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The mysterious disappearance of Yemenite children in Israel is the focus of a new play
(New York Jewish Week) — Shortly after the State of Israel was founded, Shanit Keter-Schwartz was born on a dirt floor, in a hut made of aluminum siding outside the burgeoning town of Tel Aviv. She was the second of six children, the daughter of Yemenite Jews who had recently immigrated to the new country. They’d faced discrimination and violence in their country of origin, so when Jewish emissaries turned up in 1949 to bring 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel as a part of “Operation Flying Carpet,” they were all in.
Unfortunately, Keter-Schwartz’s upbringing in Israel was no magic carpet ride. “[Yemenite Jews] were seen as savages, primitive, inferior in the eyes of the Ashkenazi Jews,” Keter-Schwartz recalled in an interview with the New York Jewish Week. “They were not sophisticated or educated. It was a cultural domination, a collective trauma in Israel. They faced war, hunger, poverty, and living in very harsh conditions.”
The worst, though, wasn’t near-starvation due to rationing, or the harsh conditions of the shanty towns that these new immigrants were placed in, or the way European children wrinkled their nose at her and called her smelly. No, the worst was when the government stole her sister, Sarah, whom Keter-Schwartz never saw again.
In what has become known as the Yemenite Children Affair, more than 1,000 children of Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan descent were separated from their children during the first decade of Israel’s existence. The families and their advocates have long insisted, over denials by officials, that the children were taken from their families by the Ashkenazi government during the first decade of Israel’s existence. More often than not, parents were told their children had died when they had, in fact, been given to families of European descent for adoption, according to Amram Association, one of several organizations dedicated to documenting these abductions and advocating for victims’ families.
Now, Keter-Schwartz — a writer and performer who lives in Los Angeles, and a mother to two grown daughters — has brought to life her family’s story and her search for her missing sister in the form of a one-woman show. Premiering on Thursday at New York City Center, and running through May 15, “Daughter of the Wicked” chronicles her family’s journey from the Yemenite ma’abarot (refugee camps) to shikunim (government housing projects), where they lived in a tiny two-room apartment amid a melting pot of Jewish immigrants who were often at odds with one another.
“It is overcrowded, and the people who live here come from many different places. In their countries they were… respected by their communities,” she says in the show, which is named after one of the many Yemenite curses her mother would hurl at her when she’d done something wrong. “But here [in Israel] they are forced into stereotypes.”
“Israel had no choice but to bring the Jews from the Arab countries because the European Jews population had been greatly diminished after the Holocaust, but they didn’t want us,” Keter-Schwartz told the New York Jewish Week. “They took control of our lives, tried to assimilate us, wanted the whole country to be secular and uniform. They made all the decisions for us.”
One such “decision” made by the government, she said, was to remove her oldest brother, Yossi, from the family home to “re-educate” him at an Ashkenazi kibbutz. It worked: Yossi returned as a proud secular farmer, disdainful and ashamed of his spiritualist, religious family and their traditional ways.
The disappearance of her baby sister, Sarah, inspired Keter-Schwartz’s play, which is also informed by the kabbalistic teachings of her father. (Russ Rowland)
In the case of Keter-Schwartz’s sister, the abduction occurred directly after she was born. “When my father went to the hospital to pick up the twins, my siblings, he returned only with David. They told him that the girl, Sarah, was sick, and he should come back the following day. But when he came back, they told him that she had died,” Keter-Schwartz said. “Being naive, he didn’t question this. He didn’t ask to see a death certificate. He didn’t even know [a certificate] existed. He didn’t demand to see her body, didn’t think to bury her or give her funeral rites. He never suspected for a minute they could deceive him.”
This story, and others, is conveyed in “Daughter of the Wicked” through a series of monologues, each tied to an idea from Kabbalah,the Jewish mystical tradition. Keter-Schwartz defines each concept — like ahava (love), metsuka (hardship), busha (shame) — then tells a personal story that relates to the topic.
