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‘Club 2600’ is Brooklyn’s hottest party — for Holocaust survivors
(New York Jewish Week) — The music is blasting at a banquet hall in Midwood, Brooklyn — everything from “Hava Nagila” to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Pink, purple and turquoise balloons float above the large tables that each fit a dozen guests.
It’s just past noon on Tuesday, and waiters weave through the room to dole out lunch: golden loaves of challah and flaky knishes, steaming soup, a colorful array of pickled vegetables and roast chicken. Several guests are up and dancing; a few couples sway together in the center of the room, while a group of buoyant women make their way to the front, holding hands as they swing together to the music. Dozens of other partygoers are deep in conversation with each other while some sit by themselves, listening to the music.
The gathering is not in celebration of a bar mitzvah, a wedding or a just-born baby. Rather, the party is in honor of everyone in the room: This is a gathering for Holocaust survivors who live in Brooklyn. Nearly everyone here, almost 200 people in total, is a survivor. The youngest of the bunch in their late 70s, the oldest over 100.
“Everybody says hello to me — that’s what I love about it,” a survivor named Clara told the New York Jewish Week, adding that, every time she hears the voice of a social worker calling to invite her to the monthly party, “I can feel goosebumps.” She doesn’t stick around to answer any more questions — the music is on and she’s off to dance again.
Guests wear their favorite clothes and jewelry and often get their hair and makeup done for the party. (Julia Gergely)
Called “Club 2600” — homage to the party’s previous location at a senior center on 2600 Ocean Avenue — this festive gathering, which began nearly 20 years ago. is thrown every month by the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, a social services organization and community center in Southern Brooklyn. Since 2018, the party has taken place at Merkaz HaSimcha, a kosher banquet hall.
“I’m very happy when they have these meetings and I always try to come,” said Ruth Mermelstein, a 95-year-old survivor who was liberated from Auschwitz when she was 16 and who has now lived in Flatbush for more than 70 years. “I enjoy meeting a lot of people here.”
Ruth Mermelstein pulls up her sleeve to reveal the tattoo numbered on her body during her time in Auschwitz. On her wrist, she wears a watch that holds a picture of her and her husband, Ernest, who passed away 15 years ago. (Julia Gergely)
In addition to the guests of honor, about a dozen of JCCGCI’s social workers, three of whom speak Russian like many of the survivors, drift around the room. They chat and kibbitz with the survivors, as well as check in with them about any assistance they may need in their lives, from making doctor’s appointments to help with household repairs to aiding holiday preparations.
“If you listen in a little bit, they’ll be arguing about who sits next to who and who gets served first — there’s a certain level of reverting back to high school drama,” said Aliza Kelman, the director of client services for Holocaust survivors at the JCCGCI, who was the very first social worker for the program in 2012. “But they are so sweet, every one of them.”
“They have built so much — their jobs, their families, their legacy,” she added. “Every one of them has such a story to share. Everyone is a fascinating individual.”
Social outlets like this are just one of the many services that JCCGCI, one of the largest social services agencies for Holocaust survivors in the city, provides for Brooklyn’s survivor population. They do so with a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (aka the Claims Conference) — which last year was $57 million, according to Hudi Falik, the director of Holocaust survivor support systems programs and services. The JCCGCI is a vital resource in Brooklyn, where more than 70% of New York’s 14,700 Holocaust survivors currently live, according to a demographic report released this week from the Claims Conference.
By far the organization’s biggest budget line is for home care assistance, Falik said; this includes evaluating a client’s independence and needs and staffing full or part-time caretakers. They also provide transportation, hot meal delivery and Medicaid advocacy.
Even then, the organization would like to be able to do more — despite the dwindling population of Holocaust survivors, JCCGI receives some five to 10 client referrals weekly, said Kelman, with a waitlist of around 275 people that last year took 11 months to clear. To be able to provide everyone with the complete care they require would cost another $10 million, she added.
