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Jewish Life Stories: John Lennon’s lawyer, Michael Oren’s mom
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) — Leon Wildes, an immigration attorney best known for his years-long, successful battle to keep the U.S. government from deporting the Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, died Jan. 8 in Manhattan. He was 90.
Wildes started his career in 1959 as a migrations specialist with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and later served on its board of directors. While working on the Lennon case, he played a key role in shaping a legal remedy allowing law-abiding individuals to remain in the United States and avoid deportation if they are elderly, seriously ill or undergoing severe hardship. It set a precedent that enabled President Barack Obama, in 2012, to establish Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, offering a path to permanent legal residence for immigrants who entered the country illegally as children.
“When you hear about ‘Dreamers,’ that is who it refers to, and that is Dad’s perpetual gift to the world — now numbering well over 1 million people — they are keeping alive the dreams of so many people to pursue the same opportunities for themselves and their own families that he himself was so fortunate to have, and instilling those values in generations to come,” his son, Michael Wildes, said in a eulogy.
Wildes taught immigration law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law for 33 years, and served two terms as president of the Queens Jewish Center.
His survivors include Michael, an immigration lawyer and the longtime mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, and Rabbi Mark Wildes, the founder and director of the Manhattan Jewish Experience on New York’s Upper West Side.
When offered the Lennon case, Wildes acknowledged, “I have no idea who these people are.” And yet, he once wrote, “I think I can say that my career pretty well fit the daydream of an All-American success story for a kid from Olyphant,” the small town in Pennsylvania where he grew up. “With this case, though, I found myself defending not just John and Yoko’s personal dreams, but the foundation of the American Dream itself.”
A champion of the “new pluralism”
Irving M. Levine was an expert on intergroup relations and public policy at the American Jewish Committee. (Courtesy Levine family)
Irving M. Levine, an expert on intergroup relations and public policy who in a 25-year career at the American Jewish Committee advanced policy reforms in education, housing, mental health care, the urban poor, philanthropy and international affairs, died Jan. 11. He was 94. Raised in Brooklyn, Levine served for 25 years in various roles at AJC, including head of urban affairs and, later, director of national affairs. As the principal organizer and chairman of the National Consultation on Ethnic America at Fordham University in June 1968, he championed a “new pluralism” that, unlike the “melting pot” theory,” balanced small group identities with a commitment to society as a whole. “There are many pathways and byways to living in a pluralistic society,” he told the New York Times in a 1982 profile. “People ought to have a chance to identify in the way they feel most comfortable.” After an early retirement, he helped found, with Rabbi Steve Shaw, the Radius Institute, a think tank on new progressive visions for U.S. and Middle East policy.
The American mom of an Israeli diplomat
Marilyn Bornstein was a teacher and family therapist in West Orange, New Jersey. (Courtesy Michael Oren)
In 2021, Marilyn Bornstein, then 92, shared her secrets for a long and happy life: a healthy diet, a busy brain (in 2004, she wrote a novel, “Hold Fast the Time,” set in Israel), a regular schedule and, perhaps most of all, “my incredibly close relationship with my family and friends.” Bornstein, a teacher and family therapist, and her husband Lester, a hospital administrator and founder of the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, raised three children in West Orange, New Jersey, including a son, Michael Oren, who moved to Israel and served four years as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. “In addition to being long, her life was filled with meaning, creativity, spirituality, humor, family, and love,” Oren wrote last week. Marilyn Bornstein died Dec. 29. She was 95.
A versatile scholar of the Middle East
David Pollock speaks on a panel at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s 2018 Barbi Weinberg Founders Conference in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy WINEP)
David Pollock, a former State Department official who brought his expertise in Arabic and Middle East polling to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank in Washington, died Jan. 9 after a long illness. He was 73. A Harvard-trained academic, he joined the State Department in 1996, advising on South Asia and Middle East policy in various positions, including senior advisor for the Broader Middle East. At the Washington Institute, which he joined in 2007, he became a Bernstein Fellow, leading the institute’s incipient Arabic-language program, and expanded its Fikra Forum, a bilingual English-Arabic blog that gives voice to diverse Middle East writers who often cannot publish openly in their native countries. He was the co-author, in 2012, of “Asset Test: How the United States Benefits from Its Alliance with Israel.”
“David was a remarkably versatile scholar-practitioner who made a tremendous impact on U.S. foreign policy as a teacher, U.S. government official, and Washington Institute expert,” the institute’s executive director, Robert Satloff, said in a statement. “David’s legacy is monumental. He will be dearly missed as a brilliant analyst, generous colleague, and a devoted friend.”
