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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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German Authorities Warn of Potentially Violent Anti-Israel Protests in Berlin on International Workers’ Day
Anti-Israel protesters march in Germany, March 26, 2025. Photo: Sebastian Willnow/dpa via Reuters Connect
German authorities have warned of large-scale, potentially violent anti-Israel demonstrations expected to unfold in Berlin during the International Workers’ Day protests on Thursday.
Every year on May 1, workers’ rights are celebrated through demonstrations held around the world. In Germany, the day is marked by “Revolutionary May Day,” an annual protest organized by radical left-wing activists that often draws a broad coalition of groups and heightened police attention.
In a statement, the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) said they expect Thursday’s protest to center on tensions in the Middle East, with a particular focus on the war in Gaza, German media reported. Organized by anti-Israel activists, this year’s demonstration is being led under the slogan “Free Gaza.”
The demonstration is reportedly scheduled to begin at 6 pm in the Kreuzberg district, southeast of the city center, with organizers expecting more than 20,000 participants.
While Berlin police have historically kept the raucous protests under control for years, the LKA expects to focus this year on not only preventing and responding to attacks and vandalism across the city but also addressing terrorist propaganda and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
German law enforcement specifically issued warnings to journalists covering the protests on the streets, cautioning that they may be targeted with verbal and physical aggression.
In their statement, the LKA said past experience shows that “journalists and mainstream media are often viewed critically or even with hostility by the pro-Palestinian movement, being seen as part of the ‘lying press’ and allies of the West or ‘Zionists,’ with their work frequently obstructed.”
Before the Hamas-led massacres across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Berlin police had extensive experience with violent supporters of terrorism. However, since Hamas’s onslaught, anti-Israel sentiment has spread across Germany, fueling pro-Palestinian protests, takeovers of university campuses, and a rise in antisemitic incidents.
During last year’s protest, police deployed more than 7,000 officers, minimizing opportunities for violence. However, 34 arrests were made, with those detained charged with serious public disorder, bodily harm, and incitement to hatred, while five officers were injured during the incidents.
Compared to previous years, local police have noted a decline in unrest at these protests since 2021, when the “Revolutionary May Day” demonstrations led to 93 injured officers and over 350 arrests.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism amid the war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin, for example, surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
The post German Authorities Warn of Potentially Violent Anti-Israel Protests in Berlin on International Workers’ Day first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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NYC Police Head Off Anti-Zionist Protest After Black Residents Urged to ‘Rise Up Against’ Orthodox Jews
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of WithinOurLifetime (WOL), leading a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on August 14, 2024. Photo: Michael Nigro via Reuters Connect
Anti-Israel activists attempted to swarm the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn on Monday night to protest “Zionism,” heightening safety concerns among the New York City borough’s Orthodox Jewish community.
Scores of pro-Palestinian agitators sought to descend upon the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights, confronting visibly Jewish individuals, shouting obscenities, and throwing punches at counter-protesters. However, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) deployed officers to prevent the anti-Zionist activists from wreaking havoc.
As police vans and cars patrolled the streets, dozens of officers walked alongside the protesters’ route while streets were blocked by police on bicycles who cut off the path to Crown Heights, home to the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world. Anti-Israel activists had called on protesters, especially Black local residents, to “rise up” against Chabad.
Jewish community watch groups, including Crown Heights Shomrim, joined patrols in the area.
Chabad-Lubavitch spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson said on social media that the protesters never made it to Crown Heights due to the NYPD deployments.
It was heartening to see scores of people, some Jewish and some not, who came to Crown Heights to protect the residents. These people weren’t looking for a fight. Some gathered in front of the synagogue at 770, others stood at strategic corners. Clearly this was not 1991. https://t.co/Mt29jpBprs
— Motti Seligson (@mottiseligson) April 29, 2025
The raucous demonstrations came after the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters hosted Israel’s controversial national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir — who has called for annexing the West Bank and the emigration of Gaza’s residents — on Thursday night. Ben-Gvir’s visit drew large protests from anti-Israel activists who bellowed chants such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that has been widely used as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Jewish and pro-Israel counter-protesters met the demonstrators in Crown Heights, leading to clashes. In one incident, a mob of the counter-protesters chased and harassed a woman who they mistook for a participant in the anti-Ben-Gvir demonstrations.
Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters subsequently issued a statement denouncing the anti-Israel agitators and those who targeted the woman, reportedly a neighborhood resident in her 30s who was simply investigating the scene.
“The violent provocateurs who called for the genocide of Jews in support of terrorists and terrorism — outside a synagogue, in a Jewish neighborhood, where some of the worst antisemitic violence in American history was perpetrated, and where many residents share deep bonds with the victims of Oct. 7 — did so in order to intimidate, provoke, and instill fear,” Seligson said in a statement. “We condemn the crude language and violence of the small breakaway group of young people; such actions are entirely unacceptable and wholly antithetical to the Torah’s values. The fact that a possibly uninvolved bystander got pulled into the melee further underscores the point.”
Following the explosive clashes, a group called the Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a public statement on Instagram on Sunday urging black New Yorkers to target and harass members of Chabad-Lubavitch. The organization, which is an affiliate group of the anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime, urged Black people in Brooklyn to target Orthodox Jews in the area.