“Some other organizations triage the waitlist based on their age. I can tell you — if you look around this room, you won’t know how old anyone is,” Kelman said. “We have one man who still goes to work at the OBGYN department at Maimonides Hospital. You would never know he is over 100. Then we have a 79-year-old who has no other family and a disabled child that they’re responsible for. There’s no right answer.”
Kelman added that when she started her job 12 years ago, the JCCGCI worked with approximately 400 survivors. Today, the organization serves some 3,000 survivors.
Despite a decrease in the total number of living survivors, the Claims Conference demographic report attributes the increase in need to the aging of the population — the average age of Holocaust survivors in New York City is now 86. In many cases, as survivors age and see an increase in disability, they either need assistance for the first time or require more assistance than previous years.
“The data we have amassed not only tells us how many and where survivors are, it clearly indicates that most survivors are at a period of life where their need for care and services is growing,” Gideon Taylor, the president of the Claims Conference, said. In 2023 the organization distributed more than $118 million to agencies in New York that provide services to Holocaust survivors. “Now is the time to double down on our attention on this waning population. Now is when they need us the most.”
The JCC’s monthly party provides an opportunity for survivors to connect with each other in an easy, low-stakes, low-commitment environment. (Julia Gergely)
The JCC’s monthly party provides an opportunity for survivors — whether they are perfectly lucid and independent or require full-time care — to connect with each other in an easy, low-stakes, low-commitment environment. For most of the attendees, the JCCGCI arranges transport, either picking them up in a mini bus (many live in Flatbush, Midwood, Coney Island or Borough Park) or arranging for a car service.
Judith Weiss said she started coming to the Club 2600 parties four years ago, when her husband died. “He was sick for a while, so I didn’t go anywhere. I didn’t know anyone. I only started to go places since he passed away,” she said.
Now, the parties are the main way she stays involved with the JCCGCI. Every month, they pick her up at her home in Flatbush, drive her to the party, and drive her home again afterwards. “I go to see people,” Weiss, 87, said. “I go more [now] than all the years before put together.”
Despite the participants’ advanced ages, new connections can always be made. At one party a few months ago, Weiss was waiting to get on the bus home when she heard another woman, Katy Lowy, speaking Hungarian, the language of her childhood. Weiss heard the women mention a particular brick factory-turned-ghetto in Debrecen, Hungary, where many local Jews were rounded up to be taken to concentration camps.
“I said, ‘You were there? I was there,’” Weiss recalls saying — and it turns out that she and Lowy had last seen each other when Weiss was 7 years old and Lowy was 10. Both remember the harrowing, six-day journey they took via cattle cars in June 1944 — Weiss was eventually taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and Lowy to Mauthausen.
“So many years later, I’d never met anyone who was at that particular place at that particular time,” Weiss told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s strange. I felt myself back there, 7 years old.”
A bus waits outside to transport the guests to and from their homes. (Julia Gergely)
Still, despite harrowing experiences the survivors endured during the Holocaust, the vibe at the catering hall is a markedly carefree one. Near the end of the two-hour party, one of the social workers, Zehava Birman Wallace, steps to the microphone and wishes hearty “happy birthday” to everyone in the room who has celebrated one since the last gathering, doling out roses as gifts.
One man, tired out from the dancing, gets up to leave. “I live nearby,” he said, explaining he can walk home and has no need for a bus.
A huge smile breaks out across his face. “That was so great,” he tells Kelman, placing a hat on his head and walking to the front door. “I feel so happy. Thank you so much.”
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The post ‘Club 2600’ is Brooklyn’s hottest party — for Holocaust survivors appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine After Vandalizing University Board Member’s Home
Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has suspended two leading anti-Zionist groups on campus — Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine — following their vandalizing the home of a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California system.
According to The Daily Bruin, the university’s official campus newspaper, the decision is punishment for a Feb. 5 incident in which some 50 SJP members, along with Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, amassed on the property of UC Regent Jay Sures and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said in an email, portions of which were quoted by The Bruin and can be found online, sent to the entire student body.
