Uncategorized
Historic flooding complicates the journey home for Passover vacationers in South Florida
(JTA) — Zachary Ottenstein didn’t expect to bond with his dad over chess and classic rock during his trip home from Florida at the end of Passover.
But when Ottenstein switched his phone on after the holiday ended last night, it blew up: Fort Lauderdale was flooded and flights out of the airport — including their flight to New York — were canceled. The city was underwater after the rainiest day in its history.
He consulted with his dad, Matthew: They had enjoyed their Passover week at a hotel, but they wanted to get home in time for Shabbat the following evening.
“We really didn’t fancy staying another two days and finding a place to stay and food,” he said.
Their story was not unique: Families from across the United States who opt for Passover getaway packages in the Sunshine State found themselves stranded in Fort Lauderdale after the rains Thursday. Travelers to the airport reported seeing the headlights of cars sitting deep in water, accumulating since about a month’s worth of rain fell in an hour on Wednesday.
Traditionally observant Jews, who don’t drive or fly in planes on Shabbat, faced the prospect of either making it home before Friday at sundown, or spending at least two more days — until Saturday at nightfall — in the Fort Lauderdale area, without the institutional infrastructure that had enabled their Passover vacations.
At first, the Ottensteins looked for other flights, expanding the radius outward from Fort Lauderdale with each search. Finally, they found a barely workable option.
“There were no flights really other than one flight out of Tampa that was going to Chicago and from there, there was a flight to New York,” Ottenstein said.
They booked the flight, rented a car, left Fort Lauderdale at 10:30 p.m. and rolled into Tampa at 3 a.m. — right in time for the 5 a.m. flight to Chicago.
Others opted to stay down south for Shabbat. Mendel Fayershteyn, a Chabad rabbi in the city, put out the word in the community that he was ready to assist any families stranded at the airport.
As it turns out, there were a handful — about six or seven, he said in an interview — and he delivered kosher meals to them and found homes for them to stay in through Sunday, when the airport is expected to be back to capacity. One of the homes was his own — he decamped to his in-laws’ and handed the keys of his house to one of the airport families.
The relief he administered to the stranded Jews, Fayershteyn said, was mostly psychological.
“It was more like, people were panicking, it wasn’t like an emergency,” he said in an interview. “I would say it was more therapeutic just for the people to hear it’s going to be OK.”
Fayershteyn learned to coordinate relief during years of hurricane seasons: He put that experience to use, gathered generators and kosher food, and helped people find shelter. He also helped reunite people with cars that had floated away in the flooding.
“The main thing we were doing today is just helping people getting their cars back,” he said.
As soon as Passover ended on Thursday night, Fayershteyn got the word out on Facebook that he was offering help to Shabbat-observant Jews.
“Stay safe, and if you are in need of assistance please don’t hesitate to reach out,” the message said. “Hot Shabbat meals going out tomorrow for those that need, please DM us.”
Ottenstein also took to Facebook, posting a selfie of himself and his dad in the car after midnight. “What do you do when Fort Lauderdale airport gets closed and you want to get home for shabbos?” he wrote. “Obviously you drive through the night to Tampa to make an early morning flight home.”
Ottenstein, 24, a schoolteacher on Staten Island, and his dad, 60, a law librarian in suburban New Rochelle, filled the time up.
“The world chess championships are going on and my dad’s been very into it. He can talk for hours about that type of thing,” he said. “And we bond a lot over music. My dad’s a big 60s, 70s classic rock kind of guy.”
Zachary did the driving. “My dad doesn’t like driving at night,” he said. “No bathroom breaks, no stopping for food. The adrenaline kicked in. It was the kind of plan that was so crazy, it worked.”
—
The post Historic flooding complicates the journey home for Passover vacationers in South Florida appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Over 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied Oct. 7 rapes
(JTA) — Over 300 Jewish leaders, including women’s rights advocates and rabbis, urged the United Nations on Tuesday to remove Reem Alsalem, the U.N. rapporteur on violence against women and girls, for denying that rape occurred during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The letter, which was addressed to U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres, came two weeks after Alsalem claimed in a post on X that “No independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”
In the letter, its signatories express their “horror and outrage” at Alsalem’s rhetoric, and cite two U.N. reports from March 2024 and July 2025 that concluded that there was “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence had taken place during the attacks “in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape.”
The petition was organized by Amy Elman, a professor at Kalamazoo College who has authored books on antisemitism and state responses to sexual violence, and Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency soon after being sent to Guterres.
“The targeted sexual abuse of Israelis by Hamas and its supporters is one weapon in the arsenal of those seeking Israel’s obliteration,” Elman said in a statement. “It’s outrageous that deniers such as Reem Alsalem are aiding and abetting the sexual violence by claiming it never happened. These apologists should be ashamed of themselves.”
The letter’s signatories include Deborah Lipstadt, the former antisemitism envoy; Judith Rosenbaum, the head of the Jewish Women’s Archives; Rabbi Irving Greenberg, the former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Rabbi Deborah Waxman, the president of Reconstructing Judaism; and Hebrew College president Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld.
Dispute over whether sexual violence took place as Hamas murdered about 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 has solidified as a point of sustained interest for some of Israel’s staunchest critics who allege that Israel and its supporters are using claims of rape as propaganda. Even the United Nations, frequently maligned by Israel and its supporters over its record toward Israel, has drawn allegations of complicity in the propaganda campaign from pro-Palestinian voices — though the U.N. rapporteur on Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese, who has faced her own calls for dismissal from the Trump administration, has also publicly questioned the claims.
