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How a move to South Africa turned an American teen’s Jewish life upside down
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — The table is set. The candles are lit. The round challah is sliced and my family and I dip our apples in honey, exclaiming “Shanah Tovah.”
From the outside it may look like any other Rosh Hashanah but it definitely feels different to me.
The apples aren’t fresh from the orchard like they have been for the past 15 years. In fact it isn’t apple season at all. It’s early spring here in South Africa. The bare trees echo a sense of emptiness in me as I think back to the plentiful Rosh Hashanah suppers I always associated with the harvest season until I moved to the southern hemisphere in 2022.
I was born in Manhattan and raised by South African parents in Stamford, Connecticut until age 15, when we moved to Cape Town, South Africa. That was two Julys ago, right after I completed my first year of high school in Norwalk, Connecticut. Basically my whole world turned upside down, including my experience of being Jewish.
In my multi-faith family (Christian dad, Jewish mom), our traditions and celebrations define my Jewishness. Observing the major Jewish holidays has always brought my family together, even through the toughest of times. However, holding on to the way we did them before is near impossible since our move, mainly because of the change in seasons between hemispheres.
I never realized how much of an impact the four seasons had on the other areas of life, especially the holidays. It completely threw our usual traditions off balance, making my Jewishness difficult to navigate.
The author and her dad on vacation in Hermanus, South Africa shortly after her family moved to the country from Connecticut. (Nicola Nieburg)
Growing up in Connecticut, it just made sense having wintry, candlelit Hanukkahs. In Cape Town, why sit around candles when you could be at the beach? Getting used to the flipped seasons felt so unnatural to my family and me and was probably one of the most unexpected differences we encountered (think Chrismukkah in July).
Many people don’t think about the fact that the Torah seems to have been written from a Northern Hemisphere — never mind Middle Eastern — perspective. For example, the Jews fled from Pharaoh in the spring and many Passover traditions are centered around rebirth and springtime, with symbols like parsley and eggs. In South Africa, we do our seder in the fall. It just feels weird.
Fall is the season of harvest and rejuvenation, which seems to fit with the ideals of Rosh Hashanah better than Passover, the celebration of freedom and new life. In the U.S., my family would pick apples every Jewish New Year. Over here, forget apples — the summer fruits are starting to ripen and I feel like a fish trying to ride a bicycle! It’s hard to celebrate when my heart pangs for what’s familiar. As long as I can remember, our own unique Jewish customs have been embedded into my life and now, suddenly without them, I find myself questioning what exactly we are celebrating. The holidays don’t seem as significant because they just don’t resonate as much with me anymore.
My family has also struggled to find the same sense of Jewish community we felt in the U.S. Cape Town’s Jewish community is tiny compared to the one in Stamford, and the vast majority of Capetownians aren’t familiar with Judaism as I’ve experienced it. According to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, the Jewish community accounts for a mere 0.12% of the South African population.
I also sense less pluralism when it comes to one’s expression of Judaism than what I was accustomed to living in the liberal Northeast. Most people are either reform or “orthodox.” (There is no Conservative here. Orthodox runs the gamut from Conservative to frum.)
Our family has always kind of done our own thing since my dad is Christian but we still love celebrating our roots. And while we felt embraced and accepted marching to the beat of our own Jewish drum in America, I feel a little more unusual and isolated in how we do things here. It is not because Cape Town isn’t accepting of interfaith families, it’s just that it took us years to build up our “chosen people” in Connecticut, and we just haven’t got to that point here yet.
When we lived in the U.S. we had no family near us so we celebrated all the Jewish traditions with a colorful collection of friends who also didn’t have local family. Over here we have loads of Jewish family members, but apart from my maternal grandmother, many of them don’t even celebrate and the other half is not Jewish. So when we want to mark a holiday or a tradition, the onus falls on us to make it happen. So far we’ve hosted a Rosh Hashanah barbeque, a Rosh Hashanah potjie (traditional South African stew cooked over an open fire), a Yom Kippur potluck, Hanukkah/Christmas pool party and a seder. It’s also been hard to meet and make other Jewish friends here because there are sadly barely any Jewish families at secular schools, which has been my main way of meeting people.
Additionally, South Africa’s Jewish population is shrinking. Most Jews are focused on emigrating. According to a 2019 report done by the IJPR, 41% of Jewish adults over the age of 18 have plans to move abroad. We totally went against the grain by moving here.
However, on the upside, when you do find someone Jewish in Cape Town, chances are, because Jews are few and far between, your grandmothers were best friends or you’re actually related! In other words, you have an instant bond.
And while it’s been difficult rearranging my entire Jewish identity to a new climate, culture and different group of chosen people, the move has also allowed me to redefine my Jewish experience and create new, meaningful traditions. Now that I think about it, maybe I am looking forward to our next Hanukkah pool party. Because enjoying latkes from the comfort of a donut pool floatie takes the concept of celebrating with fried food to a whole new delicious level.
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The post How a move to South Africa turned an American teen’s Jewish life upside down appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Top Diplomat Urges Lebanese People to Break Free From ‘Iranian Occupation’
Funeral ceremony for former Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, outskirts of Beirut, Feb. 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has called on the Lebanese people to break free from “the Iranian occupation,” pushing Israel’s northern neighbor to weaken the political and military influence of the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah.
