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How Jewish studies scholars navigated Jewish law and fire-code rules to save Hanukkah at their conference
(JTA) — The email landed like a batch of soggy latkes last week: Hanukkah candle-lighting would not be permitted at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies.
“We recognize the sacrifice many of you will make to attend the conference during the holiday of Chanukah. We apologize that the conference hotel will not allow us to light candles in a separate room, as we have done in the past,” the professional group for Jewish studies scholars said in a message to its members, of whom approximately 1,200 are expected at this week’s convening in Boston.
Thus began a MacGyver-like scramble by some of the country’s leading Jewish studies scholars to hack a Hanukkah solution that would comply with both halacha, Jewish law, and the Sheraton Boston’s interpretation of Massachusetts fire code.
At first, the scholarly group directed conference-goers to details about a Hanukkah celebration at a nearby synagogue where menorahs could be lit, at least on the first night of the holiday Sunday. But that was little consolation for those whose personal practice of Judaism is rooted in traditional Jew law — which says the Hanukkah menorah must be lit in the place one eats and sleeps.
Some conference attendees said they would rely on Jewish law’s provision for travelers, which says someone on the road can be considered as having fulfilled the commandment to ignite a Hanukkah light if his family at home does so. But not everyone at the conference has a family, and even some who do were unsatisfied with that option.
Electric menorahs offered another possibility. After all, such devices are frequently found in hotels and other public spaces, and they’re what Chabad, the Orthodox denomination, uses in its famous public Hanukkah celebrations, this year scheduled for more than 15,000 locations around the world. But not everyone owns one, and at any rate, the use of oil wicks or, in the last few centuries, wax candles that offer a similar experience is considered preferable, according to some interpreters of Jewish law.
On Facebook and over email, anger was expressed. Impractical suggestions for the conference to relocate were made. And fear mounted that some conference-goers would smuggle in contraband menorahs and light them in their hotel rooms.
“You can’t stop people from breaking the rules, and it’s certainly much less safe to have that than something being watched,” Joshua Shanes, a historian at the College of Charleston who was part of the behind-the-scenes scramble, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Finally, on Friday morning, with some scholars already Boston-bound, Laura Arnold Leibman, a professor at Reed College and a member of the AJS board, announced a solution.
“We were able to negotiate with the hotel what I am referring to as the ‘Kaplan-Shanes compr[om]ise’ this morning that should allow for a halachic solution to the candle lighting situation (see details below), and I was able to get a beautiful hanukkiah this morning from the Israel Bookstore in Brookline that will meet the fire code,” she wrote on Facebook, to plaudits from association members.
Under the plan, a single Hanukkah lamp can be lit, under supervision, at the hotel. But each candle must be contained within a glass enclosure with at least 2 inches of space above the flame — so Leibman bought glass votives used to hold yahrzeit memorial candles, as well as a massive menorah to which they could be affixed.
“This was the only Hanukkiah I could find in Brookline large enough to handle them [and] will clean them up before Sunday and glue them down for safety to the inserts,” Leibman wrote alongside pictures of the brass menorah on her hotel windowsill.
That solved the problem of the flames themselves. But what of the obligation to light, which under traditional Jewish law each household must fulfill individually?
Enter the “Kaplan” of the compromise: Lawrence Kaplan, a professor of Judaic and rabbinic philosophy at McGill University who is perhaps best known for compiling and editing the teachings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik of the philosophy of Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher.
Kaplan wrote on Facebook that he had consulted Rabbi Daniel Fridman, the rabbi of the Teaneck Jewish Center and the top rabbi at the Torah Academy of Bergen County, for a way to have a single conference-goer fulfill the mitzvah of lighting a Hanukkah lamp on behalf of others. He learned that a contribution of a penny (or more) could enable someone to buy into the mitzvah — so a bowl for coins will sit aside the jerry-rigged menorah.
“I really l appreciate the effort and expense to which you went,” Kaplan wrote on Liebman’s Facebook post. “It was easy for me to suggest the idea but it was you who transformed it into a reality.”
Now, the discussion has shifted to whether contributions in excess of a penny can be turned into donations to the Association for Jewish Studies — and what can be done to prevent such a snafu in the future. Next year’s conference in San Francisco starts after the holiday ends, and the 2024 conference will be online-only. But in 2025, the first day of the conference again corresponds with the first night of Hanukkah.
Shanes and Liebman both indicated that they expected the right to light candles to be written into the contract with any future conference host, marking a return to the old custom of having conference-goers light candles on their own schedule.
“At least for this year,” Shanes said, “we’re all coming together. It’s a silver lining I suppose.”
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The post How Jewish studies scholars navigated Jewish law and fire-code rules to save Hanukkah at their conference appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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In Israel, she’s a national heroine — Americans are starting to understand why
Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II
By Douglas Century
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $30
In Israel, Hannah Senesh, the 23-year-old poet and paratrooper who died trying to save Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, is a national heroine. Her verses are memorized by schoolchildren and encoded in prayerbooks, her kibbutz home is a memorial, and Israeli streets and settlements bear her name.