In addition to the U.N. reports, independent reporting and research by an Israeli nonprofit have validated claims of sexual violence on Oct. 7.
In the X exchange that spurred the new letter, Alsalem was arguing with another user about the Israeli government’s prosecution of soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee.
A day later, Alsalem posted a link to a Substack podcast from October where she criticized the credibility of the March 2024 U.N. report and said she had sought contact with the Israeli government to confirm its findings but had not received a response.
“The media, certain organizations and the world basically fell into the trap that Israel set up, which is to project that there was barbaric sexual violence being committed by these barbarian Palestinian men, and it was spun around and disseminated and very much used in order to then justify the genocide,” said Alsalem on the podcast.
Medoff said in a statement that Alsalem’s continued employment reflected inconsistent standards when it comes to Israel and antisemitism.
“If a UN official made such a remark concerning rape victims from any other ethnic or religious group, there would be an international uproar,” he said. “The same standard should apply to Israeli Jewish women who were sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists.”
The post Over 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied Oct. 7 rapes appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Rome synagogue memorial for 2-year-old killed in 1982 Palestinian terror attack vandalized
(JTA) — A synagogue in Rome and a memorial for a 2-year-old boy killed in a 1982 attack by Palestinian terrorists on the city’s Great Synagogue were vandalized on Monday by unknown individuals.
The plaque dedicated to Stefano Gaj Taché, who was killed in the attack that also left 37 injured, is located on the Monteverde synagogue, also known as the Beth Michael Synagogue, in Rome.
The unknown vandals spray painted black on the memorial, and also wrote “Free Palestine” and “Monteverde anti-Zionist and anti-fascist” on the facade of the synagogue, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The vandalism was condemned by Victor Fadlun, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, who said in a post on Instagram that the incident came amid a “a climate of intimidation” where antisemitism has “become a tool of political protest.”
“We place our trust in the police and call for the government’s strong intervention to halt this spiral of hatred,” Fadlun continued.
The incident comes amid a recent series of antisemitic vandalism in Rome, an epicenter of pro-Palestinian activism that has continued to see large demonstrations even after the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In October, the words “Dirty Jews, may you all burn” were spray-painted on the shutters of a kosher bakery, and in June a sign at another local synagogue was defaced with the words “Sieg Heil” and ”Juden Raus.”
“This is an act that outrages the Jewish community and deeply wounds it, because the plaque is dedicated to a child murdered by Palestinian terrorism and because this is a meeting place where young people and children meet, where they pray and create a sense of community,” Fadlun told Corriere della Sera. “Attacking the synagogue in this way means disavowing and violating the right of Jews to be able to come together and lead a normal life.”
In a subsequent post on Instagram, Fadlun said Italian President Sergio Mattarella had spoken to him over the phone to express his “solidarity” in relation to the synagogue vandalism.
Antonio Tajani, the Italian minister of foreign affairs, also condemned the vandalism in a post on X, adding that he has called Fadlun as well.
The European Jewish Congress also condemned the vandalism in a post on X. “This is not ‘anti-Zionism.’ It is antisemitism: the targeting of Jewish memory, Jewish mourning and Jewish history,” the group said. “Stefano’s name is a symbol of one of Italy’s darkest terror attacks. His memory should be protected, not desecrated. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community of Italy and call on authorities to investigate this hate crime and ensure that such acts are treated with the seriousness they deserve.”
The post Rome synagogue memorial for 2-year-old killed in 1982 Palestinian terror attack vandalized appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Danny Wolf will see you now
When the Brooklyn Nets drafted Danny Wolf this summer out of the University of Michigan, scouts said they were getting a versatile big man who could get buckets, create for his teammates and rebound.
But the last few days of NBA action have shown the Jewish seven-footer picking up a surprising new habit: putting his opponents on posters.
After scuffling through the first two months of the season with a bum ankle, Wolf announced his arrival Saturday with a thundering jam on the Milwaukee Bucks’ Kyle Kuzma, for two of the forward’s career-best 22 points.
He claimed his next victim, in a 10-point, 7-rebound outing two days later, driving from the top of the arc before leaping off his left foot and dropping the hammer on the Charlotte Hornets’ Miles Bridges:
“That may get two howls!” Nets play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco cried.
Early returns have been limited since the Brooklyn Nets grabbed Israeli point guard Ben Saraf and Wolf with the 26th and 27th picks this summer. The learning curve for young floor generals is notoriously steep, and Saraf — who wears the number 77 to represent the Hebrew word mazal, meaning good fortune — has struggled to stay in the playing rotation.
But Wolf, an American-Israeli who was bar mitzvahed in Israel, is finding his footing — at least when he’s not taking off for a dunk. He dropped in five high-arcing three pointers against the Bucks, eliciting excited howls from Nets color commentator Sarah Kustok; before the Charlotte game, he apparently told teammates he was going to posterize somebody.
“I was kinda saying that as a joke,” he said, “but looking at it as an opportunity, and just trying to attack the rim, I did it, with rewards.”
“He manifested it,” said teammate Nic Claxton.
Let’s enjoy one more picture of Claxton and Wolf:
And here’s a Danny Wolf meme for good measure, courtesy of the Nets social media.
The post Danny Wolf will see you now appeared first on The Forward.