A Russian poet and critic of the Kremlin
Russian Jewish poet Lev Rubinstein, a leading figure in the Soviet underground literary scene and frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Natalia Senatorova/Wikipedia)
Russian Jewish poet Lev Rubinstein, a leading figure in the Soviet underground literary scene and frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died Jan. 14, days after being hit by a car in Moscow. Police are investigating the incident. He was 76. While working as a librarian in the 1970s and 1980s, Rubinstein was a leading light of Moscow Conceptualism, an avant-garde movement that mocked the Soviet-approved doctrine of Social Realism. After the fall of the USSR, he remained a frequent critic of the Kremlin, most recently opposing the war in Ukraine. “In war, people’s souls are destroyed and distorted, and the consequences of a war are at times disastrous even for the generations that come after,” Rubinstein said.
A pioneer of Women’s Studies
Elaine Reuben, as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960s, helped spread the gospel of Women’s Studies as an interdisciplinary field. (Courtesy Brandeis University)
When women’s studies first entered the university in the 1970s, “merely to assert that women should be studied was a radical act,” according to a history of the field. One of those radicals was Elaine Reuben, who as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison helped spread the gospel of Women’s Studies as an interdisciplinary field. Shortly after directing Women’s Studies at The George Washington University Graduate School, she co-chaired, starting in 1971, the Modern Language Association Commission on the Status of Women. While teaching in the American Studies program at the University of Maryland, she served, in 1978, as national coordinator of the National Women’s Studies Association. At Brandeis University, she was a board member of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and founded the Reuben/Rifkin Jewish Women Writers Series.
She was also active in a number of progressive Jewish organizations, including the New Israel Fund and J Street. A native of Indianapolis, she was a longtime member of the Fabrengen havurah in Washington. Reuben died Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. She was 82.
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Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Music Festival Showcases Tunnel Installation That Simulates Gaza Bombings
An outside view of the “Unsilence Gaza” installation at the 2025 Primavera Sound music festival. Photo: Screenshot
A reproduction of a tunnel that simulates the sound of bombings in the Gaza Strip is being showcased this year at Barcelona’s annual Primavera Sound music festival, which opened on Wednesday.
The unique installation, titled “Unsilence Gaza,” allows visitors to walk through a dark tunnel-like path where they hear noises of explosions as well as dramatic, ominous music. At the end of the tunnel, there is a wall with a message that says in English, Spanish, and Catalan: “Silence isn’t the opposite of the sound of bombs, it allows them to happen.” The outside of the installation features the message: “When everything blows up, don’t hide in the silence.”
The installation makes no mention of the Gaza-based Hamas terrorist organization that started the ongoing war with Israel after it orchestrated the deadly, mass terror attack across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
UNSILENCE GAZA #PrimaveraSound2025 Instalación de 15 metros de túnel que simula el ruido de un bombardeo a Gaza en el festival de #primaverasound de #barcelona pic.twitter.com/L7XnpF06u1
— Barcelona.lives (@BarcelonaLives) June 4, 2025
The installation was designed by Palestinian sound engineer Oussama Rima and is located by the main entrance of the annual music festival, held at the Parc del Fòrum. T-shirts and sweatshirts with the words “Unsilence Gaza” are also being sold at the festival and proceeds from the sales will be donated to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society to support emergency medical aid.
The Primavera Sound Foundation said on its website that the installation aims to remind people about the power of sound and how, especially in Gaza, it is associated with pain, fear, “torture and trauma.”
“We have normalized seeing war, but not listening to it,” the foundation said. “We live in a world saturated with violent images. Hypervisibility has anaesthetised us: we see, but we do not react. Sound, on the other hand, can still move us. At Primavera Sound, sound is emotion, connection, pleasure. But sound can also be the opposite: it can become a weapon. With this installation, we want to remind you that in Gaza and other parts of the world, sound is pain. It is fear. It is torture and trauma.”
In its statement, the foundation made no mention of Hamas or Israel. Instead, it talked about “genocide,” increased military spending, “warmongering rhetoric and attempts to criminalize and silence voices that defend peace.” The installation was conceptualized by the non-profit organizations Casa Nostra, Casa Vostra and the International Institute for Nonviolent Action (NOVACT), with support from the Primavera Sound Foundation.
More than 150 artists will perform at the Primavera Sound music festival this year including Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Troye Sivan, Chappell Roan, FKA Twigs, HAIM, Fontaines D.C., IDLES and Magdalena Bay.
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Sephardic Jewish Film Festival in NYC to Feature Array of Movies Celebrating Culture, Tradition, History
A promotional image for the film “Giado: Holocaust in the Desert” being screened at the 2025 New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival. Photo: Provided
The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival (NYSJFF), also known as the Sephardic Film Festival, returns to New York on Sunday for a week-long celebration of films that spotlight the traditions, cultures, and histories of Sephardic Jews.
This year’s festival will features documentaries, feature films, and shorts that highlight stories set in Israel, Morocco, France, Turkey, and more. It kicks off on Sunday night with a Pomegranate Awards ceremony, whose honorees will include French-born Israeli singer Yael Naim, Iranian-American writer Roya Hakakian, and French-Tunisian actor and screenwriter Michel Boujenah. Acclaimed Brazilian Jewish singer-songwriter Fortuna will receive the ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Preservation of Sephardic Culture. Fortuna will also perform at the opening night ceremony with Trio Mediterraneo and special guest Frank London, a Grammy-winning trumpeter and co-founder of The Klezmatics.
