Uncategorized
Sophie is 85 and survived the Holocaust. Caroline is 29 and new to NYC. Here’s how they became fast friends.
(New York Jewish Week) – It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon, and Sophie Turner Zaretsky has laid out a tray of fruit and cookies, eagerly awaiting her friend Caroline Crandell. When Crandell arrives at Zaretsky’s Upper West Side apartment, just a few minutes after their scheduled meeting time of 3 p.m., the two break into smiles and embrace.
The two women have been meeting every few weeks since the fall of 2022. Like any pair of friends, they discuss everything that’s going on in their lives and families, as well as current events and their favorite spots in the city. But unlike most friendships, there’s a 56-year age gap between the two: Zaretsky, a Holocaust survivor and retired radiation oncologist, is 85, while Crandell, a software engineer, is 29.
“We just talk,” Zaretsky told the New York Jewish Week as she poured tea for Crandell and a reporter. “Whatever comes into our head.”
“She knows all about my dating life,” Crandell added. “I get a lot of advice, which is helpful.”
The pair were matched through the “Caring Calls” initiative, a flagship program of the Wechsler Center for Modern Aging at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on the Upper West Side. The program was created during the pandemic to help seniors combat isolation. It enlists some 130 volunteers to reach out to everyone over 70 who has attended any type of program or event at the JCC in recent years. Most of the check-ins happen over the phone: Volunteers call a few times a year to say hello and offer everything from tech support to grocery shopping assistance.
“We want to be there for our community as folks age,” Susan Lechter, the director of the Wechsler Center, told the New York Jewish Week. “No one should be lonely in this world. If we can make a difference in any way, we want to be there for our community.”
And some of these relationship blossom into something deeper. Seniors can request a “buddy” for regular phone calls; according to the Wechsler Center, there have been 140 “buddy” matches so far.
When Zaretsky first heard from Caring Calls last fall, she had a specific request: She wanted to be matched with a young person as a buddy. “I talk to old people and I’m tired of hearing about all the issues and problems with aging,” Zaretsky quipped. “I have my own issues; I don’t want to hear anybody else’s.”
Given that most of the Caring Calls volunteers are middle-aged or older adults, Lechter knew exactly whom to tap: Crandell, who was living by herself in a fifth-floor walkup on the Upper East Side, having arrived in New York via California during the Omicron wave of January 2022. In order to meet new friends, Crandell had enrolled in intramural soccer at the JCC, and she also had inquired about volunteer opportunities there.
“My family is very far away and I haven’t had any living grandparents for a long time. I didn’t know anyone when I moved here,” Crandell said, explaining her interest in the Caring Calls program. “I think it’s good to have different generations and different perspectives come together.”
Matched by Lechter, the pair first spoke in October of last year and they hit it off immediately. “I think we spoke for like an hour,” Crandell said, recalling how they bonded over their dislike of cooking and exercise. “By the end of the call we said to each other, ‘Let’s not do the call thing. Let’s meet up.’ I came over a few days later and we’ve been getting together every few weeks ever since.”
Turner Zaretsky and Crandell get together every few weeks at Turner Zaretsky’s Upper West Side apartment, pictured here on May 10, 2023. (Julia Gergely)
The particular afternoon of the New York Jewish Week’s visit, Crandell had brought over a new blend of tea to try. Over their beverages, the two women share lipstick and book recommendations, and swap stories about their childhoods — which were, not surprisingly, vastly different from one another’s.
Zaretsky, born Selma Schwarzwald in 1937, had grown up in hiding in Lvov, Poland; she and her mother posed as Catholics in order to avoid deportation to the Belzec killing center. She moved to England with her mother in 1948, when she was 10, and wasn’t told she was Jewish until she was a teenager.
“It was terrible,” she said of moving from Poland to England. “It’s very hard to be a refugee when you don’t know the language. You feel stupid. You don’t have the narrative. I didn’t have the narrative for England and I didn’t have the narrative for being Jewish.”
After attending medical school in England, Zaretsky moved to New York in 1963 for her medical residency at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, and found herself alone in a brand new city. In 1970, she married David Zaretsky.
Though the JCC initiative is the first time either Zaretsky or Crandell have participated in a formal matching program, Zaretsky has a history of “adopting” people who look like they might need it. A number of years ago at a dinner at the United Nations, which she attended in place of her son who often worked with the organization, Zaretsky was seated next to the ambassador from Malta. “He didn’t know people in New York, so being the Jewish mother that I am, I had to introduce him to everyone to make sure he could live a good life here,” she said. They’re still friends to this day, Zaretsky said, and she has been known to advise him on certain geopolitical issues when the General Assembly meets.
