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Jewish Life Stories: Hasidic filmmaker Menachem Daum, pioneering publisher Carol Hupping Fisher
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.
(JTA) — Filmmaker Menachem Daum, a member of Brooklyn’s Gerer hasidic movement whose documentaries challenged preconceptions about haredi Jews and Polish gentiles, died Jan. 7. He was 77.
A gerontologist by training, Daum and his frequent collaborator, Oren Rudavsky, made the 1997 PBS documentary, “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,” which introduced many Americans to his community from a rare insider’s perspective. In “Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust” (2004), he traveled to Poland in part to dispel his religious sons’ mistrust of gentiles by finding the Polish family that helped save his parents during the Holocaust. And in “The Ruins of Lifta” (2016), he and Rudavsky documented the efforts of an Israeli-Arab group trying to prevent an empty Arab village from being demolished by Israeli developers.
Daum was born October 5, 1946 at the Landsburg Displaced Persons Camp in Germany, and lived in Brooklyn most of his life. Last year, Daum told the news site Shtetl that he made “A Life Apart” as a way to honor his father, a Holocaust survivor and devoted Hasid. And he made “Hiding and Seeking” to challenge his community’s discourse around gentiles. “As a Jewish filmmaker, I use film to challenge stereotypes,” he told the Jewish Standard in 2022. “If Jews thought that all Poles were incorrigible antisemites, I can show films about the Poles who protected my family, and Poles who now are going to great lengths to protect Jewish cemeteries.”
Author and filmmaker Eva Fogelman, whose advice Daum sought in making “Hiding and Seeking,” told JTA she appreciated his “courage to speak out against intolerance within a religious community that was healing itself from persecution and is not ready to embrace ‘the other.’”
A bat mitzvah at 91
Holocaust survivor Eugenia Unger, then 91, celebrates her bat mitzvah in Buenos Aires in 2017. (Facebook screenshot)
In 2017, after decades in which she shared her experiences of surviving the Majdanek and Auschwitz concentration camps, Eugenia Unger made national news in Argentina by celebrating her bat mitzvah at age 91. She was called to the Torah at the Herzliya Jewish community center and synagogue in Buenos Aires, which also organized a birthday celebration in her honor. She told Argentine media that “the culmination of my whole life is my bat mitzvah.” One of the founding members of the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires in 2000, she wrote three books about her experiences. Unger died Dec. 19 in a private hospital in Buenos Aires. She was 97.
A tireless defender of public health
Sidney M. Wolfe (1937–2024), physician who challenged drug companies. (Wikimedia Commons)
In 1967, the Cleveland-born physician Sidney Wolfe traveled to the South to provide medical care during voter registration drives. There he met the consumer activist Ralph Nader, and the two would go on to found Public Citizen. As head of its affiliated Health Research Group, Wolfe demanded accountability from the pharmaceutical industry and government regulators, leading campaigns to drive dangerous or mislabeled prescription drugs and devices off the market. His book “Worst Pills, Best Pills: A Consumer’s Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or Illness” was a perennial bestseller. In 1992, Manhattan’s Central Synagogue presented him with its annual Shofar Award, given to those “whose accomplishment, mission, and goals in pursuit of social justice are informed by the highest principles of Judaism and the Jewish people.” Wolfe died Jan. 1 at his home in Washington. He was 86.
A Jewish publishing pioneer
Carol Hupping Fisher of the Jewish Publication Society served as publishing director, managing editor and chief operating officer. (Courtesy Fisher family)
When Carol Hupping Fisher interviewed at the Jewish Publication Society in the late 1990s, it felt like a perfect fit. “I was pursuing my Jewish education as somebody getting ready to convert,” Fisher, who grew up Protestant, told the Jewish Exponent in 2016, “and I was in publishing, so it was a beautiful blend of my personal life getting to extend … into my professional life.” Fisher would go on to become publishing director, managing editor and chief operating officer for the Philadelphia-based JPS, shepherding over 100 books into print — including “Etz Hayim,” the Conservative movement Torah commentary — and overseeing a partnership between JPS and the University of Nebraska. Before joining JPS, she was the first female and youngest vice president of publishing at Rodale Press, a publisher of health and wellness magazines and books. Raised in Merrick, New York, she died Dec. 14 of glioblastoma at her home in Collingswood, New Jersey.