In the United States, recognition of Senesh’s achievements has come more slowly. Roberta Grossman’s 2008 documentary, Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, told her story with archival footage, interviews and dramatic recreations. In 2010-11, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted an exhibition, Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.
Now, when the notion of Israeli military heroism seems particularly contested, Senesh has surfaced again. This fall, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene revived David Schechter’s play with music, Hannah Senesh, a collaboration with Lori Wilner that originated in the 1980s. And a major new biography, Douglas Century’s Crash of the Heavens, excavates the brilliant young woman — frustrated, lonely, headstrong, determined — long encrusted in myth.
Century’s powerful book, whose title derives from a Senesh poem, depicts both a unique 1944 Jewish rescue mission and its historical context: the chaotic final months of World War II, when Europe’s remaining Jews were both targeted victims and bargaining chips.
An emigrant from fascist Hungary to British Mandatory Palestine, Senesh was one of a cohort of Jewish volunteers — 37, including two other women — chosen to infiltrate the inferno of Central and Eastern Europe that other Jews were desperate to escape. Trained by the elite fighters of the Palmach, as well as the Royal Air Force and British Intelligence, they had a dual mission: to locate and evacuate downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war, and to save Jews. For the latter, it was almost too late, though the paratroopers did ultimately rescue an unknown number of Jews.
While Senesh is the focus, Century’s cinematic narrative alights periodically on several of her colleagues. Among the most notable was Enzo Sereni, an Italian Jewish intellectual, “a remarkable man with prodigious appetites,” who died in Dachau. The Romanian-born Surika Braverman, phobic about heights, was unable to parachute. But she did fly into Yugoslavia, link up with Tito’s partisans, and later establish the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces. Yoel Palgi, the lone survivor of the three paratroopers who infiltrated Hungary, became a key source of information about Senesh’s ordeals.
Her story, told here with great intimacy and detail, is riveting. Those who knew her underline her uniqueness, including a courage that ultimately impressed even her captors.
Born Anna Szenes in 1921 Budapest, she was the daughter of a celebrated Hungarian Jewish playwright and journalist who died of heart failure at 33. At 13, Senesh started a diary. In 1938, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law restricting Jewish participation in the economy, and her country’s growing antisemitism transformed the teenager into a Zionist.
Accepted to an agricultural school in Palestine, Senesh made aliyah in 1939. She graduated with expertise in poultry farming, but was assigned to the laundry of Kibbutz Sdot Yam (Fields of the Sea), near Caesaria. The location inspired one of her most famous poems, but the daily routine was mind-numbing. She longed to return to Budapest to inspire Jewish resistance and help her mother escape.
As luck would have it, her kibbutz connected her to a fellow Hungarian refugee involved in organizing a secret rescue mission. “I see the hand of destiny in this,” she wrote at the time. “I’m totally self-confident, ready for anything,” she later added.
The mission was delayed, in Century’s telling, by mutual distrust between the British military and the Jewish leadership in Palestine. But Senesh finally was able to train as both a paratrooper and wireless radio operator. She chose the code name Hagar, for the second wife of the Biblical Abraham, “the slave girl who’s redeemed, who speaks directly to the Lord, who is told that she must return home.” Before leaving for Europe, she was able to see her brother, Gyuri, and give him a poignant letter in which she wrote: “Will you sense that I had no choice, that I had to do this?”
After parachuting into Yugoslavia, Senesh joined Tito’s partisans. But within days, the Germans had marched into Hungary, complicating her mission. She crossed the border anyway, and was quickly captured by Hungarian gendarmes — likely because of a betrayal, or more than one, Century suggests.
He graphically describes the vicious beatings and torture she endured, and her stoic silence. One of her fellow paratroopers had declined to give her a cyanide pill, so an easy death was impossible. Her suicide attempts failed. Believing her mother had left Budapest, she finally offered her real name. That led to a heartbreaking reunion between a bruised and battered Hannah and her anxious mother, Katherine. Both spent time in a Gestapo prison, where they had occasional contact.
Katherine eventually was released, and her daughter experienced a mild reprieve: She was able to teach her fellow inmates Hebrew, distribute hand-made dolls as gifts, and counsel a pregnant Jewish prisoner on an escape route. Then came a trial for treason and espionage. In her defense, Senesh eloquently denied betraying Hungary and chastised her judges for allying with Nazism. As Soviet and Romanian troops descended on Budapest, she was abruptly informed of her conviction and an immediate death sentence, with no chance of appeal.
Integral to her legend is that the youthful Senesh went defiantly to her execution by firing squad, declining to beg for a pardon and refusing even a blindfold. She left behind a trove of diaries, letters and simple, emotionally direct poems — a dazzling literary as well as moral legacy.
One poem, from a period of torture and solitary confinement, concludes: “I gambled on what mattered most,/The dice were cast. I lost.” Another famous verse emphasizes redemption, declaring, “Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.” Century’s biography — which also recounts Senesh’s prodigious cultural afterlife — is a stirring testament to both her undeniable gifts and tragic fate.
