”
Trump celebrated his own Israel policies, including a recent ceasefire agreement brokered with Hamas that returned Israeli hostages from Gaza but has not ended violence in the region. He has vowed to move the ceasefire into its second phase, accounting for Gaza’s postwar governance, in early 2026.
He also warned the room, “You have a Congress in particular which is becoming antisemitic.” He singled out “AOC plus three” — a reference to the progressive House “Squad” led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom Trump says “hates Jewish people.”
Trump also blamed universities for inculcating anti-Israel sentiment, and predicted that Harvard, with which his administration has been embroiled in lengthy settlement talks over antisemitism-related fines, “will pay a lot of money.”
Trump’s audience included Jewish Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Holocaust survivors, and conservative pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson. He brought Adelson to the podium with him, calling her his “number one” financial supporter.
Adelson, in turn, implied that she and pro-Israel legal scholar Alan Dershowitz believed there would be a way to keep Trump in power beyond his two-term limit.
“I met Alan Dershovitz, and he said, ‘The legal thing, about four more years,’ and I said, ‘Alan, I agree with you.’ So, we can do it. Think about it,” Adelson told a smiling Trump as attendees chanted, “Four more years!”
“She said, ‘Think about it, I’ll give you another $250 million,’” Trump quipped.
Early in his remarks, Trump turned to the Bondi Beach massacre at a Chabad-hosted menorah lighting. “Let me take a moment to send the love and prayers to the entire nation, to the people, of Australia and especially all those affected by the horrific and antisemitic terrorist attack — and that is exactly what it is, antisemitic — that took place on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney,” he said. “What a terrible thing. We don’t learn.”
He also reflected on the meaning of the holiday.
“Against overwhelming odds, a small band of Jewish fighters rose up to defend the Jewish people’s right to worship freely,” Trump said. “The miracle of Hanukkah has reminded us of God’s love for the Jewish people, as well as their enduring resilience and faith in the face of centuries of persecution, centuries. And it continues.”
Absent from the Hanukkah party was the White House’s own, first menorah, added to its collection in 2022 under President Biden.
The post At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Australia’s Yiddish community is thriving, not reviving
As a professional translator of Yiddish literature, I was surprised by the characterization of the Australian Jewish community’s connection to the Yiddish language in the recent Forward piece “Australia’s Jewish community is defined by Holocaust survivors, Yiddishkeit and immigrants.”
Australia’s Jewish community has indeed been shaped by the Yiddish language. This is why, when I was a Yiddish Book Center translation fellow, I used the small travel stipend that came with the fellowship to visit Melbourne, the center of Australian Yiddishkayt.
What I was surprised by in the Forward‘s article, (which cites a Vice article from 2019 as its source) was the characterization of Yiddishkayt in Australia as a “revival,” with “young people who view it as a ‘language of protest’ leading the charge.”
What is remarkable about the Melbourne Jewish community’s connection to the Yiddish language is not that it has been revived, but rather that it has been sustained, for over a hundred years, thanks in large part to the role the Jewish Labor Bund has played in shaping the Jewish community of Melbourne. The Kadimah Jewish Cultural Center and Yiddish Library has a name that literally means “forward” in Yiddish and Hebrew. They have been leading the charge for 110 years. The particular young people mentioned in the Forward‘s article are new arrivals.
One might think, reading this piece, that teaching Yiddish as a subject at Sholem Aleichem College was a recent development, rather than the central reason for the founding of the school over 40 years ago, with earlier Bundist-modeled Yiddish-language Sunday schools preceding it.
In addition to Sholem Aleichem college, there is also the SKIF youth group, which Melbournian Bundist families have been sending their children to since 1950. When I visited Melbourne in 2019, I attended SKIF’s annual Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Commemoration, which featured children and teenagers reciting poetry and texts from the Warsaw Ghetto in the original Yiddish, a sharp contrast to the recent Yiddish learners profiled in the Vice article the Forward piece linked to, one of whom had only recently learned that bagel was a Yiddish word.
This is not to shame newer learners of Yiddish. We all have to start somewhere. I welcome everyone, Jewish and not, who decides to learn, but Yiddish is not only a language of protest. It is first and foremost a language of life, one that I hope will continue to be sustained in Australia following this horrific attack.
