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‘You don’t know yet, do you?’ How Jews offline for a 2-day holiday found out about the attack on Israel
(JTA) —When Rabbi James Proops arrived at his Modern Orthodox synagogue in Livingston, New Jersey, on Saturday morning, he found three people waiting to meet him: two members of the security committee and a non-Jewish guard.
“As I approached, they looked at me … you know, I could see there was something wrong with the look,” Proops recalled on Monday. “And they said, ‘Rabbi, You don’t know yet, do you?’ And I said, ‘Don’t know what?’”
That was how Proops learned about the horrors unfolding in Israel — an attack by Hamas that would leave more than 900 Israelis dead, wounded and taken captive in brutal fashion.
It would fall to him to pass the grim news along: Because Proops’ synagogue, Suburban Torah, is Orthodox, most congregants refrain from using electronic devices on Shabbat or on the following day, which was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. That meant, he said, “The vast majority of people that were coming to synagogue came that morning [had] no clue what was going on.”
Proops chose the moment in the service when Jewish communities recite a prayer for those in need of healing to share that, in fact, many Jews were hurt. He offered numbers that were staggering — yet far smaller than what would become known.
“The whole sanctuary was in absolute silence as I began to relay what was going on in Israel,” he said. “And I could see in the faces, just shock and bewilderment.”
It was a scene that would unfold countless times over the weekend. There was no question about how Israelis who observe Shabbat and holidays found out about the attack on their country on Saturday morning, as sirens announced incoming rockets, phone alerts sounded and soldiers were called to duty. They got more details on Saturday night when the Simchat Torah and Shemini Atzeret holiday ended in Israel and they turned their phones back on.
But in the rest of the world, where the two holidays are celebrated over consecutive days, the process of finding out was slower and more drawn out. Orthodox Jews often found themselves relying on non-Jews to feed them details about the catastrophe unfolding in the country where they have many friends and family.
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt was on her way to teach a Torah class for bat mitzvah-aged girls when a member of her synagogue approached her.
“You don’t know what’s happening in the world. It’s really bad,” the woman told her.
“I didn’t understand what I was even hearing from her,” recalled Chizhik-Goldschmidt, a longtime journalist who has contributed to the New York Times and The Atlantic and now leads The Altneu synagogue in New York City with her husband. But when she returned to the main sanctuary from the class, she saw that something had changed.
“There were people hanging off the rafters, it was so packed with Jews,” she recalled. “And I just saw on their faces that they had seen something very traumatizing. And they didn’t know how to process it. I just saw the look on their faces.”
Throughout the morning, Chizhik-Goldschmidt said several people came up to her in a repeat of her first encounter — telling her that she did not know what was happening.
“I understood in that moment that this was not another rocket exchange,” she said. “It’s a very strange experience to be an observer, and you’re sort of in this almost hermetically sealed bubble in time and space.”
But living in New York City, Chizhik-Goldschmidt explained, meant having access to plenty of people who did know what was happening and who had seen the news. She began walking into different bodegas to ask for information. She spoke to her doorman. At the synagogue’s kiddush, she spoke to the wait staff, asking them in Spanish how many people had died.
“It felt like from another era, when there are rumors, and you don’t know what is true,” Chizhik-Goldschmidt said. “I heard there was a pogrom. I heard there was a pogrom in another city. I heard there were Jews. I heard there were rapes. I heard, I heard, I heard. It was a total mess. … Unfortunately, all of them were true, but it was just so impossible to comprehend at the time that all those things could happen.”
Avi Rovinsky, who attended an Orthodox synagogue in Cleveland, learned about the attack when the rabbi informed the congregation in the middle of the morning prayer service on Saturday. The congregation paused their prayers to recite three chapters of Psalms — a traditional Jewish response to tragedy. “Whenever the rabbi spoke it was about the joy of the holiday while still having your heart ripped out,” Rovinsky said.
Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel in Chicago found out from an Israel congregant who was waiting for him at the synagogue with a flask. Finkelstein said he cracked a joke about it being too early to drink before being told about what was happening in Israel. He then relayed the news to his congregation during services, just before the Yizkor prayer of mourning recited four times a year, including on Saturday.
“It was certainly a holy burden to be able to kind of share that in real time,” he said.
Proops said he got details over the course of the holiday from Debbie, the former police officer his synagogue had hired to provide security over the weekend, in keeping with the practice of many American synagogues.
As a police officer, Debbie had gone on an exchange trip to learn from law enforcement in Israel and had stayed with a police officer’s family. She learned early on, Proops said, that her host had been killed in the attack on Saturday.
“The woman who’s outside protecting us is feeling it just like we are — that was actually a very moving and painful moment,” he said.
Another moment was also a source of pain and anxiety, he said: 7:15 p.m. on Sunday evening, when the two-day holiday ended.
“I dreaded turning my phone on, I’ll be honest with you. Because you know, 36 hours had gone by since the initial outbreak of attacks. And I had no idea what I was going to find from relatives, friends, colleagues,” Proops said. “And so with trepidation, we finished the services last night with some extra Psalms. And then we had to kind of connect with the real world, so to speak.”
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The post ‘You don’t know yet, do you?’ How Jews offline for a 2-day holiday found out about the attack on Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.