The post In Israel, she’s a national heroine — Americans are starting to understand why appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says US Will Sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia Ahead of White House Talks With Crown Prince
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman shake hands during a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to approve the sale of US-made F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, announcing his intention one day before he hosts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House in Washington, DC.
The high-stakes meeting comes as rumors swirl about the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia, long-time foes who in recent years have increasingly cooperated behind closed doors, normalizing ties under a US-brokered deal.
“They want to buy. They are a great ally. I will say that we will be doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We will be selling them F-35s.”
Reuters reported earlier this month that Saudi Arabia has requested to buy as many as 48 F-35 fighter jets in a potential multibillion-dollar deal that cleared a key Pentagon hurdle.
Such a sale would be a policy shift for Washington, which primarily sells the F-35 to formal military allies, such as NATO members or Japan. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has the elite fighter jets, in accordance with longstanding bipartisan policy for US administrations and the Congress to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. Saudi Arabia’s acquiring them would at least somewhat change the military balance of power.
However, Axios reported over the weekend that Israel does not oppose the US sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer — as long as it’s conditioned on Riyadh normalizing relations with Jerusalem.
“We told the Trump administration that the supply of F-35s to Saudi Arabia needs to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel,” an anonymous Israeli official told the news outlet, adding that giving the fighter jets without getting any significant diplomatic progress would be “a mistake and counterproductive.”
It has been widely reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of a deal to establish formal diplomatic ties until the discussions were derailed by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Saudi officials have said that they will only agree to a normalization deal if Israel commits to a path toward a Palestinian state.
Saudi Arabia’s close partners Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were among the Arab states to normalize ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. Trump has said he is intent on expanding the accords to include other countries, above all Saudi Arabia.
“I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly,” Trump told reporters on Friday.
The F-35 deal and possible Israeli-Saudi normalization are expected to be central to the agenda when bin Salman, widely known by his initials MBS, meets Trump.
It will be the crown prince’s first trip to the US since the death of prominent Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018. US intelligence concluded that bin Salman approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi, although Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader has denied ordering the operation.
Seven years later, Washington and Riyadh, longtime strategic partners, are looking forward, with bin Salman set to receive full ceremonial honors at the White House. Their meeting comes six months after Trump secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States.
Beyond investment, Riyadh has been eager to reach a security agreement with Washington expanding arms sales such as advanced missile-defense systems and drones, and deeper military training partnerships. Most importantly for Riyadh, however, is the US offering certain guarantees ensuring the kingdom’s security. Many observers have suggested that such a defense deal could be part of a broader arrangement to broker Saudi-Israel normalization.
Trump and bin Salman are also expected to discuss broadening ties in commerce, technology, and potentially nuclear energy.
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Catholic Church in Berlin Condemns Antisemitism as Anti-Israel Agitators Vandalize Historic Crucifix
Illustrative: Hamas supporters at a rally in Cologne, Germany, on Oct. 22, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Ying Tang
As antisemitic incidents continue to rise in Germany, the Catholic Church in Berlin has taken a firmer stance against anti-Jewish hatred by issuing new guidelines prohibiting its members from expressing racist, antisemitic, or extremist views.
On Saturday, the Archdiocese of Berlin, the governing body of the city’s Catholic Church, announced that all candidates for leadership positions must sign a special declaration rejecting racism, antisemitism, and extremist views.
“With this decision, responsibility falls where it belongs. Anyone seeking to serve on the diocesan committees and run in the elections must actively uphold the values of our Church,” Karlies Abmeier, president of the Diocesan Council, said in a statement.
The Catholic Church’s latest move aims to ensure that anyone seeking a leadership role within the institution commits to rejecting “racism, antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and hostility toward democracy.”
“It is crucial for us that such statements never come from those in positions of power within our Church,” Marcel Hoyer, executive director of the committee, told the German Press Agency.
Candidates would also be prohibited from belonging to any party or organization that the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has designated as extremist.
The archdiocese’s announcement comes amid a climate of rising hostility and radicalization in Germany, where the local Jewish community has increasingly become a target.
Last week, anti-Israel protesters vandalized a church with paint in the Vogelsberg district of Hesse in central Germany.
According to local media reports, a crucifix was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, including the slogans “Free Palestine” and “Jesus is Palestinian,” and the church walls were also defaced with red paint.
Pastor Ingmar Bartsch denounced the incident, describing himself as “angry and bewildered.”
“What affects me most is that it’s a historic depiction of Jesus, at least 200 to 300 years old, and truly one of a kind,” Bartsch told the German newspaper Bild.
He explained that the crucifix will require a professional restoration, with initial damage estimates reaching into the thousands of dollars.
Local police have launched an investigation into the incident as a case of property damage, noting that the items involved hold religious significance.
As the restoration process begins, Bartsch said the church will remain closed for now, reopening only for religious services.