RSS
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.”
—
The post The unofficial mayor of Queens’ Bukharian Jewish community gets a long-awaited honor appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Bryan Singer Secretly Filmed Period Drama With Jon Voight Critical of Israel for Lebanon War: Report
Jon Voight at the opening night of the 2023 Beverly Hills Film Festival held at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, California, on April 19, 2023. Photo: FS//AdMedia/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Jewish-American filmmaker Bryan Singer has returned to the director’s chair after a long hiatus with a film starring Oscar winner Jon Voight that is set in the Middle East and critical of Israel, Variety revealed on Wednesday.
Singer secretly filmed the period drama and one source who saw the final cut, but is not involved with the production, thinks the feature is “going to be a huge hotbed of controversy” because of its attention on the Middle East. “It makes Israel look really bad and could be polarizing,” the insider told Variety.
The source said the film is set in late 1970s or early 1980s. On June 6, 1982, Israel launched the First Lebanon War against Palestinian terrorists based in southern Lebanon following the attempted assassination of Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Shlomo Argov by a terrorist cell.
The “Superman Returns” director shot the new film in Greece in 2023, and it focuses on the relationship between a father and son, Variety added. Israeli filmmaker Yariv Horovoitz is also reportedly collaborating on the project. There are no details about a release date.
Voight is a longtime supporter of Israel and said in 2018 that he feels an obligation to combat antisemitism. Last year, he was critical of his daughter, actress and filmmaker Angelina Jolie, when she slammed Israel’s defensive military campaign against Hamas in Gaza following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Singer – who was raised Jewish in suburban New Jersey – has not directed in mainstream Hollywood since he was infamously fired by 20th Century Fox from “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 2017 and replaced during shooting, after several absences during the film’s production. He was signed on to direct a remake of the action film “Red Sonja,” but was reportedly fired from the project amid allegations in 2019 of sexual misconduct involving minors, which he denied.
The director’s past credits include four films in the “X-Men” franchise, “Valkyrie,” and the Oscar-winning film “The Usual Suspects.”
Singer faced sexual misconduct allegations starting in 1997, when two teenage boys claimed the director ordered them to strip naked for a scene in his film “Apt Pupil.” The filmmaker has never faced criminal charges for the sexual misconduct allegations made against him in 1997 or in later years.
Singer has been living in Israel for several years and Variety reported in 2023 that he was looking to make a comeback into the mainstream Hollywood film industry with features set in and around Israel.
RSS
Italian Law Professor Faces Backlash Over Viral Antisemitic Social Media Posts
An Italian law professor is facing mounting backlash after past antisemitic social media posts went viral, sparking outrage among the local Jewish community and public officials.
Professor Luca Nivarra, who teaches in the Faculty of Law at the University of Palermo in Sicily, has come under scrutiny after several of his social media posts went viral, spreading antisemitic and hateful content.
“I don’t want to meddle in matters that don’t concern me directly, but, having very few tools at our disposal to oppose the Palestinian Holocaust, a signal, however modest, could be to unfriend your Jewish ‘friends’ on Facebook, even the ‘good’ ones, who declare themselves disgusted by what the Israeli government and the IDF are doing,” Nivarra wrote in one of his posts.
“They lie, and with their lies, they help cover up the horror: it’s a small, tiny thing, but let’s start making them feel alone, face to face with the monstrosity to which they are complicit,” he continued.
On Tuesday, the university issued a public statement distancing itself from Nivarra’s antisemitic remarks. Despite mounting public outrage, Nivarra has not faced any disciplinary action yet.
Massimo Midiri, Dean of the University of Palermo, condemned such hateful rhetoric, calling it “a personal and culturally dangerous initiative, far removed from our academic principles.”
“Nivarra’s statements risk fueling the very dynamics he claims to oppose. Complex issues like the Middle East conflict require dialogue and critical engagement, not exclusion or ideological censorship,” Midiri said in a statement.
Italy’s Minister of University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, also denounced Nivarra’s remarks, saying they “not only offend the Jewish people but also all who uphold the values of respect and civil coexistence.”
“Conflicts are overcome through dialogue, not isolation and it is only through this path that an authentic journey toward peace can be built, an objective to which Italy and the international community continue to dedicate their efforts,” the Italian diplomat wrote in a post on X.
This is not the first time Nivarra has made public antisemitic statements and spread anti-Jewish hateful rhetoric. In his previous Facebook posts, he also wrote that “there are no good Israelis” and that “Israeli society is morally rotten.”
