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These Bronx 8th-graders traveled 4 hours to pay a shiva call to the family of 2 Israelis murdered by Hamas

(New York Jewish Week) – Alyssa Halpert, an eighth-grader at SAR Academy from New Rochelle, had never met, nor even vaguely knew Maurice Shnaider when she traveled 100 miles to his house to make a shiva call.

But it wasn’t a hard decision for Halpert, along with two dozen of her classmates from the Modern Orthodox day school, to get on a bus after school on Wednesday to make the trip from Riverdale to Shnaider’s home in Kingston, New York. They knew his sister and brother-in-law, Margit Shnaider Silverman and Yosi Silverman, were among the 1,400 Israelis murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7.

“After I heard what happened, I just thought it would be a good thing to go,” Halpert told the New York Jewish Week. “He’s going through a really hard time. If we went and made him happy for even two seconds, it’s worth it.” 

Alongside the murder of his sister and brother-in-law, who lived in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Shnaider’s niece and nephew, Shiri and Yarden Bibas, and their young, red-haired sons Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months old, became early faces of the hostage crisis after a Hamas video of Shiri and her sons became public on the day of the attack. Kfir, who was using a pacifier in the video, is believed to be the youngest hostage.

The family’s kibbutz in southern Israel was especially hard-hit during the Hamas attack; between a quarter and a third of the kibbutz’s 350 residents were killed or kidnapped. The Bibas family is thought to be among more than 220 people held hostage in Gaza; the Silvermans were initially thought to be among the hostages, too, but their bodies were later identified and they were buried in Israel on Monday.

SAR Academy has a tradition of showing support for Jewish community members in need, especially when it comes to Jewish mourning rituals. Recently, when the father of an eighth-grader died, all the kids in the class visited while the family was sitting shiva, marking a seven-day period of mourning after a funeral

The school had learned about Wednesday’s gathering in Kingston the day before from an SAR parent, who had been in touch with Shnaider’s rabbi at Chabad of Ulster County.

“We got the message out to students about this opportunity, and when they understood the significance of what was going on, they knew immediately it was worth it,” said Rabbi Zev Hait, the middle school’s director of Jewish life and learning who chaperoned the students on the visit.

At Shnaider’s home, the students were able to sit and chat with the grieving brother for about 20 to 30 minutes, Hait said. Their group was among hundreds of people who came from around the state and beyond, from different Jewish denominations and backgrounds, after an announcement was distributed around WhatsApp groups. “It was an amazing sight, ‘Am Yisroel B’Yachad’ — the Jewish people being together,” Hait said. 

Hait said that while it was important for the students to understand the importance of showing up for fellow Jewish people in need, he wasn’t convinced about how much comfort the young teens could provide, especially amongst a sea of mourners.

But as Halpert described it, “a lot of students went up close to talk to [Shnaider]. He was appreciative that we came in, really happy and very surprised. He asked other people to move out of the way,” so he could talk to the students. 

Halpert added that she had worried it might be uncomfortable with the stranger in mourning, but it turned out to be much easier than she thought because “he was a very friendly person.” 

The students gather around Maurice Shnaider, in blue, for a shiva call at his home in Kingston. (Yael Baker)

“It was sweet in the way only kids can be,” Hait described. “A few of them sat in front of him cross-legged, in a way that an adult never would. He spoke about his sister as someone who never got angry, something for us all to learn from her.” He added that Shnaider emphasized to the students and other shiva attendees that they were here for each other just as much as they were here for him. 

The following day, at a public event in front of Kingston’s Chabad synagogue, Shnaider spoke about the outpouring of support from his community. 

“I stand before you today deeply moved by the overwhelming outpouring of support from hundreds of people who have reached out to us,” Shnaider said, according to a report from the Daily Freeman. “People from all over and from all walks of life, your presence here, in person and in spirit, has been a source of immense comfort and strength to not only myself but to my entire family, whether they are here with us in the United States or in Israel.”

On the bus ride, which lasted two hours each way, the students discussed the mitzvah of making shiva calls, both to respect and honor those who have passed and to provide even temporary relief of the pain of the mourners. 

Shnaider insisted that the kids take some cookies with them for the road, according to people who were present. But what struck Halpert the most was that Shnaider was adamant that they would all meet again soon — when there is good news to celebrate and his family is returned. “He has a lot of faith in Hashem,” she said. “Right now you just have to hope for the best and do all you can to stay positive.”

Hait said the visit was in line with SAR’s “action-driven” values, which he said were themselves in line with the spirit of the moment. 

“Since the war broke out, you see this desire to help,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what’s going on, if there’s a test the next day or a basketball practice, if the moment calls for it, we’ll show up and support.” 

Halpert, who has cousins and friends in Israel, said that in addition to the shiva visit, the school has been teaching about the war; organizing prayer services and recitations; packing duffel bags of supplies and writing letters of support to IDF soldiers.

“The message that we’ve been giving our kids for the last three weeks has been that the things that you do matter,” said SAR Academy’s principal, Rabbi Bini Krauss, who spent the last week in Israel meeting with the more than 75 SAR alumni who are serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, as well as with former teachers and parents. 

“When you get a position to do something, you try to do it,” Krauss said. “We don’t want to scare the kids, but we want to appropriately introduce them to the realities of the world. They had a job to do and they chose to do it.”


The post These Bronx 8th-graders traveled 4 hours to pay a shiva call to the family of 2 Israelis murdered by Hamas appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.

Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.

Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”

“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”

Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.

UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.

Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.

“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”

On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”

The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.

“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.

“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.

“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.

“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”

During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”

At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.

The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.

As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.

Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.

For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance. 

On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.

One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”

The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.

These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference. 

Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.

This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students. 

Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.

These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.

McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction. 

This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.

We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”

Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.

The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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