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The unofficial mayor of Queens’ Bukharian Jewish community gets a long-awaited honor
(New York Jewish Week) — Throughout his nearly 50 years living in Forest Hills, Queens, Gavriel Davidov was the unofficial mayor of the borough’s Bukharian Jewish community. He was widely known a peacekeeper, and the first person someone could turn to for help.
The owner of Gavriel Davidov Jewelry, a fine jeweler in Manhattan’s Diamond District on 47th Street, Davidov was among the first members of the Bukharian community — mostly Russian-speakers from Central Asia — to resettle in New York City. Seeking to escape Soviet restrictions on religious Jewish life and expression, Davidov, his wife Zoya and their four daughters — Ninel, Susan, Stella and Zhanna — immigrated from Tajikistan to New York in 1976.
By the time Davidov died in April 2020 at 85, the number of Bukharian Jews in New York had grown to over 50,000 people. And many of them had Davidov to thank for the strength of their community: Over the course of his life in the United States, he helped establish dozens of yeshivas, synagogues and community centers in Forest Hills and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Last month, Davidov’s dedication to the Bukharian community — and his legacy of humility, leadership and honesty — was honored by the City of New York with the co-naming of the corner of 64th Road and 108th Street, near the epicenter of Bukharian life in New York, as Gavriel Davidov Corner.
“He was the patriarch of our family and he was a pillar in the community,” Gabriella Kaplan, one of Davidov’s nine grandchildren, told the New York Jewish Week in a recent phone interview. “Whenever I’d walk down the street with him, everyone was his very best friend. You couldn’t get two feet because everyone had to stop him to say hello. It was so cool to see how much respect he had in the community and how much everyone loved him.”
“He is finally getting the recognition that he deserved,” said Kaplan, 28, who was one of about 10 people who spoke at the unveiling ceremony on Oct. 22.
According to Manashe Khaimov, an adjunct professor at Queens College specializing in Bukharian Jewish history and the founder of the Sephardic American Mizrahi Initiative, the city’s recognition of Davidov is a major step in acknowledging and celebrating Bukharian life in the United States. “It leaves our footprint on the history of New York,” he said.
“For the Bukharian youth and for the Bukharian people as a community, this is a big deal,” he added. “Living in Forest Hills, walking down the street in Forest Hills, to have a street named after a Bukharian person is an empowering moment.”
For Davidov’s family, which also includes 11 great-grandchildren, the ceremony provided a bit of much-needed closure. Davidov died just as COVID-19 took hold in New York City and last month’s ceremony, said Kaplan, was “a celebration of his life that we didn’t necessarily get to have in the way that we should have when he passed.”
A prominent lawyer in Tajikistan, Davidov arrived with his family in the U.S. via Vienna and Israel. The family settled in a two-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills — the same apartment Davidov inhabited for the rest of his life.
According to his daughter Susan Davidov Hod, they were the tenth Bukharian family to make their home in the neighborhood, which is now home to thousands of Bukharian Jews and dozens of synagogues.
Upon arriving in New York, despite being well-educated and fairly well-off in Tajikistan, Davidov found work as a taxi driver, a job he held for three years to support his family while learning English. According to favorite story passed down by the family, Davidov picked up a man from JFK Airport and told the passenger in broken English about his journey to the United States and his four girls at home. At the end of the day, he was cleaning out his car and realized the man had left his suitcase in the cab.
“We opened it up — it was full of cash,” Hod recalled. Her father insisted he had to return it.
Hod found a business card in the suitcase and they called the passenger. “My father didn’t speak English very well, so I talked,” Hod said. “My father drove back to him the next morning and gave him the full case. A week later, we got four or five boxes of clothing because the man knew that he had four daughters. He sent us the most fashionable clothes at the time.”
This type of honesty was typical of her father, Hod said, who was 18 when he opened his jewelry business in 1980 and she started working with him — an experience she describes as “amazing.”
Hod recalled how her father would help others get started in the jewelry business, sometimes signing on as a guarantor for loans. “People still owe him a lot of money,” she said. “But he never chased that. Not that he was a millionaire, believe me. But his heart was of gold.”
Davidov also quietly worked throughout his life to boost the Bukharian community, helping to establish two Orthodox synagogues, the Bukharian Jewish Community Center and Beth Gavriel Synagogue, as well as multiple yeshivas in the neighborhood.
“He planted the seeds for 35 Bukharian synagogues in New York City and united thousands of congregants,” said City Council member Lynn Schulman, who represents Forest Hills and its environs and who sponsored the legislation to co-name the street. “As a leader in the Bukharian community, Gavriel always gave of himself, never asking for anything in return. He has left an indelible mark in Forest Hills and throughout our city.”
