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Jewish Life Stories: A lone soldier, the voice of the Shangri-Las, two giants of American health care
This article is also available as a weekly newsletter, “Life Stories,” where we remember those who made an outsize impact in the Jewish world — or just left their community a better or more interesting place. Subscribe here to get “Life Stories” in your inbox every Tuesday.
Rebecca Baruch, 18, a Dutch immigrant who found a home in Israel
Rebecca Baruch was 18 when she moved from the Netherlands to Israel in 2017.
In 2021, in an article in the Christian Science Monitor about her experience as a “lone soldier,” she spoke about the loneliness of graduating from offficer training school during COVID-19, when her family couldn’t travel to Israel for the ceremony. She graduated on Nov. 5, 2020, and went on to lead an all-female field intelligence unit.
“I think women make good combat soldiers in general because we push to prove ourselves, our worth,” she explained. “Inside our unit, we don’t have to prove anything because we build each other up through our hard work and camaraderie.”
She also told the Monitor what she told the soldiers under her command, about “my perfectionism, that if I get angry it’s probably because I need to eat, and why I immigrated to Israel, pulled here as a European Jewish girl looking for a place I could feel fully at home.”
After the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, she rejoined her reserve unit. She served a few weeks and was allowed to leave the army to attend a Habonim youth group camp in South Africa as a counselor. There she contracted a bacterial infection and slipped into a coma. She died Sunday at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel. She was 24.
“In line with Rebecca’s last wish her organs were donated to people that needed them,” her father, Robbert Baruch, wrote in a Facebook post. “Whilst today is one of the saddest days of our lives, the fact that our sister and daughter continues to help people after her death fills us with pride and gratitude.”
Mary Weiss, 75, the leader and the voice of the Shangri-Las
Mary Weiss, center, and The Shangri-Las on the cover of Cash Box magazine, Feb. 13, 1965. (Wikipedia)
Mary Weiss was barely a teenager when she formed the Shangri-Las with her sister Betty and two other Jewish teens from the Cambria Heights section of Queens, New York. The “girl group” had a breakout hit in 1964 with “Leader of the Pack,” a bombastic melodrama about a doomed, bad-boy romance. The group broke up in 1969 but left a legacy that inspired other female musicians, including the Jewish singer Amy Winehouse. “I love the drama, I love the atmosphere, I love the sound effects,” Winehouse said of the group. Weiss died Friday in Palm Springs, California. She was 75.
Norman Jewison, 97, the gentile director who brought “Fiddler” to the big screen
Director Norman Jewison, right, and star Topol as Tevye on the set of the film version of “Fiddler on the Roof.” (Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber)
Norman Jewison relayed a by-now familiar anecdote: When producers of the Broadway musical approached him for the directing job, he had to sheepishly inform them he wasn’t actually Jewish. He got the job anyway, and generations of Jewish families watching 1971’s “Fiddler” would come to associate that big title card displaying the “Jewison” name with the story of their shtetl-born ancestors. Bringing Anatevka to vivid, pulsating life was one of many career highlights for the Toronto native, who died Saturday at age 97. Jewison helmed several other iconic films in his long, distinguished career, including “Moonstruck,” “In The Heat of the Night,” “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “The Hurricane” — many of them involving pressing social matters like racism and other forms of bigotry.
Zevulun Charlop, 94, a transitonal leader of YU’s flagship seminary
Rabbi Zevulun Charlop served as dean of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University from 1971-2008. (Yeshiva University)
Rabbi Zevulun Charlop, former dean of the rabbinical seminary at Yeshiva University, died Jan. 16. He was 94. When Charlop was named dean of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Y.U. in 1971, it had 154 students. When he retired in 2008, it had 340. Charlop also saw a transition in American Orthodoxy, training American-born, college-educated rabbis to succeed the European-trained rabbis who had held pulpits and led yeshivas through much of the 20th century. Charlop was himself a pulpit rabbi, having been given a lifetime contract in 1966 by the Young Israel of Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx, New York, which closed in 2015. He once said that his ideal Y.U. would be “a yeshiva like Volozhin,” a legendary seminary in what is now Belarus, and a university like Columbia, the Ivy League university where he obtained a degree.
