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One rabbi’s lifesaving solution to help Odessa’s vulnerable Jews: jerry-rigged car batteries
This winter, the city of Odessa, Ukraine, feels like the heart of darkness.
The city is constant bombardment by the Russian military, freezing nighttime temperatures commonly fall below zero, and electricity is only available for six hours per day: three in the morning and three at night.
Amid these desperate circumstances, Avraham Wolff, the chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine, is trying to bring some light — and heat.
He’s doing so with jerry-rigged car batteries to provide warmth and electricity to about 400 Holocaust survivors in the city — the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.
“The ones at greatest risk of starving to death or freezing to death are the Holocaust survivors who were not able to flee this place,” Wolff said in a phone interview from Odessa. “Holocaust survivors are staring death in the face for the second time, and we can’t avert our eyes.”
Wolff is trying to raise $500,000 in funds to purchase heating units powered by car batteries. Placed inside a home, the two car batteries connect to special transistors, which generate sufficient electricity to heat an apartment. Each unit costs $1,400, and Wolff’s organization, Mishpacha Chabad Odessa, is trying to organize 357 units: one for each apartment where a Holocaust survivor lives. Accounting for spouses, the units will provide enough electricity for about 500 people.
This literally can stave off death, Wolff says — not only by providing lifesaving heat, but also the electricity essential to the elderly and frail.
“If they go to the bathroom in the dark and they fall and break their hip, that’s the beginning of the end,” he said. When there is no power, Wolff said, “it’s darkness. But not just darkness. Also cold and hunger.”
About 20,000 Jews remain in wartime Odessa. That’s less than half the Jewish population of 50,000 that was there just a year ago, before Russian invaded Ukraine. Since then, most have fled to safer places either in western Ukraine, elsewhere in Europe or Israel. Odessa’s Jewish schools once taught 1,000 children. Now, only 200 students remain.
Jerry-rigged heating units use a pair of car batteries connecting to transistors to generate the power needed to heat an apartment. (Courtesy of Mishpacha Odessa)
The Holocaust survivors in their 80s and 90s who remain in the city are either too old or infirm to endure a dangerous journey or unwilling to leave the place where their spouse is buried.
“Someone over 90 cannot start life over as a refugee,” Wolff said.
Air raid sirens go off four or five times a day. Most of the incoming Russian rockets are shot down by defense systems, but there are hits on infrastructure, including power plants. Even the six hours per day of light and heat are not reliable, according to Wolff.
“Two days ago, they hit two power plants, so the city had no electricity for 24 hours,” he said on Monday. “We’re constantly under this pressure. We’ve been living in a war zone for a long time.”
Aside from caring for the Holocaust survivors, Mishpacha Chabad Odessa organizes monthly food deliveries of basic supplies to the homebound Jewish elderly, including such essentials as rice, cooking oil, potatoes, meat and hygiene items, and run Jewish schools and preschools still operating in Odessa.
“We want to help these people not just spiritually, but physically,” the rabbi said. “Elderly Holocaust survivors are currently the highest-risk group, but we help everyone.”
Odessa once was home to the world’s second-largest Jewish community. In the 19th century, the city became a major center of Jewish life and culture, with a large and diverse Jewish population. Many Jewish immigrants came to Odessa during this period, fleeing persecution and poverty in other parts of Europe and the Russian Empire.
Before the Holocaust, one-third of Odessa’s population was Jewish. Then the Nazis came, and Jews were subjected to forced relocation, property confiscation and mass extermination. Approximately 25,000 Jews were killed in the city and its surroundings.
A year ago, before the current war, 1.1 million people lived in Odessa. Hundreds of thousands have fled.
Wolff, 52, has lived in Odessa since 1992, when he came to the country from Israel as an emissary of Chabad, the Jewish outreach movement. When war broke out last February, he left Ukraine temporarily to settle a group of orphans in Germany. Then he returned.
After the Russian invasion, many Ukrainian Jewish communities crumbled. People fled, and Jewish institutions and landmarks like synagogues, community centers and cemeteries were destroyed by Russian bombs.