With this framework, Keter-Schwartz pays homage to her father, a spiritualist rabbi who spent his days poring over holy texts and divining the true meaning of the universe. She reads from his writings — which were collected and published towards the end of his life as a book, “Nachash HaNechoshet” — detailing her complex relationship to a man who was both an inspiration and, at times, inscrutable to all around him.
“The play is set in a hotel room, while I’m waiting for my sister to show up,” Keter-Schwartz explains. “As I wait, I tell my life. Behind me, on three screens, there’s archival footage from the 1950s that I got from Steven Spielberg’s archive. That footage tells the story, too, and so does the music.” The accompanying music, which transitions the audience from segment to segment, was written by Israeli composer Lilo Fedida, using traditional Yemenite melodies and instruments.
“We lived with this [tragedy] all my childhood, and I’ve been wondering all these years about my missing sister,” said Keter-Schwartz. “If I see her on the street, will I recognize her? Where does she live? Is she happy? I felt guilty that I never really tried to find her, I was so busy with my own life. But now I need to know.”
As a young woman, Keter-Schwartz said she went to great lengths to distance herself from her family’s tragedies. She lived in Amsterdam, London and New York, finally finding her footing in Los Angeles. She changed her name — from Shoshana to Shanit — and declared herself a new person in a new land. It was only when she lost all but one of her siblings, as well as both parents, that she felt an urge to revisit the past. When her last surviving sibling got so ill he almost died, she swore to search for Sarah. Initially, the idea was just to hire a private investigator to try to locate her. During her search, though, she began to feel an urge to share her story.
“I’d never written a play, so it took me two years [working] with coaches,” says Keter-Schwartz. “I’ve been an actress all my life, I’ve edited other people’s scripts, I produced movies, but to actually write — ha! I had amazing coaches. I’m especially grateful to Yigal Chatzor, the Israeli playwright. He brought the Israeli spice and the humor, which is wonderful now because now the play is balanced. It’s heart-wrenching and it’s hysterical. It’s everything, you know.”
The Yemenite Children Affair has never been formally confirmed by the state of Israel, which maintains the position that most of the babies died of malaria or malnutrition and were not, as some have proposed, sold to Ashkenazi families in exchange for donations to the young country. Several government-led commissions have claimed that there was no official wrongdoing, but testimonies continue to emerge that suggest otherwise. According to a 2016 article in Yediot Ahronot, a prominent Israeli news source, the government has sealed the official records of these disappearances until 2071, despite ongoing demonstrations and demands for actions.
In 2021, the Israeli government authorized tens of millions of dollars in reparations to families whose children disappeared while in government care. Nonetheless, no official admission of guilt or apology has been issued, a fact which caused many affected families to reject the plan, calling it “hush money.” Only a fraction of the affected families are eligible for these payments and, according to recent reporting, very few have claimed the money. Less than 1% of the allocated funds have been distributed thus far.
For Keter-Schwartz, no amount of money could compensate for the loss of her sister. She’s more interested in creating connections with others who lost family members and bringing awareness to this chapter in Israeli history. “Going back to my roots, revisiting the past, is an act of forgiveness,” Keter-Schwartz said in a statement. “By writing this play, I was able to forgive and accept the past. I hope that when audiences see my play they come to terms with their own history, and that they feel a sense of what it means to be free, and the challenges that confront us in maintaining that freedom.”
That is a major throughline of “Daughter of the Wicked”: Keter-Schwartz does not forsake the country that gave her her identity and childhood; rather, she insists on loving it while demanding recognition of past wrongs. Towards the end of her show, Keter Ashkenazi raises both arms to the sky and screams at those who wronged her: “My country! I blame you, shame on you for forsaking us, shame on you!”
But then, she lowers her arms and says, voice cracking with heartbreak: “I love you, I blame you, I love you. My country, I love you.”
