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In Jerusalem neighborhoods bound together by terror, anger and trepidation about what comes next
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Time stops on Shabbat in Jerusalem, for the living and the dead.
Up the stairs in an apartment on the main road in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood in the city’s northeast, past hallway portraits of Sephardic rabbis, the Mizrahi family was not taking visitors on Saturday. “This is not the right time,” a woman who opened the apartment door said.
A Palestinian gunman gunned down Eli and Natali Mizrahi on Friday night. Now the couple was in a morgue awaiting burial. There are no Jewish funerals on Shabbat. They would be buried after nightfall.
The gunman killed seven people Friday night, in the worst terrorist attack in Jerusalem in over a decade.
A day earlier, Israeli troops killed nine people, including two civilians, in a raid in the northern West Bank city of Jenin that Israeli officials said was aimed at preempting a major terrorist attack; a 10th died later. A day later, a 13-year-old Palestinian shot and wounded an Israeli father and son outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls amid a scattering of further incidents.
Jerusalem, the country, the region are on edge. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced new measures aimed at curbing the violence, targeting families of terrorists. Police arrested 42 people in connection with the Neve Yaakov attack. Bill Burns, the CIA boss, is on his way to Israel to consult with Netanyahu about how to keep the region from blowing up.
On Friday night, around 8 p.m., in the middle of the Sabbath evening meal, Eli Mizrahi, 48, ran downstairs as soon as he heard the gunfire. His father, Shimon, asked him not to go, the Times of Israel reported. Eli’s wife of two years, Natali, 45, followed her husband.
Eli Mizrahi spoke to the gunman, who shot him and Natali dead.
On Saturday, Neve Yaakov residents stood in groups on the street in the long shadows cast by the winter sun, gossiping, trying to piece together details from second hand reports; Shabbat forbade them from turning on the radio or TV or checking their phones.
“We sat here in the living room and suddenly I heard shooting,” said Sara Gablayev, 76, who lives on the ground floor, below the Mizrahis. “I ran to the window and saw two people falling. Then I saw some running and I shouted, ‘What happened?’ He said two more people were killed down the street.”
Family and friends of Eli and Natali Mizrahi, who were killed in a shooting attack in Jerusalem, mourn during their funeral in Bet Shemesh, jan. 28, 2023. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
It was Friday evening, as Shabbat services were ending. Kheiri Al-Qam, 21, drove his car down Neve Yaakov Boulevard, shooting civilians, seemingly aiming at whomever he could reach.
He murdered the Mizrahis. He murdered Rafael Ben Eliahu, 56, who worked for the post office, and who left a widow and three children. He murdered Asher Natan, who was 14. He murdered Shaul Hai, 68, a sexton at one synagogue who was entering another to attend a Torah lesson. He murdered Irina Korlova, a Ukrainian caregiving worker. He murdered Ilya Sosansky, 26.
“The terrorist killed three people at the entrance to the synagogue and left three others with various injuries,” said Chanoch Reem, a volunteer first responder with United Hatzalah who lives next to the synagogue Hai was entering and who rushed to the scene when he heard the commotion. “He then drove away while continuing to shoot passersby.”
In a release, United Hatzalah quoted another of its first responders, Yosef Deshet, who was in the synagogue when Al-Qam opened fire. “When I heard the gunshots begin I took cover on the floor under a table with my son,” he said. “Immediately after the shooting ended, I ran to my house nearby to bring my son back to safety and to grab my medical trauma kit and bulletproof vest.”
Al-Qam drove his car to a junction that connects roads to Neve Yaakov and Bet Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood. There, he exchanged fire with Israeli troops, and was killed.
On Saturday, in Ras al-Amud, an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood seven miles south of Neve Yaakov, Israeli troops surrounded the six-story building where Al-Qam lived with his extended family. Before dawn, troops bound men and boys to one another by the wrists and led them out. Neighborhood Palestinian youths grouped together on a nearby stairway watched the soldiers.
One of the young Palestinian men watching the troops said they were in wait-and-see mode.
