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Rabbi Zevulun Charlop, dean who led Yeshiva U seminary through period of growth, dies at 94
(JTA) — Rabbi Zevulun Charlop, who as dean of the rabbinical seminary at Yeshiva University for 37 years oversaw a period of enormous growth for the Modern Orthodox institution, died Jan. 16. He was 94.
When Charlop was named dean of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Y.U. in 1971, it had 154 students. When he retired in 2008, it had 340.
Charlop was also on hand for a transition in American Orthodoxy, training American-born, college-educated rabbis to succeed the European-trained rabbis who had held pulpits and led yeshivas through much of the 20th century.
“When I first came to Yeshiva as a student” in the 1940s, “almost all of the roshei yeshiva were European-trained” and many lacked university degrees, he told the New York Jewish Week in 2008, referring to the top scholars on the RIETS faculty. In 2008, he said, over 90% of RIETS faculty trained at Y.U., which offered undergraduate and graduate degrees in addition to ordination.
Charlop saw the transition as a fulfillment of the Y.U. philosophy, “Torah umadda,” or Jewish and secular learning, which posited that Orthodox Jews should take part fully in general society without compromising on their religiosity.
Charlop wanted RIETS “to be a place of intense Torah scholarship,” Chaim Bronstein, an administrator at the seminary, recalled in a tribute upon Charlop’s retirement. However, “he did not want our students and roshei yeshiva to remain in an ivory tower. He wanted them to go out into the community. He wanted to produce rabbis who can relate to the broadest range of Jews throughout the country and throughout the world.”
Charlop was himself a pulpit rabbi, having been given a lifetime contract in 1966 at age 36 by the Young Israel of Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx, New York. Charlop led the synagogue through a period of declining fortunes in the Bronx and the flight of many of the Jews from the neighborhood to the suburbs and other neighborhoods in New York City.
“On Rosh Hashanah, 1977,” he told the New York Jewish Week, “we sold 875 seats” in a main and overflow service. “In 1978, we lost 40 seats. By 1985, we didn’t need a second service. The next year it was less. The next year, it was less than that. We still have many members but few in the neighborhood.” The synagogue closed in 2015.
Charlop was considered an authority on Torah and Talmud and lectured in American history. His scholarly essays include “The Making of Orthodox Rabbis” for the Encyclopedia Judaica and “God in History and Halakha from the Perspective of American History” for The Torah U-Madda Journal, a Y.U. publication. Charlop was also editor of three novellas on Torah and Talmud by his late father, Jechiel Michael Charlop, a Jerusalem-born rabbi.
Aaron Goldscheider, the former rabbi at Mount Kisco Hebrew Congregation in New York’s Westchester County, recalled visiting the dean’s office and studying the writings of Charlop’s grandfather, Ya’akov Moshe Charlop, a disciple of Abraham Isaac Kook, the chief rabbi of Palestine.
“[S]itting in Yeshiva University, a bastion of Lithuanian learning, I was treated to a glimpse of the more mystical world of study characteristic of Rav Kook and his protege Rabbi Charlop,” Goldscheider recalled in the acknowledgements of his book, “Torah United.” “It is impossible to put into words my feelings of gratitude for those precious weekly meetings. They were a source of inspiration at the time and continue to carry me until this day.”
After his retirement, Charlop served as dean emeritus and special advisor on yeshiva affairs to Yeshiva University’s then-president Richard M. Joel.
Zevulun Charlop (pronounced khar-LOP) was born in the Bronx on Dec. 14, 1929. His father had arrived in New York in 1920 and after his own ordination at RIETS served as a pulpit rabbi in New York, Canton, Ohio and Omaha, Nebraska. In 1925, the elder Charlop returned to New York and became the rabbi at the Bronx Jewish Center.
Zevulun attended Yeshiva Salanter in the Bronx and Talmudical Academy, which would later be known as Yeshiva University High School for Boys. He earned degrees at Yeshiva College and Columbia University, and was ordained at RIETS.
Charlop once said that his ideal Y.U. would be “a yeshiva like Volozhin,” a legendary seminary in what is now Belarus, and a university like Columbia. But he would also note wryly that the Vietnam War turned out to be a great recruiter for Y.U., at a time when rabbinical students could earn a deferment from the draft.