“I have found that young people nowadays are so educated and so aware, but they still need a little bit of TLC — at least this one does,” Zaretsky said, nodding towards Crandell. “But I do, too.”
Indeed, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has described a “loneliness epidemic” that peaked, not surprisingly, at the height of the pandemic. Older adults, disproportionately women, have been especially vulnerable, although a Harvard studying 2021 found that older teens and young adults were the hardest hit by the social isolation brought on by the pandemic.
“I feel like in the society we live in right now, isolation and disjointed community is common,” Crandell said. “Everything’s online, every single person has been affected by technology and feeling pretty isolated, no matter what age. Any opportunity to meet people in person or just connect with someone goes a long way.”
This type of relationship is exactly what the program aims to achieve, said Lechter. “We were determined to create more intergenerational opportunities,” she said. “We’re hoping that it becomes more frequent.”
By the time Crandell needs to head to her soccer game, several hours have passed. “I come thinking I’m just stopping by, but it turns out we have hours of things we need to discuss,” Crandell told the New York Jewish Week. “I always lose track of time.”
Like any good Jewish mother, Zaretsky sends her off with a care package of snacks to take home and a plan for when they’ll meet up again — this coming Friday, for Shabbat dinner.
—
The post Sophie is 85 and survived the Holocaust. Caroline is 29 and new to NYC. Here’s how they became fast friends. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
US Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Deport Immigrants With Extremist Ideologies
US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) leaves the House Republican Conference caucus meeting in the US Capitol on April 15, 2026. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has introduced sweeping legislation aimed at expanding the federal government’s authority to deport, denaturalize, deny US citizenship, and refuse entry to immigrants tied to extremist ideologies, including socialism, communism, and Islamic fundamentalism.
The legislation, titled the MAMDANI Act, short for Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists, is a direct political reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and what conservatives describe as a growing alliance between far-left anti-Israel activism and Islamist extremism.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist, has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric.
In a statement, Roy argued that the legislation would increase the government’s capability to filter out potential immigrants with anti-American, anti-Western ideologies.
“Not just for the last six years, but for the last 60 years, our immigration system has been cynically used to disadvantage American workers’ competitiveness in favor of mass-importing the third world,” Roy added. “This has not just led to higher crime and lower wages, but also the promulgation of hostile ideologies fundamentally opposed to American values.”
Roy said the bill is intended to confront what he called a “Red-Green Alliance” between far-left and Islamist extremists that has fueled antisemitism, anti-American radicalism, and support for terrorist organizations under the guise of progressive politics.
“By targeting the Red-Green Alliance, this legislation deploys new tools to fight back against the Marxist and Islamist advance that has devastated Europe and has now arrived on our doorstep, especially in my home state of Texas,” Roy continued.
Under the proposal, non-citizens affiliated with socialist parties, communist parties, the Chinese Communist Party, or organizations deemed to promote Islamic fundamentalism could be denied entry or deported. The bill would also expand grounds for denying naturalization and, in some cases, allow denaturalization for individuals found to have concealed ideological affiliations or to be actively advocating for violent anti-democratic movements.
Supporters of the bill argue that the measure is necessary amid rising antisemitic incidents across the United States following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. They point to pro-Hamas rhetoric on some college campuses and among far-left activist circles as evidence that immigration enforcement should include stronger scrutiny of extremist ideological affiliations.
In recent years, conservatives have drawn attention to the massive surge in antisemitic protests on American soil, pointing to an increase of foreign migration as the culprit. In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 slaughters in Israel, protests erupted on US campuses and streets. Many of these demonstrations, many of which devolved into riots, were spearheaded by either foreign nationals or recent migrants from the Middle East or southeast Asia.
US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned in 2024 that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to many of these protests.
Critics, however, say Roy’s legislation raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly around First Amendment protections, religious liberty, and due process rights. Civil liberties advocates have warned that broad ideological tests for citizenship or deportation could be vulnerable to court challenges and used too broadly against political dissent.
Uncategorized
Orthodox Jews Harassed in Brooklyn as Antisemitic Hate Crimes Surge in New York City Under Mamdani
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during his inauguration ceremony in New York City, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Multiple videos which emerged this week captured in vivid detail the surge of antisemitic hate crimes that have proliferated under New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s leadership.
On Monday, Williamsburg News shared a 36-second video depicting two young males riding bicycles on Williamsburg Street & Lee Avenue in Brooklyn. The first swerves his bike in front of an elderly Jewish man, leading the victim to turn and address his assailant. Then the second perpetrator comes from behind on his bike and knocks off the Jewish man’s black hat.
