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The Purim story starts in fear and ends in vengeance. Can America and Israel break that cycle?
(JTA) — Many people think of Purim as a children’s holiday — unadulterated joy, fun and merriment. But I have come to see it as a profound moral commentary on what it means to hold power, and a cautionary tale about what happens when we fail to do our part to break the cycle of violence when the power is in our hands to do it.
I have been living with my husband Rabbi Aryeh Cohen’s interpretation of Megillat Esther — the biblical book read on the holiday, which begins Monday evening at sundown — for more than 29 years now. It initially caught me off guard during a discussion while we were still dating, back in 1993: “You know, of course, that Purim is all about confronting the impossibility of redemption.” (Of course?!) In short, the king’s viceroy Haman decides capriciously that the Jews must be killed, and the king agrees. It is only after the Jewish heroine Esther marries the king and convinces him that her people do not deserve to be killed does he change the decree, and the Jews are saved. Redemption!
This happy ending is accompanied by another decree, however, in which the Jews are given permission to slaughter those who were going to slaughter them. To authorize this violent self-defense, the king takes the royal ring, a symbol of his authority, from the corpse of Haman and gives it to Esther’s Jewish cousin, Mordecai.
Writes Aryeh: “The question we are left with is this: In the next scene, the scene after the end of the megillah, who will get the ring then? … We suspect that another Haman will get the ring, then another Mordecai, forever.”
Visions of this unredeemed world were on view in recent days as we watched the multi-directional, free-flowing hate catching fire in America, in Israel and in the West Bank. These weeks leading up to Purim have felt all too much like the horrifying parts of the megillah: the reality of Jewish vulnerability in the face of mercurial antisemitism at its beginning; the wielding of Jewish power in a revenge fantasy at its end.
For me, this megillah started two weeks ago when two Jewish men — Persian, like Mordecai — were shot within a block or two of my Los Angeles house simply because they were Jewish men. The shooter had fallen into a conspiracy rabbit hole and believed that Jews had manufactured and released the COVID-19 virus in an attempt to target Asians. Thank God, both men will recover, and I hope that the shooter can recover from his own misguided hate, too. When politicians, media and others play with rhetorical fire and boost conspiracy theories, it lights the torches of vulnerable people, and we all get burned.
Then last week, I watched through waves of nausea as the end of the megillah was reflected in the West Bank, following the killings of Israeli brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv, by a Palestinian shooter. There, Jewish acolytes of Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered 29 praying Palestinians 29 years ago on Purim, took a break from marauding in the Palestinian village of Huwara to offer their evening prayers. In the video that was circulating, the settlers were reciting the words of Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, sometime before or after a resident of nearby Zu’tara, Sameh Aqtash, was shot and killed. They were not reciting the Kaddish for him. Few participants in the pogrom have faced consequences. But the Israeli army has attacked Israelis protesting it.
There were other horrors in between, both here and there — and more since. Innocent Palestinians were killed and injured during military raids in the West Bank. A recent college graduate, the dual American-Israeli citizen Elan Ganeles, was shot to death as he headed to a friend’s wedding in Jerusalem.
And here in the United States, a “Day of Hate” called by far-right antisemitic group put Jews on alert throughout a recent Shabbat.
For these past weeks and months, it has felt like Jews are being squeezed between our vulnerability as Jews here in the United States and Israel and the contortion of Jewish power in Israel — quite literally in the case of the militant Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security, whose party is known as Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power.
On the eve of Purim we need to think about what it means to change the story — for everyone.
In the United States, that means building strong and deep relationships that keep us all safe. California state assembly member Isaac Bryan offered a model at a town hall following the shootings here, when he said that Black and Jewish solidarity looks like “thriving, safe, and healthy communities from Pico-Robertson to Leimert Park.” Bryan names the most identifiable Jewish and Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles to remind us that all Angelenos’ fates are connected. That if we show up for one another and ensure one another’s physical and economic safety and well-being, the city becomes a better place for all of us.
In Israel, it means recognizing that the Israeli government and those that have empowered it are currently “holding the ring” of power. If they continue to act with unrestrained power to terrorize and dispossess Palestinians, or simply allow settlers to do this with no repercussions, they fail to heed the words of Isaiah: “And when you lift up your hands, I will turn My eyes away from you; Though you pray at length, I will not listen. Your hands are stained with crime” (1:15).
When the Israeli nonprofits Tag Meir and Standing Together organized solidarity trips to Huwara last week, they were taking Isaiah’s admonition deeply to heart, refusing to turn their eyes and hearts away, walking toward the residents of Huwara and raising their voices against the settlers’ hate and violence. Tag Meir was founded to counteract settler “price tag” attacks, and shows up for both Palestinian and Israeli families who have been impacted by violence. Standing Together is a growing group of Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel who organize for change. Both are working to change the end of the megillah in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
In response to identity-based violent rhetoric, we must humanize those whom others would pit against us, while humanizing our own people, as well. There are many organizations that create spaces in which we can build relationships that create a variety of pathways for us to act on one another’s behalf, ensuring safety and dignity for one another. In solidarity, we can write a new ending to our megillah.
