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Sarajevo Jews celebrate a second Purim. For centuries, they weren’t alone.
(JTA) — Starting tonight, many Jews around the world will celebrate Purim in the same ways: by reading the story of the heroic Queen Esther, dressing in festive costumes and drinking alcohol.
For many of the 900 or so Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it will be the first of two annual Purim celebrations.
Since 1820, locals have also observed the Purim de Saray (Saray being a root of the word Sarajevo) early in the Hebrew calendar month of Cheshvan, which usually falls in October or November of the Gregorian calendar.
In that year, the story goes, a local dervish was murdered, prompting the corrupt Ottoman pasha of Sarajevo, a high-ranking official, to kidnap 11 prominent Jews, including the community’s chief rabbi, a kabbalist named Moshe Danon. The pasha accused them of the murder of the dervish — who had converted from Judaism to Islam — and held them for ransom, demanding 50,000 groschen of silver from the Jewish community.
But the pasha, who was a transplant from elsewhere in the Ottoman empire, deeply offended the multiethnic populace of Sarajevo, who considered the Jewish community — then around one-fifth of the city’s entire population — an essential part of their home. So local Jews, Muslims and Christians rebelled together, storming the pasha’s palace and freeing the imprisoned community leaders.
Ever since, Bosnian Jews have celebrated that story by visiting the grave of the Sarajevan Jewish historian Zeki Effendi, who was the first to document it. Dozens also take part in a pilgrimage every summer to the grave of Rabbi Danon, who is buried in the south of Bosnia, not far from the Croatian border, where he died on his way to what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine.
For centuries, several other Jewish communities around the world observed their own versions of Purim based on stories of local resistance to antisemitism, inspired by Esther and her uncle Mordecai, who in the original holiday story save all of Persia’s Jews from execution in the 5th century BCE.
Here are the stories behind some of those traditions.
Ancona, Italy
An aerial view of Ancona in 2006. (Wikimedia Commons)
Jews settled in and around Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast in the 10th century, and by the 13th century they had established a flourishing community, which included figures such as the Jewish traveler Jacob of Ancona — who may have beaten Marco Polo to China — and famed poet Immanuel the Roman, who despite his title was born in a town just south of Ancona.
Though the city’s Jewish community was largely spared by the Holocaust, it has slowly declined over the years and is believed to have fewer than 100 members today. What it is not short on, however, are local Purim stories — the city is known for multiple celebrations that were established over the centuries.
The first, marked on the 21st of the Hebrew month of Tevet (usually in January) was established at the end of the 17th century and marks an earthquake that nearly destroyed the city.
“On the 21st of Teveth, Friday evening, of the year 5451 (1690), at 8 and a quarter, there was a powerful earthquake. The doors of the temple were immediately opened and in a few moments it was filled with men, women and children, still half-naked and barefoot, who came to pray to the Eternal in front of the Holy Ark. A true miracle then took place in the Temple: there was only one light, which remained lit until it was possible to provide for it,” wrote Venetian Rabbi Yosef Fiammetta in 1741, in his text “Or Boqer,” meaning “the light of the morning.”
Other Ancona Purims were established a half and three-quarters of a century later, respectively. The story for the first commemorates fires that nearly destroyed the local synagogue but miraculously did not, and the next tells of a pogrom that nearly destroyed the community as Napoleon marched through Italy during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Today, these stories have largely faded into memory. But a few centuries ago, Italy had a high concentration of communities that celebrated local Purims — including in Casale Monferrato, Ferrara, Florence, Livorno, Padua, Senigallia, Trieste, Urbino, Verona and Turin — some into the 20th century.
“It would be hoped that the local Purims are not forgotten or that they are restored in the communities that have not completely died out,” the late Italian Rabbi Yehuda Nello Pavoncello once wrote, according to the Turin Jewish Community, “so that the memory of the events reconnects us to the infinite links of the chain of the generations that have preceded us, who have suffered.”
North Africa
An illustration shows King Sebastian of Portugal being fatally wounded at a battle in Morocco in 1578. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
The extra Purim phenomenon was not confined to Europe.
In Tripoli, Libya, local Jews established the so-called Purim Barghul after the deposition of a local tyrant in the late 18th century. Ali Burghul, an Ottoman officer who was installed after the downfall of the Qaramanli dynasty, ruled the region brutally for two years, treating minorities particularly harshly. After factions of the Qaramanlis were reconciled, Burghul was driven out. Jews would go on to celebrate that day, the 29th of Tevet (usually in January).
(Centuries later, in 1970, dictator Muammar Gaddafi established his own holiday, the Day of Revenge, which celebrated the expulsion of Italian officials from Libya; some say it also celebrated the exodus of Jews since the formation of the state of Israel. Within a few years after Gaddafi’s decree, Libya’s Jewish community had dwindled to less than two dozen, effectively ending the nearly 3,000-year history of Jews there.)