A “rabbi’s rabbi” and scholar of Yiddish
Rabbi Emanuel S. Goldsmith was a professor, pulpit rabbi and co-editor of “Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai M. Kaplan.” (Queens College)
As a scholar of Yiddish literature, Rabbi Emanuel S. Goldsmith taught Jewish Studies at Queens College and other universities, and was the author, in 1997, of “Modern Yiddish Culture,” described as the first history of the 20th-century Yiddishist movement. As a pulpit rabbi he led congregations in Scarsdale, New York; Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. And as a committed Reconstructionist Jew, he became an expert in the work of his teacher and the movement’s founder, Mordecai Kaplan. “Manny was a rabbi’s rabbi,” Mel Scult, co-editor with Goldsmith of the book “Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai M. Kaplan,” wrote in a tribute. “Manny’s scholarship was vast, and he was particularly proud of the contacts and articles he published making Kaplan known not only to the Jewish community but also to many Christian colleagues.” Goldsmith died Jan. 5. He was 88.
A rabbi’s son who helmed The New York Times
Joseph Lelyveld served as executive editor of The New York Times during a period of peak profits and expanding readership. (©Nita Lelyveld/Penguin Random House)
Joseph Lelyveld, a rabbi’s son who became a renowned foreign correspondent and who served as executive editor of The New York Times from 1994 to 2001 — a period of peak profits and expanding readership — died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86. Lelyveld’s father, Arthur, was a leader of the Reform movement and a civil rights activist who helped influence President Harry S. Truman’s decision to recognize the State of Israel. In a 2005 memoir, Joseph recalled how his preoccupied parents shipped him off as a child to live with a Seventh-Day Adventist family and later his paternal grandparents in Brooklyn. As the son of a prominent Zionist, Lelyveld served as an intermediary with Jewish critics of the Times’ Israel coverage, but eventually lost his patience. “There has never been a Times correspondent who was considered honorable by the more extreme faction of pro-Israel readers,’’ he told a researcher in 2012.
Faces of Israel’s Fallen
David Schwartz, left, and Yakir Hexter were photographed learning together in the beit midrash, or study hall, of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, in a program for Israeli soldiers. (Via Facebook)
Two Israeli combat engineers who were chevrutas, or study partners, at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut were killed Monday in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the Gaza city of Khan Younis, the IDF said. David Schwartz and Yakir Hexter, both 26, were part of a paratrooper force, and, as the Times of Israel explained, “tasked with some of the most dangerous work as part of the IDF’s ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, scanning Hamas’s tunnel networks and destroying them, along with other sites, with explosives.”
Schwartz was married to Meital Schwartz, whose father Joseph Gitler is the founder and chairman of Leket Israel, the country’s largest food non-profit. David’s sister Shira Meirman is currently an Israeli emissary at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto. Both soldiers, who studied together as part of an army program for religious troops, had family connections to Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a Modern Orthodox seminary in Riverdale, New York: Schwartz, from Elazar, was a nephew by marriage to YCT alumnus Rabbi Marc Gitler of Denver, Colorado; Hexter, from Jerusalem, was the nephew of YCT board member Rabba Yaffa Epstein of New York’s Jewish Education Project. Schwartz and Hexter were among nine Israeli soldiers killed in combat on Jan. 8, including six troops killed in an explosion in central Gaza. Their deaths raised the toll in Israel’s offensive to 185.
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The post Jewish Life Stories: Hasidic filmmaker Menachem Daum, pioneering publisher Carol Hupping Fisher appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Threatens Hamas ‘Wherever They Are’ as Qatar Hosts Summit
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes a question from the media next to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at their joint press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office, during Rubio’s visit, in Jerusalem, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard/Pool
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are,” as the heads of Arab and Islamic states held a summit to back Qatar after Israel‘s attack last week in the Gulf state.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha was a significant escalation of Israeli military action in a region shaken by conflict since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that ignited the Gaza war.