“There is so much destruction,” Wolff said. “We’re going to do all we can to rebuild, with God’s help.”
With the Russian military targeting infrastructure like power plants, residents of Odessa, Ukraine, use candles for the scant electricity and heat they provide. (Courtesy of Mishpacha Odessa)
Despite the immense dangers and challenges, Wolff says he is optimistic about the future.
“I’m sure that after Ukraine wins, and life and peace returns, there will be a rapid return of those who left, and I think others will come because there will be an economic and building boom,” Wolff said. “I believe there’s a bright future.”
Part of Wolff’s job as a Jewish leader and Chabadnik is not only to provide physical aid, but positive morale and spiritual inspiration.
“When I was a child, I heard a story from an old Jew who had been imprisoned in Siberia,” Wolff recalled. “One day, he got up and he felt he couldn’t say Modeh Ani” — the Jewish morning prayer of gratitude — “because the Russian authorities had taken everything from him: his house, wife, yeshiva, grandkids, tefillin, kippah, tzitzit. He was all alone in a Siberian prison with nothing. But then he realized that the one thing Stalin couldn’t take from him was the ability to say Modeh Ani.”
Even in these grim times, Wolff said, there is a spirit that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is prosecuting this war, cannot take away from Ukraine’s Jews.
“There’s a war, there are challenges, nothing is easy. It’s dark, it’s cold,” Wolff said. “But the ability to smile Putin didn’t take from us and can’t take away. This is what I try to show the community. In the end we’ll win, so let’s smile now, too.”
Those interested in supporting this effort can make a contribution here to fund the battery-powered heating units being deployed to help Odessa’s Holocaust survivors survive this winter.
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The post One rabbi’s lifesaving solution to help Odessa’s vulnerable Jews: jerry-rigged car batteries appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia jointly condemned Israel for declining to open a criminal probe into the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in Deir al-Balah.
The three countries, whose citizens were among the dead, called the decision “shameful,” adding that “the victims of this incident and their families deserve justice and accountability, and we will continue to seek answers on their behalf.”
Poland, who also lost a citizen in the strike, also sharply criticized Israel and summoned its ambassador to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw last week. Australia also summoned Israel’s ambassador.
The seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike after they had just dropped off food supplies at a warehouse. The army mistook them for Hamas operatives, according to the IDF.
In a statement released last week, the IDF said its prosecutors found that despite serious failures in its assessment that Hamas had seized the aid convoy, commanders’ decisions raised no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.”
The World Central Kitchen (WCK) had hired armed guards and had not coordinated the route with the IDF, leading the army to conclude Hamas had seized the supplies and that its operatives were in the vehicles that left the warehouse, according to the army.
José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef who founded World Central Kitchen, said at the time that the convoy had been targeted “systematically, car by car.”
The WCK denounced the IDF’s decision, writing in a statement last week, “There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.”
It called for an independent investigation into the strikes on the convoy, “because the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own conduct.”
The WCK incident was one of five cases out of Gaza about which the IDF on Wednesday gave an update regarding its investigations, including the death of Hind Rajab, age 5, on January 29, 2024.
She had been traveling in a vehicle in Gaza with six members of the Hamada family, which included her aunt, uncle and five cousins. In its statement Wednesday, the IDF admitted for the first time that it fired at the vehicle, killing five members of the Hamada family. Hind and her 15-year old cousin Layan Hamada initially survived, but were trapped in a combat zone and killed within hours.
The IDF said it is opening an investigation into the events in the hours that followed the initial shooting of the five members of the Hamada family, including Hind’s death.
Hind’s killing resonated globally, galvanizing students 5,700 miles away who seized Hamilton Hall during the Columbia University protests, renaming it “Hind’s Hall” after her.
The film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” built around recordings of her phone calls with the Red Crescent begging for help, was nominated for an Academy Award this year.
The IDF had initially said its forces were not within firing range of the vehicle. The army’s announcement Wednesday was a reversal of that position.
“Troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them,” even though the army had issued a notice to Gaza residents to stay away from the area, the military explained.
