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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.
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Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference?
Moments after Seattle rapper Macklemore led fans in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in a call to “Free Palestine” that ended his opening spot on a national tour, another notorious rapper, despite years of toxic, antisemitic behavior, played to a sold-out crowd in Chicago’s Soldier Field for the second night in a row: the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
On Monday, Macklemore paid the price for that Sept. 4 show where he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid while opening for English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran. That gig ended when Robert Kraft, owner of Boston’s Gillette Stadium, said Macklemore was not welcome there for Sheeran’s two scheduled shows.
The shutout went beyond Gillette. With 10 more shows left on the tour, eight including Macklemore as the opening act, Kraft rallied other stadium owners to bar him too. Macklemore was removed.
“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” Sheeran wrote on Instagram. “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision. It was not mine. I have spent this week trying to build bridges, to find a solution and unfortunately, was unable to do so.”
On Tuesday, Sheeran’s three other opening acts and his back-up band withdrew in solidarity.
On that list of stadiums that barred Macklemore was AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, where tickets to see Ye in November went on sale last week. But there was no mention of canceling that show.
Neither Soldier Field nor AT&T Stadium responded to the Forward’s inquiries about why Ye was still welcome there despite his escalating antisemitism over the years.
In 2025, his antisemitic conduct hit a fever pitch when he ran a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to an online store that briefly sold a $20 T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. He also released a music video on X titled “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION),” featuring the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain,” which surpassed one million views. He was banned by Twitch after appearing in a livestream giving a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”
So is hating Jews more acceptable than hating Israel?
Not exactly, said Ari Ingel, executive director of The Creative Community for Peace, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism in the entertainment industry. Macklemore has shown no signs of remorse or intention to understand why his actions were harmful.
Meanwhile, Ye has paid a hefty price for his antisemitic rants over the years, losing lucrative deals with Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and Universal Music Group. And while some still question Ye’s sincerity and he has more work to do, he did apologize, Ingel said.
“Kanye is still being held accountable for his statements,” Ingel told the Forward. “He’s not working with the biggest promoters in the industry … We have not let go of all the harm he has caused yet, but his team has put him on a better path.”
Though Ye has performed in some European shows, his headline act at this summer’s Wireless Fest in London was canceled after the U.K. denied him a visa to travel to the country. Concerts in Italy, Russia and Poland also got nixed.
Here in the U.S., his promoter has only been able to book select stadiums for this 2026 tour, including the New Orleans Superdome, San Antonio Alamodome, and two shows at Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago.
In San Antonio, Mayor Gina Maria Ortiz Jones unsuccessfully tried to prevent Ye’s July 4 show in the city-owned stadium. But backlash against pulling the plug was too intense and the show was allowed to go on. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott also sought to cancel Ye’s June shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, another publicly-owned venue scheduled to host Sheeran on Nov. 7.
Ye’s shows have featured the spectacle that he is known for – the artist performing on top of a gigantic spinning globe in the center of the stadium with billows of fog, laser light shows, fireworks and surprise guest appearances. His setlist covers the span of his career, minus the song “Heil Hitler.”
Macklemore, by contrast, commandeered what was supposed to be a family-friendly show to deliver a not-so-family-friendly, even hostile, message, Ingel said. He didn’t just speak briefly about the plight of Palestinians, which would have been within his right to do. While singing “Hind’s Hall,” his tribute to pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building at Columbia University, he projected images of war and encampments on giant screens and led the crowd in a call and response, creating an atmosphere where Jewish fans felt threatened.
“Ye, despite the previous statements, is not doing that at his shows,” Ingel said. “He’s not whipping up the crowd into a frenzy of antisemitic hatred.” If he did, his tour would undoubtedly come to a screeching halt.
“Stadiums are not going to allow their venues to turn into forums for hate,” Ingel said. “This is about bringing people together.”
And so far, ironically, that’s what Ye’s shows try to do by sticking to the music. Unfortunately, Ingel said, Macklemore did not.
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Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment
(JTA) — Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found, after employees were subjected to harassing messages — some of them posted by employees in an internal forum called the Connected Jewish Network.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was “reasonable cause to believe” Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment based on their national origin, religion or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The determination follows on media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees.
The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had “repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths” and “labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.”
“This is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world and they couldn’t get it right,” Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told the Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. “Thankfully the EEOC did.”