While the assembled Arab and Muslim leaders were expressing solidarity with Qatar, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Netanyahu and gave strong backing for Israel‘s stance, although Washington has expressed unease over the Qatar strike.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu in Israel, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas fighters to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
Washington has said it was not warned in advance before Israel attacked Qatar, which houses the biggest US military base in the Middle East. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Israel had to be “very, very careful.”
“They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States,” Trump said.
QATAR DENOUNCES ‘COWARDLY AND TREACHEROUS’ STRIKE
Hamas has said the Israeli strike killed five of its members, including a son of its exiled Gaza chief, but its leadership survived. Qatar says one of its security agents also died.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani urged the summit to take “practical and decisive steps” in response to the “cowardly and treacherous” strike, saying it occurred as Hamas leaders were studying a US ceasefire proposal.
The final communique of the summit, which brought together states including Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, did not contain language that appeared in a draft seen by Reuters which said the Israeli attack and other “hostile acts” threaten coexistence and efforts to normalize ties in the region.
A separate statement by the Gulf Cooperation Council said Israel’s “continuation of these aggressive policies undermines … the future of existing understandings and agreements with Israel.”
The summit’s communique did call on countries to review diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, in what Arab League Assistant Secretary General Hossam Zaki said was an invitation to states that have relations with Israel to revise them.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, a US ally which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, told the meeting Israel‘s actions “put obstacles in the way of any opportunities for any new peace agreements and even aborts existing ones.”
RUBIO TO FLY TO QATAR
Rubio will travel to Qatar after his visit to Israel. He called on Qatar to continue to play a constructive role in resolving the Gaza conflict, saying it could help reach the goals of releasing all 48 hostages still held in Gaza, disarming Hamas and building a better future for Gazans.
But his words alongside Netanyahu suggested Washington now considers a diplomatic solution unlikely and is backing Israel‘s plan for a major new military operation that Netanyahu says will crush Hamas once and for all.
“As much as we may wish that there be a peaceful, diplomatic way to end it, and we’ll continue to explore and be dedicated to it, we also have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” said Rubio, calling Hamas “savage terrorists.”
“Hamas needs to cease to exist as an armed element that can threaten the peace and security of the region,” he said.
Netanyahu did not rule out annexing the West Bank in response to moves by some countries to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly later this month. France and Britain are among the countries that have said they will do so.
Asked whether Israel was considering extending its sovereignty to the West Bank, Netanyahu said: “A future step is a future step. We don’t need to expose it ahead of time.”
“It’s clear that taking unilateral actions against us simply invites unilateral actions on our part,” he said.
While diplomacy was unfolding in Jerusalem and Doha, Israeli forces continued their military campaign in Gaza City.
The war in Gaza was triggered by a rampage into southern Israel by Hamas terrorists who killed around 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages.
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Abraham Accords Tested on 5th Anniversary as Arab Leaders Gather to Condemn Israel’s Strike on Hamas in Qatar
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, attends the preparatory ministerial meeting for emergency Arab-Islamic summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 14, 2025. Photo: Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Handout via REUTERS
The fifth anniversary of the Abraham Accords was overshadowed on Monday as top Arab diplomats gathered in Doha for an emergency summit after Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar last week.
Five years on, experts say that, despite war and political shocks, the US-brokered deals that normalized relations between Israel and several Araba countries have endured, though not without setbacks, and many argue that strengthening them is the most effective way to defeating the hatred and terrorism that led to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Trade between Abraham Accord countries in 2025 increased from the year before, though it remained well below the levels seen before the Hamas-led attack. The UAE, Israel’s most significant new trading partner, has dominated the commerce generated by the accords, signed on the lawn of the White House on Sept. 15, 2020.