The post Australia’s Yiddish community is thriving, not reviving appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Must Increase Its Advocacy — and Jews Must Continue Speaking Up
Trucks carrying aid move, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri
When will Israel answer the decades-long smear campaign against it? How can a nation known for breakthroughs in medicine, science, and agriculture — and home to the most ethical military and the Middle East’s only democracy — struggle with self-advocacy?
As a Soviet Jew raised in Moscow, I saw Israel as the guardian of my identity. After millennia of persecution and the Holocaust, Israel became a beacon of freedom and safety for the Jewish people. I excused Israel’s public-relations failures as the cost of survival. Surrounded by hostility and judged by the harshest standards, Israel focused on defending land, people, and principles — not narratives. Key conflicts shaped this posture — from 1948, 1967, and 1973, to the Intifadas, wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre.
The deepest wound is internal: too many Jews refuse to stand together against evil. Unity and principled advocacy are imperative. After three decades in New York, I’m devastated by Zohran Mamdani’s victory; he is a Social Democrat, an anti-Zionist, and an antisemite. Yet 33% of New York’s Jewish community voted for him. I cannot comprehend voting for a mayor who is an antisemite.
Since October 7, Israel has failed to communicate why it had to wage war on Hamas and prevent Hamas’ plan to destroy Israel. The opposing side advanced a narrative, amplified by the media and anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda — casting Palestinians as victims of “Israeli colonialism” and branding Israel’s war as a genocide.
Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took 251 hostages — and vowed to repeat the massacre again and again. Israel’s goals: return the hostages and eradicate Hamas to prevent future attacks. Yet the IDF and Netanyahu are cast as murderers, and a campaign to eliminate a terrorist organization is labeled as genocide.
Israel’s story is factual and moral. Israel’s war is not genocide; it targets Hamas terrorists, not Gazans. This is legitimate self-defense under international law. The IDF’s morality is rooted in courage, justice, and protection of the weak; Hamas attacks civilians and uses civilians as human shields, while the IDF takes extensive precautions to protect civilians. Hamas embeds its terrorists among civilians, seeking their deaths to feed a media campaign. The casualty story is distorted: the IDF estimates that two civilians are killed per Hamas terrorist — among the lowest ratios in recent warfare. Civilian deaths, tragic in any war, do not constitute genocide. If Israel sought genocide, the toll would be vastly higher.
The world must know that Hamas obstructs aid — attacking workers, firing on distribution sites, and blocking aid — while the IDF strains to deliver it. These tactics sow chaos and spawn false reports blaming the IDF for deaths and famine, even as Hamas hoards fuel and medical supplies.
Israel cites extensive aid deliveries, daily pauses, secure corridors, and controlled entry to challenge famine assessments. This data gets scant media coverage. Israel hasn’t failed deliberately; it neglected to adjust to the change in political choreography.
Israel must remind its people of their history, and clarify that it fights to defends all Jews, not only Israelis. It should use the media to change the narrative about the Middle East, ground claims in data, and pair them with images of Israeli victims from October 7.
An antisemitic mob gathered outside a Manhattan synagogue, chanting “Death to the IDF,” “Death to Israel,” and “We need to make them scared,” during a Nefesh B’Nefesh event. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani issued a perfunctory note “discouraging the language,” then effectively blamed the synagogue, claiming that houses of worship must be free from intimidation and should not promote activities that “violate international law.”
First of all, promoting the rights of Jews to live in Israel does not violate international law (unless you believe Israel shouldn’t exist, which Mamdani does). Second, what about the rights and freedom of the congregants? Mamdani’s posture is as hollow as Putin’s desire for peace. Emboldened by elected antisemitic leadership, the mobs blur protest, hate, and violence.
Yet fault also lies with us Jews: freedom is our faith’s core, and with that, comes responsibility. Instead of urging Israel to communicate the facts, too many Jews stayed passive — or boosted Zohran Mamdani, who believes Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the massacres.
“Am Yisrael Chai!” is a Jewish cry of an uncompromising will to live — “The People of Israel live.” Rabbi Stephen S. Wise proclaimed it in 1933 in defiance of Hitler; survivors heard it after Bergen-Belsen’s liberation; Shlomo Carlebach made it the anthem of the Soviet Jewry movement. Across the years, the cry affirms Jewish resilience and frames a narrative: “The People of Israel live.” Our story starts and ends with this cry. In between, lie the facts — and without facts, history turns to fiction and democracies become dictatorships.
Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir, Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.