Claire Fagin, 97, a force in nursing and academia
From 1977 to 1992, Claire M. Fagin served as dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, which named the nursing education building in her honor in 2006. (Penn Nursing)
When Claire Fagin was growing up in New York in the 1930s, her parents — European Jewish immigrants — wanted her to be a physician, like one of her aunts. Fagin, inspired by her “collegial” nature and the snappy uniforms of the Army Nurse Corps, had other ideas. She earned a degree in nursing and went on to become perhaps the most influential nursing educator over the next 50 years. She successfully challenged policies limiting visiting hours to parents of hospitalized children, remade the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing as its dean starting in 1977, was the founding director of a national program on geriatric nursing and championed advanced training that earned nurses more professional respect. And along the way, she became the first woman to lead an Ivy League university when she was named Penn’s interim president in 1993. Fagin died Jan. 16 at her home in Manhattan. She was 97.
Gabriel Maza, 99, a rabbi who championed tough laws against hate
Rabbi Gabriel Maza, longtime rabbi of Long Island’s Suffolk Jewish Center, in a photo from the early 1960s. (Courtesy Devra Maza)
Gabriel Maza, who as the leader of the Suffolk Jewish Center in Deer Park, Long Island urged legislation to combat hate crimes and antisemitism, died Dec. 26, 2023. He was 99. The president of the Suffolk Board of Rabbis and later the Long Island Board of Rabbis in the 1980s, Maza lobbied the New York State Legislature about the need for tougher hate crime laws, and, among other successes, pushed for the creation of the Suffolk County Task Force on Anti-Semitism. “Open antisemitism is contagious among people in whom this old form of hate is dormant or hidden,” his daughter Devra Maza quoted him as saying. “As hate and prejudice travels across oceans and continents, all people of decency, and certainly those in positions of power, have a duty in sounding a civilized alarm, for criminal prejudice sickens every society which allows it to thrive.” Born in Minsk and raised on New York’s Lower East Side, Maza was one of seven children and four brothers who were ordained as rabbis, including the late comedian Jackie Mason.
Naomi Feil, 91, who brought empathy to the treatment of dementia
Naomi Feil was the the developer of the “validation method” for treating the eldderly with dementia. (Validation Training Institute)
Naomi Feil, a gerontologist and social worker who pioneered a method for “validating” the often angry or disoriented behavior of those with dementia, died Dec. 24 at her home in Jasper, Oregon. She was 91. In two books and thousands of workshops, she spread the gospel of “person-centered dementia care,” urging caregivers to affirm, rather than deny, the emotions of agitated people. “You don’t argue, you don’t lie,” she said in a TEDx talk in 2015. “You listen with empathy and you rephrase.” Born in Munich, Feil escaped with her Jewish family to the United States, where her father became the administrator of a Cleveland nursing home. “I grew up in a home, so I know how mean old people can be,” Feil said in 1993, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “The old lady isn’t really yelling at you; you remind her of someone from long ago. She’s trying to resolve some unfinished business from the past at this final stage in her life.”
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The post Jewish Life Stories: A lone soldier, the voice of the Shangri-Las, two giants of American health care appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Sen. Rick Scott Donates Salary to US Holocaust Memorial Museum
US Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, Dec. 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
US Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) announced on Wednesday that he will donate a portion of his Senate salary to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, underscoring what he called the urgent need to combat antisemitism at home and abroad as threats to Jewish communities escalate.
Scott, who has given part of his congressional salary since joining the Senate in 2019, said his gift was motivated by the growing dangers facing Jewish people and the importance of ensuring younger generations understand the Holocaust.
“Ann and I are proud to support the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Years ago, Ann and I brought our daughters to the Auschwitz memorial and museum in Poland because it was so important to us that they learned about the Holocaust and understood the horrors that occurred,” he said in a statement.
“It’s so important that every generation understands the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the museum does an incredible job teaching those lessons to millions of people every year. By sharing the stories of those who survived and those who were murdered, providing critical resources to educators, and reminding each of us what it means when we say ‘Never Again,’ it is a vital institution,” he added.
Scott also recounted taking his daughters years ago to Auschwitz in Poland, describing the visit as an effort to show them the catastrophic consequences of unchecked hatred against Jews.
The senator tied his donation to the approaching second anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during the onslaught.