In northern Morocco, Jews commemorated the defeat of a Portuguese king, Don Sebastian, who attempted to take over parts of the country but was defeated in a battle in August 1578. Jews had believed that Sebastian would have tried to convert them to Christianity if he had prevailed.
Today only around 2,000 Jews remain in Morocco, but some Moroccan communities marked the day into the 21st century.
Saragossa
A view of an 11th-century palace in Zaragoza, Spain. The Purim of Saragossa story is set in either Zaragoza or Syracuse, Italy. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Scholars still debate which city was the origin of the Purim of Saragossa story — it could have been Zaragoza in Spain or Syracuse in southern Sicily, which was often referred to in the medieval era as Siragusa. Both cities were part of the Spanish empire in 1492 and were depopulated of Jews following the Inquisition.
Either way, Sephardic descendants in places around the world, including Israel and the Turkish city of Izmir, observed their own Purim story by fasting on the 16th of the Hebrew month of Shevat — generally in February — and feasting on the 17th.
The story tells of an apostate named Marcus who slandered the Jewish community to a non-Jewish king, putting their status in jeopardy. But at the last minute, Marcus’ deception is revealed, and he is executed while the community is saved.
The story could have been entirely fabricated. According to Jewish historian Elliot Horowitz, the establishment of this second Purim story may have been a way for the descendants of Saragossan Jews, whether they are originally Spanish or Sicilian, to maintain a unique identity in the larger Sephardic diaspora.
“The Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean in the early modern period were often composed of émigré subcommunities, each of which was distinguished by the customs and liturgy of its place of origin,” he wrote in his 2006 book “Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence.” “The ‘Purim of Saragossa,’ the earliest manuscript evidence for which dates only from the mid-eighteenth century, may well have been ‘invented’ by former ‘Saragossans’ eager to maintain their distinct identity in the multicultural Sephardi Diaspora of the eastern Mediterranean.”
Regardless of its origins, the Megillah of Saragossa text continued to be published through at least the end of the 19th century. It was well known enough that an American Reform rabbi from New York would publish a stage play based off of it in the 1940s.
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What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste
It has become exceedingly difficult to get a bowl of kosher matzo ball soup in my L.A. neighborhood. I’m reminded of this every few months, when a cold or a craving reminds me what we lost when Pico Kosher Deli, established in 1968 about a mile from my apartment, closed for good early in the pandemic. It’s not just the soup, of course. It’s the whole kosher deli experience — bulging pastrami sandwiches, a waitress with a notepad, frilly toothpicks.
The traditional kosher deli is dying, if not dead, and not just in L.A. Kosher Ashkenazi fare is officially passé, a cuisine category today’s balabustas — at least my millennial Modern Orthodox cohort — have abandoned. At the kosher markets, Manischewitz products are relegated to a dusty corner, the “kosher aisle” of the kosher grocer. And at surviving delis like Katz’s and Canter’s, kosher is not a religious certification. It is, simply, a nostalgia cue immediately preceding the word “style.”
Fortunately, a wave of new, smartly packaged foodstuffs capitalizing on that nostalgia has arrived to restore my Ashkenazi birthright, or at least my former sodium levels. In the years since my neighborhood deli closed, direct-to-consumer brands have launched to hawk kosher potato latke crisps, kosher matzo chips and kosher jarred charoset (lovingly named Schmutz). The newcomer that I sprung for was a kosher instant matzo ball soup called Nooish. A box of four stout, colorful soup cups arrived about a week after I ordered them online.
To find out why these shelf-stable products have taken off while delis languish, I called Nate Rosen, whose official title — creator of the consumer brands newsletter Express Checkout — obscures the coolness of his job, which largely consists of reviewing new snacks on TikTok. According to Rosen, the kosher renaissance was part of a broader surge of food startups during the pandemic, when free time and disposable income were suddenly in abundance. It was inevitable someone would find the Jewish angle on the trend.
“There’s a market for it,” Rosen said. “There’s dedicated spots for it [on shelves]. And I think especially now, people are proud to be Jewish and proud to show that off a little bit.”
Nooish’s instant soup, ready in just a couple minutes, doesn’t come with booth seating. But taste-wise, comfort-wise and deli-wise, it’s a worthy adaptation of the experience. The kneidlach — three to a cup, each a bit larger than a Ping-Pong ball and floating in a salty brown broth, hold their form but obey your spoon. (There’s no chicken, and the soup is certified pareve.) At four-for-$36, the instant soup is probably too pricey for your kid’s lunchbox, and not substantial enough for an adult meal. But in a pinch — say, a cold or a craving — it can be transporting.
