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18 notable Jews who died in 2025
(JTA) — Jews around the world were already reeling after nearly two years of war and death in Gaza and the grim confirmation that many hostages hadn’t survived the Oct. 7 attacks or two years of captivity. Then came news of the shootings in Sydney, Australia, where 15 people were gunned down at a celebration of Hanukkah.
Despite its grief, the Jewish world also took time to celebrate the lives lived by a constellation of figures who made lasting contributions to film, architecture, politics and Jewish scholarship and letters.
In chronological order, here are obituaries of 18 notable Jews who died in 2025.
Marion Wiesel
Marion Wiesel (born Mary Renate Erster), a Holocaust survivor and humanitarian, married the writer and human rights activist Elie Wiesel in 1969, and was the translator of many of his award winning and influential books on the Holocaust, including the final edition of “Night.” Following Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Prize win, the couple founded the Beit Tzipora Centers in Israel, an educational program for Ethiopian-Israeli youth, which Marion Wiesel went on to lead for a number of years. “In the alignment of stars that helped make Wiesel the international icon he became, his marriage to Marion was among the most significant,” wrote Joseph Berger in his 2023 biography “Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence.” She died on Feb. 2 at 94.
Jacqueline van Maarsen
In 1942, Anne Frank immortalized her friendship with Jacqueline van Maarsen, writing that she “is now my best friend.” While the pair were forced apart during the war, never to be reunited, van Maarsen went on to write multiple books about Frank, including 2008’s “My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank.” In 1986, van Maarsen also began lecturing on the Holocaust and antisemitism at schools. “In her books and during school visits, Jacqueline spoke not only about her friendship with Anne but also about the dangers of anti-Semitism and racism, and where they can lead,” the Anne Frank House said of van Maarsen. She died on Feb. 13 at age 96.
Leonard Lauder
Leonard Lauder built his Jewish family’s business, The Estée Lauder Companies, into a cosmetics empire, serving as its president from 1972 to 1995 and as CEO from 1982 through 1999. But beyond his entrepreneurial prowess, Lauder also was a major patron of the arts, at one point donating a collection of paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York valued at more than $1 billion. “The number of lives he touched and positively impacted across all his endeavors is immeasurable,” his younger brother, Ronald, said. “His passion and generosity have inspired us all, and there are no words to express how much he will be missed.” He died on June 14 at 92.
David Schaecter
After losing 105 relatives during the Holocaust, David Schaecter went on to spend his life pushing for restitution, Holocaust education and vigilance against antisemitism. In 1989, Schaecter founded the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach and in 2000 created the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA, which often took a more aggressive stance than other Jewish organizations in pursuing restitution of goods looted during the Holocaust. “I am here to remind everyone that there are still thousands of survivors alive today who are in desperate need, and who cannot be forgotten,” Schaecter told the Senate Special Committee on Aging on April 30. He died on Sept. 4 at 96.
Ruth Posner
After Ruth Posner escaped the Warsaw Ghetto along with her aunt as a child, she went on to flee to the United Kingdom at 16 where she began an illustrious career as an actress and dancer. She was a founding member of the London Contemporary Dance Company and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and also starred in films including “Leon the Pig Farmer” and “Love Hurts.” In 2022, she was awarded a British Empire Medal for her commitment to Holocaust education. She died on Sept. 21 at 96.
