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My mom’s hamantaschen recipe carries the memories that she is losing
(JTA) — My mother always loved to cook and bake, but I was never welcome in the kitchen. Not every night before dinner, not before Shabbat when she made challah every week, and not in the leadup to Hanukkah and Passover, when her latke and seder preparations were underway.
The big exception was just before Purim, when she would ceremoniously invite me into the kitchen to help her fill and pinch the triangle-shaped cookies that are a trademark of the holiday.
As an adult with young kids of my own, I get it, but as a child, it didn’t occur to me that my mother had already spent hours setting everything up. All I had to do was walk into the kitchen, take a round cup, place it on the rolled-out dough, peel away a circle, scoop jelly from a bowl that she had laid out for me, and pinch the corners of the cookie and put them on the tray. I felt like I was really baking hamantaschen.
The cookies of semi-mysterious origin are core to helping the eater celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim — a tale told of a villain, Haman, who wanted to destroy the Jewish people in the ancient kingdom of Persia. The cookie is the ultimate revenge: Its Yiddish name means “Haman’s ears,” so in the end it’s us, the Jews, who end up consuming our oppressor, and not the other way around.
My mother talked to me about this meaning — until she began to lose the ability to speak at all.
Two years ago, she was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a type of dementia where she struggles to recall words, has short-term memory loss and confuses dates and times. Eventually, she will lose her ability to speak or understand words.
As with so much in Jewish life, her decline is linked in my family’s memory to the Jewish calendar. We started to notice changes several years ago when she arrived in New York City for a celebration of Rosh Hashanah and could not put into words what she had brought with her. (It was her special apple cake, my favorite.) Then, she set the table with challah and candles, as she would to get ready for Shabbat — but it was Thursday. And it was when I started to prepare for Purim in 2021 that I realized it had been an entire year since my mother had sent me anything by text or email.
Kay Beser holding her daughter Erin in the late 1980s, left, and outside her kitchen. (Courtesy Erin Beser)
The last message I’d gotten was a document I needed for our first pandemic Purim, when my son was 3 and we’d only just started sheltering in place in our apartment. Titled “Mommy’s Hamantaschen Recipe,” the document allowed my mother and my son to bake together via FaceTime. Even though she was on the phone, my mother was laughing and present.
A year later, she could not be. But as a Jewish educator, I was tasked with the job of creating virtual programming for my community, to sustain us, to keep us together even though we were apart. Like many Jewish communities in that moment, we as a community decided to bake hamantaschen on Zoom together, everyone in their own home. I sent “Mommy’s Hamantaschen Recipe” to 500 households through the Jewish Community Project of Lower Manhattan.
This week, as I dug out the supplies to make hamantaschen with my own children in our new home outside Philadelphia, I opened the recipe file again. And I remembered: I had dropped the “Mommy’s” from the title — making the recipe my own.
My mom is still alive, thank goodness in relatively good health, and I’m thankful every day for that and for my dad, who is her full-time caregiver. I try to focus on the fact that she is still here, and not to dwell on the parts of her that are missing. And so as her absolutely delicious recipe gets used once more in countless Jewish homes this year, I am thinking about all of the children who are getting the experience that was a highlight of my childhood: forming hamantaschen that somehow never fall apart, using my mother’s recipe.
I know that when I tell my mother about her recipe’s reach, she will feel, if only for the briefest of moments, the pride and joy that I once felt taking up my post at the end of her hamantaschen assembly line. And I will take comfort, yet again, in the fact that the Jewish calendar creates opportunities to mark the passage of time in ways that can outlast any of us, making memories when we cannot make new ones of our own.
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Survey: Jews in smaller communities feel less heard when raising concerns about antisemitism
(JTA) — Jews living in smaller communities are less likely than those in large communities to feel their concerns about antisemitism are taken seriously by law enforcement and would-be allies, a new survey from the Jewish Federations of North America has found.
Jews in smaller communities were “lacking a sense of allyship in the communities around them,” said Mimi Kravetz, the chief impact and growth officer for JFNA.
“Jews in small communities tell us that they feel deeply concerned that they’re looking for support, that their leadership is looking for network and resources, because it can feel like they’re on their own,” Kravetz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The JFNA survey, which was compiled from its March 2025 study of Jewish Life in North America, found that 22% of Jews live in small communities. Defined as Jewish communities with fewer than 5,000 Jews living within five miles of their zip code, small Jewish communities are also more likely to be found in the South or in rural or suburban areas.
Although the survey found no statistically significant difference in the antisemitism experienced by Jews in smaller and larger communities, it found that Jews in small communities are more likely to feel that antisemitism is invalidated or dismissed.
Among respondents, 58% of Jews in small communities reported feeling more likely to be invalidated, compared with 48% of Jews overall.
Jews in small communities were also less likely to express confidence in local law enforcement’s responses to antisemitism. Just 39% of Jews in small communities say local law enforcement takes antisemitism seriously, compared with 47% of Jews in larger communities.
Leaders of small Jewish communities also feel less physically safe in Jewish spaces than their big city counterparts: 60% of those small-community leaders said they feel safe, compared to 86% of community leaders overall.
