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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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Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts
Gazans receiving humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Col. Richard Kemp
A recent Haaretz exposé accusing the Israeli military of ordering troops to fire at unarmed civilians near food aid sites in Gaza relied on mistranslation, selective quotes, factual omissions, and contradictions to construct a narrative of unprovoked Israeli violence, according to independent observers interviewed by The Algemeiner.
Debunking the claim of indiscriminate fire by the IDF, the experts instead described widespread fear of Hamas, not the Israeli military.
The Haaretz report quickly gained traction in international media. Titled “’It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” it was cited by outlets such as NPR, CNN, and Reuters, .
British military analyst Andrew Fox criticized the article for its framing and language. One of the discrepancies he pointed to was the shift in the English version of the story from soldiers firing “towards” civilians, as stated in the Hebrew original, to “at” them. The original Hebrew subheader also specified that soldiers were told to fire “towards” crowds “to distance them” from the aid sites, suggesting the shooting took place as a means of crowd control.
“It’s a matter of intent,” Fox told The Algemeiner. The phrase “‘at civilians’ means they are trying to kill them. It’s misleading because they’re firing warnings to avoid harm rather than shooting to cause harm.”
“Warning shots are something all armies do — we did in Afghanistan — but when you pull the trigger there’s always a risk of harm, and that’s not great,” explained Fox, a think tank researcher and former British Army officer. “Still, there’s a huge difference between that and deliberately targeting civilians.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “shooting towards,” as in the original Hebrew, was “quite reasonable as a means to exercise crowd control in a war zone.”
“It is highly unlikely the IDF would be ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians unless they directly endangered them,” Kemp told The Algemeiner, citing Israel’s interest in the success of US-backed humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza. “The IDF rigidly follows laws of war. It makes no sense for the IDF to want to damage aid efforts. They cooperate with and facilitate [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and want it to succeed. The ones who want it to fail are Hamas because it deprives them of control and funds. If anyone has been doing this shooting, it would be Hamas. They have the motive the IDF do not.”
There were other discrepancies in the original headline and its translation. Whereas the Hebrew version reads “Soldiers testify: IDF deliberately shoots towards Gazans near aid collection points,” the English version not only omitted any reference to mediating testimony or attribution, but also framed the event as an empirical fact: “IDF soldiers ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid.” Further, the phrase “waiting for humanitarian aid” may carry specific legal implications under international law, suggesting heightened vulnerability, whereas the Hebrew version referred more vaguely to crowds “near aid collection points.”
The subheader — which claimed soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed civilians “even when no threat was present” — conflicted with the body of the text, which acknowledged that Israeli soldiers were wounded near the aid distribution zones. One sentence, appearing for the first time in the 21st paragraph, stood out: “There were also fatalities and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents.” The piece offered no explanation for how such casualties could occur if, as the article claims, no one else present was armed.
Elsewhere in the article, a soldier is quoted describing the IDF creating a “killing field,” supposedly involving heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers. But if such weapons were used with lethal intent, as Fox pointed out in a Substack post, the casualty rate would be far higher than the one to five reported per day. “That’s not a massacre,” he wrote, going on to quip that the only massacre to take place was one of “journalistic standards by Haaretz.”
“Could some soldiers accidentally miss and hit someone?” Fox wrote. “Yes. That is tragic and warrants investigation. However, the article itself acknowledges that the IDF is already examining those incidents. To jump from that to ‘deliberate killing fields’ is not responsible reporting. It is narrative laundering.”
The lack of video footage of the alleged mass shootings near GHF sites raises questions, given the large volume of media typically produced from Gaza, according to Fox, who noted that Hamas has repeatedly circulated images and clips for propaganda purposes.
“Every Gazan has a mobile phone, and numerous videos of other events have been released,” he wrote. “Why is there a total absence of any credible footage of these supposed IDF combined arms assaults on queuing civilians?”
Kemp, who visited two of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in the days following the report’s publication, described hearing distant gunfire but reported that the aid operation proceeded mostly without disruption.
Col. Richard Kemp at humanitarian aid site with Gazans. Photo: Provided
“None of the Gazans there showed any concerns [about the IDF] whatsoever,” he said. Many of the civilians identified Hamas, not the IDF, as the main threat to the aid effort — a dynamic not acknowledged in the Haaretz report — telling Kemp they could not return home for fear of being recognized and targeted by Hamas.
“I must have spoken to at least 50 Gazans at each site,” he said. “Many told me they feared Hamas and Hamas threatened them if they used the sites.”
Kemp added that the atmosphere was chaotic but manageable, with GHF workers — most of them local Gazans — interfacing directly with the crowds. He described people smiling, holding up food packages, and expressing gratitude for the aid.
“The overwhelming impression was how grateful they were to be getting free aid for once, as opposed to buying aid looted by Hamas and sold at a premium,” he told The Algemeiner.