Charlop inherited an activist streak from his father, who was one of the organizers of the 1943 “Rabbis’ March” on Washington, D.C. protesting inaction during the Holocaust. Charlop himself led his synagogue in supporting integration during the civil rights movement and various Jewish causes, including the fight for Soviet Jewry and support for Israel. But there were limits to an Orthodox rabbi’s role, he told the student publication Kol Hamevaser in 2012, when Y.U. was facing competition from activist rabbis who sought to liberalize Modern Orthodoxy’s approach to women’s roles and other issues.
“Turning a yeshiva into a big tent can be a dangerous thing; if we start lessening our inward Torah focus then we may start neutralizing learning and, rahamana litslan, yir’as shamayim [God have mercy, our fear of heaven],” he said. “In order to be able to sustain the multifaceted world that we have here in Yeshiva, we have to be deeper in the core. So long as we know that in this process we may be willy-nilly, lightening the thrust of our Torah learning, then widening the tent cannot be achieved. Rather, we must widen and, indeed, deepen our Torah learning and kiyyum ha-mitsvos [fulfill the commandments] at the core.
Charlop served as president of the American Committee for the United Charities in Israel, General Israel Orphans Home for Girls in Jerusalem, and the National Council of Young Israel rabbis.
His survivors include two sons, Rabbi Alexander Ziskind Charlop and Rabbi Zev Charlop, and six daughters, Peshi Neuburger, Leebee Rochelle Becher, Annie Riva Charlop, Shoshana Schneider, Zipporah Raymon and Miriam Reiss. His wife, Judith, died in 1999.
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BBC Blasted for Gaza Documentary Hiding Palestinian Interviewees’ Antisemitism, Hamas Ties
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The BBC chose to remove the documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” from its iPlayer streaming platform on Friday pending an internal investigation following a raft of criticisms regarding multiple links to Hamas and inaccurate translations obscuring participants’ antisemitism.
On Feb. 17, the broadcaster debuted the film, which features a 13-year-old narrator (now 14) named Abdullah Al-Yazouri, who viewers identified as the son of Dr. Ayman Al-Yazouri, a man who works as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture. Pro-Israel researcher David Collier said that the boy and his father come from the same family as Hamas founder Ibrahim Al-Yazouri.
“The child of Hamas royalty was given an hour on a BBC channel to walk around looking for sympathy and demonizing Israel,” Collier said. “They followed this family for months. There is no way on earth they did not know who this family was. How can the BBC possibly justify trusting anything else in the entire documentary?”
In addition, Hatem Rawagh, a cameraman who worked on the documentary, has praised Hamas and the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
Uncovered by the Arabic division of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), Rawagh wrote online on Oct. 7 in reference to the Yom Kippur war that “whoever missed Oct 6 [1973] in Egypt … Oct 7 is happening [now] in Palestine.” The next day he shared a video from Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades which showed a view from a head camera attached to one of the terrorists who shot a rifle and killed an Israeli near the Gaza border. Rawagh wrote, “You are going to come back to this video a million times.”
Amjad Al Fayoumi, another cameraman who worked on the documentary, has likewise advocated for Hamas, posting a salute to the Oct. 7 attacks and sharing “resistance” videos which featured terrorists, rockets, and Israeli funerals.
The cost of the documentary has also come under criticism. “The BBC needs to account for every penny spent on this documentary — £400,000 is a lot of licence-fee payers money,” said Danny Cohen, former director of BBC television. “They should be transparently told where their money went and whether any of it reached the hands of Hamas.”
The documentary has further received backlash for its mistranslations of “Jew” and omissions of “jihad.” The Telegraph reported that on at least five occasions the Arabic word for “Jew”— “Yahud” or “Yahudy” — received the translation “Israel” or “Israeli forces” or was removed altogether.
At four minutes into the film, a woman says, “The Jews invaded our [area],” but the subtitles say, “The Israeli army invaded our area.”
Later in the documentary, the subtitles describe a woman as saying “we’re used to seeing flashes of lightning in the sky. But now it’s real missiles. We’re happy that for once the rockets aren’t falling on us.” However, according to CAMERA, she really said that “at first, when we would see these [flashes], they would be flares, by the way. From the Jews. But now they turned out to be [real] missiles.”
In an interview with another woman, the documentary claims she described the Oct. 7 terror attacks as the “first time we invaded Israel — it was always the other way round.” CAMERA noted that the correct translation of her statement is “we were invading the Jews for the first time.”
Near the film’s conclusion, a woman discusses the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, that “his face was covered and his weapon was ready, prepared for battle.” The correct translation of her statement is reportedly “ready for jihad.” She later says, according to the subtitles, that “the video shows that he was fighting and resisting Israeli forces. He wasn’t hiding.” CAMERA said that the accurate translation of her words is “he was engaging in resistance and jihad against the Jews. Not underground.”