If the kosher deli is out, what’s in? The answer awaited me at Hatch Kitchen, a new kosher meat restaurant, where earlier this week I watched a barista prepare a fancy smoothie. Elaborate, astonishingly expensive and often named after celebrities, fancy smoothies are an L.A. institution, the lifeblood of the influencer class. The most notorious of these drinks, the upscale grocery chain Erewhon’s Hailey Bieber smoothie, contains strawberries and dates but also vanilla collagen powder and something called sea moss gel. It costs $20.
Hatch, I was told, makes something similar, the strawberry-based “Or-gan-ic” (the middle syllable also the Hebrew word for garden), which the restaurant calls its “most viral smoothie.” No sea moss gel, but the menu touts “anti-inflammatory” ingredients that include flax seeds and hibiscus. It’s $12, which sounds like a lot if you’ve never spent $20 on a smoothie before, and like a bargain if you just did, and for that one you’d had to look a cashier in the eye and utter the name of Justin Bieber’s wife. (At Hatch, you order from an iPad.)
Hatch’s fancy smoothie — which is also a photogenic one — models the dominant trend in contemporary kosher dining: pop-culture mimicry. Across from where the Pico Kosher Deli once stood, you can order a kosher crunchwrap supreme — a Taco Bell menu item — from a Mexican street food place called Lenny’s Casita. Kosher cafes still serve bagels, but people go for the avocado toast. It’s kosher dining’s hypebeast era, if you can afford it; Lenny’s crunchwrap with beef runs $30. I’m not sure how close the knockoff is to the real thing, or whether proximity really matters. Most customers will never taste the alternative.
There’s a tension inherent in these appropriated menu items — affirming both the desirability of secular culture and the Jewish laws forbidding it. Cultural diffusion and communal retreat. Assimilation and resistance. Meanwhile, the ancestral cuisine, which emerged out of kosher dietary laws, has been simultaneously rejected and idealized. You can’t find too many kosher delis, but TikTok has popularized pickle fountains. (Wait until they find out about hamantaschen.)
I was sort of sad about this state of affairs until I spoke to David Sax, who was dismayed enough about the decline of delis to write a book about it. He explained that Jewish deli food developed as a way of transforming European deli methods and flavors, which were more often made with pork, into kosher adaptations. The corned beef sandwich was the original fancy smoothie, which means our kosher crunchwrap might become tomorrow’s matzo ball soup. The comfort food changes, but the people endure.
The post What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas, Hezbollah, Terror Allies Vow to Keep Fighting Israel, Reject Regional Peace Initiatives
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Hamas and allied terrorist groups on Friday hailed the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as a “landmark victory,” rejecting disarmament and vowing to continue fighting the Jewish state even as international efforts push to implement a regional peace plan.
Leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and several other Islamist terrorist groups gathered at the 34th Arab National Conference in Beirut, where speakers called for “resistance against the Israeli occupation and its expansionist projects in Palestine and the region,” Arabic-language Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen reported.
During the summit, terrorist leaders rejected efforts to compel them to disarm and pledged to continue fighting against Western influence across the Middle East, emphasizing the central role of weapons “in protecting national sovereignty and securing the region’s future.”
“On Oct. 7, an extraordinary act of heroism unfolded across Palestine and its borders, as people everywhere contributed in their own way to support us,” Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya said during the conference, referring to the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel in 2023.
“Gaza is wounded today, but it remains steadfast, calling on everyone to stay united in the pursuit of our legitimate national goals,” the terrorist leader continued.
“Palestine will endure, just as Gaza has, despite the aggression — its land, its people, men, women, and children — and eventually, injustice will be overcome,” al-Hayya said.
” طوفان الأقصى كان رداً على محاولات طمس القضية الفلسطينية وبناء شرق أوسط جديد”
رئيس حركة حماس في #غزة خليل الحية #الميادين pic.twitter.com/tsSAc44KXY
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
At the Beirut gathering, Hamas and its terrorist allies praised the Oct. 7 atrocities, calling them a turning point in their fight against the “Zionist occupation.” They also opposed any attempt to divide Gaza and reaffirmed their commitment to unity.
“We emerged from this battle against the occupation with our weapons in hand. All resistance factions stood united against the aggression, and that same solidarity extended to the political front,” Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala said during the conference.
“[US President Donald] Trump’s plan has set numerous obstacles and conditions that cannot be implemented,” al-Nakhala continued, referring to the US-backed peace plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
“لقد كانت كل فصائل المقاومة يداً واحدة في وجه العدوان وكذلك كان الحال على الصعيد السياسي ولولا ذلك لما صمدنا شهراً واحداً”
الأمين العام لحركة الجهاد الإسلامي زياد النحالة في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/w71U1GNkZx
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Amid international efforts to mediate the Gaza conflict and bring peace to the Middle East, Hamas and its allies said they opposed all such initiatives, opting instead to escalate violence and advance their own agenda.