—
The post The mysterious disappearance of Yemenite children in Israel is the focus of a new play appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Envoys in Israel to Discuss Future of Gaza
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff take part in a charter announcement for US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were in Israel on Saturday to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mainly to discuss Gaza, two people briefed on the matter said, as local authorities reported further violence in the enclave.
The US on Thursday announced plans for a “New Gaza” rebuilt from scratch, to include residential towers, data centers and seaside resorts.
The project forms part of President Donald Trump’s push to advance an October ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that has been shaken by repeated violations.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES REPORT MORE DEATHS
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said on Saturday that Israeli fire had killed three people, including two children, in two separate incidents in the northern Gaza Strip.
A statement from the Israeli military said that its troops operating in the northern Gaza Strip identified several militants “who crossed the Yellow Line, planted an explosive device in the area, and approached the troops, posing an immediate threat to them.”
Under the ceasefire accord, Israeli troops were to retreat to a yellow line marked on military maps that runs nearly the full length of Gaza.
A source in the Israeli military told Reuters that the military was aware of only one incident on Saturday and that those involved were not children.
A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed that the meeting was planned but did not provide further details.
Earlier this month, Washington announced that the plan had now moved into the second phase, under which Israel is expected to withdraw troops further from Gaza, and Hamas is due to yield control of the territory’s administration.
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Long before Trump’s second-hand Nobel, a laureate sought to curry favor with Nazis by regifting a prize
Donald Trump is not the first authoritarian to come into possession of a Nobel medal that wasn’t intended for him. In 1943, Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun sent his Nobel Prize for Literature to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a gesture meant to secure a private audience with Adolf Hitler.
Although Hamsun was infamous during World War II and its aftermath, most Americans likely know little about the author. It has taken Trump’s lust for the Nobel Peace Prize — something like Gollum’s slobbering obsession with the “precious” gold ring — to cast fresh light on the Norwegian novelist.
Hamsun occupies a place in history similar to Hitler’s filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl: a genuine artistic innovator who fell under the spell of der Führer and paid for it later in life.
Born to a poor rural family in 1859, Hamsun began writing in his teens. Over his long career he produced more than two dozen novels, along with poetry, short stories and nonfiction. His influence was enormous — Isaac Bashevis Singer once called him the father of modern literature, and his psychological style has often been compared to Franz Kafka’s.
Hamsun vaulted to fame at age 30 with the 1890 publication of the semiautobiographical novel Hunger. He won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature for Growth of the Soil, which the Nobel Committee said “aroused the liveliest interest in many countries and has found favorable reception with the most diverse groups of readers.” Those readers included fascists.
Hamsun was a passionate admirer of Germany and of the Nazis’ ideas about Teutonic purity. The admiration was mutual. German critics praised Growth of the Soil for its portrayal of a mystical connection between people and the land — a theme the Nazis eagerly embraced.
During Germany’s 1940–45 occupation of Norway, Hamsun supported the Nazi-installed government of Vidkun Quisling. His devotion to Hitler was so great that he parted with his 18-carat gold Nobel medal, sending it to Goebbels in hopes that it would earn him a personal meeting with the Führer.
It did. But the audience did not unfold as Hamsun hoped. Although he supported the occupation, he objected to some of its harsher measures, including executions. He hoped to persuade Hitler to soften the regime’s policies. The meeting — retold in a 2005 New Yorker article titled “In From the Cold” — took place June 26, 1943, at Hitler’s retreat in the Bavarian Alps. According to the article, as the two men took tea in Hitler’s study, the conversation turned tense when Hamsun urged Hitler to fire Josef Terboven, the Reich Commissioner for Norway. Hitler rebuffed him, saying, “The Reich Commissioner is a warrior; he’s only there for war-related duties.”
Hitler did not bother to say goodbye when Hamsun left and later snapped at his aides: “I don’t want to see that sort of person here anymore.”
The unpleasant encounter did little to dampen Hamsun’s admiration for the Nazi leader. On May 7, 1945, a collaborationist newspaper published Hamsun’s obituary for Hitler, in which he wrote: “He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations.”