“The images from Nasrallah’s ‘funeral’ now precisely reflect the historic crossroads where Lebanon stands: The continuation of the Iranian occupation in Lebanon, through Hezbollah — or liberation from Iran and Hezbollah and freedom to Lebanon,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X, referring to long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli military strike in September. His funeral was held in Lebanon on Sunday.
“The choice is in the hands of Lebanon and the Lebanese people,” Sa’ar added.
The Israeli diplomat’s comments came as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told a visiting Iranian delegation on Sunday that the country was “tired” of external conflicts playing out on its territory, asserting that Lebanon is not a battleground for others and hinting at a possible break from Iranian influence.
“Lebanon has grown tired of the wars of others on its land,” Aoun told the Iranian officials, according to a statement released by the newly appointed president’s office. “Countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”
The images from Nasrallah’s “funeral” now precisely reflect the historic crossroads where Lebanon stands:
The continuation of the Iranian occupation in Lebanon, through Hezbollah – or liberation from Iran and Hezbollah and freedom to Lebanon.
The choice is in the hands of… pic.twitter.com/6aDBZCsfYV— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) February 23, 2025
Iranian officials met Aoun during their visit to Beirut for the funeral of Nasrallah, former leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which fought a year-long conflict with Israel in parallel with the Gaza war that ended in a November ceasefire. Nearly five months after his death in an Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah buried Nasrallah in a mass funeral meant to showcase political strength despite the group’s weakened state following the war.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed Nasrallah on Sept. 27 last year in an airstrike as he met commanders in a bunker in Beirut’s southern suburbs, delivering a major setback to the Islamist group amid an Israeli offensive. The campaign went on to decimate much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities through air and ground attacks.
Hezbollah’s losses from the war with Israel were further compounded by the fall of its ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, which had long served as a vital supply route for Iranian weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon under Assad’s rule.
During Sunday’s high-level meeting, Aoun said Lebanon wanted “the best relations with Tehran, for the benefit of both countries and people.” According to Aoun’s statement, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf extended President Masoud Pezeshkian’s invitation for Aoun to visit Iran.
In a televised address at Nasrallah’s funeral in a Beirut stadium, current Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem declared his refusal to let “tyrant America” control Lebanon.
The United States helped broker the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire after almost a year of fighting. The conflict, which Hezbollah launched in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas during the early days of the Gaza war in October 2023, resulted in thousands of deaths in Lebanon and widespread destruction across the country’s south.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from the south, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area, as Israeli leaders seek to reassure northern residents that they can return home safely.
Tens of thousands of residents in northern Israel were forced to evacuate their homes last year and in late 2023 amid unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah, which expressed solidarity with Hamas amid the Gaza war.
The meeting between Iranian officials and Aoun took place even though regular flights between the two countries had been suspended.
On Feb. 13, Lebanon banned flights to and from Iran after Israel accused Tehran of using civilian planes to smuggle cash to Beirut to Hezbollah and warned of possible military action against such flights. In response, Iran barred Lebanese planes from repatriating dozens of Lebanese nationals stranded in the country, stating it would not allow Lebanese flights to land until its own flights could resume in Beirut.
The post Israel’s Top Diplomat Urges Lebanese People to Break Free From ‘Iranian Occupation’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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X, Meta Approved Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Ads Targeting German Voters Before Election, Study Finds
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X/Twitter, gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
The nonprofit group Ekō has released research showing that the social media platforms X and Meta approved advertising featuring hate speech against Jews and Muslims that was geared toward users in Germany in the lead-up to the country’s federal elections on Sunday.
The organization submitted 10 German-language ads intended to reach German voters before the election. Meta approved half of the proposed ads while X allowed all 10. Ekō canceled all approved ads before they could appear on the sites.
The five approved for publication on Meta referred to Muslim immigrants as a “virus,” “vermin,” “rodents,” or “rapists” and advocated for them to be sterilized, burnt, or gassed. Another Meta-approved ad called for arson attacks against synagogues in order to “stop the globalist Jewish rat agenda.”
“Our findings suggest that Meta’s AI-driven ad moderation systems remain fundamentally broken, despite the Digital Services Act (DSA) now being in full effect,” an unnamed spokesperson for Ekō told TechCrunch. They added that “rather than strengthening its ad review process or hate speech policies, Meta appears to be backtracking across the board.”
Meta spokeswoman Lara Hesse provided a statement to TechCrunch in response to Ekō’s findings, noting that “these ads violate our policies. None of them were published and our systems detected and disabled the advertiser’s page before we became aware of this research.”
The statement argued that “our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live. We’ve taken extensive steps in alignment with the DSA and continue to invest significant resources to protect elections.”
Ekō’s report said that all of the ads “broke Meta and X’s own policies, and several may have also breached German national laws. Meta rejected five ads on the basis that they may qualify as social issue, electoral or politics ads, but they were not rejected on the basis of hate speech or inciting violence.”
