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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 to Sue New York Times Over Article Alleging Widespread Rape of Palestinian Prisoners
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Israel on Thursday announced that it plans to sue The New York Times, after the newspaper published a column earlier this week alleging widespread sexual abuse and rape against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
“Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted on social media.
On his personal X account, Netanyahu wrote that he has instructed his legal advisers “to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof,” the columnist who authored the article, which was published on Monday.
“They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” Netanyahu stated. “Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent. We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has accused the Times of deliberately timing the column to “undermine” Tuesday’s publication of an extensive Israeli report detailing how Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists used sexual violence as a weapon of war against both those attacked in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the hostages kidnapped and held captive in Gaza.
The Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, an Israeli NGO established to document the atrocities, drew on substantial evidence to expose the Palestinian terrorists’ use of mass rape, torture, and other forms of sexual violence, explaining the atrocities were not incidental but “systematic, deliberate, and embedded in the attack itself.”
The commission approached the Times months ago regarding its then-forthcoming report, but the publication “said it was not interested,” according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
“This comprehensive and well-documented report was published this morning by CNN and other international outlets. Aware of the report and its release date, the night before its release the NYT ran a shameful attack on Israel, belittling Hamas’ sexual crimes. That tells you everything about the NYT’s agenda,” the ministry added.
“Built on unverified claims and Hamas-linked sources like EMHRM [Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor]. No evidence. No verified complaints. A politically driven smear campaign by a biased paper designed to support efforts to blacklist Israel,” the ministry further said of the column, which it described as “Hamas propaganda, a distortion of the truth and the facts all serving an anti-Israel agenda.”
“This disgusting shameful piece must be removed immediately,” the ministry added.
Kirstof’s article described “brutal sexual abuse [of Palestinian prisoners] at the hands of Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers, and interrogators.” The journalist quoted Palestinians who said they had been regularly stripped naked in prison, forcibly penetrated with various objects, and even raped by specially trained dogs — a claim that multiple dog trainers have said on the record this week is not possible.
Beyond the fierce denials of Israeli officials, several experts and commentators have noted that many of the “14 men and women” interviewed by Kristoff have ties to Hamas or anti-Israel activism, calling the report into question. Media watchdog groups have questioned the integrity of the sourcing and whether the Times lowered its rigid editorial standards to publish the article.
On Wednesday night, the Times issued a statement defending Kristof’s column. A spokesperson for the publication said the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist “draws together on-the-record accounts and cites several analyses documenting the practice of sexual violence and abuse conducted by various parts of Israel’s security forces and settlers.”
“The accounts of the 14 men and women he interviewed were corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson added. “Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys, and in one case, with UN testimony. Independent experts were consulted on the assertions in the piece throughout reporting and fact-checking.”
The Times had issued a separate statement on Tuesday that also voiced support for Kristof and the accuracy of his article. The publication additionally claimed it “never passed” on the Israeli commission report and “wasn’t told about its completion or the timing of its release.”
“Once the report was made public, we covered its findings. The commission’s work also had no bearing on Nicholas Kristof’s opinion column or its publication timing,” said a Times spokesperson.
Kristof’s column has been criticized by the Embassy of Israel to the United States and Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, Jewish organizations, and fellow journalists. CNN commentator Scott Jennings described the piece as “journalistic atrocity” in a post on X. “If everyone at the NYT who is responsible for this is not fired, then the publication will lose whatever shred of credibility it has left,” he added.
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Alex Soros commits $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism — and its weaponization
The Open Society Foundations, founded by Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros and now led by his son Alex, announced that it would give $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“As the son of a Holocaust survivor and a Jew, I am acutely aware of the dangers of antisemitism,” Alex Soros said in a video announcing the campaign Wednesday.
The grants, which will be rolled out over the next three years, represent a major infusion of cash for organizations approaching antisemitism with a more progressive framework than establishment Jewish groups.
Many of those receiving funding — including Bend the Arc, the Nexus Project and New Jewish Narrative — have focused much of their efforts on countering what they see as efforts to restrict legitimate speech criticizing Israel under the guise of countering antisemitism. That work also involves attempts to recalibrate how incidents get counted.
Open Society said in a press release that it is committed to “distinguishing antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies that violate international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The Nexus Project, for example, was significantly expanded in 2024 after creating an alternative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which classifies much criticism of Israel as antisemitic and continues to be promoted by the country’s largest Jewish groups.
Several of the organizations being funded as part of the new $30 million commitment had received one-off Open Society grants in the past, including Nexus and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
Kevin Rachlin, Washington director for Nexus, said its new funding from Soros will be directed toward the launch of an antisemitism research center, led by a former senior analyst from the Anti-Defamation League who has sought to show how the ADL’s “messaging doesn’t always match with what their data shows.”
While the ADL continues to produce the most detailed accounting of antisemitic incidents in the U.S., it has changed its methodology in recent years to count certain political expressions of anti-Zionism as forms of antisemitism. For example, Aryeh Tuchman, director of the Nexus research center, said in a recent interview that 20% of the 600 campus incidents tallied by the ADL in its count released earlier this month referred to students using slogans like “from the river to the sea.”
