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How a Catholic university amassed a treasure trove of Jewish artifacts from the Bronx
(New York Jewish Week) – A Catholic university may be the unlikeliest place for what may be the largest depository dedicated to the Jewish history of the Bronx.
But at Fordham University — the private, Jesuit institution in the Bronx — decades worth of archival documents and artifacts from the local Jewish community have found a home, thanks to its Jewish studies department.
For the last three years, Fordham has been collecting and cataloging items that detail a once-thriving Jewish community in the Bronx: yearbooks full of Jewish last names, Bar Mitzvah invitations, phonebooks full of Jewish-owned businesses — all the simple transactions that define an era in history.
The archive at Fordham is one of the only physical collections of everyday material from Jewish residents of the borough, according to Magda Teter, the chair of the Center for Jewish Studies at the university, who spearheaded the project.
“It’s not only preserving a piece of New York Jewish history, but also a way of life,” Teter told the New York Jewish Week. “Bringing this voice to the dominant Christian identity of Fordham and teaching about Jews [as a minority] within the dominant cultures is very important.”
A song and dance book in the Fordham University collection features the lyrics for “Hatikvah” and “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and a “Jewish dictionary.” (Julia Gergely)
During the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish life thrived in the Bronx. There were 260 registered synagogues in 1940, and the borough produced some of the biggest Jewish names in show business, fashion, literature and more: designer Ralph Lauren, politician Bella Abzug, novelist E.L. Doctorow, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, Miss America Bess Myerson, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Robert Lefkowitz.
At the community’s peak in 1930, the Bronx was approximately 49% Jewish, according to the borough’s official historian, Lloyd Ultan. South of Tremont Avenue, the number reached 80%. Most of the Jewish Bronx was of Eastern European descent; many were first generation Americans whose parents had immigrated and lived on the Lower East Side, but who could now afford to live in less cramped neighborhoods with more trees and wider streets.
Though there is a strong Jewish community in the neighborhood of Riverdale, most of the Jewish community moved out of the Bronx for the suburbs after World War II when mortgages for white would-be homeowners were being subsidized by the government and Blacks and Latinos were steered to Bronx neighborhoods they couldn’t afford or that the city had chosen to neglect. The Jewish population of the Bronx dropped from 650,000 in 1948 to 45,000 in 2003. Many of the synagogues have been converted for other uses, and the physical legacy of the Jewish community there has begun to erode over time, making an archive all the more necessary.
While Teter was always interested in collecting items from the Jewish Bronx, the archive got an unexpected boost from a member of the public. In the spring of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Fordham hosted a virtual event, “Remnants: Photographs of the Jewish Bronx,” which featured evidence of the area’s faded Jewish history gathered by writer and photographer Julian Voloj. (Voloj is the husband of the New York Jewish Week’s managing editor, Lisa Keys.)
An invitation for the bar mitzvah of Freddie Rothberg, which took place on Oct. 6, 1951 at Beth Hamedrash Hagadol. (Julia Gergely)
In the audience was Ellen Meshnick, who had grown up in New York and now lives in Georgia. Inspired, she offered Fordham a trove of material her parents, Frank and Martha Meshnick, had kept throughout their lives in the Bronx. The boxes included donated yearbooks from Morris High School and Walton High School, songbooks, bar mitzvah invitations, a marriage certificate, receipts for a flower delivery — even a document from the hospital from when she was born — mostly from the 1930s through the 1960s.
The donation significantly bolstered what materials Fordham already had on hand, which included less personal but still unique items like matchbooks from kosher restaurants. Now, Teter is growing the archive through other private donations and occasionally by purchasing materials online — personal family archives, books about Bronx Jewish history, songsheets and the like.
The marriage certificate, or ketubah, recognizing the marriage between Frank Meshnick and Martha Farber on Aug. 23, 1942. The certificate was part of an archive donated to Fordham University by the couple’s daughter Ellen. (Julia Gergely)
“They may not be the most beautiful things, but we are interested in what people actually used and lived with,” Teter said.
Teter said that while the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan does collect the types of quotidian and personal items that American Jews kept with them in the last few centuries, they don’t have much that uniquely focuses on Jewish life in the Bronx.
The entire collection is part of a greater effort by Teter, the Jewish studies department and the librarians at Fordham to increase awareness about Judaism and Jewish people. “I will not hide that I think it’s an important way to fight antisemitism — to teach Jewish history and Jewish culture in all its colors and in all its experiences,” she said. “It enriches the students’ appreciation and understanding of Jewish life beyond how Jews are usually portrayed.”