At the summit, Jamil Mazhar, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called for “rejecting plans to place the Palestinian people under tutelage and opposing any attempt at demographic change” — a clear rebuke of the Gaza peace plan.
Under Trump’s plan, an International Stabilization Force (ISF) will oversee the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and train local security forces
The ISF would include troops from multiple participating countries and would be responsible for securing Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, while also protecting civilians and maintaining humanitarian corridors.
“We have gathered to renew our commitment against the Zionist enemy and its allies, and to reaffirm that the fight continues,” Mazhar said during his speech at the conference.
“Today, we must move beyond mere solidarity and slogans, and put them into practical action,” the terrorist leader continued.
During the summit, Hezbollah international relations official Ammar al-Moussawi reaffirmed the Lebanese terrorist group’s commitment to defending and supporting the “resistance in Gaza.”
“We joined the battle to support Gaza out of our conviction in the justice and righteousness of this cause, and we do not regret our decision,” al-Moussawi said.
“History shows that the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine has endured crises far graver than today’s, and the same resistance that produced those martyred leaders is fully capable of producing new ones,” he continued.
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also said at the conference that “the support fronts have played a key role throughout this important two-year round.”
“Hezbollah’s role is at the forefront of the support fronts, thanks to its steadfastness, pioneering and significant contributions, and immense sacrifices,” the leader of the terrorist group in Yemen said.
“The Israeli enemy, in alliance with the United States, seeks to impose a permissive formula and always place the blame on the victim,” he added.
“The Israeli enemy is attempting to disarm the weapons that protect Lebanon and the arms that have prevented it from controlling Gaza for the past two years,” al-Houthi said.
“العدو الإسرائيلي يحاول نزع السلاح الذي يحمي لبنان والسلاح الذي يُعيقه عن السيطرة على غزة على مدى عامين”
قائد حركة أنصار الله السيد عبد الملك الحوثي في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/utTs6S26Wc
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the Islamist groups with weapons, funding, and training.
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US Rep. Elise Stefanik, Outspoken Pro-Israel Supporter, Jumps Into New York Gubernatorial Race
US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the US Congress, officially announced on Friday that she will run for governor of New York in the 2026 election, a move that could reshape the political landscape in the Empire State.
In a campaign video released early Friday morning, Stefanik declared that she would fight to make “New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state.” She took aim at incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leadership, declaring her the “worst governor in America.”
The campaign announcement video lambasted Hochul’s “failed policies” and depicted New York as a wasteland overrun by “migrant crime.”
“Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to save New York,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Stefanik, 41, has represented New York’s 21st Congressional District since January 2015 and has risen to national prominence as chair of the House Republican Conference. A close ally of US President Donald Trump, she has also emerged as one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel in the US House of Representatives.
During the Israel-Hamas war, Stefanik earned praise across Jewish communities for her unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s terrorism and her efforts to hold American universities accountable for antisemitic incidents on campus. Her fiery December 2023 questioning of Ivy League presidents during a congressional hearing, in which she pressed them on their refusal to denounce calls for genocide against Jews, went viral and cemented her reputation as a defender of American Jewry.
In March, Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations due to the Republican Party’s razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives and concerns over passing legislation.
Though most polls indicate that Hochul maintains a lead over Stefanik, a recent survey by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the conservative firebrand leading Hochul 43 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
Hochul issued a pithy retort to Stefanik’s attacks.
“My message to Trump’s ‘top ally’ – bring it on,” Hochul said on X.
Though New York remains a heavily Democratic state, her candidacy could energize conservatives across upstate and suburban regions, particularly amid voter discontent over crime, migration, and the state’s economy. However, skeptics suggest that her status as a close Trump ally could capsize her candidacy in a historically blue state.
Pro-Israel groups have long considered Stefanik one of their strongest allies on Capitol Hill. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other advocacy organizations have praised her leadership on anti-BDS legislation and support for US military aid to Israel. In April, she introduced the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act, which would bar entities that boycott Israel from doing business with the US federal government.
Stefanik’s quest to become governor comes as Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Israel activist and member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), prepares to become mayor of New York City following his election victory on Tuesday. Stefanik lambasted Hochul recently after the governor issued a formal endorsement of Mamdani, claiming that Hochul aligned herself with Mamdani’s alleged antisemitism. If Stefanik were to become governor, she could potentially serve as a critical bulwark in thwarting any anti-Israel policies from Mamdani’s office.
If elected, Stefanik would become the first female Republican governor of New York.