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Sandy Fox, 36, Jewish camp expert
Like many academics, Sandy Fox, 34, wears many hats. She teaches history as a visiting assistant professor at NYU; she’s the director of the just-launched Archive of the American Jewish Left in the Digital Age; and she just published a book, “The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America,” which is a history of Jewish summer camping that includes all the juicy (and, in some cases controversial) issues people think about when they think about Jewish camp. The Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, resident is also the founder, host and producer of “Vaybertaytsh: A Feminist Podcast in Yiddish.”
For the full list of this year’s 36 to Watch — which honors leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers who are making a difference in New York’s Jewish community — click here.
How did you establish your career?
My path in work and life has been wind-y. When I was in my 20s, I thought I had to keep my public-facing Jewish cultural work, like “Vaybertaytsh,” separate from my academic research — that pressure exists in academia sometimes, especially when you’re a graduate student trying to prove yourself as “serious.” But I eventually learned to embrace these two sides of me — one that engages vocally and publicly in contemporary Jewish cultural and political issues, and the other that tries to investigate the past with critical distance. That eventually led me to writing “The Jews of Summer,” a book that is, as one of my colleagues blurbed it, “scholarly and entertaining.” I mean, why not be both?
How does your Jewish identity or experience influence your work?
When I entered college at The New School and started taking classes that touched on Israeli politics, I felt really blindsided by my heavily Zionist summer camp/youth group education. By the time I started my PhD program at age 23, I was on a journey when it came to my Jewish identity, trying to figure out how to replace Zionism — which had been the heart of my Jewish identity up until that point — with something else. I learned Yiddish and started “Vaybertaytsh” as part of my embrace of diaspora Jewish culture; I started attending alternative minyanim in Brooklyn that aligned with my feminism and overall politics much more than the synagogues of my childhood. My twenties, in other words, were marked by Jewish experimentation, and all the while I was writing this dissertation that was about how places like my summer camp, Young Judaea’s Camp Tel Yehudah, came to be the way they are.
Was there a formative Jewish experience that influenced your life path?
After college, I spent a year dabbling in a bunch of Jewish jobs while I applied to grad school. One of them was working for Jewish Funds for Social Justice, now Bend the Arc, leading service learning programs for college students, spring break trips to volunteer in places like New Orleans. The job was such an interesting and fun challenge, but the training, alongside about two dozen other trip leaders in their 20s, was what changed my life. That was my first exposure to a world of young, post-college adults doing Judaism in their own ways, and making their Jewishness reflective of their politics and values.
What is your favorite place to eat Jewish food in New York?
B+H Dairy
What is your favorite book about New York?
“Modern Lovers” by Emma Straub
How can people follow you online?
@sandy__fox on Twitter
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The post Sandy Fox, 36, Jewish camp expert appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria Hopes for Full Lifting of US Sanctions in Coming Months
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
Syria hopes US sanctions will be fully lifted in the coming months and has started the process of restructuring billions of dollars of debt amassed during Bashar al-Assad’s rule, Economy Minister Mohammad Nidal al-Shaar said.
President Donald Trump ordered the lifting of most US sanctions on Syria in May after meeting President Ahmed al-Sharaa, but the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 that authorizes them remains US law.
“We have to do some push and some lobbying to continue with this path that started in the right direction, and we’re hoping by the end of the year the bill [to scrap the act] will reach the president [Trump], and hopefully he’ll sign it,” al-Shaar told Reuters during a conference in London.
“And once that happens, then we are sanctions-free,” he said on the sidelines of the Future Resilience Forum.
HOPES FOR A REDUCTION OF US TARIFFS
The act’s removal will enable foreign investment, restore access to international banking, and help revive key industries.
Al-Shaar hopes Washington will reduce its 41 percent tariffs on trade with Syria and that US firms will invest in the country as the economy opens up.
Gulf countries have pledged support and Chinese firms have committed hundreds of millions of dollars, Al-Shaar said, for “big” new cement, plastic, and sugar factories.
The government is on course to introduce a new currency early next year, he said.
Sources said in August that new banknotes would be issued in December, removing two zeros – and Assad’s face – from the currency, to try to restore public confidence.
Syria‘s pound has lost over 99 percent of its value since the civil war began in 2011 but has been broadly stable in recent months.
“We’re consulting with many entities, international organizations, experts, and eventually it will come very soon,” al-Shaar said of the currency.
RECONSTRUCTION COSTS
A World Bank report on Tuesday estimated the cost of Syria‘s reconstruction at $216 billion, saying the figure was a “conservative best estimate.”