While the survey found that 50% of Jews in smaller communities report being unengaged in Jewish life, compared to 36% of Jewish respondents overall, they were just as likely to say they wanted greater connection to Jewish life.
The survey suggested that geographic constraints and limited availability of Jewish life likely caused the disparity in engagement, even as Jews sought out Jewish connections in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Kravetz said Jews in small communities were just as likely as Jews in big communities to crave those connections.
“What’s needed in small Jewish communities is more leadership infrastructure and support for Jewish life,” Kravetz said.
The survey was conducted before the January arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation, the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, which drew renewed attention to the security challenges facing smaller Jewish communities.
Michele Schipper, the CEO of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a nonprofit that supports Jewish communities across the South and was housed inside Beth Israel Congregation prior to the arson attack, said security remains a challenge for some smaller congregations.
“For some of those smaller communities, they may not be able to have personnel on site every time they’re open,” Schipper said. “It may be an older building. Not everyone is able to get one of the secure community grants,” she said, referring to federal and state government grants to nonprofits seen as vulnerable to attack.
Earlier this month leaders from Jewish communities across the South convened at the ISJL’s annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Schipper said they discussed strategies for keeping smaller communities safe.
“One of the things we really did share is how important it is not to isolate ourselves in these communities, but to continually build relationships with the local community, with local law enforcement, so that when, God forbid, something happens, you’re not starting to reach out or wait for somebody to contact you,” Schipper said.
Looking ahead, Schipper said her message to Jews in small communities was to “continue to build relationships in your own local community, and just continue to participate in the Jewish community and stay strong and positive.”
The study, which was conducted online by JFNA from March 5-25, 2025, surveyed 5,798 total U.S. adults, of which 1,877 identified as Jewish. The margin of error for Jewish adults was ± 2.26%, and samples were weighted to be representative of the U.S. population and Jewish community.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Hitler appears in the baby photos section of a New Jersey middle school
(JTA) — Adolf Hitler cropped up in the student baby photos section of a New Jersey middle school yearbook, prompting condemnation from school officials and local Jewish leaders.
In a letter sent last Thursday to the school community, East Brook Middle School Principal Ryan Aupperlee said that the school in Paramus had launched an investigation into the incident in “coordination with law enforcement.”
“Adolf Hitler represents hatred, antisemitism, and the horrors of the Holocaust, including the murder of six million Jews,” Aupperlee wrote in the letter obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “An image of him has no place in a yearbook created for our students. It does not reflect who we are or what East Brook stands for, and we condemn its inclusion without reservation.”
Sean Adams, the superintendent of Paramus Public Schools, told JTA in an emailed statement that the yearbooks were taken back from the students “the same day they were distributed, before the students left school for the day.”
“We are working with the yearbook company to develop a solution that will allow us to redistribute the yearbooks after removing the offensive content while still allowing students to retain the handwritten, personalized messages their classmates and teachers had already written in their yearbooks,” Adams said.
Adams said that an investigation into the incident was “ongoing,” and that “any details related to students must remain confidential.”
The incident comes amid a spate of allegations of antisemitism in New Jersey schools in recent years. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into Teaneck Public Schools after parents alleged the system had fostered an antisemitic climate since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacres in Israel. The same year, teachers at Fort Lee High School presented a lesson that described Hamas as a “Palestinian political party and armed resistance movement.”
A high school yearbook in East Brunswick, New Jersey, also drew condemnation and was recalled in 2024 after a photo of the “Jewish Student Association” was replaced with one of a Muslim student group.
Jason Shames, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, said that the incident was “shocking people to the core.”
“I’m not rushing to judgment, but again, if I know that it’s a minor, I want consequences. If I know that’s an adult, I want consequences,” Shames said, adding that the Jewish community “demands” to see accountability.
On Friday, Paramus Mayor Chris DiPiazza condemned the incident in a post on Facebook, writing that, “Any examples, like yesterday’s, does not reflect Paramus.”
Shames said that while he felt the school “handled it right,” he was still looking to other state leaders for a statement condemning the incident.
“There should be global condemnation,” Shames said. “If the school has already done it, and the mayor’s already done it, where’s the uproar?”
He said the incident reflected a broader normalization of antisemitism.
“It’s infuriating that it’s come to this. There’s a bigger statement about the illness in American society today, and the antisemitism, and the hate that’s involved in this,” Shames said. “Even if it winds up being two middle school kids who thought it was funny, we have a problem now with people thinking Hitler and Nazi jokes are funny.”
Rabbi Arthur Weiner, the leader of the Conservative Congregation Beth Tikvah in Paramus, said that he was first alerted to the yearbook by a congregant whose child attends the school.
On Monday, Weiner sent a letter to congregants saying that he was “angered by this blatant antisemitic incident,” and had been in contact with the school district and local elected leaders about their response.
“Events like these are of great concern to us both personally and as a community,” Weiner wrote. “Incidents involving Nazi imagery or references to Hitler are not merely offensive. They touch deep historical wounds and remind us why vigilance remains so important.”
