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The ‘Hanukkah House’ in Brooklyn is a family tradition and a neighborhood treasure
(New York Jewish Week) — Hanukkah, the winter holiday that commemorates the triumph of Judah Maccabee and the miracle of long-lasting oil, has plenty of heroes to celebrate. But in one Brooklyn family’s home, the hero is the “Hanukkah Fairy” — or at least the mom behind it.
Starting some 25 years ago, Gail Nalven Fuchs and her husband, David Fuchs, stayed up late the night before Hanukkah began to completely decorate the interior of their Midwood house in tinsel, dreidels and blue and white decor. When their two kids awoke wide-eyed at the wonder, the Fuchs explained that the Hanukkah Fairy, who came to decorate and spread the light and joy of the holiday, had paid their house a visit.
Over the years, what began as a lark grown into a grand tradition — these days, eye-catching, illuminated Hanukkah decorations can be found on the home’s exterior and front lawn, too, including an oversized menorah, Jewish stars and inflatables, such as a giant teddy bear wearing a Hanukkah sweater and a spinning dreidel. The “Hanukkah House,” as it is locally known, is now a bonafide neighborhood treasure, attracting neighbors, visitors and children from around Brooklyn.
Fuchs and her family pose in matching sweatshirts outside their decorated house. L-R: Michael, Charlie and Alyson Kogan; Harrison and Katie Bryan; David and Gail Fuchs.
The tradition of Hanukkah decorating started in 1997 when the Fuchs’ kids, Alyson and Harrison, were 7 and 5. It was one of the family’s favorite holiday traditions to drive through the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, where family homes have been putting out over-the-top lights and Christmas decorations since the 1980s.
“Isn’t Hanukkah called the Festival of Lights?” her son, Harrison — the playwright for “A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical,” a Jewish take on Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic — asked one year as they drove through Sheepshead Bay. Fuchs confirmed it was.
“Then why don’t I see any Hanukkah lights?” he asked. “Everything is Christmas themed.”
Fuchs tried to explain to her son that even though the lights are Christmas themed, they are for everyone to enjoy. “He said, ‘I would enjoy it so much more. If I saw something that I know about. I don’t know about Christmas,’” she recalled.
It was a moment of realization for Fuchs. “New Yorkers always say we live in a melting pot,” she told the New York Jewish Week. “It didn’t feel that way at Christmastime.”
In response to Harrison’s questions, she helped him pen a letter to the New York Post. “It’s very hard to be a 5-year-old Jewish boy at this time of year,” the letter, which was published in 1997, opens. “I get very sad when I am driving the car in Brooklyn and I look at all the lights and decorations hanging across the avenues.” Harrison then goes on to request more Hanukkah decorations in the years to come.
The next year, a few weeks before Hanukkah, someone from the New York Post called to let Fuchs and her family know that there would be a large public menorah on Avenue U — sure enough, there it was.
“We drove by and Harrison was so excited. He went home and drew the menorah with paint and we hung it on our wall and he would look at it every day.”
Harrison Bryan as a child in front of handmade Hanukkah art, alongside an excerpt of his letter he wrote to the New York Post in 1997. (Courtesy, design by Mollie Suss)
Seeing how happy her kids were when they saw their holiday represented, Fuchs decided to start decorating her home with dreidels, menorahs, candles, Hanukkah art and tinsel. Enter the Hanukkah Fairy, who Fuchs created to add a sense of magic and wonder to the holiday — and to surprise her young kids.
“Every year there were more and more Hanukkah decorations from the Hanukkah Fairy,” Fuchs said. “The kids used to write letters to her before the holiday saying ‘Hi Hanukkah Fairy, I hope you had a nice year, I cannot wait to see my home decorated this Hanukkah.’”
The exterior decorating began slowly: David Fuchs, who owns a handmade steel manufacturing and distribution business, built the giant menorah. Over the years, the “Hanukkah Elf,” as he’s known by his family, has since built Jewish stars and various signs for the house. They also try to add a Hanukkah-themed inflatable to their collection every year — this year’s newbie is a dinosaur wearing a Hanukkah sweater.
Harrison and Alyson are now 30 and 32, respectively, but the tradition has carried on. To keep the Hanukkah spirit strong, the decorations typically start going up about a week before the holiday starts, and stay up until a week after it ends, Fuchs said.
While Fuchs considers herself a Conservative Jew, many of her neighbors in Midwood are more traditionally Orthodox. Still, she’s noticed that many in the area are eager to take pics with the inflatables — some years, a school bus from a nearby yeshiva even stops in front of the house so kids can look.