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Mamdani visits Holocaust survivor at her apartment on Holocaust Remembrance Day
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday made a private visit to the Manhattan apartment of an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, a gesture to a Jewish community divided over his positions, and reflecting his focus on affordability and dignity for New Yorkers living on fixed incomes.
Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mamdani spent 40 minutes talking with Olga Spiegel, who was born in France in 1943 after her family fled there, believing French children would not be separated from their parents. Her father was later deported to a concentration camp. Spiegel escaped with her mother into Italy, hiding for months in a stable before being sheltered by a priest in Rome until liberation, according to Blue Card, an organization that assists Holocaust survivors in need and organized the visit.
Mamdani allocated discretionary funds to the organization while serving as a member of the New York State Assembly, and its executive director, Masha Pearl, was a member of Mamdani’s transition team.
New York is home to the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, with an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 living in the metropolitan area. More than 5,000 are at or below the poverty line, most live alone and many are homebound. Nearly 40% struggle to meet basic needs such as food, housing and medical care, according to the organization, and 84% survive on less than $24,000 a year, largely from Social Security and modest pensions.
City Hall described the private visit, which was not listed on the mayor’s public schedule, as warm and welcoming.
“It was an incredibly powerful meeting,” said Monica Klein, a spokesperson for the mayor, “and drove home that the Holocaust is not simply a thing of the past, but something that impacts countless New Yorkers every single day.”
An artist, Spiegel settled in New York in the mid-1960s and has spent the past 48 years in the same rent-stabilized apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan. Spiegel showed Mamdani her studio and artwork, and the two bonded over their shared love of art. The mayor also shared his family’s immigration story.
The visit came amid growing scrutiny of Mamdani’s approach to Jewish issues. His anti-Zionist worldview and revocation of executive orders tied to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests on his first day in office were met with criticism from mainstream Jewish organizations.
During the mayoral primary last year, Mamdani faced backlash over his decision not to co-sponsor a resolution commemorating the Holocaust in the state legislature. Mamdani pushed back, saying he voted in favor of the Holocaust Remembrance Day resolution every year since he entered the Assembly in 2021 “to honor the more than 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazis.”
In a statement posted on X earlier Tuesday, Mamdani said Holocaust Remembrance Day “calls on us to do more than reflect; it calls on us to act — to confront antisemitism wherever it exists and to reject all forms of hatred and dehumanization.”
The post Mamdani visits Holocaust survivor at her apartment on Holocaust Remembrance Day appeared first on The Forward.
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ISIS Threat Surges Across Syria and Beyond, Raising Alarm Bells From Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa
Islamic State – Central Africa Province released documentary entitled “Jihad and Dawah” covering group’s campaigns in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and battles against Congolese and Ugandan armies. Photo: Screenshot
US and Iraqi officials are warning of a resurgent terrorist threat posed by Islamic State (ISIS), with the number of militants in Syria reportedly soaring to 10,000 and regional instability raising concern from Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Earlier this week, Iraqi intelligence services sounded the alarm over the surging ISIS threat, warning of a sharp increase in the terrorist group’s fighters in northern Syria, the country’s western neighbor, and expressing growing concerns among officials.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri revealed that ISIS fighters in Syria have skyrocketed from roughly 2,000 to 10,000 in just one year.
This number far surpasses last year’s estimate in the UN Security Council report, which placed the total of ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq at roughly 3,000 as of August.
“This represents a real danger for Iraq, because ISIS — whether in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else in the world — is a single organization and will likely seek to establish a new foothold to launch attacks,” al-Shatri told the Washington Post.
He also noted that the terrorists who joined ISIS in Syria over the past year include men previously linked to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and al-Qaeda, many of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with the current political leadership.
As the Syrian government advances to retake territory long controlled by Kurdish forces, Iraqi officials are increasingly concerned about a resurgent ISIS threat.
In the wake of escalating violent clashes across Syria over the past few weeks, chaos erupted in regional prisons holding thousands of ISIS members, allowing many to escape into the desert.
Even though many escaped ISIS members were later recaptured, the Iraqi government rapidly deployed thousands of troops to bolster its border with Syria, warning that the threat of further attacks remained high.
Last week, the US military began relocating ISIS detainees from northeastern Syrian prisons, formerly controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to Iraqi facilities following the SDF’s withdrawal as Syrian government forces advanced into the area.
On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the decision to temporarily transfer ISIS detainees to local prisons aims to safeguard both Iraq’s national security and the stability of the broader region.
According to the US Central Command, around 2,500 ISIS fighters remained at large in Syria and Iraq in 2024, but no updates have been released since.
These latest warnings from the Iraqi government come amid rising concerns following the departure this month of the last US troops from Ain al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar province, bringing to a close a mission that had supported local forces in combating ISIS terrorism.