The Jewish studies department at Fordham is relatively new: The college began offering a Jewish studies minor in 2016, and opened the department in 2017. At the time, the highlight of the library’s archives was the Rosenblatt Holocaust collection, which was funded by an alumnus. Since 1992, the library has amassed over 11,000 titles, videos and artifacts on the Holocaust, according to librarian Linda Loschiavo.
When Teter arrived, Loschiavo worked with her to bring in historical Passover haggadahs from all over the world. Fordham now possesses two Italian haggadahs from the 1660s, as well as Jewish artifacts from unexpected places, like playbills from Jewish Bollywood.
Last month the university opened the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room on the fourth floor of the campus’ main library — named for Fordham’s first Jewish student, who graduated in 1968. Miller, a leader of a financial restructuring firm, is now a trustee of the college.
Fordham President Tania Tetlow described herself jokingly as “a wannabe Jew” at the room’s unveiling. “I’ve understood how deeply intertwined Judaism and Catholicism are,” she said, “and the connections we have of the deep intellectualism of both faiths, of the desire to study text and the interpretation of text going back for thousands of years, of the love of ritual — and the central place of food and guilt!”
The former Jacob Schiff Center on Valentine Avenue. (Julian Voloj)
“At the moment, we envision that the research room will be a space for exhibitions that would foster the curatorial skills of our students and that will bring Jewish art and artists to campus,” Teter said. “We would now be able to display their art and combine the exhibitions with some items from the Judaica collection.”
The research room is currently displaying Voloj’s Bronx photographs, along with some of the recently acquired local archival materials, curated by sophomore Reyna Stovall, who is interning in Fordham’s Jewish studies department this semester.
“It is really, really rewarding,” said Stovall, who is Jewish. Stovall became involved in the Jewish studies department because of her interest in Holocaust studies, but as she began her internship, she was excited to work on the archives cataloging the once thriving Jewish history of the Bronx.
The yearbook photo of Frank Meshnick (bottom right), who graduated from Morris High School in Morrisania in 1931. (Julia Gergely)
“It’s pretty amazing that they have the collection to begin with,” she added. “It really shows Fordham’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity that they’re willing to take on this massive collection of Judaica, even though that’s not the religion that the school was founded on.”
Teter estimates there are about 300 Jews among the school’s 15,000 undergrads. As a result, the Center for Jewish Studies and the research room offers students from all backgrounds the opportunity to learn more about Judaism — as well as marginalized communities in general, and connect their stories to their own lives.
“Our identity grew to showcase Jewish studies at the intersection and in conversation with other fields and areas of study,” Teter explained.
The Center’s goal, she added, is “to make students, faculty and the public realize that studying Jews is not just for Jews, and that they can learn so much about the areas of their own concern and interest by studying Jews.”
“Something magical happens when you give students the opportunity to work with historical artifacts, and really touch history,” Teter said. “That’s what I think inspired the director of the library to devote that space to that kind of research and to that kind of student experience.”
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The post How a Catholic university amassed a treasure trove of Jewish artifacts from the Bronx appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Says Airspace Above and Around Venezuela Should Be Considered Closed
A drone view shows a fishing boat anchored in the Gulf of Paria, and the coast of Venezuela in the back, in Cedros, Trinidad and Tobago, November 17, 2025. REUTERS/Marco Bello
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” but gave no further details as Washington ramps up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
US officials contacted by Reuters were surprised by Trump’s announcement and unaware of any ongoing US military operations to enforce a closure of Venezuelan airspace. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment and the White House did not provide any further explanation.
Venezuela‘s communications ministry, which handles all press inquiries for the government, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s post.
MASSIVE MILITARY BUILDUP IN CARIBBEAN
David Deptula, a retired lieutenant general who commanded a no-fly zone over northern Iraq in 1998 and 1999, said Trump’s announcement raises more questions than it answers. Imposing a no-fly zone over Venezuela could require significant resources and planning, depending on the goals of the airspace closure, he said.
“The devil’s in the details,” Deptula said.
The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. The socialist Venezuelan president has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.
Reuters has reported that options under US consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro, and that the US military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela‘s coast. Trump has also authorized covert CIA operations in the South American country.
Maduro, in power since 2013, has contended that Trump is seeking to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt.
Trump told military service members earlier this week that the US would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.
The streets of Caracas were largely quiet on Saturday morning, though some people braved rain to go shopping.