“Maybe they’ll demolish the house. Maybe it will be a surprise,” he said. “It’s a crazy government now. Any decision is possible.”
Netanyahu’s government, just weeks old, is the most right-wing in Israel’s history. His public security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was weaned on the teachings of Meir Kahane, the racist rabbi assassinated in 1990, and has called for loosening rules of engagement with the Palestinians.
Ben-Gvir the lawyer represented Jewish Israelis who were accused of violence against Palestinians. In a detail that underscored the entwined fates of the two neighborhoods, one of those whose innocence he helped obtain was Haim Perlman, arrested in 2010 on suspicion of having murdered another Kheiri Al-Qam — the Neve Yaakov attacker’s grandfather. Perlman was never charged.
Ben-Gvir the provocateur with a criminal record made his name acts aimed at forcing the government rightward, accusing it of weakness. On Friday night Ben-Gvir the government minister traveled to Neve Yaakov, and now the anger, the pushback, the pleas to do something, anything were aimed at him.
Israeli security and emergency forces at the scene of a shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem, Jan. 27, 2023. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
“It’s on your watch!” said one man, caught on video shouting at Ben-Gvir. “Let’s see what you do now!”
The next day, Saturday, the residents chattered with one another on Neve Yaakov Boulevard trying to make sense of the night before. Neve Yaakov, a neighborhood built after Israel captured eastern Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, is surrounded by Palestinian neighborhoods and the separation wall between Jerusalem looms near.
“We live down the street so we don’t know what happened,” said Miriam Reuven, who was standing on a traffic island with her three granddaughters. “We came to get more information. I don’t feel safe here anymore.”
Some residents shooed away reporters: It was Shabbat, after all. Shimon Yisrael sought them out. He was showing a French camera crew the bullet in his ground-floor window.
“He came with a pistol to my face,” he said of Al-Qam. “I was outside, he wanted to shoot me and I went into the house and he shot at the window. He wanted to kill me.”
He knows what to do with Al-Qam’s family, which is likely to receive benefits that the Palestinian Authority gives to the families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned over their role in attacking Israelis. “Destroy their house,” Yisrael said. “Deport the whole family to Syria, to ISIS, they’ll slaughter them over there.”
In Ras Al Amud, the youths outside Al-Qam’s building said his father, Musa, is at prayers at a mosque a few doors down.
At the mosque, men were gathered in a courtyard, drinking the bitter coffee typically served at funerals. Except there is no funeral. Israeli authorities are holding Khairi Al-Qam’s body.
Musa Al-Qam whose son, Khairi, murdered seven Israelis and was killed, mourns in a mosque in Jerusalem, Jan. 28, 2023. (Orly Halpern)
Musa Al-Qam came out of the mosque to meet a reporter in the courtyard. His voice was toneless.
“Today is a wedding. It’s a celebration,” he said of his son’s death. “We don’t need to cry. Everything that happens is from God.”
Men hugged him. He stiffened.
His hands are calloused. He explained that he has worked for years in construction. He has eight children, four boys and four girls. The youngest are twins, he said, and for the first time, he smiled.
“The soldiers told me my son is a fighter,” he said. “My son is not from any movement. I don’t know what happened to his mind. The occupation kills boys before they are men.”
A few hours later, Netanyahu’s office issued a release: The security cabinet had ordered his apartment building sealed ahead of its destruction.
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OneTable reimagines Shabbat dinner program amid safety concerns, layoffs and budget crisis
(JTA) — When the Shabbat-dinner nonprofit OneTable slashed a quarter of its staff last month, it wasn’t only because of a budget crisis.
It’s true that fundraising was way down. But the group was also responding to what it sees as important shifts in how Jews gather, citing its growing sense that Gen Z is less likely than others to want to open doors to their home.
Now, OneTable is revealing a raft of new pilot programs and policies, including a move away from its defining practice of subsidizing dinners; a new policy barring anti-Israel events; a renewed focus on young Jews; and a shift toward partnerships with emergent Shabbat “clubs” to lift the burden and risk of hosting at home.
