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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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Iran Has One-Third of Its Missile Launchers Left, IDF Assesses
Smoke rises following an explosion, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 7, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
After less than two weeks of fighting, Iran has lost roughly two‑thirds of its ballistic missile launchers, according to a new Israeli military assessment, as Israeli and US strikes intensify across the country and target Tehran’s strategic missile capabilities.
On Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said a new battlefield assessment revealed that a sweeping campaign against Iran’s missile infrastructure has destroyed roughly two-thirds of its launchers, leaving only about one-third still operational, Hebrew media reported.
Working with the US military, Israeli officials said sustained airstrikes, coordinated by Israeli military intelligence, crippled Iran’s missile capacity — destroying about one-third of its launchers and damaging another third enough to render them unusable, sharply limiting Tehran’s ability to conduct large-scale operations.
Out of an estimated 500 mobile and stationary ballistic missile launchers previously in Iran’s arsenal, the Islamist regime is now believed to have about 160 operational launchers remaining.
According to IDF data, Iran still possesses roughly 1,500 ballistic missiles of various ranges.
However, Israel estimates that more than 80 percent of Iran’s launching capabilities aimed at Israeli territory have already been destroyed, with officials expecting the figure could rise to as high as 95 percent within days, dramatically reducing the scale of future attacks.
In an interview with Israeli news outlet N12 on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran could end “soon,” though he declined to provide a specific timetable.
“There’s almost nothing left [to attack Iran]. A little bit here and there … Any time I want it to end, it will end,” Trump said.
During a press conference, Trump also said the United States had inflicted unprecedented damage on Iran’s military and strategic infrastructure.
“We have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we’re not finished yet,” he said.
“We’re leaving certain things that if we take them out, or we could take them out by this afternoon, in fact, within an hour, they literally would never be able to build that country back again,” he continued.
While Trump has publicly suggested that the war has achieved most of its objectives and could end soon, senior Israeli and American officials say there is still no indication of when the conflict might end.
This week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the campaign would continue “without any time limit” until Israel achieves all of its war objectives.
“The Iranian leadership that survived is a bunch of cowards who prey on women, children, and the elderly in the streets, specializing in massacres and killing civilians — and they are already threatening to murder and slaughter anyone who protests,” the Israeli official said.
“We will continue to act relentlessly, striking day after day, target after target, to crush the regime and dismantle its strategic goals in Tehran and across Iran,” Katz added. “We will continue these efforts to give the Iranian people the opportunity to rise up and overthrow the regime. Ultimately, that outcome depends on them.”
As the war continues to escalate, US officials said Tuesday that American intelligence detected Iranian preparations to lay naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical and narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. Sources told Reuters on Wednesday that the Iranians have deployed about a dozen mines so far, although the exact number is unclear.
Trump told N12 that recent US strikes — during which 16 Iranian mine-laying boats were destroyed — disrupted Tehran’s plans to threaten the shipping route.
“The war is going great. We are well ahead of schedule. We have caused more damage than we thought possible, even within the original six-week period,” Trump said.
“They’re paying for 47 years of death and destruction that they caused,” he continued, referring to the time that Iran’s Islamist regime has been in power. “This is retribution. They’re not going to get away with it.”
Iran on Wednesday said the world should be ready for oil at $200 a barrel as its forces hit merchant ships. Oil prices skyrocketed earlier in the week to nearly $120 a barrel before settling back to around $90 due to fears about supply disruption.
Almost two weeks into the war, the Israeli Air Force has intensified strikes across Iran and expanded operations farther south into areas where US forces are also active, signaling a broadening campaign against Iranian targets.
In the latest boost for US forces, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said on Wednesday is country will host American refueling planes, surveillance, and satellite communications gear for Washington’s operations against Tehran. However, he added, the equipment is “defensive” and carries no munitions.
Despite the military gains, Israeli officials acknowledge there is still no certainty that the campaign will lead to the overthrow of Iran’s ruling regime.
While Israeli officials have declared their desire to overthrow the Iranian regime, Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he seeks regime change or would be content with destroying Iran’s military capabilities and apparatus for internal repression.