Maduro and high-ranking officials in his government, some combination of whom appear almost daily on state television, have decried US imperialism in their recent comments, but do not single out Trump by name, as the Venezuelan government may be trying to de-escalate tensions, according to security and diplomatic sources. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously been the focus of Venezuelan government ire, but even references to him have decreased in recent weeks.
The US boat bombings have led to stepped-up surveillance by authorities in the remote northeastern state of Sucre, with increased patrols by security agencies and ruling-party supporters stoking fear among locals, four residents and one recent visitor said.
GPS signals in Venezuela have also been affected in recent weeks amid the US buildup.
Trump’s announcement on Venezuela‘s airspace followed a warning last week from the US Federal Aviation Administration that major airlines faced a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela due to a “worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around” the country.
Venezuela revoked operating rights for six major international airlines that had suspended flights to the country after the FAA warning.
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How would Jews fleeing Europe have fared under Trump’s anti-immigration policies?
Donald Trump’s vision of foreigners worthy of emigrating to the United States appears to boil down to this: white, Nordic, Christian, politically conservative, not obese, and not a potential drain on public services. It’s a fantasy that’s reminiscent of Nazi values, and one that is being rejected by many Americans.
Trump’s Thanksgiving Day responses to the Washington, D.C. shooting of two National Guard members — one of whom has died — are among the most overtly racist statements he has ever made in public. Trump said he would stop migration from “all Third World Countries” and deport foreign nationals who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
Trump has faced accusations of racism since he was a young real estate developer working with his father. During his first term as president, Trump said America should welcome more immigrants from places like Norway, rather than from Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations — which he dismissed as ‘shithole countries.” Trump, during his second term, has been enacting something like a purity code: Hispanics guilty of nothing more than being in the country illegally get deported; right-wing extremists who tried to carry out a coup in his name get pardons.
About 66,000 migrants are currently locked up under Trump’s immigration crackdown — the largest detention population in U.S. history. Many have no criminal record. Social media is flooded daily with videos of ICE agents smashing car windows, masked men in battle gear dragging immigrants from vehicles, and children left crying as parents are hauled away in handcuffs. Each outrage carries the same message: You are not wanted here.
More than 250 Venezuelan migrants were sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, branded by critics as a ‘black hole of humanity.”
Other migrants have been spirited away to South Sudan and countries where they had never set foot — their destinies left unknown.
The Trump administration’s unequal treatment of white South Africans and Palestinian survivors of Gaza is an infuriating display of heartlessness and racism. Even though Afrikaners were the architects and beneficiaries of apartheid’s cruelty, they have been promised the lion’s share of America’s drastically reduced refugee slots. Meanwhile, Gazan Palestinians — whose homes have been destroyed, whose loved ones have been killed by the tens of thousands, and who have endured famine for months — are excluded entirely. In Trump’s America, whiteness and ideological alignment matter more than human suffering.
I can’t help but think of the plight of refugees in postwar Europe after Nazi Germany’s defeat. Up to 60 million people were uprooted across the continent. Some 11 million refugees crowded into Allied‑run displaced persons camps, including hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, and other survivors of Nazi camps.
Most of these souls would not pass muster in Trump’s America. His new guidance to embassies and consulates instructs visa officers to screen out applicants who are overweight, elderly, or suffering from chronic conditions — diabetes, heart disease, depression. Applicants must prove financial self‑sufficiency, English proficiency, and the ability to work without reliance on public benefits. Yet multitudes of Europe’s postwar refugees were sick, stripped of education, and dependent on government support just to survive. Compassion has no place in Trump’s transactional brain; these are not the kind of people he would deem worthy of America’s embrace.
What Trump apparently did not see coming was the backlash against his terror campaign against foreigners. In towns and cities across the country, neighbors have rallied as immigrant friends, business owners, and longtime contributors to their communities were hunted down and disappeared. Vigils, marches, and local resolutions have sprung up, with ordinary citizens insisting that their communities will not be defined by terror.
Charlotte offers one example: when ICE launched Operation Charlotte’s Web in November, agents stormed immigrant neighborhoods and even a church, prompting pastors to prepare sanctuaries and residents to organize vigils and rapid‑response patrols. In St. Paul, Minn., rapid‑response networks sprang up to protect immigrant families, alerting neighbors when ICE vans appeared and mobilizing lawyers to defend detainees. During Trump’s first major sweep, in Los Angeles, mass protests turned the city into a showcase of resistance rather than submission.