Hundreds of Israeli companies now operate in the UAE, with Emirati investors channeling capital into Israeli tech startups and sovereign funds taking stakes in gas and technology ventures, though a planned $2 billion acquisition was shelved after the outbreak of the Gaza war. Recent figures show trade between Israel and the UAE reached $293 million in July 2025, a 4 percent rise from the year before, while trade with Morocco grew 32 percent in the same month to $8.7 million, according to data published by the Washington DC-based Heritage Foundation. Over the first seven months of 2025, Israel–Morocco trade totaled $71 million, a 7 percent increase from the same period in 2024, the report said.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-US President Donald Trump, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed display their copies of signed agreements as they participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, US, Sept. 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Asher Fredman, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation who also served as Israel director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute — a nonprofit founded by former White House adviser and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to promote and expand the accords — said the agreements had “proven their resilience.”
He noted that the war had exposed how Hamas, with its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to threaten the region’s stability.
“Many regional leaders appreciate Israel’s efforts to remove Hamas, a terrorist group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, from power, even if they are critical of Israel’s tactics,” he told The Algemeiner.
But he went on to say that the war had resulted in diminishing many aspects of the “warm peace and people-to-people cooperation that made the accords so unique” and that restarting momentum will require “regional projects with tangible benefits,” with strong US backing, and ensuring Hamas can no longer undermine progress toward peace.
“Lasting regional integration will depend on removing Hamas as the dominant military and governing power in Gaza,” he said.
Defense trade has also expanded, with Abraham Accords countries accounting for 12 percent of Israel’s $15 billion in arms exports last year, and major defense projects, including the UAE’s co-production of Israeli drones, continuing in 2025 – though many are now under wraps.
Middle East experts Elie Podeh and Yoel Guzansky, from the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, respectively, noted in The Jerusalem Post that Washington’s 2021 decision to place Israel within US Central Command signaled Arab states’ readiness to work with Israel openly, not just behind closed doors. Israel had already taken part in joint drills with regional neighbors, but its integration into CENTCOM created what they described as a qualitative shift in collaboration — a shift that was evident during Iranian attacks on Israel in April and October 2024 and again in June 2025.
But the UAE’s decision to bar Israeli defense firms from a major global defense and aerospace expo in Dubai later this year – reportedly in response to Israel’s strike in Doha – highlighted the political strains now testing the accords.
Podeh and Guzansky agreed with Fredman that people-to-people ties have suffered during the war but emphasized the particular impact on younger Arabs. “The gap between elite positions and Arab public opinion – especially among younger generations – continues to widen across all countries, placing pressure on ruling elites to respond,” they said.
Earlier this month, the UAE also issued a rare public rebuke to Israel over reports of renewed annexation ambitions in the West Bank. A senior Emirati official, Lana Nusseibeh, warned that any Israeli move to apply sovereignty would constitute a “red line” for Abu Dhabi that “would severely undermine the vision and spirit of the Abraham Accords” – marking the Gulf country’s toughest criticism of Israel since the war began.
On Friday, the UAE said it had summoned Israel’s deputy ambassador over the strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s subsequent “hostile and unacceptable” remarks, in another sign of strain between the two countries with close economic and defense ties. The Emirati foreign ministry said it told David Ohad Horsandi that “the continuation of such hostile and provocative rhetoric … solidifies a situation that is unacceptable and cannot be overlooked.”
A draft resolution from the Arab-Islamic summit in Doha, a day before Monday’s emergency summit, warned that Israel’s “brutal” strike in Qatar and other actions “threaten prospects of peace and coexistence in the region, and threaten everything that has been achieved on the path of normalizing ties with Israel, including current agreements and future ones.”
The text accused Israel of “genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonizing activities and expansion policies,” and said such conduct jeopardized efforts to expand normalization with Arab nations.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with Emir Of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and GCC representatives pose for a group photo ahead of an emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit convened to discuss the Sept. 9 Israeli attack on Hamas on Qatari territory, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
Podeh and Guzansky noted that Saudi Arabia, once seen as the most likely next signatory to the Abraham Accords, is “treading very carefully” since the outbreak of the Gaza war. As the guardian of Islam’s holiest sites and a leading voice in the Sunni world, Riyadh is reluctant to proceed without “significant progress on the Palestinian issue” or firm American commitments on security and civilian nuclear cooperation.