Many Gazans at the GHF sites who spoke to Kemp voiced hatred for Hamas and praised the US-backed aid effort, with some chanting “kill Hamas” while others said “I love America” or expressed admiration for President Donald Trump. The alignment between Hamas and UN criticism of the food program was “shocking,” Kemp added, particularly given the visible gratitude expressed by many recipients.
“They associate this aid program with the US,” he said. “They seem to like it, whereas Hamas and the UN seem to be its greatest enemies.”
The post Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
Two former Australian nurses who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients have been banned from working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), four months after being suspended from their jobs at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, both 27, gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night shift conversation with Israeli influencer Max Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They are now also prohibited from working with or providing any services — paid or unpaid — to NDIS participants for two years.
This latest ban, which took effect on May 9, applies nationwide and prohibits Nadir and Abu Lebdeh from working with NDIS participants or performing any role for or on behalf of NDIS providers in any Australian state or territory.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years in prison.
Nadir was charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Currently, both of them remain free on bail and have not yet entered any pleas, with a court appearance scheduled for July 29. They’ve been prohibited from leaving Australia or using social media while their cases proceed.
According to Nadir’s lawyer, the video was captured “without the consent and knowledge” of his client, and he intends to argue for its exclusion from court.
“We will be challenging the admissibility of the video recording because it was a private conversation which was recorded by the person overseas without my client’s consent and without his knowledge,” Nadir’s lawyer said. “That video recording was made secretly overseas and was unlawfully obtained.”
This incident, which drew international attention, occurred amid a surge of antisemitic acts across Australia since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October 2023, with Jewish institutions targeted in arson attacks and businesses defaced.
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, with the escalation continuing amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadrupling from 495 in the prior 12 months.
The number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
The post Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Boulder Firebomber Charged With Murder Following Death of Victim
Boulder attack suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman poses for a jail booking photograph after his arrest in Boulder, Colorado, June 2, 2025. Photo: Boulder Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
A victim of the antisemitic Boulder, Colorado firebombing died on Monday, prompting local law enforcement to charge suspect Mohamed Soliman with murder in the first degree.
“Severe injuries” caused the death of Karen Diamond, 82, the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office (BCDA) said on Monday in a statement. She was one of 13 people injured when Soliman hurled Molotov cocktails into a crowd of Jewish people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. Her death adds five new charges to the over 200 federal and state criminal charges which could lock Soliman away for over 600 years.
“These additional charges, including the counts of First Degree Murder, are being filed after consultation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Boulder Police Department,” said the DA’s office, adding that it “continues to work closely with federal, state, and local partners in the strong response to this attack. We stand united against acts of antisemitism and hate.”
“This horrific attack has now claimed the life of an innocent person who was beloved by her family and friends,” said Michal Dougherty, district attorney of Boulder County. “Our hearts are with the Diamond family during this incredibly difficult time. Our office will fight for justice for the victims, their loved ones, and the community. Part of what makes Colorado special is that people come together in response to a tragedy; I know that the community will continue to unite in supporting the Diamond family and all the victims of this attack.”
Prosecutors said in May that Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack, and, according to court documents, told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
That incident came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, also 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.”
In Garret Park, Maryland, a middle-aged man, Clift A. Seferlis, was recently arrested by federal authorities for sending a series of threatening messages to Jewish organizations in Philadelphia. Seferlis referenced the war in Gaza in his communications.
“The Victim Jewish Institution 1 received numerous additional messages since April 1, 2024, which contained a threat to physically destroy the institution,” the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “Prior to the receipt of the May 7, 2025, mailing, Victim Jewish Institution 1 and its employees had received very similar-looking letters, believed to have been sent by Seferlis, which referenced Victim Jewish Institution 1’s ‘many big open windows,’ ‘Kristallnacht,’ ‘anger and rage,’ and a future need to ‘rebuild’ the institution following its destruction.”
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where Juan Diaz-Rivas, Alejandro Flores-Lamas, and others law enforcement is working to identify, allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and Flores-Lamas, along with their associates, approached the victim while shouting “F—ck the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to the office of the San Francis district attorney.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the 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 data released by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in April, antisemitism in the US is surging to break “all previous annual records.”
In 2024 alone, the ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, an eruption of hatred not recorded in the nearly thirty years since the organization began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The Algemeiner parsed the ADL data, finding dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
“In 2024, hatred toward Israel was a driving force behind antisemitism across the US, with more than half of all antisemitic incidents referencing Israel or Zionism,” Oren Segal, ADL senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence, said when the report was released. “These incidents, along with all those documented in the audit, serve as a clear reminder that silence is not an option. Good people must stand up, push back, and confront antisemitism wherever it appears. And that starts with understanding what fuels it and learning to recognize it in all its forms.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Boulder Firebomber Charged With Murder Following Death of Victim first appeared on Algemeiner.com.