The United States is now focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, where analysts have identified rising Islamist terrorist threats, making the region a central concern in the fight against global jihadist terrorism.
Last week, the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said Washington is stepping up equipment shipments and intelligence support to Nigeria as part of a wider government effort to strengthen its presence across the region and assist African forces in combating Islamic State-linked militants.
Brennan also revealed that the US military continues to engage closely with the armed forces of the junta-led Sahel nations — Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali.
Under US President Donald Trump, “we’ve gotten a lot more aggressive and are working with partners to target … [regional] threats, mainly ISIS,” Brennan told reporters.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” he continued. “It’s been about more enabling partners and then providing them equipment and capabilities with less restrictions so that they can be more successful.”
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Antisemitism Witnessed by 78% of EU Teachers in Classrooms, UN Survey Finds
Krakow, Poland – Oct. 5, 2024: Pro-Palestinian activists in front of the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University. Photo: Artur Widak via Reuters Connect
Teachers across the European Union are witnessing antisemitism as a near daily social occurrence in the classroom and the workplace, according to a new survey issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Released on Tuesday, the survey of 2,030 teachers found that 78 percent have “encountered at least one antisemitic incident between students,” and 27 percent have “witnessed nine or more such incidents.” It added that 61 percent saw students promoting Holocaust denialism, while others had students who drew or wore Nazi symbols. Forty-two percent witnessed “other teachers being antisemitic.”
“Hate speech, notably antisemitism and Holocaust denial, has reached levels not seen since World War II,” UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany said in a statement. “Most teachers have never received specific training to confront this reality, including the consequences related to AI development. UNESCO provides policymakers with unique tools to empower teachers in more than 30 countries — from classrooms and campuses to sports clubs — and soon even more.”
Included in a UNESCO report titled “Addressing Antisemitism Through Education: A Survey of Teachers’ Knowledge and Understanding,” the survey comes amid a global rise in antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Since then, many European antisemitic incidents have occurred on college campuses, including someone assaulting a group of Jewish students while shouting “Zionist fascists” at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Vienna hosting an “Intifada Camp,” a pro-Hamas encampment. At the Free University of Brussels campus in Solbosch, a pro-Hamas group illegally occupied an administrative building and renamed it after a terrorist. Elsewhere across Europe, anti-Zionists damaged property to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros, desecrated Jewish religious symbols, graffitied Jewish students’ dormitories with swastikas, and carried out gang assaults on Jewish student leaders.
Violence in the streets of Europe’s major cities is also a regular occurrence. In July 2025, a group of people wielding knives attacked Jews walking home from an event on the Greek island of Rhodes; in Davos, Switzerland a man spat on, attacked, and verbally abused a Jewish couple— an offense he reportedly perpetrated multiple times against other Jewish people.
European governments are responding to the antisemitism crisis by paying closer attention to its linkage with the politics and ideology of anti-Zionism, a connection many political leaders hesitated to acknowledge and which UNESCO, despite having exuded anti-Zionist hostility in the past, also cited as a leading cause of rising antisemitism.
“Almost half of teachers (43.6 percent) had encountered students articulating hateful comments in relation to the State of Israel either once or twice, or often,” the report, summarizing the survey results, stated. “Hateful comments targeted at the State of Israel might not necessarily be antisemitism and may be motivated by other forms of hostility. However, comments motivated by hate are significantly more likely to include prejudice, or incite further dehumanization and violence.”
The document added, “Moreover, the prevalence of emotionally charged comments around the conflict in the Middle East highlights the salience of this topic and the need for targeted training and guidance for teachers on how to handle difficult conversations in an increasingly polarized environment.”
Across the Atlantic, teachers in the US have seen a surge of antisemitism in K-12 schools.
According to another survey conducted by the StandWithUs Jewish advocacy organization, 61.6 of teachers have been both targets and witnesses of antisemitic conduct in a professional setting. Meanwhile, nearly half suffered antisemitism perpetrated by their teachers unions, purportedly their advocates and representatives in collective bargaining.
School districts, obligated to comply with civil rights laws which proscribe discrimination, fail at prevention, according to the data. Of the 65 percent of respondents who said they are required to take anti-bias trainings, only 10 percent said those trainings address antisemitism.
“This first of its kind empirical study sought to understand antisemitism experienced by Jewish educators in K-12 education. Over 60 percent of respondents reporting that they personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism in their profession is an astounding number,” StandWithUs data and analytics director Dr. Alexandra Fishman said in a statement. “StandWithUs is deeply committed to rigorous research that serves both academic and lay audiences.”
Civil rights groups have argued that pushing anti-Zionism in the classroom can have a profound impact on students, who in many cases perpetrate antisemitic incidents. On Thursday, for example, local media reported that two 15-year-olds were arrested on suspicion of having graffitied 60 swastikas all over a playground in Brooklyn, New York.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.