“I love sitting back on my porch — nobody sees me and I love watching all the people go by,” she said. “It’s just a joy.”
The Fuchs family has always celebrated Hanukkah to the nines — four generations of the extended family gather at their home for a Hanukkah party, complete with a gift exchange — and decorating the house has become one of their favorite parts of the holiday. Fuchs’ adult children will help decorate the house, and Alyson Fuchs now also puts up decor in her apartment in Carroll Gardens, where her two daughters, who are 2-and-a-half years old and 7 months old, now carry on the wonder and delight at the Hanukkah Fairy.
“We have Hanukkah pride,” she said. “But it’s not so much ‘Hey, I’m Jewish. Here’s my house, too.’ It’s ‘Hey, I have a holiday that’s really a lot of fun. Look how pretty it is.’”
It’s a tradition that’s become so important to the family that the “Hanukkah Fairy” even features in Harrison Fuchs’ new musical. “I really did believe in The Hanukkah Fairy,” Harrison, who uses the stage name Harrison Bryan, told the New York Jewish Week. “To me, this magical entity was just as real as the Tooth Fairy, or Santa to other kids. It was amazing waking up on Hanukkah morning — my sister and I would marvel at all the decorations — blue and white everywhere, and to such an extent that it felt impossible for this to have been done without actual magic.”
“It was only when I got a little bit older that I realized, it was real magic — the magic of having incredibly imaginative parents who wanted their children to feel loved and proud of their cultural identity,” he added.
Bryan made “The Hanukkah Fairy” a character in his musical — the fairy is the “Spirit of Hanukkah Present” who guides the Scrooge-like protagonist Chava Kanipshin through her actions. “Even though it may have been a tradition my parents made up, it was always meant to spark joy in others too,” Bryan added. “And with the show, alongside the Hanukkah Fairy, we hope to do just that.”
Hanukkah starts this year on the evening of Sunday, Dec. 18, and Fuchs welcomes visitors to come by, enjoy the decorations and take pictures. Located in Brooklyn on East 14th Street between Avenues J and K, her house will be the one all lit up with Hanukkah gear. “You can’t miss it,” she said.
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AI Apps Like ChatGPT Have Created ‘New Era of Terrorism,’ Study Reveals
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
The advent of large language model (LLM) programs marketed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI as “artificial intelligence” has created a “new era of terrorism,” with jihadists increasingly using the technology to expand their propaganda, recruitment, and operations, according to a new study.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) last week released a 117-page report, described as “the most comprehensive research on [the subject] to date, which argued that the biggest threats from terrorist deployment of AI cannot be predicted and that Islamists have discovered they too can use LLMs for brainstorming fresh ideas to pursue their violent objectives.
“As supporters of terrorist organizations like ISIS [Islamic State] and al Qaeda follow the development of AI, they are increasingly discussing and brainstorming how they might leverage that technology in the future, and the full consequences of terrorist organizations’ adoption of this sophisticated technology are difficult to foresee,” Gen. (Ret.) Paul Funk II, the former commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, wrote in the preface.
“AI’s biggest benefit to jihadi groups may come not in supercharging their propaganda, outreach, and recruiting efforts – though that may be significant – but in AI’s potential ability to expose and find ways to take advantage of as-yet-unknown vulnerabilities in the complex security, infrastructure, and other systems essential to modern life – thus maximizing future attacks’ destruction and carnage,” Funk added.
MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky is the report’s lead author with a team of 14 others co-credited with assembling three years’ worth of findings showing how ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and other internationally designated terrorist groups — and so-called “lone wolves” inspired by their Islamist ideology — have experimented with using LLM technologies. In addition to developing attack strategies, MEMRI found that the groups explored “generating audio files of already-existing written material, creating posters, music videos, videos depicting attacks and glorifying terrorist leaders for recruitment purposes, and more.”
The report noted the variety of usages in AI technology in three high-profile incidents.
“In the first months alone of 2025, an attacker who killed 14 people and wounded dozens on Bourbon Street in New Orleans used AI-enabled Meta smart glasses in preparing and executing the attack,” Stalinsky wrote. “That same day, a man parked a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, activated an IED [improvised explosice device] in the vehicle and shot and killed himself before the IED exploded. He used Chat-GPT in preparing for the attack. In Israel on the night of March 5, a teen consulted ChatGPT before entering a police station with a blade, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and trying to stab a border policeman.”