Alex Hearn, the co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said that “it is this whitewashing that keeps viewers ill-informed about the nature of Hamas, and promotes sympathy for their deadly ideology. This documentary signifies the institutional failure behind the BBC”s reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict.”
Orly Goldschmidt of the Israeli embassy in the UK said that the mistranslations do not allow “viewers to see how children, and Palestinians at large, have been taught to hate ‘Jews’ from a very young age.”
A spokesperson for the BBC said in a statement that “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” features “important stories we think should be told — those of the experiences of children in Gaza. There have been continuing questions raised about the program and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The program will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.”
Investigators are supposed to deliver a report about the documentary to the BBC on Thursday, the results of which will be made public that day or on Friday.
The post BBC Blasted for Gaza Documentary Hiding Palestinian Interviewees’ Antisemitism, Hamas Ties first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Spokesperson Rebukes Terror Group Leader’s Comments to New York Times Expressing Regret About Oct. 7
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
After the head of Hamas’s foreign relations office in Qatar told the New York Times in an article published on Monday that he would not have supported the Palestinian terrorist organization’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel if he knew what kind of destruction it would bring to Gaza, a Hamas spokesperson rebuked his statement and said it does not represent the views of the Islamist group.
“If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been Oct. 7,” senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told the Times, claiming he was not privy to the exact details of the planned invasion of southern Israel.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, kidnapped 251 hostages, and perpetrated mass sexual violence against Israelis during their Oct. 7 massacre. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Abu Marzouk told the Times that it would be “unacceptable” to say Hamas won the Gaza war given the level of destruction the conflict caused in the coastal enclave. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), about 20,000 Hamas terrorists were also killed in the war, suggesting the group lost a significant portion of its fighting force.
Referring to Israel, Abu Marzouk said, “We’re talking about a party that lost control of itself and took revenge against everything … That is not a victory under any circumstances.” However, he added, “Hamas’s survival in the war against Israel was itself a kind of victory.”
Abu Marzouk did not mention Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Abu Marzouk’s comments marked a departure from previous statements by Hamas officials regarding the Oct. 7 attack. Less than three weeks after the onslaught, for example, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau and a spokesman for the Iran-backed terror organization, told Lebanon’s LBC TV that the terrorist group will repeat its massacre of Israelis “again and again” to bring about the Jewish state’s “annihilation.”
Months later, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, Ahmad Abd Al-Hadi, told Lebanon’s Annahar newspaper that the terrorist group would carry out its brutal Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel again if it could travel back in time.
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem echoed such support for the Oct. 7 atrocities in a statement that was quickly put out to counter Abu Marzouk’s latest comments.
“Hamas is committed to its resistance weapon as a legitimate right, and there is no discussion about that as long as there is an occupation of our Palestinian land,” Qassem said. “The statements attributed to Mousa Abu Marzouk do not represent Hamas’s position.”
The spokesperson argued that “the occupation’s aggressive and destructive behavior is the cause of the destruction in Gaza” rather than the actions of Hamas. “The Oct 7 epic marks a strategic turning point in the Palestinian national struggle,” he added. “Dr. Abu Marzouk has emphasized that the blessed operation of Oct. 7 was an expression of our people’s right to resist and their rejection of the siege, occupation, and settlements.”
Qassem also claimed that Abu Marzouk’s comments were “incorrect and taken out of context,” with the Hamas statement taking a shot at the New York Times: “The interview was conducted a few days ago and the published statements did not reflect the full content of the answers.”
Some observers have argued that Abu Marzouk’s answers to the Times regarding the Oct. 7 attack were likely part of a public relations strategy to boost its perception in the West.
Khalil Sayegh, co-founder and president of the Agora Initiative, which aims to create “a shared vision for Palestine and Israel,” wrote on X that Hamas “is still emphasizing to the Arab world that Oct. 7 was a great victory” and that the purpose of the Times interview was “to mislead the American public to believe that Hamas regrets their decision on Oct. 7.”
“Don’t fall for Hamas’s lies,” Sayegh added.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas leaders have consistently expressed their satisfaction with the attack and their view that the terrorist group has achieved victory in the war.
After the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal was reached last month, Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya said in a speech that “what occurred on Oct. 7 — a miraculous military and security achievement by the elite Qassam Brigades — will remain a source of pride for our people and resistance, passed down through generations.”