Weiner said that the local Jewish community could “take heart in the reaction of the authorities to this particular event.”
“We have not always seen that clear and unambiguous response from school districts when similar incidents of antisemitism and bias have occurred,” Weiner told JTA. “I think we’ve been very, very proud of the response.”
Rabbi Shmuel Goldstein of the Modern Orthodox Congregation Beth Tefillah in Paramus said that while many parents at his congregation had expressed “frustration,” “hurt,” and “concern” over the incident, they also felt “supported by the local government.”
Goldstein said that he nonetheless did “not feel that there’s nearly enough proactive measures in the local school systems.”
“These incidents don’t happen in a vacuum,” Goldstein said. “They happen because someone is taught at home on social media or informally amongst peers at schools, that it is okay to hurt Jewish people, that has to be made clear, that that is unacceptable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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The warmth of community, the heat of hostility: Yona Speidel’s Jewish journey
(JTA) — Hours after emerging from a ritual bath marking her conversion to Judaism, Yona Speidel was leaving a celebratory dinner with her rabbi when a man across the street yelled “f–ck Jews.”
For Speidel, it was an unexpected welcome into the Jewish community.
“My rabbi looked at me and he goes, ‘Welcome,’” Speidel recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh, great, I’m home.”
The conversion ceremony in Los Angeles in March marked the conclusion of a decade-long exploration of Judaism for Speidel, the prominent transgender Emmy-nominated television writer and producer formerly known as Our Lady J.
“Over a period of 12 years of casually dating Judaism, I eventually got engaged when I realized that Judaism holds so much space for all of me, and then some,” Speidel said.
Growing up in Central Southern Pennsylvania, where two of her great-grandparents had been Mennonites, Speidel said that she had little exposure to Jews. Still, she felt a pull toward Jewish culture from an early age.
“I don’t remember when I first became aware of Judaism as a culture,” Speidel said. “But I knew I loved New York City. Many years later, I look back, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I love Jews, I love Jewish culture, that’s what drew me to New York.’”
Speidel is believed to have become the first out trans writer to be hired in a television writers’ room when she joined the hit TV show “Transparent,” which follows the story of a Jewish family in Los Angeles with a parent who comes out as trans.
During the show’s third season, as she became immersed in researching Judaism for the show, Speidel said she began taking conversion classes but then put them on pause because she “wasn’t sure if there was space for me in Judaism.”
That all changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Speidel said she began opening up to faith and spirituality after becoming “burnt out” by her work on “Transparent” and another hit LGBTQ TV show, “Pose.”
“As the world got more complicated and darker and scarier for a lot of people, and especially for Jews, I found that Judaism was able to hold everything for me that I needed to pour out, to release,” Speidel said.
Speidel, who learned as an adult that she is intersex, said that at the time she discovered Isaiah 56, a passage of the Hebrew Bible that promises a place for eunuchs in the Temple.
She said discovering the passage left her feeling that her “intersex and trans identity feels really seen and awakened.”
“It was not only that I was accepted as, you know, this idea of tolerated, but rather I could see a part of me that would be uplifted, actually, and be embraced, and that’s always been in Judaism,” Speidel said.
In late 2024, Speidel began taking conversion classes again at the American Jewish University, saying that rising antisemitism had strengthened her commitment to Judaism.
“In a post-Oct. 7 world, I felt, even though I wasn’t officially Jewish at that point, I felt how much Judaism meant to me — and how much it informed my life and enriched my life — was under threat, and so it made me want to step up and be more conscious in my relationship with Judaism,” Speidel said.
Speidel is not the only person to embrace Judaism amid rising antisemitism. In recent years, some rabbis have reported increased interest in conversion, with prospective converts saying the post Oct. 7 environment strengthened rather than diminished their commitment to Judaism.
In the midst of her conversion, which she completed with Rabbi Igael Gurin-Malous, the lead rabbi at the Reform Beit T’Shuvah in Los Angeles, Speidel also took aim at what she described as anti-Zionism within the LGBTQ community in a social media post.
“Zionism is not a dirty word,” she wrote. “It is the belief in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”
Speidel faced a spate of online attacks following the statement, but she said she felt obligated to be the “bridge” between the Jewish and LGBTQ communities.
“I think that word ‘Zionist’ means a lot of different things to a lot of people, and so people ran with it and did what they wanted to do with it, and that did not feel good, but at the same time I was grateful for the people who got closer to me and understood my intentions,” Speidel said.
While Pride Month celebrations and parades took place in cities across the United States during June, Speidel said that she had not participated in them in years because of the antisemitism she had seen in those spaces.
“The LGBT movement needs to really look at itself in the mirror and say no to antisemitism, you know, before I come back and dance under the rainbow again,” Speidel said.
Looking ahead, Speidel said she remains optimistic about the future of Jewish life despite present challenges.
“A storm is here, and the storm is going to pass,” Speidel said. “But at the end of the day, we carry this incredible legacy with us, and we get to pass it down, and it’s something to be proud of.”
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