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Jewish Life Stories: Hasidic filmmaker Menachem Daum, pioneering publisher Carol Hupping Fisher
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(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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Genuine Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Should Call to ‘Free Gaza’ From Hamas, Says Israel’s Antisemitism Envoy
A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
Activists who truly care about the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza should focus their energies on rallying against the ruling terrorist group Hamas, not opposing Israel, according to Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism.
“Genuine support for human rights means advocating for freedom from oppressive groups like Hamas and Hezbollah,” Michal Cotler-Wunsh told The Algemeiner in an exclusive interview during a recent trip to the United States, referring to the Iran-backed Islamist terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively.
Her comments came amid rising concerns over escalating hostility toward Jewish communities worldwide during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The US is just one country among several that has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes and demonstrations since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with university campuses emerging as a hub for antisemitism and pro-Hamas activism.
“If [these demonstrations] actually are pro-Palestinian and pro-human rights, they would be calling to free Gaza from Hamas, to free Yemen from the Houthis, to free Lebanon from Hezbollah, to free the people of Iran from the Islamic Republic,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
Across the US and Europe, prestigious universities such as Harvard and Columbia have drawn international attention for allowing raucous, unsanctioned, and sometimes violent anti-Israel demonstrations which have included calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state. The protesters have largely argued their activism is in support of the Palestinian people and human rights.
“Silence, impunity, and false moral equivalency are fueling and normalizing this tsunami of antisemitism,” Cotler-Wunsh warned.
“We realize this is not about human rights or Palestinian advocacy, but reflects support for terrorism, antisemitism, and anti-Western ideologies,” the top Israeli official told The Algemeiner. “They are pro-terror, pro-antisemitism, pro-anti West protests.”
After taking office in January, US President Donald Trump has taken swift action to address antisemitism in higher education institutions. The US Department of Education is investigating dozens of schools and universities for potential civil rights violations related to their alleged failure to address campus antisemitism.
Last month, for example, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia University, citing the school’s alleged failure to combat faculty, students, and staff from disciplinary action for anti-Jewish discrimination
According to Cotler-Wunsh, higher education institutions “have become platforms easily used for indoctrination, spreading dangerous ideologies.”
“Universities are facing a moment of reckoning: They must decide whether their mission is to teach students what to think or how to think critically,” she told The Algemeiner.
“There seems to be an inability, unwillingness, or lack of courage to enforce existing policies to combat antisemitism and hold those promoting such behavior accountable,” the special envoy continued. “Leadership has failed to understand that this is not a political issue, but rather it is an existential one for all who cherish life and liberty.”
Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
In addition, the order authorizes the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, both intellectual and material, such as Hamas, has contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, Cotler-Wunsh argued that the rise of anti-Zionist protests worldwide reflects “the modern strain of ever-mutating antisemitism.”
She explained that anti-Zionism “denies the right of the Jew among nations to exist, stripping Jews and Zionists of their identity, and of the right to return to their ancestral homeland.”
“There’s a systematic dehumanization, delegitimization, and double standards that denies the Jewish state’s right to exist,” the Israeli official told The Algemeiner. “Zionism is integral to the identity of most Jews and many non-Jews who believe in Israel’s right to exist.”
Far from being limited to US colleges, the rise in anti-Jewish demonstrations and antisemitic rhetoric has skyrocketed worldwide since Hamas’s invasion of Israel.
“The mainstreaming and normalization of antisemitism is deeply concerning, not just for Jews, but as a historically reliable predictor of a major threat to humanity and freedom,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “Antisemitism, when legitimized and normalized in this way, becomes an existential threat.”
According to a report from the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, there has been a staggering 340 percent increase in antisemitic acts worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022.
The report showed a sharp rise in antisemitic outrages in North America and Europe, with the US up 288 percent, Canada increasing by 562 percent, and Britain seeing a 450 percent spike, with nearly 2,000 incidents recorded in the first half of 2024 in the UK.
The post Genuine Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Should Call to ‘Free Gaza’ From Hamas, Says Israel’s Antisemitism Envoy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump, Netanyahu Meet in DC, Talk Tariffs and Iran as White House Cancels Press Conference
US President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, US, April 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
The White House on Monday canceled a joint press conference planned for the afternoon with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Washington, DC, to discuss a range of issues including the Trump administration’s new global tariff offensive.
There was no explanation for the surprise decision to nix the press conference moments before Netanyahu’s arrival. However, the two leaders took questions in the Oval Office from a smaller group of reporters.
During their second in-person meeting since Trump’s inauguration in January, Trump and Netanyahu discussed Iran’s nuclear program and the new US tariffs placed on the Jewish state, among other issues.
“We’re having direct talks with Iran” beginning on Saturday,” Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Netanyahu.
“We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump said, adding that Iran is “going to be in great danger” if the direct talks don’t go well.
Trump recently threatened to bomb Iran if the regime does not agree to a deal to curb its nuclear program, which the US and Israel believe is ultimately meant to build nuclear weapons. Iran claims its nuclear activities are meant for peaceful, civilian purposes.
However, the primary topic of conversation on Monday was Trump’s newly unveiled tariff policy.
“I can tell you that I said to the president, a very simple thing — we will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States,” Netanyahu said. “We intend to do it very quickly. We think it’s the right thing to do. And we’re also going to eliminate trade barriers.”
The US announced last week that it will impose 17 percent tariffs on goods imported from Israel under a major new trade initiative that Trump announced. As part of Trump’s sweeping set of tariffs, the US will impose a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports to the US and higher duties on some countries with which it has larger trade deficits.