Shocking! 2 perps on cyclists assaulted and threw down a hat from a elderly Jewish person, on Williamsburg St & Lee Ave, @WSPUshomrim and @NYPD90Pct are on scene investigating for a possible hate crime. @nypdhatecrimes pic.twitter.com/Y3mXw6CZmH
— WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) April 20, 2026
Officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD)’s 90th precinct responded to the assault and opened a hate crime investigation.
Also on Monday, the Boro Park Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group, released a 37-second clip of young males driving a white SUV into a crosswalk before stopping to address a Jewish man with payot wearing traditional Hasidic attire. He begins to walk away, provoking a teenager in the back seat to leap out, chase after him, and yell, “Come here! Come here!”
An individual sitting in the front seat’s passenger side applauds the act of intimidation before the young man rushes back into the SUV which speeds away, tires squealing.
These individuals are wanted by @NYPDHateCrimes for terrorizing and harassing local residents in Boro Park over Pesach. If you can help us identify them, please contact 911 and our 24-hour emergency hotline 718-871-6666. #YourCityYourCall. @NYPD66Pct pic.twitter.com/WFRBGDXej7
— 𝐁𝐨𝐫𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐫𝐢𝐦 (@BPShomrim) April 20, 2026
While evidence of these antisemitic incidents emerged from security footage, the perpetrators of a separate incident from last week chose to film their harassment targeting a Jewish pizzeria proprietor themselves.
Operatives of the so-called Palestine News Network (PNN) conducted one of their pseudo-interviews of Isaac Garson, owner of Slices Pizza in Hastings-on-Hudson, a community roughly 20 miles north of New York City.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group’s modus operandi of choreographed hostility, explaining that members “have a history of entering neighborhoods with significant Jewish populations, or approaching those attending Jewish or Israel-related events, where they shoot videos that walk the line between ‘interview’ and provocation.”
The 47-second video appears in a vertical format, indicating filming on a phone. In the lower right corner, the video bears a red and white PNN logo intended as a parody of the traditional CNN logo. Garson emerges from the restaurant, gestures his hands, and says, “I’m going to be calm. I want peace around the world.”
The man filming the encounter then goads, “What about Palestine? Can you say Palestine, specifically?”
The video cuts to footage of a man outside the restaurant who appears to be affiliated with PNN and carries a fractured placard that says, “End US AID to Israel.” However, the word “Israel” was originally at the bottom of the sign but snapped off, requiring the activist to carry along the broken piece to complete his political proclamation.
The next 20 seconds of the video focus on the men harassing a woman wearing a black baseball cap and black sunglasses walking by on the sidewalk. They demand to know “what’s your opinion?” The video cuts off her answer and jumps to them insulting her as “a textbook case of white mediocrity. Mediocre aesthetics, no stances, this is what we call ‘white mediocrity.’ You’re a shining example of mediocrity.”
The woman, taken aback by being insulted by eccentric activists carrying a dilapidated sign on the street, says, “Oh. Well, that’s also your opinion.”
The conclusion of the video returns to Garson, who asks the men: “What happened to Israel in 1948?”
The cameraman then yells, “Oh, it came out! It came out!”
Garson asks, “What happened?”
The cameraman then chants proudly, “The Nakba! The Nakba!”
The Arabic term “Nakba” translates as “catastrophe,” and anti-Zionists regularly deploy it to signify the founding of the modern State of Israel. In 2023, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree defining the “Nakba” as “the crime against humanity committed against the Palestinian people in 1948.”
Garson then asks in the video: “How many people were killed on Oct. 7?” referring to the Palestinian terrorist group’s 2023 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The cameraman shoots back, “We support Oct. 7!”
Beginning to walk back into his restaurant, Garson says, “OK, great, you support a murder.”
NEW YORK TODAY: Pro-Hamas Criminals Harass Jewish Pizza Shop Owner in Hastings-on-Hudson
They targeted him specifically because he is Jewish
Then they bully a random white Christian lady and ruin her day.
⁰PNN’s loser Muslim gang ambushed Isaac Garson, the Jewish owner of… pic.twitter.com/o26YdjBkQg— Shirion Collective (@ShirionOrg) April 15, 2026
Hastings-on-Hudson Mayor Tom Drake released a statement on Wednesday condemning PNN’s harassment.
“I am sorry that this type of conduct has reached our amazing and tolerant village,” Drake said. “Today, the strength exhibited by our friend and business owner, who I have been in communication with, makes me proud to be your mayor and do everything to support our businesses and residents, even when faced with such a gross display of hate.”
Drake added, “As a community, we cannot let stickers placed on signs or other forms of hate become normal. While they may seem small in some cases, they are intended to cause fear and intimidation. These actions have targeted a specific population of our village, and I urge all Hastings residents to join me in condemning such actions of hate and come together and support one another.”
The ADL names the leaders of PNN as Ramsey Aburdene and David Wolf, explaining they chose to found the group following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in southern Israel. Aburdene says that he has urged people for years to “stop condemning Hamas.”