“As we approach the second anniversary of Oct. 7, Ann and I are proud to support the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s meaningful work defending the truth of the Holocaust and their important efforts to teach its relevance for today,” Scott said.
Scott’s office did not disclose the specific amount of the donation.
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Texas State University Silent on Status of Professor Who Incited Violent Attack on Jews at Public Library
West Asheville Library in North Carolina. Photo: Screenshot/buncombecounty.org.
Texas State University is refusing to disclose whether it still currently employs a far-left professor who was filmed inciting a riotous assault on three pro-Israel individuals who peacefully spectated an anti-Israel presentation that was held in June 2024 at the West Asheville Library in North Carolina.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, two of the victims, David Moritz and Monica Buckley, are Jewish, and one is cancer patient Bob Campbell, an 80-year-old military veteran. Their assailants kicked, punched, and dragged them out of the event, titled “Strategic Lessons From the Palestinian Resistance,” after Texas State University assistant professor of philosophy Idris Atsu Robinson spotted them in the audience and invited the 60-80 anti-Israel partisans in attendance to decide their fates.
At one point during harrowing footage taken of the incident, Robinson suggested that the encounter could lead to “murder.” At no point did he deescalate the situation and even seemed to find humor in igniting the passions of a mob.
Responding to an Algemeiner inquiry on Thursday, a Texas State media relations official declined to comment on Robinson’s employment status, saying the university “does not discuss personnel matters.”
The university has been asked before to account for its handling of Robinson.
In June, the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department, a pro-Israel nonprofit that seeks to combat antisemitism, notified the school of Robinson’s conduct and rhetoric. According to StandWithUs, “university sources” confirmed that he will not be teaching during the fall semester of the 2025-2026 academic year. However, the university would not comment on the matter “due to the confidential nature of personnel matters,” making it unclear whether Robinson is still employed by Texas State and will teach there in the future.
StandWithUs says Texas State should state Robinson’s employment status, share findings amassed during an internal investigation of him, and produce any previous complaints which accused him of wrongdoing.
“It is critical that universities protect Jewish and Zionist students by refusing to provide a classroom platform to faculty members unlawfully promoting antisemitic hate and violence,” Michael Scheinman, Saidoff Legal Department assistant director of campus and community affairs, told The Algemeiner on Wednesday. “Schools that do not act and fail to implement strong safeguards risk exposing their students to the same hatred and violence suffered by the victims of this attack.”
He added, “StandWithUS Saidoff Legal continues to support the victims of this horrendous hate incident by coordinating with law enforcement, helping to identify masked perpetrators, and urging Texas State University to condemn the antisemitic conduct that contributed to this violence.”
By his own words, Robinson took immense pride in what transpired in Asheville, North Carolina last year. Commenting on the matter the next day while being interviewed on a podcast produced by the organizers of the event, he argued for “popular riots” and “divine violence,” saying explicitly that “terrorists” reserve the right to “take the life of the oppressor.”
“My arms are chewed up,” Campbell, a Navy veteran, told The Algemeiner during an interview which followed the assault. He added that medical staff at a local US Veterans Affairs facility identified “severe contusions” on his body.
“What really upset me — I was [lying] on the floor, and this big guy was on top of me,” Campbell recalled. “The librarian came to the door, looked me right in the eye, turned around and walked back and didn’t do a damn thing. Didn’t call the police.”
The activists proved equally merciless to the other victims, putting Moritz in a headlock and heaving Buckley outside and ordering her not to free herself from their grip.
Expressions of anti-Zionism are escalating to violence more frequently, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
Earlier this month, Eden Deckerhoff — a female student at Florida State University (FSU) — allegedly assaulted a Jewish male classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” the woman said before shoving the man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.” Deckerhoff has since been charged with misdemeanor battery.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Deckerhoff has denied assaulting the student when questioned by investigators, telling them, “No I did not shove him at all; I never put my hands on him.” However, law enforcement charged her with misdemeanor battery and described the incident in court documents as seen in viral footage of the incident, acknowledging that Deckerhoff “appears to touch [the man’s] left shoulder.” Despite her denial, the Democrat noted, she has offered to apologize.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
According to the latest data released by the FBI, antisemitic hate crimes in the US have been tallying to break all previous statistical records. In 2024, even as hate crimes decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Europeans Launch UN Sanctions Process Against Iran, Drawing Tehran’s Ire
Satellite image shows buildings at Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, before Israel launched an attack on Iran targeting nuclear facilities, in Isfahan, Iran, May 17, 2025. Photo: Planet Labs PBC via REUTERS
Britain, France, and Germany on Thursday launched a 30-day process to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, a step likely to stoke tensions two months after Israel and the United States bombed Iran.