“Rigorous, healthy dialogue is central to everything we do to advance knowledge,” he explained. “What there should never be room for is violence. No one should ever fear for their safety. Without the basic feeling of safety, human cannot learn, teach, work, and live — much less thrive and flourish. This is true no matter what group you are a member of — or which identities you hold. There is no place for violence in our Bruin community.”
He continued, “I am personally letting you know that the UCLA Office of Student Conduct has issued an interim suspension today to two registered student organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine (GSJP), based on its review of initial reports about the groups’ involvement in an incident last week at the home of UC Regent Jay sures. Any act of violence undermines the foundation of our university … as your chancellor, I can commit to you that whenever an act of violence is directed against any member of the university community, UCLA will not turn a blind eye. This is a responsibility I must take seriously.”
Numerous reports suggest that SJP intends to defy the university’s sanctions by holding a demonstration to call for a “future free of Zionism.” Also, on Wednesday, the group told its social media followers to “stay tuned” for forthcoming developments, saying, “turn on our story & post notifications.”
Antisemitism at UCLA has been pervasive, Jewish students and faculty have reported.
On Sunday, a Jewish faculty group at the university sounded the alarm about the problem, issuing an open letter which called attention to a slew of indignities to which they are subjected.
One primary agent of anti-Jewish hatred named by the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) is the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism (AAAR), a university-created body that has allegedly violated its mission to promote pluralism by lodging defaming accusations at the pro-Israel Jewish community in a series of reports, the latest of which contained what JFrg described as intolerable distortions of fact.
“The [AAAR] has released a deeply misleading report that falsely accuses Jewish faculty, staff, and students of harassment while ignoring the documented, escalating antisemitism at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM),” JFrg’s letter said. “DGSOM and UCLA’s ongoing silence concerning rising antisemitism continues to encourage more antisemitism, as we can plainly see in this report. JFrg unequivocally rejects this baseless and inflammatory report, and calls on the UCLA administration, DGSOM leadership, and the public to confront the reality of antisemitism at UCLA.”
JFRG’s letter went on to enumerate a slew of falsehoods included in the AAAR’s report, including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression, involving university and non-university actors,” align itself with conservative groups, and harm minority students by opposing “racial justice.” It added that life for faculty at the Geffen medical school has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
In 2024, a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment was filed in federal court.
The suit — which named UCLA students Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian as plaintiffs — excoriated UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up, as students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Republicans in Washington, DC have said that similarly disruptive and extremist political activity on college campuses “will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration.” Meanwhile, the US President Donald Trump has enacted a slew of policies aimed at reining in disruptive and discriminatory behavior.
Continuing work started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — Trump’s recent “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” The order also requires each government agency to write a report explaining how it can be of help in carrying out its enforcement. Another major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine After Vandalizing University Board Member’s Home first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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South Africa Says ‘No Chance’ It Will Withdraw Genocide Case Against Israel Despite US Pushback
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Chatsworth, South Africa, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rogan Ward
South Africa has vowed to continue pursuing its case against Israel at the United Nations’ top court accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide in Gaza, saying it will not change course despite strong US opposition.
There is “no chance” of South Africa withdrawing its case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told the Financial Times in a new interview.
“Standing by our principles sometimes has consequences, but we remain firm that this is important for the world, and the rule of law,” he added.
The comments from South Africa’s top diplomat came after US President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order to “halt foreign aid or assistance” to South Africa partly in response to the country’s ICJ case and anti-Israel stance.
Trump’s order was also a response to South Africa’s new land expropriation law, which the US argues discriminates against Afrikaners, a minority South African ethnic group of European descent.
During the interview, Lamola denied such accusations, stating that the White House’s statements were “misinformation.” He also argued that the land reform is not “arbitrary,” but an essential measure to rectify the land ownership inequalities left by apartheid.