“He was really the person that so many people in the Bukharian community came to. He was very quiet about it. He wasn’t public. He wasn’t looking for name recognition. But helped so many people that were new to the Bukharian community and Queens, whether they needed money or had a family emergency,” said Assembly Member David Weprin, who knew Davidov personally. “He was the person that people said: Go see Gavriel Davidov. He will help you.”
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The post The unofficial mayor of Queens’ Bukharian Jewish community gets a long-awaited honor appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Free Palestine’ Activist in Arizona Wearing ‘Israel Kills Children’ T-Shirt Gets Arrested After Refusing to Leave Gym
A pro-Palestinian activist who was kicked out of a gym in Gilbert, Arizona, and arrested after he wore a shirt that read “Israel Kills Children.” Photo: Screenshot
A pro-Palestinian activist wearing an offensive T-shirt critical of Israel was kicked out of a gym in Gilbert, Arizona, and arrested this week after he ignored requests by gym management to leave the premises.
The man, who goes by the social media handle Resistance is Beautiful, posted videos of the incident on Wednesday on Instagram. It began when he was exercising at a Life Time gym in Gilbert while wearing a black short-sleeve T-shirt that said “Israel Kills Children.” He said that when he arrived at the gym and was checked in, a gym employee told him that he needed to take off the shirt, whose message was an apparent commentary on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war falsely accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. He refused to take off the shirt.
Shortly afterward, the gym’s manager approached the activist and told him that he must leave the premises for not having “an active membership, or the gym would call the police. When the activist refused to leave the facility, police were called to escort him out of the building.
“You don’t have an active membership so I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the gym’s manager, Mike Esposito, said to the anti-Israel activist in a video shared on Instagram.
“I just paid for my membership, what do you mean?” the activist replied. “I pay for my membership … I’ve been a member here for three years. Payment goes through every month.”
“Someone from corporate … the cops are on their way,” Esposito said. “Your membership is not active so we called the police because you’re trespassing here in the club.”
The activist then asked Esposito, “Is the problem the shirt? Or is it the skin color?” He also told the manager: “You know where there are no more gyms left? In Palestine. Because you guys bombed it all. Are you offended by the shirt or the fact that you guys kill all the Palestinians in the gyms over there [in Gaza]. Is the problem the shirt?”
Esposito, who is reportedly not Jewish or Israeli but of Italian descent, ignored the man’s questions about the T-shirt and his remarks about Palestinians. Instead, the manager repeatedly said that the activist does not have an active membership at the facility. “You just don’t have an active membership, so right now you’re trespassing because you’re in the club without an active membership,” he said. “We have to ask you to leave.”
Two Gilbert police officers arrived not long afterward and arrested the anti-Israel activist for trespassing. Before they escorted him out of the gym, he told police, “There’s a Holocaust going on in Palestine … there are no more gyms left in Palestine, you guys bombed all of them. Free Palestine.” He also shared that he wore the “Israel Kills Children” T-shirt previously at the gym, and staff members told him in the past that it was offensive. “They’ve always said, ‘Oh that shirt is offensive.’ You know, typical Gilbert white supremacy stuff,” he said.
The founder, CEO, chairman, and president of Life Time is Bahram Akradi, who was born in Tehran, Iran, and emigrated to the US months before the 1979 Iranian revolution. He founded the chain of gyms in 1992.
The activist was released from the Gilbert police station shortly after the incident at the gym. “There is no greater honor in the world than to sit in a jail cell for Palestine,” he said in an Instagram video posted on Wednesday after his release. “And we’ll do it over and over and over again until we break this enemy and we get Palestine back. That’s my word.”
The man has shared other photos and videos on social media of him clashing with police officers in Gilbert, trespassing while carrying a Palestinian flag and getting arrested for his anti-Israel activism. He also shared clips of himself wearing other anti-Israel shirts, including one that read “Israel is a terrorist project, Free Palestine,” and another that said, “Israel KILLS and America covers it up.”
The post ‘Free Palestine’ Activist in Arizona Wearing ‘Israel Kills Children’ T-Shirt Gets Arrested After Refusing to Leave Gym first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Gal Gadot Addresses Controversy Over Not Wearing Hostage Pin to the Golden Globes
Gal Gadot at the 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. Photo: Dan MacMedan-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
Israeli actress Gal Gadot took to social media on Wednesday to explain why she did not wear to the 82nd Golden Globes this past weekend a pin in solidarity with the 100 hostages still held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip for more than 450 days.