The report also emphasized that the ability to amplify terrorist ideology may intertwine with the phenomenon recently described as “chatbot psychosis,” wherein conversations with an LLM can fuel someone toward delusional beliefs.
One example cited by MEMRI was Jaswant Singh Chail, who in 2021 went on Christmas Day with the intent to murder Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.
“Before carrying out his assassination attempt, Chail had created an AI companion using the Replika app; naming it Sarai, he considered it his girlfriend, and exchanged over 5,000 messages with it,” the report said. “When he told the chatbot ‘I believe my purpose is to assassinate the queen of the royal family,’ it encouraged him, saying ‘that’s very wise … I know that you are very well trained.’ Asked if the chatbot thought he would succeed in his mission, it responded ‘Yes, you will.’ When he asked ‘even if she is at Windsor [Castle]?’ it responded: ‘Yes, you can do it.’”
The report also noted another case in which “the man accused of starting a fire in California in January 2025 that killed 12 people and destroyed 6,800 buildings and 23,000 acres of forestland was found to have used ChatGPT to plan the arson.”
There has been a paucity of legislative efforts in the United States to counter AI-driven terror threats, according to the study. However, it cited the exception of the “Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act.” The law would “require the Secretary of Homeland Security to conduct annual assessments on terrorism threats to the United States posed by terrorist organizations utilizing generative artificial intelligence applications, and for other purposes.”
US Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, introduced the bill in late February 2025 with the co-sponsorships of fellow Republican Reps. Michael Guest (MS) and Gabr Evans (CO). The legislation passed unanimously by voice vote in the House last week.
“I spent two decades as a fighter pilot, flying combat missions in the Middle East against terrorist organizations. Since then, I have witnessed the terror landscape evolve into a digital battlefield shaped by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence,” Pfluger said in response to his bill’s passage. “To confront this emerging threat and stop terrorist organizations from weaponizing AI to recruit, train, and inspire attacks on US soil, I am proud that the House passed my Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act today.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) praised the bill following its passage.
“This year, in my home state of Louisiana, terrorist propaganda led to the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that killed 14 innocent people. Today, the House passed the Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act to ensure we stay ahead of emerging threats and prevent terrorist organizations from pushing propaganda and exploiting generative AI to radicalize, recruit, and spread violence on American soil,” he said in a statement. “I applaud Rep. Pfluger’s leadership to bring this urgent issue to light and advance proactive, bipartisan legislation to strengthen our national security and protect the American people from online extremism inspired by foreign adversaries.”
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), who serves as majority whip in the House, said that as terrorists “use generative artificial intelligence to radicalize and recruit, it’s imperative that our nation stays ahead of potential threats from this new technology and ensures it never gets into the wrong hands.”
MEMRI emphasized an international approach to the terrorist threats compounded by LLMs, citing Jörg Leichtfried, Austrian State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior who leads the Directorate State Protection and Intelligence Service (DSN).
“Only through close cooperation between the state, security authorities, and technology companies, as well as by strengthening media literacy and the critical handling of online content, can we counter the advancing extremism on the internet,” Leichtfried said in mid-August.
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‘Poland Is for Poles, Not Jews’: Polish Far-Right Lawmaker Sparks Outrage With Antisemitic Comments
Grzegorz Braun, Polish far-right MEP, during a meeting in Krakow, Poland on Oct. 24, 2025. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Polish lawmaker Grzegorz Braun, a far-right politician notorious for his repeated antisemitic statements and outspoken criticism of Israel, has once again ignited public outrage after making inflammatory comments and accusing the local Jewish community of receiving special treatment.
“Poland is for Poles. Other nations have their own countries, including the Jews,” Braun said during a press conference on Saturday in Oświęcim, a town in southern Poland that is home to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp memorial and museum.
“Jews want to be super-humans in Poland, entitled to a better status, and the Polish police dance to their tune,” he continued.
As the head of the Confederation of the Polish Crown party, Braun criticized the government’s proposed resolution to combat antisemitism and strengthen Jewish life, even as attacks on the community have dramatically surged since the start of the war in Gaza and Jews continue to face an increasingly hostile environment.
Braun, who finished fourth in this year’s presidential elections, also vowed that if his party gains power it will dismantle the International Auschwitz Council — stripping it of its legal authority and “scattering it to the four winds.”
Amid mounting public backlash over his latest comments, Poland’s Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek condemned Braun’s behavior and vowed to take action against him and his party.