After the war, thousands of Norwegian collaborators were arrested and put on trial — including Hamsun. By then he was 86, and his age, along with his stature as Norway’s most celebrated novelist, worked in his favor. While 40 collaborators were executed, including Quisling, Hamsun received a fine of 325,000 kroner, reduced from 575,000.
Hamsun died on Feb. 19, 1952, at age 92.
As for the Nobel medal he sent to Goebbels — it vanished. No one knows what became of it.
Which brings us to Donald Trump and his pre-owned Nobel.
Hitler had no shame in accepting lavish gifts from industrialists, world leaders, and others who arrived in Berlin seeking favor. But Hitler might well be impressed with Donald Trump’s collection during his second term — a glittering haul accumulated on trips to the Middle East and during visits to the White House by foreign dignitaries and sycophantic American business executives.
Size-wise, nothing comes close to the 747 provided by Qatar. And knowing the way to Trump’s heart, Benjamin Netanyahu personally presented him with a letter that the Israeli leader had sent nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. FIFA, the world soccer federation, went so far as to create its own peace prize for the American president.
Trump kept pressing his case that he deserved the Nobel prize, sometimes aided by foreign allies who publicly insisted that he, more than anyone else, merited the honor. But the Nobel Committee never budged.
A workaround presented itself in the person of María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who had been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in resisting Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship. Machado, desperate for Trump’s backing as Venezuela enters a volatile transition, made a calculation as stark as Hamsun’s in 1943. She handed Trump her Nobel medal in the hope that the gesture would secure her political survival.
Still smoldering over being snubbed by the Nobel Committee for a Peace Prize of his own, Trump lashed out in familiar ways — threatening to use military force to take control of Greenland and to slap heavy new tariffs on European allies. Those threats eventually fizzled after Europe dug in its heels, but the resentment never did.
It’s unlikely America’s Gollum will abandon the quest for his own golden “precious,” one with his name engraved on it. With the inauguration of Trump’s new “Board of Peace,” he may have convinced himself he’s found a fresh path to Oslo. The board — made up of foreign governments invited by Trump — is billed as a vehicle for resolving global conflicts. Permanent membership is offered to those that contribute more than $1 billion. As chairman, Trump would be in a position to steer the board however he wishes.
If the “Board of Peace” doesn’t help him finally secure a gold Nobel medallion, it may still serve another purpose: expanding his already considerable wealth.
Luxury condos on the Gaza waterfront, anyone?
The post Long before Trump’s second-hand Nobel, a laureate sought to curry favor with Nazis by regifting a prize appeared first on The Forward.
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Oct. 7 spurred this secular private school in Manhattan to start holding an annual Shabbat gathering
(New York Jewish Week) — A new Jewish tradition has taken hold at a private, non-Jewish school in Manhattan.
On a recent Friday, about 240 students, parents and educators from the Town School, located on the Upper East Side, stayed late to eat matzah ball soup, recite blessings over challah and candles, and sing Hebrew songs.
It was the third time in as many years that the school had held a Shabbat celebration, and more than half of the students and parents in attendance weren’t Jewish.
“I think there is a real enthusiasm and excitement for families who are not Jewish to come into their first Shabbat or learn more about it again,” said Pierangelo Rossi, the Town School’s director of equity and community action.
Originally from Peru, Rossi is not Jewish. His first Shabbat experience ever was at the Town School in 2024, after Jewish parents organized a gathering in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
For years, the school had special “affinity groups” and spaces for students and parents of color, for “white anti-racist” students, and for queer students and their allies. The attack, and the surge of antisemitism that followed, spurred Jewish students and parents to work with the school to create their own.
While the Town School does not collect information about students’ religion, officials estimate that at least a quarter of the student body is Jewish.
“After Oct. 7, we knew — and it became clear to all of us — that our Jewish community was looking for that sense of affirmation in a way they hadn’t before,” said Head of School Doug Brophy.
Brophy, who has led the Town School since 2018, understood how they felt. He is also vice president of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side.