Wolf is Jewish and described by the ADL as “an extreme anti-Zionist” who “had his Star of David tattooed over with a Palestinian flag.”
PNN has amassed more than 100,000 followers on the X social media platform and has seen its videos shared by prominent anti-Zionist influencers such as British rapper Lowkey and “anti-imperialist journalist” Benjamin Rubenstein.
The incidents come amid continued criticism and scrutiny over the Mamdani administration’s approach to countering antisemitism.
Earlier this month, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed that “confirmed hate crimes increased nearly 12 percent this quarter citywide. We continue to see that the vast majority of our hate crimes are antisemitic in nature.”
Tisch added that “in fact, in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of all confirmed hate crimes, or 55 percent, were antisemitic, despite Jews only making up approximately 10 percent of the population of New York City.”
Mamdani assumed office on Jan. 1.
Uncategorized
‘Another Holocaust’: Netanyahu Tells Bereaved Families on Memorial Day of Iran Plot to Destroy Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the opening event for the Memorial Day at the Yad LaBanim House in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: Marc Israel Sellem/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the Holocaust during a Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem on Tuesday, saying joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran had prevented the regime from carrying out its genocidal vision.
“The Ayatollah regime in Iran planned another Holocaust. It plotted to destroy us with nuclear bombs and thousands of ballistic missiles,” he said at the state ceremony for fallen soldiers at Mount Herzl military cemetery. “Had we not acted against the existential threat, had we not acted with determination and daring, the names of the death sites Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan might have joined the names of the death camps of the Holocaust: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka.”
“But that did not happen because together with our great friend, the United States, we crushed the Iranian regime’s machinery of destruction in time,” he said. “We removed an immediate existential threat.”
Netanyahu ended by saluting wounded soldiers and bereaved families. “May the memory of the fallen of Israel’s wars be blessed and kept in our hearts forever,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wearing the Tefillin of IDF Golani Brigade Fighter First Sgt. Sean Carmeli, who fell in the 2014 war with Gaza. Photo: Ma’ayan Toaf (GPO)
The national Memorial Day, known as Yom Hazikaron, came as Iran poured cold water on the notion of extending the ceasefire, saying it would not send officials to Islamabad to continue negotiations with the US.
Meanwhile, a second ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump with Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah was also poised to be tested, as rocket sirens sounded toward evening in northern Israeli communities near the border with Lebanon.
At a separate Memorial Day ceremony for fallen Mossad personnel, intelligence agency chief David Barnea disclosed that one of the service’s operatives was killed during the war with Iran.
The officer, whose identity remains under gag order, had served in the agency for more than three decades, Barnea said, adding that he was “filled with pride” by his actions.
“There is no other day during the year that is as difficult for us, for me, as Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen,” Barnea said, tracing a line from the defenders of the pre-state Jewish community to the soldiers fighting since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He said the obligation to defend the country had passed from generation to generation, with each cohort choosing to shoulder it anew.
Other commemorations took place outside the state ceremonies. On Memorial Day eve, OneFamily, a nonprofit that supports victims of terrorism and bereaved families, held a gathering centered on personal testimony.
The evening was led by two bereaved mothers, Liat Smadja and Laly Derai, whose sons were killed in the same explosion in Gaza in June 2024.
Smadja, who serves in the reserves as a casualty notifier, described the cruel inversion of learning that the task she performs for other families had come to her own door.
“I have the job of knocking on doors and delivering the worst possible news, one that changes a family’s life forever,” she said. “And then the message came for me as well.”
In Israel, “the knock on the door” has become a traumatic shorthand for one of the most feared moments in public life, the arrival of military representatives to tell a family that a loved one has been killed.
Derai said the families had forged a bond that cut across their different backgrounds.
“We come from different worlds and different backgrounds. Since [their death], we are one family, connected by something deep and unbreakable.”
Two days earlier, Derai had attended a weekend for bereaved families organized by OneFamily, spending the run-up to Memorial Day among others carrying the same loss.
Yigal Tamam, whose son Adir and daughter-in-law Shiraz were murdered on their way to the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attack, was also there.
As rocket fire erupted early in the morning that day, the couple pulled over and ran into a roadside bomb shelter, where they were killed by Hamas terrorists who threw grenades inside. The two were survived by their young daughters.
“I’m breathing but I’m not alive,” Tamam said over the weekend.
He said he breaks down when he thinks about his grandchildren, Goshen, 10, and Gili, 8, growing up without their parents.
OneFamily founder Chantal Belzberg is set to receive the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, a rare national award granted by the state for outstanding contributions to Israeli society, presented on Independence Day, which follows Memorial Day.