Then, on Feb. 15, at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan spoke about expanding the resistance against Israel. He argued that “the region’s basic tool is its ability to slap Israel whenever it wants, and do this at a high level, and we proved this on Oct. 7.”
At the same forum, Hamdan referred to “the victory in Gaza” and said that “Oct. 7, 2023, was a historic achievement and an astonishing success that gave Palestinians a sense of confidence.”
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal last year, then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said he was glad about the position in which Hamas had put itself and Gaza, with no indication he regretted anything about starting the war. “We have the Israelis right where we want them,” he reportedly said.
The Journal also reported that Sinwar sent a message to Hamas leaders in Doha in which he referred to the civilians who died in Gaza as “necessary sacrifices.”
The post Hamas Spokesperson Rebukes Terror Group Leader’s Comments to New York Times Expressing Regret About Oct. 7 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Mourns Bibas Family as Hamas Agrees to Free Last Hostage Bodies Under Phase One of Gaza Truce
A woman holds a cut-out picture of hostages Shiri Bibas, 32, with Kfir Bibas, 9 months old, who were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and then killed in Gaza, on the day of their funeral procession, at a public square dedicated to hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
Israelis mourned the family that symbolized the trauma their country suffered in the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, as the Palestinian terrorist group agreed to free the last hostage bodies included in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire.
Hamas said the bodies of Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi, and Shlomo Mantzur would be released on Wednesday night and added that a hospital in Gaza was preparing to receive Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said an agreement was reached for the handover of bodies of four deceased hostages, but it did not name them.
The resolution came on the same day as the funeral of the Bibas family following the handover of the bodies of nine-month-old Kfir Bibas, his four-year-old brother Ariel, and their mother Shiri last week.
The youngest hostages seized during the attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, were killed weeks after they were abducted into the Gaza Strip.
Israel says it has intelligence and forensic evidence that shows the boys and their mother were killed by their captors using their bare hands. Hamas said they were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Thousands of people, some in tears, carrying blue and white Israeli flags or photographs of the family, walked in procession or waited as a convoy bearing the coffins drove past. Many were carrying orange balloons, a symbol of mourning for the hostages, matching the red hair of the two Bibas boys.
“It’s still not really registering,” said Tal Ben-Shimon, who joined mourners at what has come to be known as Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. “They kind of represent all the families, the very young families, who were slaughtered on that day.”
Yarden Bibas, the father of the boys, who was captured separately from his family and released earlier this month, paid tribute in an emotional eulogy at their funeral.
“I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute,” he said in an address carried live on Israeli television.
For Israelis, the Bibas family has become an emblem of the trauma that has haunted their country since the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza. But fighting has stopped since the fragile ceasefire agreement brokered by Egyptian and Qatari mediators last month.
Under the deal, Hamas agreed to hand over 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from some of their positions in Gaza as well as an influx of aid.
BREAKTHROUGH SECURED
On Wednesday, Egyptian mediators confirmed they had secured a breakthrough that should allow the handover of the final four hostage bodies due in the first phase of the deal this week after a days-long impasse.
Hamas confirmed that an agreement had been reached for the exchange of hostages for prisoners, that would be conducted under a new mechanism.
It said the European Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis was preparing to receive released prisoners as early as Wednesday night. The Israeli Prison Service said it had received the list of prisoners and detainees and that preparations were under way for their release.
An Israeli official said the bodies of the hostages were expected to be handed in the evening. Netanyahu’s office said their release would not include a Hamas ceremony.
The Hamas-staged ceremonies in which living hostages and coffins carrying hostage remains have been displayed on stage before a crowd in Gaza have drawn increasing criticism, including from the United Nations.
Israel had refused to release more than 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Saturday after Hamas handed over six living hostages in such a ceremony.
Days earlier, the agreement was held up when Hamas handed over the remains of an unidentified woman instead of Shiri Bibas before delivering the correct body the next day.
With the 42-day truce due to expire on Saturday, it remains unclear whether an extension will be agreed or whether negotiations can begin on a second stage of the deal, which would see the release of the remaining 59 hostages in Gaza.
Despite numerous hiccups, the ceasefire deal has held. But moving to a second phase would require agreements on issues that have proved impossible to bridge so far, including the postwar future of Gaza and Hamas, which Israel has vowed to eliminate as a governing force.
Hamas said that it has not received any proposals so far.
The post Israel Mourns Bibas Family as Hamas Agrees to Free Last Hostage Bodies Under Phase One of Gaza Truce first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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