“According to the reports published, this vehicle belonged to the Hamada family. As a result of the fire, five of the vehicle’s passengers were killed, and two survived: Hind Rajab and her cousin Layan Hamada,” the IDF stated.
The experience of the two girls caught in an active combat zone was documented by the Red Crescent after Layan called its operators. Once she was killed by gunfire, Hind continued to talk to the dispatchers until she too was killed.
The Israeli army described how it tried to coordinate with the Red Crescent to allow for an ambulance to evacuate the girls.
“Upon the ambulance’s arrival at the scene of the incident, a shell was fired toward it,” resulting in the deaths of the two paramedics travelling in it,” the IDF said. “Several days later, the bodies of the seven members of the Hamada family, including the bodies of Hind and Layan, were recovered from the vehicle. In addition, the bodies of the two paramedics were recovered from the ambulance.”
The statement does not say how Hind and Layan died.
The IDF said it was ordering the investigation because of failures in coordinating the ambulance’s movement, but that it could not release further details while the probe is ongoing.
In a statement to JTA, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it “demands an independent international committee of inquiry into this incident, as well as the protection of medical personnel wherever they may be.” It added, “There is no communication with the Israeli occupation regarding this matter or any other. The Palestinian Red Crescent will cooperate with the investigation once it is international and independent.”
The IDF said last week it was also opening a criminal probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers, including a U.N. employee, in March 2025.
In its statement last week, the IDF on that day said its forces had set an ambush for Hamas vehicles in Tel al-Sultan. “Approximately one hour later, the troops received a report regarding five vehicles moving toward them at high speed,” the military said.
“The vehicles stopped in very close proximity to the troops, and their occupants rapidly disembarked. A decision was then made to open fire toward them. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the troops fired at an additional vehicle that arrived at the scene,” the military explained. Only later, the army said, did its forces understand that they had struck ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. vehicle. The army said that six of the emergency workers were also Hamas members.
The earlier IDF review led to the dismissal of a deputy commander after professional failures were found. At first, the military said that the vehicles approached without their emergency signals activated, an account contradicted by cellphone video recovered from one of the dead paramedics. On Wednesday, the military said that there was reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.
The IDF declined to investigate two other incidents involving the deaths of four employees of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, two of whom were killed in the Khan Younis area in February 2024, and another two who were killed in Gaza City in 2023.
In a statement on its website, Doctors Without Borders rebuked the IDF’s decision to close the cases. “This is not justice,” the group said. “Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer. However, it is the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself.”
B’Tselem, the left-wing Israeli human rights organization, went further, telling the JTA that Israel’s military law enforcement system, “is not a genuine mechanism for uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, but a whitewashing mechanism designed to create the appearance of an investigation.”
Yair Dvir, the spokesperson, added that such investigations focus on low-ranking soldiers while “the policies, orders, and senior military and political officials behind them remain outside the scope of investigation.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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When does criticizing Israel become antisemitism? Ask Mark Ruffalo
American actor Mark Ruffalo on Saturday denied that he is antisemitic, one day after Paramount accused the actor of invoking antisemitic tropes in his campaign against the studio’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The clash lands as Paramount is trying to clear the last major obstacle to closing the Warner Bros. Discovery deal: a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other state attorneys general seeking to block it on antitrust grounds.
“The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” Ruffalo said on Saturday. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.”
Now, what started as a celebrity spat has turned into a stand-in for a much bigger fight: When does criticizing Israel’s government turn into hating Jews?
Ruffalo and his defenders say targeting a defense contractor’s technology and a media family’s wealth is ordinary corporate criticism. Paramount and its allies say invoking Israel in a business dispute imports old tropes about Jewish power and money into a fight that has nothing to do with Jews. The same argument has played out over campus protests, in Congress and across the globe since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
The dispute began Friday, when Ruffalo posted a 2024 clip of former Oracle CEO Safra Catz reportedly discussing “profoundly scary technologies” the company built for the Israeli military after Oct. 7. Along with the clip, Ruffalo wrote that the war in Gaza was “a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Larry Ellison, who co-founded Oracle and has an estimated net worth of around $200 billion, has personally backstopped $40.4 billion in equity financing for his son David Ellison’s Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ruffalo called the elder Ellison a “classic Oligarch” and warned that the “most destructive and inhuman forces in the world” would soon sit inside an important media company if the merger succeeds. The deal would give the family control of CNN. It already owns CBS News.