In addition to green-lighting the five ads allowed by Meta, X approved and scheduled five more, according to the study. These labeled immigrants as rodents and said that Muslims were “flooding” Germany in order “to steal our democracy.” Another ad used an antisemitic slur and accused Jews of lying about climate change to sabotage European industry. This ad also included an AI-generated image which featured sinister men at a table surrounded by gold bars with a Star of David behind them.
Researchers used OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion to create the AI imagery included with each ad. One image featured immigrants crowded into a gas chamber while another showed a synagogue on fire.
One X-approved ad specifically targeted the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), accusing the center-left party of wanting to allow 60 million Muslim immigrants into the country. One more ad allowed by X urged for the killing of Muslim rapists and claimed that leftists sought “open borders.” While Meta took as much as 12 hours to approve the submitted ads, X scheduled the ads instantly.
The Sunday election saw an 83.5 percent voter turnout, the highest level seen since Germany reunified in 1990. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party Christian Social Union (CSU) won with 28.6 percent of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second with 20.8 percent. X owner Elon Musk had previously endorsed the populist-nationalist, anti-immigrant party, saying in a livestream on his platform that “only AfD can save Germany, end of story, and people really need to get behind AfD, and otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany.” SPD came in third with 16.4 percent of the vote, followed by the Green Party with 11.6 percent.
“Our findings, alongside mounting evidence from other civil society groups, show that Big Tech will not clean up its platforms voluntarily,” the Ekō spokesperson said. “Meta and X continue to allow illegal hate speech, incitement to violence, and election disinformation to spread at scale, despite their legal obligations under the DSA.”
The report from Ekō stated that “at the core of the problem is these platforms’ toxic business model – one dependent on digital advertising revenue and fueled by engagement, no matter the cost.” The report explained that the websites’ systems “are built to maximize attention and revenue, creating little incentive to curb hate speech, disinformation, or incitement of violence.”
According to research released last month by the Anti-Defamation League, 6.2 million people in Germany “harbor elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes,” totaling 9 percent of the population and positioning the European nation with one of the lowest levels of antisemitism globally.
The post X, Meta Approved Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Ads Targeting German Voters Before Election, Study Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Documentary About Former Hamas Hostage Abducted on Oct. 7 Wins Two Awards at Berlin Film Festival
Brandon Kramer and Lance Kramer in front of the Berlinale Palast holding the Berlinale Documentary Award for “Holding Liat” on Feb 22, 2025. Photo: Berlin International Film Festival
A documentary about a woman who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, and has since returned to Israel won the annual Berlinale Documentary Award and also an Ecumenical Jury Prize on Saturday at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
“Holding Liat” was directed by Brandon Kramer and produced by Darren Aronofsky, Lance Kramer, Yoni Brook, Ari Handel, and Justin Gonçalves. Aronofsky is an Oscar-winning director whose credits include “Black Swan,” “Requiem for a Dream,” and “The Whale.”
The Berlinale Documentary Award is accompanied by a prize money of 40,000 euros ($41,907), which is split between the director and producer of the winning film. Winning the award also means the film will advance and take part in the Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature. “Holding Liat,” which is in both English and Hebrew, received a standing ovation when it made its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 16.
The American film revolves around Liat Atzili, a civics and history teacher kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive in the Gaza Strip until she returned to Israel in the first ceasefire and hostage-release deal in November 2023. Her husband, Aviv Atzili, was murdered by Hamas terrorists during their deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which they killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Brandon began filming “Holding Liat” shortly Liat’s abduction, first talking to her family members and unaware how his film would end and what Liat’s fate would be. A Washington, DC-based filmmaker, Brandon and his brother Lance co-founded Meridian Hill Pictures, which produced “Holding Liat.” They are related to Atzili and their documentary also highlights her parents Yehuda and Chaya, who were born in the US and made a number of efforts to secure their daughter’s release from captivity, such as meeting with politicians and other influential figures in the US.
“This isn’t a film that we wanted to make,” Brandon said upon accepting the award on Saturday. “After our relatives, Liat and Aviv Atzili, were taken from their home on Oct. 7, my brother Lance and I felt a responsibility to pick up the camera and document the family’s unique experience. We witnessed up close a family wrestling with different points of view on how to return their loved ones, hold onto their values, and seek a more peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians. In a complicated and polarized moment, telling a nuanced story about one family, navigating their differences, their grief, and their empathy felt universal and urgent to share. Documentaries can help us find each other’s humanity and the shared language of cinema can contribute to peace.”
“Holding Liat” was not the only documentary about the hostages featured this year in the Berlin International Film Festival. “Letter to David,” from Israeli director Tom Shovel, is about hostage David Cunio, an actor who was also abducted by Hamas from the Kibbutz Nir Oz and is still being held captive. Cunio starred in Shoval’s award-winning debut feature film, “Youth,” which was shown in 2013 at the Berlinale and focused on the relationship between brothers and, ironically, revolved around a kidnapping. “Letter to David” made its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 14.
The 75th Berlin International Film Festival took place from Feb. 13-23.
The post Documentary About Former Hamas Hostage Abducted on Oct. 7 Wins Two Awards at Berlin Film Festival first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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