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New ADL Campus Antisemitism Report Card Shows Some Improvement on Addressing Hostile Climate
Protesters gather at the gates of Columbia University, in support of student protesters who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has released a new annual “Campus Antisemitism Report Card,” in which its researchers assigned grades to major US colleges and universities based on how the institutions responded to the issue in accordance with civil rights laws and their own professed values.
Released on Monday, the report rewarded some elite colleges previously accused of ignoring antisemitism with letter grades considerably above what they earned in past academic years. Most notably, no Ivy League institution merited an “F” this year, while Columbia University, Princeton University, and Yale University all improved on last year’s close to failing “D” grade by earning a “C.”
A “C” grade, a mark again given to Harvard University and Cornell University in this year’s report, indicates lingering areas of inertia in performance. Pomona College, Northwestern University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Chicago were assigned a “C” too, indicating that elite higher education across the country remains a problematic space for Jewish youth.
Meanwhile, four colleges, including Evergreen State College, Scripps College, California State University, Los Angeles, and The New School in New York City received an “F,” the only institutions in the cohort to fail the ADL’s assessment.
“The data confirms what we’ve said from the start: maintaining a safe campus climate is a matter of will,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Universities that have taken a comprehensive approach — reviewing policies, clarifying expectations, and strengthening enforcement — are seeing meaningful progress. Some of the strongest gains are coming from institutions that have engaged deeply with our recommendations and translated them into lasting institutional practice, rather than symbolic commitments.”
The 2025-2026 academic year has seen a continuation of the barrage of antisemitic incidents that led Jewish community advocates to describe the issue as a “problem,” with anti-Zionist activists continuing to disrupt events, harass Jewish students, and stage demonstrations related to how Israel conducts its foreign policy and manages its conflict with the Palestinians.
In October, for example, masked pro-Hamas activists breached an event held at Pomona College in California to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists raped, murdered, and abducted women, children, and men during their rampage across southern Israel.
Footage of the act circulated on social media showed the group attempting to raid the room while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas dogma. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they mounted on their own as campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance, according to video of the incident and witnesses who spoke to The Claremont Independent.
Following the incident, an anonymous group claimed credit for storming the event in a disturbing open letter.
“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” said the note, which the group released on social media, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”
In January, a sophomore and right-wing social media influencer at the University of Miami verbally attacked a Jewish student group, leading the school to defend free speech while saying that “lines can be crossed” in response.
“Christianity, which says love everyone, meanwhile your Bible says eating someone who is a non-Jew is like eating with an animal. That’s what the Talmud says,” Kaylee Mahony yelled at members of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) who had a table at a campus fair. She added, “They think that if you are not a Jew you are an animal. That’s the Talmud. That’s the Talmud.”
In December, an unidentified perpetrator twice vandalized the Chabad Jewish Center at Michigan State University (MSU) during the Hanukkah holiday. According to local reports, the vandal hurled rocks at and defaced the building’s entrance, shattering its glazing. Video footage of the suspect’s second trip to the Chabad center shows the vandal graffitiing the swastika, the emblem of Nazi Germany, next to which he spray-painted a message that said, “He’s back.”
That was not the first antisemitic incident to target a Jewish cultural center in the state of Michigan this academic year. In October, a man trespassed the grounds of the Jewish Resource Center, which serves University of Michigan students, and kicked its door while howling antisemitic statements.
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to survey results released in February by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism. Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
Higher education institutions have an added incentive to address antisemitism, as the reelection of US President Donald Trump brought to Washington, DC a chief executive who went on to fulfill his promise to tax the endowments of those that do not.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order which directed the federal government to employ “all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” Additionally, the order initiated a full review of the explosion of campus antisemitism on US colleges across the country after Oct. 7, 2023, a convulsive moment in American history to which the Biden administration struggled to respond during the final year and a half of its tenure.
“This failure is unacceptable,” Trump said. “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton Call Out Right-Wing Anti-Israel Influencers During Antisemitism Conference
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson
Two prominent US Republican senators issued stark warnings this week about what they described as a growing strain of antisemitism within parts of the conservative media ecosystem, using a Washington symposium hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition and National Review to call out influential right-wing commentators and urge fellow Republicans to confront the problem directly.