Paramount fired back. “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” a company spokesperson told The Wrap, a Hollywood trade publication. “Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.” The company added that the episode “exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction.”
It’s not the first time Paramount has made that argument. Axios reported in June that company executives believed antisemitism was fueling opposition to the merger more broadly, pointing to the Ellisons’ Jewish identity and Larry Ellison’s friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ruffalo pushed back on social media Saturday refuting the accusation that he is antisemitic and adding: “Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.”
An advocate and activist
Ruffalo, 58, is best known for playing the Hulk in the Marvel cinematic universe and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, for his performances in The Kids Are All Right, Foxcatcher, Spotlight and Poor Things.
He has also built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most consistent activists, campaigning for environmental causes and protesting against the Trump administration. This fight is the latest flashpoint in the actor’s history of pro-Palestinian activism.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel, he has frequently called out Israel’s military action in Gaza, notably wearing an Artists4Ceasefire pin to the 2024 Oscars. In September 2024, he was among more than 700 SAG-AFTRA members who signed a letter demanding the actors’ union publicly call for a Gaza ceasefire and protect pro-Palestinian members from what they described as industry blacklisting.
In September 2025, he said he supported efforts to “boycott, divest, sanction, and prosecute” Israel. And just 10 days before the Oracle post, he joined Javier Bardem, Susan Sarandon and other artists in a statement arguing that despite the U.S.-brokered truce in place since October 2025, “there is no ceasefire in Gaza.”
That history is why three prominent voices in the fight against antisemitism sided with Paramount over the weekend.
“Words matter, and so does the willingness to draw a line when legitimate debate gives way to antisemitic tropes,” wrote Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praising the studio for “refusing to allow prejudice to masquerade as political or corporate criticism.”
He went on: “Invoking Israel in an issue where it is completely irrelevant is a textbook case of obsession and demonization.”
Creative Community for Peace, a Hollywood group that pushes back on boycotts of Israel, went further, with executive director Ari Ingel accusing Ruffalo of fusing “hostility toward Israel and Zionism with Jewish-associated wealth, media ownership, oligarchic power and ominous warnings about concentrated control into a single narrative.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called Ruffalo’s posts “cynical and sickening.”
Antisemitism vs. anti-Zionism
The fight lands amid the worst stretch of global antisemitism in decades. Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that 20 Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks worldwide last year, the highest toll in more than 30 years — a count that includes a gunmen who killed more than a dozen people at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December.
As incidents rise, and amidst Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza and its war with Iran, the country’s standing in the world has cratered.
A Pew Research Center survey of 36 countries this spring found a median of 67% hold unfavorable views of Israel, with opinion growing more negative since 2025 in most countries where Pew has trend data. Even in the U.S., Israel’s staunchest ally, Americans no longer clearly side with Israelis over Palestinians for the first time since Gallup began asking in 2001 — a reversal driven largely by independents and voters under 35.
Where the merger stands
Representatives for Paramount and California are expected to meet Monday for preliminary talks, at Paramount’s request, though people briefed on the discussions cautioned there’s no guarantee they will lead anywhere. The Writers Guild has also sued to block the deal.
The stakes of delay are real: if the deal doesn’t close by October, Paramount would owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. If there is no resolution, a trial is set for March.
The post When does criticizing Israel become antisemitism? Ask Mark Ruffalo appeared first on The Forward.
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AIPAC wants to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan Senate race. Mike Rogers would rather it stay out.
In the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, both candidates are trying to turn a narrow margin into victory.
Republican Mike Rogers is trying to win as the more moderate alternative to Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive and an outspoken critic of Israel. El-Sayed, who narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary, hopes to repeat a strategy that worked for him: campaigning against AIPAC and its political influence.