A senior Iranian official quickly accused the three European powers of harming diplomacy and vowed that Tehran would not bow to pressure over the move by the E3 to launch the so-called “snapback mechanism.”
The three powers feared they would otherwise lose the prerogative in mid-October to restore sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under a 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the decision did not signal the end of diplomacy. His German counterpart Johann Wadephul urged Iran to now fully cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog agency and commit to direct talks with the United States over the next month.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters the decision was “illegal and regrettable” but left the door open for engagement.
“The move is an action against diplomacy, not a chance for it. Diplomacy with Europe will continue,” the official said, adding: “Iran will not concede under pressure.”
The UN Security Council is due to meet behind closed doors on Friday at the request of the E3 to discuss the snapback move against the Islamic Republic, diplomats said.
Iran and the E3 have held several rounds of talks since Israel and the US bombed its nuclear installations in mid-June, aiming to agree to defer the snapback mechanism. But the E3 deemed that talks in Geneva on Tuesday did not yield sufficient signals of readiness for a new deal from Iran.
The E3 acted on Thursday over accusations that Iran has violated the 2015 deal that aimed to prevent it developing a nuclear weapons capability in return for a lifting of international sanctions. The E3, along with Russia, China, and the United States, were party to that accord.
US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of that accord in 2018 during his first term, calling the deal one-sided in Iran‘s favor, and it unraveled in ensuing years as Iran abandoned limits set on its enrichment of uranium.
Trump’s second administration held fruitless indirect negotiations earlier this year with Tehran.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the E3 move and said Washington remained available for direct engagement with Iran “in furtherance of a peaceful, enduring resolution to the Iran nuclear issue.”
An Iranian source said Tehran would do so only “if Washington guarantees there will be no [military] strikes during the talks.”
The E3 said they hoped Iran would engage by the end of September to allay concerns about its nuclear agenda sufficiently for them to defer concrete action.
“The E3 are committed to using every diplomatic tool available to ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon,” including the snapback mechanism, they said in a letter sent to the UN Security Council and seen by Reuters.
“The E3’s commitment to a diplomatic solution nonetheless remains steadfast.”
Iran has previously warned of a “harsh response” if sanctions are reinstated, and the Iranian official said it was reviewing its options, including withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The E3 had offered to extend the snapback for as much as six months to enable serious negotiations if Iran restored access for UN nuclear inspectors – who would also seek to account for Iran‘s large stock of enriched uranium whose status has been unknown since the June war – and engages in talks with the U.S.
Calling the E3 decision inevitable, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said it was an “important step in the diplomatic campaign to counter the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.”
GROWING FRUSTRATION IN IRAN
The UN process takes 30 days before sanctions that would hit Iran‘s financial, banking, hydrocarbons, and defense sectors are restored.
Russia and China, strategic partners of Iran, finalized a draft Security Council resolution on Thursday that would extend the 2015 nuclear deal for six months and urge all parties to immediately resume negotiations.
But they have not yet asked for a vote.
“The world is at crossroads,” Russia’s deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters. “One option is peace, diplomacy, goodwill … Another option is a kind of diplomacy at the barrel of the gun.”
The specter of renewed sanctions is stirring frustration in Iran, where economic anxiety is rising and political divisions are deepening, three insiders close to the government said.
Iranian leaders are split over how to respond — with anti-Western hardliners urging defiance and confrontation, while moderates advocate diplomacy.
Iran has been enriching uranium to up to 60 percent fissile purity, a short step from the roughly 90 percent of bomb-grade, and had enough material enriched to that level, if refined further, for six nuclear weapons, before the airstrikes by Israel started on June 13, according to the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog.
Actually manufacturing a weapon would take more time, however, and the IAEA has said that while it cannot guarantee Tehran‘s nuclear program is entirely peaceful, it has no credible indication of a coordinated weapons project.
The West says the advancement of Iran‘s nuclear program goes beyond civilian needs, while Tehran says it wants nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.