NYSJFF is organized by the American Sephardic Federation.
A documentary about Naim will make its world premiere at the film festival on Monday and the screening will be followed by a Q&A with Naim and the film’s director, Jill Coulon. Also screening on Monday is the 1985 French comedy “Three Men and a Cradle” starring Boujenah, who will participate in a Q&A after the screening. Boujenah won the coveted César Award for best supporting actor for his role in the film, which is about three adult friends who are enjoying their single life until they get stuck taking care of a baby.
The Sephardic Film Festival will additionally feature the North American premiere of the films “The Last Righteous Man (Baba Sali)” and “Jinxed.” The latter is a Hebrew-language comedy, directed by Hanan Savyon and Guy Amir, about two repairmen who go to fix a television and instead find a dead body in a client’s apartment. They are then mistaken for murder suspects and get mixed up with the mafia and police investigations, as bad luck follows them around.
The Sephardic Film Festival will also host the New York premieres of “Matchmaking 2,” “Neuilly-Poissy” and “The 90s – The Revelry — Hillula,” which was a box office hit in Israel.
The film festival line-up includes “Over My Dead Body,” which explores Persian-American Jewish traditions; a documentary short about efforts to preserve the Ladino language spoken by Sephardic Jews; and a film that highlights the first-hand testimony of Yosef Dadosh who, at the age of 20, was one of 3,000 Libyan Jews deported by the Italians to the Giado concentration camp during the Holocaust.
This year, the Sephardic Film Festival is part of a new, larger cultural festival called Festival Sefarad, which will be a citywide celebration of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities. Festival Sefarad will include film screening, musical performances, workshops, book talks, and Shabbat dinners throughout the month of June. The festival is organized by the American Sephardic Federation with support from the UJA-Federation of New York.
“Our inspiration to expand the 27th NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival into the first-ever Festival Sefarad is the acute need, in the face of so much adversity and antisemitism, to create communal, intellectual, and cultural events that bring all Jews together,” Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, said in a statement. “With the support of the UJA-Federation of NY and 50 organizations throughout Brooklyn, Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens, the ASF is hosting over 40 events that showcase the dynamism, resilience, and joy of the Greater Sephardic world for Jews of all backgrounds and friends.”
The 27th New York Sephardic Jewish Film festival runs from June 8-June 15. The festival concludes with a live concert by legendary artist Enrico Macias. Tickets for the film festival are available online. The annual festival, which started in 1990, has previously screened films from Morocco, India, Yemen, Kurdistan, and more.
The post Sephardic Jewish Film Festival in NYC to Feature Array of Movies Celebrating Culture, Tradition, History first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Administration Imposes Sanctions on Four ICC Judges Over ‘Baseless Actions’ Targeting US, Israel
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
US President Donald Trump‘s administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court, an unprecedented retaliation over the war tribunal’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
Washington designated Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler of Slovenia, according to a statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel. The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies,” Rubio said.
The ICC slammed the move, saying it was an attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution that provides hope and justice to millions of victims of “unimaginable atrocities.”
“It is with deep concern that we note the latest actions announced by the government of the United States … These … are regrettable attempts to impede the court and its personnel in the exercise of their independent judicial functions,” the ICC‘s governing body said in a statement on Friday.
Both judges Bossa and Ibanez Carranza have been on the ICC bench since 2018. In 2020 they were involved in an appeals chamber decision that allowed the ICC prosecutor to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan.
Since 2021, the court had deprioritized the investigation into American troops in Afghanistan and focused on alleged crimes committed by the Afghan government and the Taliban forces.
ICC judges also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict. Alapini Gansou and Hohler ruled to authorize the arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, Rubio said.
The move deepens the administration‘s animosity toward the court. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the court’s work on Afghanistan.
The measures also follow a January vote at the US House of Representatives to punish the ICC in protest over its Netanyahu arrest warrant. The move underscored strong support among Trump‘s fellow Republicans for Israel’s government.
Sanctions severely hamper individuals’ abilities to carry out even routine financial transactions as any banks with ties to the United States, or that conduct transactions in dollars, are expected to have to comply with the restrictions.
But the Treasury Department also issued general licenses, including one allowing the wind-down of any existing transactions involving those targeted on Thursday until July 8, as long as any payment to them is made to a blocked, interest-bearing account located in the US.
The new sanctions come at a difficult time for the ICC, which is already reeling from earlier US sanctions against its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who last month stepped aside temporarily amid a United Nations investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct.
The ICC, which was established in 2002, has international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in member states or if a situation is referred by the UN Security Council.
However, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. Nonetheless, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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