Al-Shaar said the amount could be over 1 trillion dollars if the rebuild brought infrastructure up to date but would be spread over a long time, with the rebuilding of houses alone likely to take 6-7 years.
Asked about plans to overhaul Syria‘s debt burden, al-Shaar said the process had started already.
“The sovereign debt that we have, which is not very big actually, will be restructured,” he said, adding that Syria would be asking for grace periods and other relief.
Assad left Syria in disarray when he was ousted last December and fighting continued in the oil-producing north until a ceasefire was struck this month.
“I’m hopeful that the next maybe few weeks, or maybe a month or two, we will reach some kind of an agreement with those who are controlling that part of Syria,” Al-Shaar said.
“Once that happens, I think we will have greater ability, financial, natural resources, to really start meaningful [investment] projects,” he said, predicting a “quantum leap in our GDP.”
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Israel Urges Canadian PM Carney to Drop Pledge to Arrest Netanyahu
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks as he and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israel urged Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to drop his pledge to honor the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he traveled to the country.
Carney was asked in an interview with Bloomberg published last week if he would fulfil the commitment of his predecessor Justin Trudeau to arrest Netanyahu on war crimes charges if he came to Canada, to which he replied “yes.”
“We believe that Prime Minister Carney should, of course, reconsider this and welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu, the leader of the only Jewish state and democratic country in the Middle East, to Canada,” Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian told reporters.
The ICC issued arrest warrants last year for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. Israel rejects the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
Bedrosian said Canada’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state was a “prize for terrorism” and it had “only poured fuel on an antisemitic fire in Canada.”
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Daniel Naroditsky, Jewish chess grandmaster and influential streamer, dies at 29
Daniel Naroditsky, a Jewish chess grandmaster and former child prodigy who became one of the game’s most popular voices through his streaming, commentary and teaching, has died at 29.
Naroditsky’s death was announced Monday by the Charlotte Chess Center, a chess academy in North Carolina, where he worked as a head coach. Information on his survivors and a cause of death was not immediately available.
“It is great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky. Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community, admired and respected by fans and players around the world. He was also a loving son and brother, and a loyal friend to many,” the Naroditsky family wrote in a statement shared by the Charlotte Chess Center.
As a teenager, Naroditsky published books on chess strategy, including “Mastering Positional Chess” in 2010 and “Mastering Complex Endgames” in 2012.
Naroditsky earned his chess grandmaster title, the highest honor given to competitors by the International Chess Federation, in 2013 when he was 17 and had yet to graduate high school.
He was an active content creator on Twitch and Youtube, where he had nearly 500,000 subscribers.
Known as Danya, Naroditsky was born on Nov. 9, 1995, in San Mateo, California to Vladimir Naroditsky and Lena Schuman, Jewish immigrants who came to the United States from Ukraine and Azerbaijan, respectively. Naroditsky attended Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City, California and was bar mitzvahed at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo in 2009.
In November 2007, Naroditsky was named the under-12 World Youth Chess Champion, telling J. The Jewish News of Northern California at the time that he “couldn’t play chess without loving it.”
“I played a rabbi,” a 10-year-old Naroditsky said after he earned the title. “He lost right away and instead of losing normally he threw all the pieces in the air and stormed out. I almost laughed.”
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University in 2019 after taking a year off to play in chess tournaments.
Naroditsky was introduced to the game by his brother, Alan, at just 6 years old and quickly developed an aptitude for the game.
“I think a lot of people want to imagine that it was love at first sight and that my brother couldn’t pull me away from the chessboard,” Naroditsky told the New York Times in 2022, when he was introduced as its chess columnist. “It was more of a gradual process, where chess slowly entered the battery of stuff we did to pass the time. A lot of my best memories are just doing stuff with my brother.”
In his last video uploaded to YouTube, titled “You Thought I Was Gone!? Speedrun Returns!,” Naroditsky told his fans that after a brief pause he was “back and better than ever.”
“I still can’t believe it and don’t want to believe it,” tweeted Dutch grandmaster Benjamin Bok about news of Naroditsky’s death. “It was always a privilege to play, train, and commentate with Danya, but above all, to call him my friend.”
At the time of his death, Naroditsky was ranked in the top 160 players in the world and the top 20 players in the United States, according to the International Chess Federation. He especially excelled at a fast-paced version of the game called blitz chess, for which he maintained a top 25 ranking throughout his adult career.
Naroditsky’s father, Vladimir, died in 2019.
“We ask for privacy for Daniel’s family during this extremely difficult time,” the statement from his family continued. “Let us remember Daniel for his passion and love for the game of chess, and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us every day.”
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