“In this world right now, the idea of welcoming something, someone into your home is scary to people,” said OneTable’s new CEO, Sarah Abramson, who joined the company in May. “All of these things are actually creating barriers to people wanting to host in their homes, and so we know that we need to bring OneTable out into the world.”
At the same time, the group is centralizing its operations. While the 14 layoffs took place across the company, Abramson said OneTable had focused in part on field managers, who served as regional liaisons with hosts and potential hosts.
“If a person in that community really saw that field manager as the face of OneTable, and for whatever reason, did not feel like that person spoke to them or was not aligned with their Jewish values and how they want to Shabbat, then often they would kind of discount OneTable,” she said.
The changes come as Israel looms large over Jewish nonprofits, influencing fundraising and engagement while also at times laying a minefield, especially for younger Jews who are increasingly divided in their sentiments.
OneTable says the number of people participating annually in Shabbat dinners it supports doubled after Oct. 7, 2023, in keeping with a “surge” of Jewish engagement that many organizations observed following Hamas’ attack on Israel. Before the resulting war in Gaza, 42,000 people a year were attending OneTable dinners. After, the number reached 80,000, according to the group.
But the group struggled to keep pace when it came to fundraising. In 2024, OneTable ran a deficit of more than $900,000, spending about $10.6 million while bringing in just over $9 million in contributions, according to their tax filings that year. That represented a sharp decline in funding from 2023, when the organization reported nearly $12 million in contributions and ended the year in a surplus.
“In full transparency, our philanthropy has not kept pace with the volume,” Abramson said.
Prior to joining OneTable, Abramson worked as the executive vice president for strategy and impact at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Boston’s Jewish federation. There, she oversaw grantmaking as well as the nonprofit’s $60 million post-Oct. 7 Israel emergency fund.
As Jews across the United States flooded funds like that with nearly $1 billion, concerns quickly emerged about whether the donations would supplant other giving. The answer at OneTable, at least, appears to be yes, Abramson said.
“Eighty thousand participants requires so much more philanthropic support at a time where, rightly, philanthropic support for the Jewish community was directed towards Israel, and really thinking about other priorities,” she said.
Gali Cooks, the president and CEO of Leading Edge, a nonprofit that provides training, research and support for Jewish nonprofits, said that there was also a “tricky confluence right now of rising demands and rising costs” within the Jewish nonprofit sector.
Cooks said that, across the sector, nonprofit leaders were realizing that they have to “think smaller and bigger at the same time” — as OneTable says it is doing.
“Within each organization, leaders are trying to achieve more focus and clarity and streamlining toward the mission,” said Cooks. “But between organizations, they’re striving for more collaboration, more partnerships, shared infrastructure, and shared planning. That’s true in the conversation about talent, board excellence, and leadership development, but I think it’s also true about things like antisemitism, security, Israel engagement, and more.”
The changes underway at OneTable include formalizing a stance on Israel for the first time. Earlier this month, the organization added a list of its “core commitments” to its website that included a section outlining drawing a hard line against anti-Israel advocacy.
“We do not formally partner with, or support, any organization, Shabbat dinners, or gatherings that call for Israel’s destruction or in any way question Israel’s right to exist,” the section reads. “We do not fund dinners that align with any political party or candidate.”
At the same time, the group is aiming to stoke Israel talk at the Shabbat table. The group has a new partnership with Resetting the Table, a Jewish nonprofit that teaches dialogue skills, to “allow our Shabbat tables to become nuanced places for hard conversations,” Abramson said during a presentation about at the Jewish Federations of North America annual conference in November.
“We also are doing a lot of pilots based on research that enable the skill of hard conversations for Shabbat,” Abramson told JTA. “For example, we have a pilot right now with Resetting the Table, helping a lot of our hosts think through, how do you actually have deep, meaningful conversations, often about Israel, but not only, particularly in the American context right now.”
For some, the changes mark an unhappy end to OneTable as a respite for young Jews from the pitched ideological divides over Israel that increasingly characterize Jewish experiences.
Alexis Fosco, a former OneTable employee, posted on LinkedIn last month in an announcement of her departure that she was “frustrated at Jewish funders withdrawing from diaspora-focused work, leaving the staff who are already subsidizing their causes to absorb the impact.” She indicated that she had not been among the laid-off workers.