Trump also accused South Africa in his executive order of working with Iran “to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”
“While we do have a good relationship with Iran, we don’t have any nuclear programs with them, nor any trade to speak of,” Lamola said.
US intelligence agencies have for years described Iran as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, and Iranian leaders routinely declare their intention of destroying Israel.
Trump’s executive order puts at risk not only $440 million in aid to South Africa but also tariff-free access to US markets under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, presenting a major challenge for the South African coalition government, which took power last year after the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority in parliament for the first time in South Africa’s post-apartheid democratic history. The ANC still remained the largest party and retained power at the national level through a coalition.
“We are willing to engage with them to persuade them, if they are willing to be persuaded,” Lamola said.
Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Jewish community have lambasted the case as “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.
Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide. However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, which may take years to go through the judicial process, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign. Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide. The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Last month, Cuba officially became the latest country to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, following Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Libya, Bolivia, Turkey, the Maldives, Chile, Spain, and “Palestine.”
Since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, the South African government has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s military campaign, which seeks to free the hostages kidnapped by the terrorists and dismantle Hamas’s military and administrative control in Gaza.
In late 2023, South Africa temporarily withdrew its diplomats from Israel and shut down its embassy in Tel Aviv, saying the government was “extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians” in Gaza.
Then in December of that year, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.
Months later, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The post South Africa Says ‘No Chance’ It Will Withdraw Genocide Case Against Israel Despite US Pushback first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Celebrity AI Video Shows Dismal State of Real Celebrities Standing Up to Antisemitism
Scarlett Johansson attends The American Museum of Natural History’s 2024 Museum Gala at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, December 5, 2024. Photo: Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
If you were online on February 11, you likely saw an AI-produced video of Jewish celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld, Jake Gyllenhaal, Scarlet Johansson, and Jack Black, wearing t-shirts that had a Jewish star and a middle finger to Kanye West. While it looked smooth, it was obviously AI.
While it is true that many Jewish celebrities have not been vocal enough in fighting the shocking rise of antisemitism in the US (Seinfeld and David Schwimmer have been good), we cannot expect them to comment every time Kanye West makes absurd antisemitic posts, as he recently did.
I am not upset with the person who made the video, because it’s funny. For anyone who believed it was real, they need a reality check.
I wish these Jewish celebrities would do something like this in real life, but that’s not happening.
Instead, many Jews — and especially many Jewish celebrities — believe that if antisemitism is ignored, it will go away. Unfortunately, we have learned that is not the case.
Kanye, who has said he loves Hitler in the past, thinks he is funny. People may try to excuse his behavior as part of a mental health problem. Whether he has one or not, there is no excuse. Plenty of people have mental health problems, and the logical conclusion is not that they are antisemites.
I don’t understand how West was allowed to have a Super Bowl commercial given his past comments about the Jews. No corporation whose CEO said the kind of things he said would have been able to be featured on the game. His website featured only one item: a t-shirt with a swastika on it.
Kanye is addicted to attention. It is sad that in 2025, one of the best ways to get it is antisemitism. It is also sad that rather than real videos against him, there are AI ones. The problem is not going away — as much as these Jewish celebrities and others wish it would.
Kanye still influences people around the world, and it would be surprising if his posts did not lead to violent attacks against Jews — and more chillingly, even more global hatred of the Jewish people.
If you would have told me 10 years ago, that a famous rapper would make such posts and the response would be an AI video that some thought was real, I would have said that was impossible. Will we also have AI videos against Candace Owens next?
Those promoting false accusations against Jews often have little intelligence. Perhaps artificial intelligence will one day be installed in their brains. But until then, AI videos of Jewish celebrities is not the answer.
But I understand someone trying to do something when people in the real world aren’t doing enough.
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post Jewish Celebrity AI Video Shows Dismal State of Real Celebrities Standing Up to Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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