Washington decided on the 17-percent figure for Israel because it is half of the 33 percent tariffs that the White House says the Jewish state has put in place for some American products. Israel and the United States — the Jewish state’s largest trading partner — completed $34 billion in bilateral trade in 2024. Of that, over $22 billion came from exports from Israel to the US, including diamonds, medications, and electronic devices.
While unveiling the slate of new tariffs on international trade partners, the White House cited a “lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships” that is “indicated by large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits.”
Trump’s announcement came one day after Israel removed all tariffs on US goods. Israeli officials had hoped that dropping the tariffs would prevent the White House from placing its own tariffs on the Jewish state. Jerusalem will reportedly launch efforts to convince the Trump administration to reverse its decision.
The short-notice meeting between Trump and Netanyahu appears to be part of such an effort.
While leaving Hungary on Sunday, Netanyahu revealed that he will be “the first international leader, the first foreign leader” to hold a discussion with Trump regarding the tariffs and that the planned meeting is reflective of “the special personal relationship and the special bond between the United States and Israel, which is so vital at this time.”
“I believe this reflects the special personal relationship and the special bond between the United States and Israel, which is so vital at this time,” Netanyahu said.
Following his arrival on Sunday, Netanyahu met with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the two masterminds behind the massive tariff plan that has plunged stock markets throughout the world. Trump’s proposed 17 percent tax on Israeli imports sparked frustrations within the Jewish state, with critics arguing that the proposal has the potential to destabilize the country’s economy.
In a post on X/Twitter, Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister’s meeting with Lutnick and Greer was “warm, friendly, and productive.”
The post Trump, Netanyahu Meet in DC, Talk Tariffs and Iran as White House Cancels Press Conference first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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ADL Issues Revised ‘Campus Antisemitism Report Card’ Grades
Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march in front of pro-Israel demonstrators on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued revised grades for over a dozen colleges and universities that received low marks in the organization’s recent 2025 Campus Antisemitism Report Card, which was released last month.
The “report card” listed grades based on two criteria — “what’s happening on campus” and “university policies and responsive action.” In total, the ADL assessed 135 colleges and universities across the US, only eight of which — Elon University, Vanderbilt University, University of Alabama, Florida International University, University of Miami, City University of New York’s (CUNY) Brooklyn College, CUNY Queens College, and Brandeis University — merited an “A” grade.
On Friday, the ADL announced that more “A” grades are warranted due to several universities — Arizona State University, Purdue University, and the University of Georgia — enacting fresh policies for addressing antisemitism after learning they had not been judged as positively as they had hoped. Purdue University, the ADL noted, was upgraded from a “B” to an “A” after creating a “standing committee” on Jewish life and offering “expanded” educational programming on antisemitism. It also “re-affirmed” its low opinion of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, vowing never to adopt it.
The University of Georgia was equally responsive following the report’s release, forming an “advisory council on antisemitism” and sharing with the ADL previously unknown information about efforts to combat and raise awareness of anti-Jewish discrimination. Arizona State University also earned its revised grade by alerting the ADL of programming it holds to foster civil discourse and a balanced understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The consultations ADL has engaged in with universities and colleges are part of our commitment to fostering safer and more inclusive environments for Jewish students and all members of the campus community,” ADL vice president of advocacy Shira Goodman, who also leads the Ronald Birnbaum Center to Combat Antisemitism in Education (CCAE), said in a press release. “Addressing antisemitism on campuses across the United States is one of our top priorities, and the willingness of many schools to engage with us after the release of our report card shows this is a priority for them as well. We hope this continues and that more schools will continue to engage, take action, and see their climate improve.”
Other schools saw their grades lifted from barely passing to average, with the University of Houston, University of Boston, and Stanford University going from a “D” to a “C.” The of Minnesota, which had been given an “F,” now holds a “D.”
“It is encouraging to see that a significant number of schools have decided to take action right after we released the 2025 Report Card a few weeks ago to improve the campus experience for Jewish students,” ADL chief executive office Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “These important steps and policies send a clear message that antisemitism will not be tolerated on campus. We now urge consistent enforcement of the new polices and recommendations to ensure meaningful impact.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Ivy League received the poorest marks in the 2025 Campus Antisemitism Report Card.
No Ivy League institution — save Dartmouth College, which notched a “B” grade — earned better than a “C,” a mark given to Brown University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Princeton University, Yale University, and Columbia University rated lowest, scoring “D” grades.
Harvard’s receiving a “C” came amid a period described by observers as a low point in its history. The institution, America’s oldest and arguably most prestigious, had recently settled a merged lawsuit in which two groups accused it of refusing to discipline an allegedly antisemitic professor and other perpetrators of anti-Jewish discrimination, hate speech, and harassment. For months, the university’s legal counsel strove to dismiss the complainant’s charges, arguing that they lacked legal standing. Meanwhile, its highly reputed Law School saw its student government issue a defamatory resolution which accused Israel of genocide; its students quoted terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event held in April; and dozens of its students and faculty participated in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment attended by members of a group that had shared an antisemitic cartoon.
Now, the Trump administration is reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus.
Princeton University’s partnerships with the federal government have been suspended as well, and $400 million of taxpayer funds due to be paid out to Columbia University were nixed as, the federal government said, “a response to their continued failure to end the persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
Brown University’s federal funding may soon be canceled soon, according to a report which said that its alleged failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the pending action.
“US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in March. “That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ADL Issues Revised ‘Campus Antisemitism Report Card’ Grades first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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