Ho said Cisco had “at best failed to take their harassment seriously” and through its inaction had sent “the implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.”
The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees’ cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.
The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.
In August 2024, employees — including some concerned Jewish employees — filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian.
The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to “reduce the mess across the board.”
Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.
Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s determination, saying it had “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.” The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings and provided coaching to multiple employees.
The post Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment appeared first on The Forward.
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Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University citing ‘hostile environment’ for pro-Palestinian students
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University alum who was detained by the Trump administration last year, is suing his alma mater along with an Israeli dean of the school he attended for facilitating a “hostile environment” for pro-Palestinian students.
Khalil became a national symbol of the campus pro-Palestinian protest movement when he was detained in March 2025 after the government accused him of being aligned with terrorists. On Monday, he filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court accusing the school of engaging in months-long “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of pro-Palestinian students on campus, including at the hands of right-wing pro-Israel groups.
He contends that Columbia’s alleged indifference ultimately helped to lead to his 104-day detention by federal immigration authorities, during which he missed the birth of his first child, before being released after a federal judge ruled his detainment was likely unconstitutional. He is joined in the suit by members of the School of International and Public Affairs Palestine Working Group, a pro-Palestinian student group on campus.
“Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students,” Khalil told reporters at a press conference in New York on Monday.
SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo speaks during a book talk for Fareed Zakaria’s new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on April 3, 2024 in New York City. (Shahar Azran/Getty Images)
In addition to the university, the suit also names Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, who is Israeli-American, as a defendant. The complaint says that Yahi-Milo had unfairly accused Khalil, while a student in the school, of antisemitism and harassment.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Columbia representatives defended Yarhi-Milo in general terms.
“Throughout her time at Columbia and during her service as dean, Dean Yarhi-Milo has worked with and supported students of all backgrounds, including our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students,” the statement reads. “The University is grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of our students and her commitment to a campus free of discrimination and harassment.”
Columbia representatives declined to comment further on the lawsuit but said that “creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university. It is also a responsibility we take seriously.”
A leading figure of the encampment movement that began at Columbia before spreading to schools across the country, Khalil was the first pro-Palestinian student protest leader to be detained by the Trump administration and spent months in an immigrant detention center despite holding a green card.
In the months since a federal judge ordered his release, Khalil has filed a number of lawsuits, including against pro-Israel groups that he said “conspired” with the government to target him. He has also sued Columbia before, for disclosing student records as part of a congressional investigation.
Khalil’s latest lawsuit against Columbia claims the school violated Title VI protections for him and his fellow plaintiffs based on their ethnic identity, national origin or “affiliation with Palestine.” The lawsuit invokes the same federal civil rights law that Jewish and Israeli students have used in discrimination claims against universities, some of which have resulted in settlements.
Columbia itself signed a controversial agreement with the Trump administration last year to resolve federal civil rights investigations, paying $221 million and agreeing to a number of concessions in order to free up hundreds of millions in federal funding. During his press conference Monday, Khalil called such settlements “disgraceful.”
The suit notes that, as a student, Khalil called Yarhi-Milo “genocidal” in a message to fellow students. The suit then describes a subsequent internal university investigation into Khalil as “unfounded and retaliatory,” and claims the school “repeatedly launched meritless allegations of antisemitism against Mr. Khalil” prior to his federal detention.
During the press conference, Khalil accused Yahi-Milo of being someone who “weaponizes her identity to shield herself from legitimate concerns and criticism.” Khalil added, “Her priority has never been her students, me and my fellow students here. Her priority has always been Israel.”
The lawsuit’s examples of indifference include a claim that Columbia failed to intervene when a right-wing group, Accuracy in Media, labeled some of the members of Palestine Working Group as “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” in messages on the side of trucks driven near campus for months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. The group had targeted pro-Palestinian students in a similar fashion at several campuses.
Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who is Jewish, spoke at the press conference in support of Khalil, whom he called a friend. “We all see how the university’s anti-Palestinian racism has directly endangered its students,” said Howley, who wore a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice hat and a “Not In Our Name” shirt. “I won’t be wasting any more time on town halls or listening sessions or imagining anything.”
In a statement to JTA, Accuracy in Media president Adam Guillette said his group “uses publicly available information, and we are steadfastly opposed to doxxing. We pledge to continue delivering accountability to pro-Hamas radicals across the country.”
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