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Israel’s special envoy for trade and innovation and co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council, struck a more positive note, saying that the Abraham Accords have been “game changing for Israel and the Middle East,” and stressing that even after an extensive regional war they have “stood strong.” She noted that the signatory states have consistently condemned Hamas, blocked boycott efforts against Israel at the Arab League, and made no overtures toward unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, unlike Canada, the UK, France and Australia.
“Even with the current tensions, it is the Abraham Accords countries who are clearly calling for the end of Hamas, as European countries remain silent,” Hassan-Nahoum told The Algemeiner.
“I am extremely optimistic about the long-term viability and even expansion of the Abraham Accords in the next ten years,” she concluded.
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Anti-Israel Protests Force Early End to Vuelta a Espana Cycle Race
Cycling – Vuelta a Espana – Stage 21 – Alalpardo to Madrid – Madrid, Spain – Sept. 14, 2025: Barriers are smashed by anti-Israel protesters during Stage 21. Photo: REUTERS/Ana Beltran
Anti-Israel protests forced the Vuelta a Espana cycle race to be abandoned at its finale on Sunday, with Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard declared winner as police sought to quell demonstrations against an Israeli team’s participation.
Protesters chanting “they will not pass” overturned metal barriers and occupied the Vuelta (Tour of Spain) route at several points in Madrid as police attempted to push them back.
Two people were arrested and 22 police officers injured, the Spanish government said.
“The race is over,” said a spokesperson for the organizers, who also canceled the podium ceremony, leaving Vingegaard celebrating in the back of his team car.
Earlier, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed “admiration for the Spanish people mobilizing for just causes like Palestine” by protesting during the race.
Israel‘s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar posted on X that Sanchez and his government were “a disgrace to Spain.”
“Today he encouraged demonstrators to take to the streets. The pro-Palestinian mob heard the incitement messages – and wrecked the La Vuelta cycling race.”
The demonstrations have targeted the Israel-Premier Tech team over Israel‘s actions in Gaza. Some riders had threatened to quit last week as routes were blocked, causing some falls.
Israel‘s war against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has sparked protests globally and affected several sporting events.
Seven Israeli chess players withdrew from a Spanish tournament starting on Friday after organizers told them they would not be competing under their flag, citing the Gaza conflict and expressing solidarity with the Palestinians.
On Sunday in Madrid, more than 1,000 police officers were on duty as cyclists reached the final stage of the 21-day race – the biggest deployment since the Spanish capital hosted the NATO summit three years ago.
PROTESTERS CLASH WITH RIOT POLICE
Police held back a crowd of hundreds bearing placards and waving Palestinian flags for several hours as the cyclists snaked their way through towns and villages towards Madrid.
As the riders drew closer to the capital, the demonstrators hurled plastic bottles and traffic cones, upended blue barriers and surged onto the road. Baton-wielding riot police fired smoke bombs to try to disperse them.
Sanchez has repeatedly clashed with Israel over its war in Gaza, describing it as genocide. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused his Spanish counterpart of antisemitism and making genocidal threats.
Madrid’s Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida blamed Sanchez.
“[It’s] violence that the prime minister is directly responsible for due to his statements today in the morning instigating the protests,” Martinez-Almeida said.
“Today is the saddest day since I became mayor of this great city.”
Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, posted: “The psychopath has taken his militias to the streets.”
“He doesn’t care about Gaza. He doesn’t care about Spain. He doesn’t care about anything. But he wants violence in the streets to maintain power.”
It is the first time one of cycling’s Grand Tours has been prevented from completing its final stage by political demonstrators since the Vuelta in 1978 was halted by Basque separatists in San Sebastian.
Health Minister Monica Garcia said the latest protests showed Spain was a “global beacon in the defense of human rights.”
“The people of Madrid join dozens of demonstrations across the country and peacefully bring to a halt the end of a cycling race that should never have been used to whitewash genocide,” Garcia said in a post on Bluesky.
Israel‘s nearly two-year-long campaign against Hamas in Gaza was prompted by the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The onslaught, in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages, was the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.