In a message shared on her Instagram Story, the “Wonder Woman” star, 39, started by clarifying that contrary to Israeli media reports, she was “never forbidden” by Golden Globes organizers from wearing to the award ceremony on Sunday night in Beverly Hills a pin that featured a yellow ribbon, which is a symbol that calls for the return of hostages abducted by Hamas terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Some people chose to tell a story that never happened, and I prefer to focus on what’s real and truly important — our hostages,” she wrote. She then detailed her conscious decision not to wear a pin with a yellow ribbon to the Golden Globes — a move for which she was widely criticized by many pro-Israel supporters on social media. The “Red Notice” star explained that she instead chose to show solidarity with the hostages by wearing a yellow sapphire ring to the award show, where she was a presenter.
“Everyone expresses their support in a way that suits them. I chose to share a post with global reach and wear a yellow ring as a symbol of solidarity,” she wrote in the Instagram Story. “What truly matters is that the hostages come home now. My heart is with the families waiting for them. May we experience quieter and safer days.”
The message on her Instagram Story was written in both English and Hebrew, and was accompanied by an image of a yellow ribbon.
Before the Golden Globes took place on Sunday night, Gadot uploaded a post on Instagram that featured a statement and photos about the remaining 100 hostages with a focus on 20-year-old Israeli hostage Liri Albag, who was featured in a video that Hamas released on Saturday. Albag was taken hostage along with six other female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces at the Nahal Oz army base on the Israel-Gaza border during the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel in October 2023. The five women are still held hostage by Hamas.
Gadot wrote in her Instagram post on Sunday afternoon that while she prepared to attend the Golden Globes, “my heart is heavy, and my soul aches knowing the hostages are still there [in Gaza].” She added: “Every day that passes without an agreement puts their lives in greater danger. I can’t stop thinking about the families, waiting for them, counting the hours, the minutes, clinging to hope. They must come home. We all deserve to see them return, alive. Bring them home now.”
Gadot presented at the 82nd Golden Globes wearing a custom black silk Giorgio Armani Privé long sleeve gown that she styled with Tiffany & Co. jewelry and a yellow sapphire ring.
A screenshot of Gal Gadot’s Instagram Story.
The post Gal Gadot Addresses Controversy Over Not Wearing Hostage Pin to the Golden Globes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Polish President Wants Netanyahu to Be Able to Go to Auschwitz Anniversary Despite ICC Arrest Warrant: Aide
People with Israeli flags attend the International March of the Living at the former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp, in Brzezinka near Oswiecim, Poland, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Poland’s president asked the government to ensure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can choose to attend the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp without fear of arrest under an ICC warrant, a senior aide said on Thursday.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu and his ex-defense minister, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group.
Israel has condemned the warrants for Netanyahu and former defense chief Yoav Gallant, saying that it has acted in self-defense in its air and ground war in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that President Andrzej Duda had written Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying Poland should ensure Netanyahu can be “unhindered” in attending the Jan. 27 Auschwitz commemoration given the event’s exceptional nature.
Malgorzata Paprocka, the head of Duda’s office, confirmed to state news agency PAP on Thursday that such a letter had been sent.
“In the opinion of the president, there is one issue — precisely because it is the Auschwitz camp, every person from Israel, every representative of the authorities of this country should have the opportunity to take part in this exceptional event.”
She said Duda was waiting for a response. Tusk’s office did not reply to an emailed request for comment.
Duda is a right-wing nationalist who has had tense relations with Tusk’s centrist, pro-European government since it took office in December 2023.
Asked by state-run news channel TVP Info whether Netanyahu could count on a guarantee from Poland that he would not be arrested, Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said: “There is no such topic, because Mr. Netanyahu is not coming to Europe.”
Meanwhile, the Polish Foreign Ministry denied reports on Thursday that the country had threatened to arrest Netanyahu should he choose to attend the Jan. 27 ceremony marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
“We are aware that this fake news is being spread in the US media, as if Polish Secretary of State Władysław T. Bartoszewski had stated that Prime Minister Netanyahu would be arrested upon his arrival in Poland, based on a ruling by the International Criminal Court,” the Foreign Ministry told JNS in a statement.
“Such a statement has never been made,” the ministry added. “Poland is a safe country and any leader visiting Poland is entitled to protection granted by the Ministry of the Interior.”
A spokesperson for Netanyahu declined to comment. Netanyahu has not said whether he would attend the Auschwitz commemoration. He has attended previous anniversary events at Auschwitz.
Over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold, and disease at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War Two.
More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The post Polish President Wants Netanyahu to Be Able to Go to Auschwitz Anniversary Despite ICC Arrest Warrant: Aide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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