“I keep thinking about how funding-driven scope creep takes hold,” continued Fosco. “It’s heartbreaking and spiritually exhausting to pour yourself into an organization and walk away realizing the work no longer aligns with what you set out to build or believe in.”
Three former field managers did not respond to JTA requests for comment.
Abramson said the nonprofit’s new initiatives would be rolled out as pilots over the coming year. But even if the tests are temporary, they mark a significant shift for the nonprofit that has long been synonymous with underwriting the costs of serving Shabbat dinner at home. Hosts have historically received $10 stipends for each registered guest at their OneTable dinners.
An analysis of host patterns found that a small number of repeat hosts were racking up disproportionate subsidies.
In September, after one former OneTable host posted about their dismissal from the program on Facebook, Dani Kohanzadeh, OneTable’s senior director of field, told JTA that it had let go of just under 50 hosts in one week. But she said that the decision was not primarily financial.
“It’s not about balancing the budget,” said Kohanzadeh. “We didn’t make this decision based on the financial cutoff, it’s based on the overall experience with our support.”
Now, Abramson said the organization plans on rolling out alternative incentives for hosting Shabbat, including a “point” system in which points can be exchanged for prizes including, potentially, trips to Israel and elsewhere.
“OneTable’s model really works for a lot of people … so we want to ensure that people who are finding a lot of meaning and financial support through nourishment continue to be able to choose that, we won’t be taking that away,” she said.
Abramson said the company was also shifting away from its recent focus on older Jewish adults to center its programming on younger Jews.
“OneTable was founded as an organization designed to provide Friday night Shabbat experiences for young adults,” she said. “This is really going back to our roots and ensuring that we are evolving the way in which young adults want to be reached.”
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Resignations shake art gallery after it rejects Jewish pro-Palestinian activist’s work over antisemitism claims
(JTA) — An art gallery in Canada has been roiled by resignations after it narrowly voted not to acquire works by Jewish photographer and outspoken pro-Palestinian activist Nan Goldin over accusations that she holds antisemitic views.
The resignations of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s modern and contemporary curator and two members of its modern and contemporary collections committee were first reported by The Globe and Mail.
Goldin, who is widely acclaimed for her documentary-style photography of marginalized communities, has faced controversy in recent years over her outspoken pro-Palestinian activism.
In the weeks following Oct. 7, Goldin also signed onto a letter calling for “Palestinian liberation.” In April 2024, she also signed another letter calling for Israel’s exclusion from the Venice Biennale. In December 2023, Goldin told n+1 Magazine that she had “been on a cultural boycott of Israel for my whole life.”
And German leaders criticized her after she said in a November 2024 speech at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, where she said, “I decided to use this exhibition as a platform to amplify my position of moral outrage at the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon,” adding, “Anti-Zionism has nothing to do with antisemitism.”
Last week, Goldin donated one of her artworks to a fundraiser for Palestinian children curated by children’s YouTube star Ms. Rachel, who has faced criticism for her pro-Palestinian advocacy.
According to an internal memo obtained by The Globe and Mail, the gallery was embroiled debates over acquiring Goldin’s works in the middle of last year.
The gallery’s modern and contemporary curatorial working committee eventually voted 11-9 against purchasing Goldin’s works, after some members alleged Goldin’s remarks were “offensive” and “antisemitic.” Other members of the committee argued that her works were not antisemitic and that “refusing the work because of the artist’s views was censorship,” the newspaper reported.
The Art Gallery of Toronto is publicly funded and already houses three of Goldin’s works. The work it decided not to acquire, “Stendhal Syndrome,” does not relate to her pro-Palestinian activism and was instead acquired by Vancouver gallery that has displayed it since November.
Following the debate over Goldin’s work, the director and chief executive of the Toronto gallery, Stephan Jost, outlined a governance review that recommended a “reset” on the committee’s acquisition discussions and “clarification” of its members’ responsibilities, according to the Globe and Mail.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the resignations, the gallery acknowledged the turmoil over Goldin’s work and said they had engaged an expert to review the meeting.