Speaking at Tuesday’s event, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) sharply criticized conservative media personality Tucker Carlson, calling him “the single most dangerous demagogue in this country” and accusing him of amplifying extremist rhetoric and historical revisionism to a large online audience.
Cruz argued that antisemitic ideas have increasingly surfaced in segments of right-wing media over the past year and a half, particularly among younger audiences consuming political content online. While Republican leaders have often been quick to condemn openly extremist figures, Cruz said the party has been more reluctant to challenge more mainstream influencers who command massive followings.
“This is the beginning of a battle where our nation, our beliefs, our Constitution, the principles that built America, are under assault. And we need to gird ourselves for battle and defeat this garbage,” Cruz said to the audience.
Cruz warned that commentators with mainstream visibility can normalize rhetoric once confined to the political margins.
“I want us to be winning, but I’m not sure it is accurate as a descriptive manner that we are winning right now,” Cruz said.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) delivered a similar message during the symposium, criticizing unnamed right-wing “influencers” who he said were smuggling antisemitism into the conservative movement and promoting ideas incompatible with conservative principles. Cotton dismissed their influence as inflated and said their rhetoric echoed arguments more commonly associated with critics of Israel on the political left.
“I do not agree that I share a political movement or a political party with anyone who traffics antisemitism,” he said.
The remarks highlight an emerging divide within the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement over foreign policy, Israel, and the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. While establishment Republicans have long maintained strong support for Israel, a newer wave of populist commentators has increasingly questioned US involvement in Middle East conflicts and criticized Israel more aggressively.
Some of those commentators have drawn accusations from critics, including fellow conservatives, that their rhetoric veers into antisemitic tropes or conspiratorial narratives about Jewish influence.
Carlson has sparked backlash among conservatives over his consistent pattern of condemning Israel and platforming individuals who peddle antisemitic narratives. He has falsely suggested that Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state, oppresses and persecutes Christians.
During an interview with controversial podcaster Darryl Cooper, Carlson did not push back after Cooper argued that the US was on the “wrong side” of World War II and that former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, not Adolph Hitler, “was the chief villain” of the conflict. Cooper also suggested that the slaughter of six million Jews in concentration camps was “humane” because the Nazis did not have food to feed the “prisoners of war.”
Carlson also conducted a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes, an avowed antisemite and Holocaust denier, that was released last year. During the conversation, both men rebuked Israel and Zionism, with Carlson lambasting Christian Zionism as an affront to the values of Christianity.
In the two years following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, conservative commentators have found themselves increasingly split over Israel and foreign policy. Beyond Carlson, popular conservatives such as Steve Bannon and Megyn Kelly have also ramped up criticisms of Israel, oftentimes arguing that the Jewish state has embroiled the United States in unnecessary wars on their behalf.
Further, recent polling reveals the existence of a sizable antisemitic contingent within the GOP base, heavily concentrated among the younger cohorts which more frequently engage with content of online pundits. For example, the Manhattan Institute, a prominent US-based think tank, released a survey poll in December examining the evolving makeup of the Republican Party (GOP) and its current attitudes toward Israel and Jewish Americans.
According to the results, newer entrants to the GOP are more likely to be antisemitic.
“Anti-Jewish Republicans are typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college-educated, and significantly more likely to be New Entrant Republicans,” the survey found. “They are also more racially diverse. Consistent church attendance is one of the strongest predictors of rejecting these attitudes; infrequent church attendance is, all else equal, one of the strongest predictors of falling into this segment.”
The data also showed that older GOP voters are much more supportive of Israel and less likely to express antisemitic views than their younger cohorts.
According to the data, 25 percent of GOP voters under 50 openly express antisemitic views as opposed to just 4 percent over the age of 50.
Startlingly, a substantial amount, 37 percent, of GOP voters indicate belief in Holocaust denialism. These figures are more pronounced among young men under 50, with a majority, 54 percent, agreeing that the Holocaust “was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.” Among men over 50, 41 percent agree with the sentiment.