Community members have demonstrated an incredible fearlessness in their efforts to protect immigrants from federal agents — shouting at them to identify themselves, to show a warrant, and that they’re not welcome in the neighborhood. Sometimes the agents have retreated, getting back into their van or SUV without making an arrest.
ICE agents’ attempts to arrest a 16‑year‑old high school student in Rhode Island this month offers a stirring example of community compassion in action. The teen, interning for Superior Court Judge Joseph J. McBurney in Providence, was misidentified by agents who surrounded the judge’s car and threatened to smash the windows. McBurney stood firm, insisting they had the wrong person. Only after confirming his words did the agents back down, and the boy was freed.
In several communities, high school students, peers and teachers have stepped in to defend migrant classmates against ICE and Border Patrol agents prowling neighborhoods, often accused of racial profiling based on skin color or accents.
In Oregon, nearly 300 students walked out of McMinnville High School to protest the ICE arrest of a classmate during lunch break and demanded school administrators create protocols to alert migrant students whenever ICE agents are spotted nearby.
“Honestly, after what happened to that kid, the 17-year-old, I don’t feel safe going to school,” fellow student Alexis Hernandez Flores told KOIN 6 News.
As depressing and alarming as the past several months have been — as Trump has brought the United States to the abyss of autocracy — I have found reason for hope in ordinary citizens’ bold actions to protect foreigners in their midst from illegal and racist roundups. From Chicago to Charlotte, from Los Angeles to Providence, neighbors, churches, and even judges have refused to be silent. Their defiance recalls what was missing in Nazi Germany: a public willing to stand up, to insist that fear and violence will not define their communities.
If Trump sends federal agents into neighborhoods to arrest and deport foreign nationals who are deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” as he has threatened, the backlash will surely become louder, and the resistance against him stronger.
The post How would Jews fleeing Europe have fared under Trump’s anti-immigration policies? appeared first on The Forward.
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Most American Jews believe Zohran Mamdani will make NYC Jews less safe, Israeli poll finds
(JTA) — More than two-thirds of American Jews believe that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will make the city’s Jews less safe, according to a new survey by a nonpartisan Israeli research institute.
The finding came in the Jewish People Policy Institute’s latest Voice of the Jewish People Index, which surveyed 745 American Jews about a range of topics last month, just 10 days after Mamdani was elected. It offers the latest insight into Jewish sentiments about Mamdani, whose staunch criticism of Israel has drawn attention, and at times allegations of antisemitism, from Jews around the world.
The survey found that 67% of respondents believed Mamdani’s election would make New York City’s Jews less safe, while 6% believed they would be more safe and 18% believed he would make them neither more or less safe.
Among Jews identifying as politically conservative, 93% said they believed Mamdani would make New York City Jews less safe. Concerns were lower among liberal-leaning Jews, but still one third of respondents who identified as “strongly liberal” said they believed Mamdani would make Jews less safe.
Over half of respondents said they felt “worried” about the election of Mamdani, while 11% said they were “afraid.” Another 13% said they were “hopeful.”
A different poll in August found that 58% of Jewish New Yorkers believed the city would be less safe for Jews under Mamdani.
The Jewish People Policy Institute conducts regular surveys of Jewish sentiment, drawing on a pool of Jews who have agreed to be part of a survey pool. The institute notes that as a result, “the survey tends to reflect the attitudes of ‘connected’ American Jews, that is, those with a relatively strong attachment to the Jewish community and/or Israel and/or Jewish identity.”
It found that 70% of respondents identified as Zionist, while 12% identified as “not a Zionist, but a supporter of Zionism.” Additionally, 7% identified as “neither a supporter nor an opponent of Zionism,” 5% identified as a post-Zionist and 3% identified as an anti-Zionist.
Among strong liberal respondents, 52% identified as Zionists, while 79% of strong conservatives identified as Zionists.
Asked whether they believed that Zionism is racism, a charge frequently leveled by Israel’s critics, 59% of respondents said they believed that Zionism is “not at all racism.” Among strong liberal respondents, the proportion was 28%, compared to 86% of strong conservatives.
The survey also asked respondents about their perception of antisemitism coming from the political left and right in the United States. In recent months, calls to condemn right-wing antisemitism among Jewish conservatives have revealed growing rifts within the party.
Among the survey’s respondents, 62% said they were worried about antisemitism from both the left and the right, while 20% said they were more worried about antisemitism on the left and 17% were more worried about it on the right. Among strong liberals, just 5% were worried about antisemitism on the left while just 1% of conservatives were worried about antisemitism on the right.
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