“When the audit puts contested incidents like that in the same report as a neo-Nazi putting a swastika on a synagogue and it’s just presented in a topline number — that number can perhaps distort our understanding of what is actually happening,” said Tuchman, who until recently helped oversee the ADL’s annual audit.
But even with the new dollars, organizations that contend anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism, and that have accordingly sought to crack down on campus protests against Israel, retain a large funding advantage. Annual budgets for the ADL and the American Jewish Committee, for example, each exceed $100 million.
Soros grants come with ‘baggage’
The Soros grants also come with some controversy attached. Open Society has long funded Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups as well as pro-Palestinian organizations in the United States, including Al-Haq, B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence.
It has also supported Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a major source for the recent New York Times column that alleged Israeli prison guards have used dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners — a report condemend as a “blood libel” by the Israeli government.
George Soros and Open Society have also been the subject of many far-right conspiracy theories, some of which have relied on antisemitic claims — including that Soros was supposedly taking over the world on behalf of, variously, socialists, Jews or “globalists.” George Soros, a Holocaust survivor born in Hungary in 1930, invested heavily in projects promoting democracy behind the former Iron Curtain, making him a target for oligarchs as they consolidated power.
“Obviously, for any funding, there’s baggage,” said Rachlin. “There are those who are going to hate Soros.”
The decision to funnel the $30 million to not only combating antisemitism but also fighting anti-Muslim hate emphasized what the foundation sees as the need for Jewish and Muslim organizations to work together. “We’ve seen this alarming intensification of antisemitism over the past few years, and at the same time the explosion of anti-Muslim hate,” said Sean Savett, a spokesperson for Open Society. “It just feels like we’ve gone back 10 or 15 years in this country.”
Alex Soros is married to Huma Abdein, a longtime advisor to Hillary Clinton, who is Muslim, which he referenced in his announcement video. “Discrimination and hate aren’t abstract concepts to me or my family,” he said.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, another one of the grantees, helped organize a statement from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a major coalition of legacy civil rights groups, following the firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado, last spring, and has partnered with the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“Post-Oct. 7, we’re seeing extreme voices on both ends of the political spectrum exploit the conflict to pit our communities against each other,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of JCPA.
Open Society is also funding the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, a coalition of nearly 70 mostly progressive Jewish organizations that executive director Abby Levine said had recently focused more specifically on addressing antisemitism.
The post Alex Soros commits $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism — and its weaponization appeared first on The Forward.
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Here Are Some Positive Local Developments in Support of Israel You Haven’t Heard About
Tennessee State Capitol Building in Nashville. Photo: Andre Porter/Wikimedia Commons.
On April 27, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed legislation requiring state agencies to use the geographic name “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank” in official state materials. Known as the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” the law asserts that these terms are historically and Biblically accurate.
Just the week before, the members of the Arizona House passed a nonbinding resolution saying the same thing, after the Arizona Senate approved the legislation in February.
These pro-Israel bills earned little press in the Jewish community and even less in the general media outside of Tennessee and Arizona. Americans of all faiths who support Israel should applaud the lawmakers in both Arizona and Tennessee for their leadership and commitment to historical truth. At a time of increasing misinformation and the targeting of Israel, this bill sends a clear message about the significance of recognizing the Jewish people’s deep ties — dating back to Biblical times — to the Land of Israel.
The city of Hebron is in Judea and is the ancient resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. There are so many other links and ties proving the deep and continuous Jewish presence in the land, and these bills acknowledge that.
What’s more, this is a defeat for anti-Israel radicals in Tennessee who fought against the bill. The New York Times reported about those efforts: “The day of lobbying this month in the State Capitol in Nashville, coordinated by the American Muslim Advisory Council, attracted more than 100 Muslim students and community leaders.”
One year ago, Arkansas state legislators passed their “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” following a 2023 Arkansas General Assembly resolution urging the use of the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank” in official state language.
While it can be argued that Arkansas, Tennessee, and Arizona are right leaning states, they often have Democratic or moderate trends and representatives. For example, from December 2020 through the beginning of 2023 neither of Arizona’s two senators were Republican. While Arizona Republicans control the state legislature, the margin is far from wide with just a handful of seats separating the parties.
Given the unprecedented levels of anti-Israel activity in both parties and the fact that anti-Zionists radicals are winning the anti-Israel legislation fight in far too many parts of the country, the question of how these seemingly symbolic wins matter is a legitimate one to ask.
Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, is remembered for coining the saying that “all politics is local.” From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, how many politicians serve early in their careers in their state legislatures? What’s more, these efforts force anti-Israel activists to play defense and occupy their time with things other than BDS, as was the case in Tennessee.
These are the kinds of innovative, accessible, and positive initiatives that the pro-Israel community should pursue much more frequently. Our confidence has been shaken by the harsh criticism of Israel from far too many on Capitol Hill, and these local efforts have been missing from our playbook for much longer than may have been reasonable. If only a handful more states enact such legislation, it will still be well worth it. Correcting false narratives and fighting for a cause you believe in is always worth it.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.