Nivarra also compared the Israeli Defense Forces’ defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to the actions of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann during the Holocaust.
“The only difference between Adolf Eichmann and the IDF is that Eichmann defended himself by saying he was following orders, while Israeli soldiers happily do what they do,” he wrote in another social media post.
Since his posts went viral, Nivarra has faced mounting criticism on social media, but he has denied any accusations of antisemitism.
“You can call me an anti-Semite when I am not one at all. There is an insurmountable distance between me and the perpetrators of these horrors,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
RSS
‘Six Million Not Enough’: Minneapolis School Shooter Scrawled Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Messages on Guns
Law enforcement officers set up barriers after a shooting at Annunciation Church, which is also home to an elementary school, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ben Brewer
The lone suspect in Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, Minnesota, scrawled antisemitic and anti-Israel messages across his weapons and allegedly shared his desire to kill “filthy Zionist Jews” in a notebook before unleashing a barrage of gunfire on students and parishioners.
Law enforcement officials identified the shooter as Robin Westman, 23, who died by suicide at the scene. According to police, Westman opened fire during morning Mass in the school’s adjoining church, killing two children (aged 8 and 10) and injuring 17 others.
Witnesses said the church erupted in chaos as stained-glass windows shattered and gunfire ripped through pews filled with children. Teachers and staff rushed to shield students, with some ushering them outside the building.
The shooting is being investigated as both a domestic terrorism case and a hate crime against Catholics, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
However, the assailant also appeared to endorse antisemitic conspiracies and express a desire to kill Jews and Israelis.
Researchers at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported they found videos believed to be from Westman showing firearms and ammunition magazines marked with the antisemitic messages. Investigators are also reviewing the now-deleted YouTube channel allegedly linked to Westman that featured disturbing videos uploaded before the attack.
“Israel must fall and “Burn Israel” were among the writings on the weapons, as seen in the video. In addition, the messages on the guns included “6 million wasn’t enough” — an apparent reference to the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust, and “Burn HIAS” — an apparent reference to a Jewish organization which helps settle refugees.
Westman also allegedly wrote “kill Donald Trump” on a gun magazine as well as anti-black and anti-Latino racist messaging.
The videos also included images of a notebook with writing in the Cyrillic alphabet.
“If I will carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” the notebook said, according to a translation by the New York Post. Westman also allegedly wrote slogans such as “Free Palestine.”
Images of the content has been widely circulated on social media.
Robin Westman, the suspected shooter in today’s mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, appears to have had a YouTube Channel named “Robin W” which has since been deleted, that contained several video consisting of guns, a manifesto… pic.twitter.com/B3JJUOIGJp
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) August 27, 2025
Shocking antisemitic messages spotted on the Minneapolis shooter’s gun including:
– “Israel must fall,”
– “Burn Israel”
– “6 million wasn’t enough.”
– “ Burn HIAS (originally a Jewish resettlement org for refugees)Via our colleague @RealSaavedra pic.twitter.com/NFUnkRNlDs
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 27, 2025
An analysis of the shooter’s apparent manifesto by the ADL found no singular political motive. The assailant “scrawled numerous references and symbols on their weapons linked to a broad range of mass attackers, mimicking the 2019 Christchurch, 2022 Buffalo, and 2025 Antioch shooters, among others, who marked their weapons before launching their attacks,” the ADL wrote.
“The references found on the attacker’s weapons do not suggest a deep knowledge of white supremacy. Instead, the references point to a broader fixation on mass violence,” the group concluded.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who is Jewish, spoke with raw emotion after visiting the scene. “There are no words that can capture the horror and the evil of this unspeakable act,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the students “were met with evil and horror and death.”
“We often come to these and say these unspeakable tragedies or there’s no words for this. There shouldn’t be words for these types of incidents because they should not happen and there’s no words that are going to ease the pain of the families today,” Walz added.
The suspect was reportedly a transgender woman who changed her name from Robert to Robin in 2020. Westman’s mother worked as a secretary at Annunciation until 2021, according to news reports, and authorities are still examining whether that connection influenced the target.
The tragedy adds to a growing list of school and faith-based shootings in the United States this year. Experts warn that antisemitic conspiracy theories, spread widely online, can inspire such violent attacks.
The tragedy came a week after the ADL released a new report highlighting how extremist online spaces are fueling not only school shootings but also a broader rise in antisemitism across the US. According to the report, many websites containing violent and gruesome material have pulled young people into white supremacist propaganda and conspiracy theories, inspiring them to commit deadly attacks.