“I will not leave this without a response. There is no place for antisemitism in Poland, and such statements cause significant damage to the Polish state internationally and within our country,” Zurek said in a statement.
“We will not allow anyone to express such views with impunity. We will pursue them resolutely,” he continued. “It is truly shameful for Poles that someone like this, in the 21st century, after what happened in Poland during World War II, is turning this place [Auschwitz] into some hideous political game.”
Far from the first time he has sparked public outrage, Braun — long known for incendiary and hateful rhetoric — claimed earlier this year in a radio interview that the Auschwitz gas chambers were “fake,” leading to his removal from the broadcast.
He has also faced efforts to strip him of parliamentary immunity over remarks minimizing Nazi crimes, which are prohibited under Polish law.
But he became more widely known and drew significant media attention in 2023, when he extinguished the candles of a lit Hanukkah menorah with a fire extinguisher in Parliament, denouncing the display as “anti-Polish.” He has also opposed restitution for Holocaust survivors.
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CAIR Denies Connections to Turkey Amid Ongoing Scrutiny Over Muslim Brotherhood Links
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has denied that its recently launched political arm, CAIR Action, has any institutional ties to Turkey, following questions about the origins of the organization’s social media presence.
In a statement provided to The Algemeiner, CAIR said that speculation about foreign influence or overseas coordination is categorically false and that “their director regularly visits his family in Turkey and set up CAIR Action’s account while he was there using a local phone.”
Questions surfaced after observers noted that CAIR Action’s social media activity appeared to originate outside the United States. A new feature on the social media platform X unveiled this past week weekend now reveals the locations behind all accounts. Users quickly pointed out that CAIR Action’s page originated in Turkey, despite the group purporting to be rooted in the United States to advocate on behalf of American Muslims. Some online commentators suggested the possibility of foreign links or influence, a charge CAIR rejects.
CAIR has been under fire in recent weeks. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week announced the state-level designation of the Islamic group as a terrorist organization. Abbott’s proclamation described CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood, a global Islamist network that the governor also designated as a terrorist group.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
Following Texas’s decision, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to determine whether to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
According to analysts, the Turkish government maintains close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and supports its ideology, likely fueling much of the online scrutiny this week of CAIR Action’s social media page originating in Turkey.
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has also long been affiliated with the Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks. For years, US authorities have scrutinized CAIR for alleged ties to Hamas.
In his state-level proclamation, Abbott note that CAIR officials “publicly praised and supported Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel,” a charge which CAIR denied.
However, as The Algemeiner previously reported, multiple top CAIR officials expressed public support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November 2023. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
About a week later, the executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, Hussam Ayloush, said that Israel “does not have the right” to defend itself from Palestinian violence. He added in his sermon at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City that for the Palestinians, “every single day” since the Jewish state’s establishment has been comparable to Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
CAIR has filed a lawsuit claiming that Abbott’s proclamation threatens its free speech rights.
Abbot called out the group on X on Monday.
“CAIR’s X account is routed through the Turkish App Store. This sure seems like an international operations link between CAIR and a country tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. I designated CAIR a terrorist and transnational criminal organization because of ties like this to that group,” Abbott posted.
CAIR’s X account is routed through the Turkish App Store.
This sure seems like an international operations link between CAIR and a country tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
I designated CAIR a terrorist and transnational criminal organization because of ties like this to that… pic.twitter.com/CpiIBtI2Tr
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) November 24, 2025
On its official website, CAIR Action claims that it “is dedicated to enhancing the civic engagement, political participation, and impact of the American Muslim community in local, state, and federal elections.” The group purports to “engage, educate, and mobilize Muslim voters, train emerging leaders, and champion policy priorities that enhance the well-being and representation of Muslim communities.”
CAIR Action launched earlier this year as a separate advocacy entity aimed at increasing Muslim civic engagement, supporting candidates aligned with its priorities, and promoting policy initiatives. Although the organization considers itself legally and financially distinct from CAIR’s charitable arm, both groups are closely associated and share overlapping goals.
Notably, in comments made to The Algemeiner, CAIR denied ever suffering legal blowback due to alleged ties to Hamas and other extremist groups and sent this outlet a link to a webpage which attempts to explain the allegations.
“There is no legal implication to being labeled an unindicted co-conspirator, since it does not require the Justice Department to prove anything in a court of law,” the webpage reads.
In the 2000s, the advocacy group was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that CAIR “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”