“Political views are never intended to be part of the process. In this instance, personal political views did surface,” said a AGO spokesperson. “As a result, the AGO engaged an independent governance expert to review matters relating to that meeting. The AGO takes these learnings seriously and has reset to ensure that such discussions are focused on an artwork’s alignment to the AGO’s acquisition criteria, are healthy and productive, and welcome multiple perspectives.”
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Berlin rabbi convicted of ‘sexual assault and sexual coercion’ of woman he offered to counsel
(JTA) — BERLIN — A Berlin district court has found a rabbi guilty of “sexual assault and sexual coercion by exploiting a moment of surprise,” a misdemeanor under German law.
The criminal case was brought by the Berlin public prosecutor and by one of multiple women who have accused the rabbi of a range of sexual abuses dating back almost two decades. Anyone with a complaint may press charges, Michael Petzold, a press spokesman for the public prosecutor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Many of the women — including the co-plaintiff in this case — have said they thought they were his only victim, until news reports emerged following his firing by the Jewish community in Berlin on June 1, 2023.
The saga proved significant because it marked a rare instance of a rabbinic firing by an organized Jewish community in Germany. It also initiated a new openness to discussing abuse allegations within the community.
Reuven Y., 49, a married father of four, has now been given a suspended prison sentence of 10 months as well as two years’ probation. German law bars the release of the convicted person’s full name and address.
The co-plaintiff and two witnesses were among 17 women who had testified against the rabbi in July 2023 to an Orthodox Jewish court, or beit din, in Germany. That court had determined that the defendant was unfit to serve in any of his clerical roles, including as ritual circumciser, Torah scribe and kashrut supervisor.
In the current case, the defendant “invited witness P. to a purported ‘personality training’ on February 21, 2021” in the premises of his synagogue on Passauer Strasse in Berlin, according to the Berlin district court verdict issued Wednesday.
In the course of this “training,” the rabbi instructed the witness “to stand with her back to the wall and close her eyes in order to free her from the ‘negative energies’ of her ex-partner,” the court found. He then suddenly kissed her intimately, without her consent, the court wrote. “Due to the unforeseen assault, the witness was unable to defend herself. Her well-being was significantly violated by your behavior,” the court wrote, addressing the defendant.
On Tuesday, Reuven Y. withdrew his right to appeal the decision. If he violates his probation, even on the last day, he can be jailed for the full 10 months, Petzold said.
The rabbi’s Berlin-based defense attorney, Galina Rolnik, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The newly convicted rabbi, who had unsuccessfully sued the Jewish community to get his job back, recently lost his appeal in that case, it was reported during the recent trial. He told the court during a hearing on Jan. 5 that he was being supported by his wife.
The Jewish community fired him in 2023 after a handful of women, all of them with a migration background from the former Soviet Union, testified privately that the defendant had assaulted them sexually, mostly after gaining their confidence by claiming that only he as a rabbi with special powers could help them resolve family or relationship problems. The incidents dated back nearly two decades.
The Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany, known by its German acronym ORD, issued a statement following the verdict.
“We have the deepest sympathy for the woman affected. We as rabbis will not remain silent when a sexual assault occurs in the name of Judaism,” the statement said. “The Beit Din (Jewish rabbinical court) of the ORD and the rabbis of the ORD condemn all forms of harassment and abuse in the strongest possible terms, especially when perpetrated by someone in a position of power within education and religion. A person who harasses or abuses others is not fit to hold the office of rabbi and should not be active in religious, rabbinical, or educational positions.”
Court witness Elena Eyngorn, the whistleblower who raised awareness and support for the victims in 2023, told the court during the recent criminal trial that about 32 women had contacted her with accounts of abuse by the accused rabbi. She also testified that other incidents were more severe than the one heard in the case that resulted in conviction.
This reporter was subpoenaed and testified in the case about JTA’s previous reporting on the topic.
Petzold told JTA that other alleged victims “may file complaints at the police station or at the prosecution office. And then it has to be investigated.”
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