Affinity groups have emerged as a hot-button issue in the debate over DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. While their proponents say the groups give minority and marginalized populations desperately needed spaces of their own, critics of DEI say the groups can reinforce divisions and inappropriately inject progressive ideologies into schools and other institutions.
Jewish “anti-woke” advocates have particularly criticized the affinity group framework for too often forcing Jewish students into a binary framework about race and privilege that does not recognize the complexity of Jewish identity.
At the same time, tensions amid the aftermath of Oct. 7 roiled some New York City private schools. The head of one elite private school stepped down last summer after members of the school community clashed over identity, antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Gaza war.
At the Town School, officials and parents say, those tensions have been absent. Instead, the entire school community has embraced the Shabbat celebrations alongside the other special events held to honor students’ traditions, such as a lion parade on the school’s block to mark Lunar New Year and a Persian New Year observance led by parents.
“Whether it’s coming from a vulnerability or a difference, it’s [about] wanting to be part of something bigger than yourself, and not just our Jewish families and colleagues feeling a sense of identity, but everyone else developing a greater sense of empathy,” Brophy said.
The Town School is not the only non-Jewish private school in the city to hold Shabbat celebrations in recent years: Riverdale Country Day School in the Bronx says 700 people attended its November 2024 gathering. But it has committed to annual gatherings, which are growing in attendance.
That first Shabbat in 2024 was led by Rabbi Bradley Solmsen from the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue; in 2025, by Rabbi Rena Rifkin from Stephen Wise; and this year, by Ana Turkienicz, an educator from the Upper West Side’s Rodeph Sholom School and the Pelham Jewish Center.
“For me, it was really a very different context where you have non-Jews that are interested in learning about what is it that Jews do and are open,” Turkienicz said. “And it was beautiful.”
To create an educational plan that was still engaging for children of all ages, she narrowed the focus of the event to two words: “Shabbat” and “shalom,” meaning “Sabbath” and “peace.”
“I need to use vocabulary, and I need to work with the room only, with those with concepts that are universal,” Turkienicz added. “And there is a lot. There’s a lot in ‘Shabbat’ and ‘shalom’ that are universal.”
She taught the guests the songs “Bim Bam” and “Salaam” — the latter being the Arabic word for “shalom” — and recited the blessings over the candles and challah, and the younger children decorated placemats, while the older children hung out with their classmates.
14-year-old Daniel Rybak stuck around near the school after his last class of the day got out so he could attend the after-school Shabbat service for his second time.
Rybak, whose mother is Catholic and whose father is Jewish, has attended the Town School for nine years.
“Just talking about the greater world at this point, with all the troubles in the Levant, with Israel and Gaza, as well as just the general sense, I suppose, that things are getting a little more violent around the world — it’s just a nice thing that brings people back to that sense of, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re family, we’re OK, we’re getting through this,’” Rybak said. “It just shows that even throughout all that that’s happened everywhere, there’s still pockets of community and of real hope.”
This year, the Shabbat gathering took on added meaning for some attendees as some of New York’s Jews feel increasingly alienated or afraid following the election of Zohran Mamdani, a longtime and staunch critic of Israel, to the mayor’s office.
“The whole time I was thinking: 20 blocks north from here, there is a new mayor that we don’t know what [he’s] going to be for the Jewish community in New York,” Turkienicz said. “Twenty blocks south of his mansion, we have a private, non-Jewish school doing a Kabbalat Shabbat.”
Katy Williamson, a Jewish parent who helped organize the last two Town School Shabbats and attended this year’s, said she was “really blown away by the sense of community” and surprised by how many people attended.
“I read the news. Obviously, we live in New York City. I’m very aware of what’s going on outside of this, just in the world right now,” she said. “There was just this really warm feeling. … So many people from the school community joined and wanted to be a part of it.”
The post Oct. 7 spurred this secular private school in Manhattan to start holding an annual Shabbat gathering appeared first on The Forward.