The pro-Israel lobbying group’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed in the primary. Now, with $60 million in cash on hand, according to the latest FEC filings, it is eager to keep a fierce Israel critic out of the Senate. There is just one problem: Rogers would rather AIPAC stay out of the race.
Allies of the Republican nominee have reportedly asked AIPAC not to run ads to boost him, fearing that the group’s involvement would backfire and give El-Sayed the same political foil that helped him overcome its massive spending in the primary. Axios reported that AIPAC officials didn’t take that rejection easily. However, after Rogers spoke with AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin, the group shelved an ad it had already produced attacking El-Sayed.
AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa told Axios that its members “are highly motivated to be involved in this race and we will be looking at every option to make the case that El-Sayed’s policies are bad for Michigan and bad for America.”
Rogers did not outright reject support from pro-Israel donors. His campaign reportedly suggested ways AIPAC could help without putting its own name front and center. The disagreement is over whether having the group attached to the campaign would help him win or make his job harder.
Michigan’s narrow margins
Recent Michigan elections leave little room for error. Trump carried the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes. In the Senate race that same year, Democrat Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden carried Michigan by about 2.8 points.
A recent AARP poll found El-Sayed at 48% and Rogers at 47% among 877 likely voters, well within the poll’s 3.3-point margin of error. El-Sayed leads among independents by six points. To close the gap, Rogers would need more independents and some dissatisfied Democratic primary voters.
For Rogers, that creates an important distinction: He wants to run against El-Sayed’s positions on Israel and his associations with controversial Israel critics without allowing El-Sayed to turn the election into another fight over AIPAC.
AIPAC has already become increasingly controversial among mainstream Democrats for backing pro-Israel Republicans who joined President Donald Trump’s crusade to question the 2020 election results. The wars in Gaza and Iran have only intensified that backlash, as Democratic voters have increasingly rejected U.S. policy supporting Israel.
Michigan has one of the largest Arab American populations in the nation, and it is the birthplace of the “uncommitted” movement to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war in the 2024 presidential primary — making the politics of Israel and Gaza particularly complicated. A recent Fox News poll showed that 55% of Michigan voters opposed continuing U.S. aid to Israel.
In addition to the Michigan primary, AIPAC had some setbacks in other midterm races across the country. Last week, progressive candidate Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed Melissa Hernandez in the closely watched California special election to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned after allegations of sexual assault. Earlier this year, Analilia Mejia prevailed in a New Jersey special election for a House seat, after an AIPAC-associated super PAC spent more than $2 million targeting another Democratic candidate. Many congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC.
AIPAC has also become increasingly controversial on the right. Prominent America First voices, including Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have attacked AIPAC’s influence over American foreign policy.
Winning over Jewish Democrats
Last week, Rogers launched a “Democrats for Rogers” effort to target voters who are uncomfortable with El-Sayed, in particular Jewish Democrats who remain uneasy with his rhetoric on Israel — including his calling Israel “bloodthirsty.” Jewish voters make up 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, a Modern Orthodox rabbi in suburban Detroit who backed Stevens in the primary and usually votes Democratic, endorsed Rogers at that event and urged others to do the same. Lopatin focused his criticism not only on El-Sayed’s positions on Israel but on his relationship with Hasan Piker, the popular left-wing pundit who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric and who appeared with El-Sayed on the campaign trail.
El-Sayed “has shown contempt for the Jewish community and, frankly, for American values by making Hasan Piker, a vicious antisemite and racist, his campaign surrogate and someone he buddies up with,” Lopatin said.
The Democratic nominee understands that vulnerability. Since winning the primary, El-Sayed has sought to reassure Jewish voters that his opposition to Israel is not hostility toward Jews. “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said in a recent TV appearance. “They are not the same as AIPAC and Israel.” In that interview, El-Sayed also disavowed some remarks by Piker, though he did not commit to ending campaign appearances with him.
That helps explain why Rogers prefers AIPAC to remain out of the spotlight. The Republican nominee would rather spend the fall forcing El-Sayed to defend his positions on Israel, his relationship with Piker and distrust among Jewish voters than spend it answering attacks over millions of dollars in AIPAC money pouring into his campaign.
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