“Waiting for the sleeping giant that is Carribean Brooklyn, who have long suffered abuse and oppression at the hands of the racist Zionist Chabad Lubavitch to rise up against them,” the group wrote, vowing to “flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here.”
The Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee continued, arguing that Orthodox Jewish landlords have “violently exploited” the Black residents of Brooklyn through collecting exorbitant amounts in rent to supposedly “feed their genocidal land grabs in Palestine.”
“What would happen if Caribbean Brooklyn brought that VYBZ Kartel Barclays energy with ferocity and tore down these f—king monsters!?” the statement continued. “We will flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here. Free Palestine. Bring flags and keffiyeh.”
VYBZ Kartel is a highly popular Reggae artist within the Caribbean community. He performed to sold-out crowds at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York in April.
Crown Heights was also the site of infamous 1991 riots, in which Black New Yorkers targeted and attacked Jewish residences and businesses for three days. The riots, which were sparked by a fatal car crash involving a Hasidic Jew and two young black children, were largely motivated by an unfounded belief that Jewish New Yorkers received preferential treatment from city services.
Following the latest clashes near Chabad’s headquarters, Crown Heights Bites Back and other radical groups called for a meeting to plan for future confrontations, decrying protest organizers for not being prepared and calling on supporters to train for “defensive and offensive tactics.”
The group went on to describe Chabad as “Zionist Nazis” and Zionism as an inherently oppressive idea.
The post NYC Police Head Off Anti-Zionist Protest After Black Residents Urged to ‘Rise Up Against’ Orthodox Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Police Investigate After British Neo-Nazis Shock Pub With Swastika Cake to Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday
Illustrative: A police car is seen outside Victoria Station in Manchester, England. Photo: Reuters/Phil Noble
In the United Kingdom, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have started an investigation into potential crimes at a gathering of members of the British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, at the Duke of Edinburgh pub in Royston on April 19.
Photos from the organization’s Telegram channel showed participants holding Nazi banners, performing Nazi salutes, and eating a cake decorated with a swastika to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which is April 20. One man in the group wore a German soccer jersey with “Fuhrer 44” on the back.
Law enforcement have confirmed they are reviewing for potential violations of Section 18 public order laws, which criminalize efforts to foment hate. “Police in Oldham are investigating reports that a group attended a pub on Market Street in Royton in possession of Nazi memorabilia,” a GMP spokesperson said.
The British Movement’s Northern Region wrote about the event, describing how “on a gorgeous sunny afternoon in Greater Manchester, a platoon of Northwest British Movement met up to celebrate the 136th birthday of Uncle A. It certainly didn’t take long for the dimly lit interior of the Oldham boozer to be filled with the warm laughter of comrades old and new. Tables were filled with a plethora of drinks: frosty pints of beer, fruity cocktails, schooners, and birthday cake!”
Employees of the pub did not know about the public display of Nazi symbols at the time, learning only afterward and prompting a report to the police.
“They said they had a cake, but we didn’t know what happened because they covered everything up,” Jean Anderson, who is taking over operations of the pub from her partner Terry English, told The Manchester Evening News. “The pub was full. There were about six to eight men and one woman. They sat in the corner and didn’t cause any problems. I have never seen them before, but they definitely won’t be coming in here again.”
English said, “I just can’t understand why they picked this pub.”
The Duke of Edinburgh’s operator, Craft Union Pubs, released a statement to The Independent, describing the British Movement group’s efforts to hide their offensive activities.
“A group entered the Duke of Edinburgh on Saturday under the pretext of celebrating a birthday and gathered in a back area of the venue. The group actively concealed their clothing and their activities during the visit and as a result, their actions were not visible to staff at the time,” the statement read. “The operator who runs the pub was therefore unaware of what had taken place until after the event. Upon becoming aware, the operator reported the matter to the police immediately.”
Craft Union Pubs added, “To be clear, we are absolutely appalled at what took place. We do not and will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and these people aren’t welcome in any of our venues. We are focused on uniting our local communities, not dividing them. We are supporting our operator to look after their team, who are understandably incredibly distressed by the incident.”
“There is absolutely no place in any civilized society for those who celebrate hatred and evil. Honoring Hitler is not an act of free speech; it is a shameless glorification of one of the darkest crimes in human history,” a spokesperson for the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters. told Jewish News. “Neo-Nazism must be unequivocally condemned, and we urge the police to investigate.”
The British Movement emerged in 1968. David Lawrence, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, called it a “highly fringe Nazi group that is repulsive even by the standards of the far right.”
Lawrence explained that “the group is trying to raise its profile with small propaganda actions, especially in the North West, where its numbers have grown slightly due to the defection of activists from a larger fascist organization, Patriotic Alternative. The promotion of base racial hatred is always dangerous. However, the British Movement today is no closer to ushering in a new Reich than when it launched decades ago and remains a tiny collection of crank Hitler fetishists and washed-up hooligans.”
CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2024, the second-highest level ever seen. The group noted that “there were still 909 incidents reported to CST in 2024 where the Holocaust or Nazi era were invoked, comprising 26 percent of all incidents.”
The post Police Investigate After British Neo-Nazis Shock Pub With Swastika Cake to Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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