Aron Bell
Aron Bell was only 11 or 12 when he and his older brothers formed the famed Bielski partisans, a group that saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. The brothers’ tale of defiance also inspired several adaptations of their story, including the books “The Bielski Brothers” by Peter Duffy and “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” by Nechama Tec, which was later made into the 2008 film “Defiance” with actor George MacKay portraying Bell. “If you were in the company of those three brothers, you felt like you had a whole army behind you, you were fearless,” said Bell in his 1996 testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation. He died on Sept. 22 at 98 at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Katherine Janus Kahn
Katherine Janus Kahn’s vibrant watercolor illustrations in Jewish children’s books helped shape the imaginations of generations of Jewish children. Beginning with her paper-cut illustrations for “The Family Haggadah,” which became a bestseller when it was published in 1987, Janus Kahn later went on to illustrate more than 50 books for Kar-Ben, a publishing house for Jewish children’s books. Among her work for Kar-Ben was the “Sammy Spider” franchise, which includes more than two dozen books about Jewish holidays, prayers and practices. ““We are profoundly grateful for her legacy, and for the countless stories and memories she leaves behind,” said Kar-Ben. She died on Oct. 6 at age 83.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union since 2020, was widely respected across denominations and was considered an exemplar of Modern Orthodoxy’s historical blend of religious and secular expertise. In 2023, he testified about antisemitism on college campuses at a hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which prompted several investigations. “Rabbi Hauer was a true talmid chacham, a master teacher and communicator, the voice of Torah to the Orthodox community and the voice of Orthodoxy to the world,” the Orthodox Union said after his death. He died on Oct. 14 at 60.
Susan Stamberg
When Susan Stamberg first got behind the microphone at the newly minted National Public Radio in 1972, some board members feared she was “too New York” for Midwest audiences. But Stamberg nevertheless became one of the station’s “founding mothers,” helping to craft its intimate, often humorous and consistently eclectic voice. Stamberg was the co-anchor of “All Things Considered” for 14 years, before pivoting to cultural stories. “I think all of that is very Jewish, the telling of stories, but also the seeking of opinions and also being open to the range of opinions that are out there,” Stamberg told the Jewish Women’s Archive in 2011. She died on Oct. 16 at 87.
Tova Ben-Dov
Tova Ben-Dov devoted six decades of her life to the Women’s International Zionist Organization, serving as the president of World WIZO from 2012 to 2016. She also served as the vice president of the World Jewish Congress, a member of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Israel and a member of the International Council of Women according to JNS.“For 60 years, Tova devoted her heart and soul to WIZO—a lifetime of love, leadership and giving to women, children and families in Israel,” said World WIZO chairperson Anita Friedman. She died on Oct. 17 at 88 in Tel Aviv.
Arthur Waskow
Rabbi Arthur Waskow first became one of the most notable progressive rabbinic voices in 1969 when he created the “Freedom Seder,” a version of the Passover Haggadah that blended contemporary liberation struggles with the ancient passover story. Throughout his career, Waskow authored more than two dozen books that offered a Jewish perspective on civil rights, economic injustice, nuclear arms control and climate change. He was arrested more than two dozen times at protests. He died on Oct. 20 at 92.
Mark Mellman
At the height of his illustrious career as a pollster and political consultant, Mark Mellman was the go-to pollster for Democrats as well as a wide variety of firms and interests, including the NBA’s Washington Wizards, United Airlines and both Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In 2019, he founded the Democratic Majority for Israel, a group he said was formed to “strengthen the pro-Israel tradition of the Democratic Party, fight for Democratic values and work within the progressive movement to advance policies that ensure a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.” He died on Nov. 21 at 70.
Carrie Soloway
Carrie Soloway, a Jewish psychiatrist in Chicago, came out as a transgender woman at 70-years-old, a milestone that formed the basis for her children’s hit Amazon TV series “Transparent.” After the show’s 2014 premiere, Soloway visited the White House under then-President Barack Obama and became friends with trans elected officials, while “Transparent” blazed a path for modern LGBTQ Jews exploring their identity. “She loved the show and us and the character, but sometimes she wasn’t in the mood to be everyone’s favorite trailblazer,” her son, Joey, said after her death. She died on Nov. 21 at the age of 88.
Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard was in his 80s and had already won four Tony Awards during his prolific career as a playwright and screenwriter when he finished “Leopoldstadt,” which portrayed a Jewish family dealing with rising antisemitism in Vienna, and a young writer, much like him, who only earned of his Jewish forebears as an adult. His final work won the Tony for best play after it opened on Broadway in 2022. Stoppard’s other era-defining plays include “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (1968), “Travesties” (1974), “The Real Thing” (1986) and “The Coast of Utopia” (2007). “I just live my life and let the Jewishness take care of itself,” Stoppard told the New York Times Magazine in 2022. He died Nov. 29 at 88.
Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry, born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, was one of the most influential talents in the history of modernist architecture. Among his most acclaimed works, which feature his signature sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, DZ Bank Building in Berlin and oversized fish sculptures he said were inspired by the carp his grandmother would turn into gefilte fish. In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. While Gehry identified as an atheist throughout his adult life, he told the Jewish Journal that “there’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture” that influenced his career. He died on Dec. 5 at 96.
Rabbi Eliezer Diamond
Rabbi Eliezer Diamond taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary for over three decades, where he also published several texts on the Talmud and left an indelible mark on generations of rabbis and Jewish scholars. In 2003, he published “Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture.” “Wherever I am, God is there too. I hope that I will return home soon,” wrote Diamond in his last post on Facebook, where he detailed his long struggle with cancer. He died on Dec. 11 at 73.
Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner, a beloved Jewish film director, actor and liberal activist, left his mark on modern American comedy and drama with his generation-defining classics from the 1980s and 1990s, including “When Harry Met Sally…,” “The Princess Bride,” “Stand By Me,” “A Few Good Men” and “This Is Spinal Tap.” The son of legendary Jewish comedian Carl Reiner, he also starred in the ’70s sitcom “All in the Family” and became a prominent Democratic Party activist later in life. Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found dead in their California home on Dec. 14. The couple’s son, Nick, has been charged in connection to their killing. Days after his death, Reiner gave a pre-recorded address at a virtual Holocaust survivor event where he told attendees, “If ever we needed to be resilient, it’s now.”
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz was 30 when he was appointed to run the American Jewish Committee’s thought journal Commentary. Over his career, he charted a path from Jewish liberal to pro-Israel neoconservative, serving as the godfather to a movement that long dominated late- and post-Cold War conservative politics. He made waves in 2016 for endorsing Donald Trump in his first run for president. “He was a man of great wit and a man of deep wisdom and he lived an astonishing and uniquely American life,” his son, John Podhoretz, wrote in a remembrance for the magazine announcing his father’s death. “And he bound himself fast to his people, his heritage, and his history.” He died on Dec. 16 at 95.
As the year concludes, the New York Jewish Week also remembers 13 Jewish New Yorkers who died in 2025. Among them are people who left an indelible mark on New York City, including rabbis, musicians, writers, activists and a supercentenarian.
Peter Yarrow
As one-third of the American folk band Peter, Paul and Mary, the Jewish musician and progressive activist Peter Yarrow was one of the writers of the group’s hit song “Puff the Magic Dragon” and their Hanukkah hit “Light One Candle,” which Yarrow said he wrote to express his opposition to Israel’s 1982 war in Lebanon. The band performed “Light One Candle” in Jerusalem in 1983 to a positive response.
Rose Girone
A rare supercentenarian, Rose Girone was thought to be the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor, turning 113 years old in January. As a young mother during the Holocaust, Girone was able to rescue her husband from the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the small family of three sought refuge in Shanghai, where they survived the war and Girone built a business selling her handmade clothing. In New York, she taught knitting and also ran a knitting shop in Forest Hills. She later divorced and remarried. Even after she closed her shop, she continued knitting until the end of her life.
Michelle Trachtenberg
Michelle Trachtenberg was a child and teen star known for her roles in “Harriet the Spy,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “17 Again,” “Ice Princess,” and “Gossip Girl.” Born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn, Trachtenberg was the daughter of Jewish immigrants: Her mother was from the former Soviet Union, and her father was from Germany. In 2022 and 2023, she reprised her “Gossip Girl” role in the series reboot.
Trachtenberg died Feb. 26 at age 39 from complications related to diabetes.
Max Frankel
The former executive editor of The New York Times fled the Nazis as a child, starting at the paper at just 19 years old as a Columbia University campus correspondent. In his 40-plus-year career at The Times, he wrote the memo that convinced the paper’s lawyers that it should cover the Pentagon Papers — the leaked documents that revealed how the government deceived the public about the scope of the U.S. war in Vietnam. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his coverage of President Richard Nixon’s visit to China. In 2001, after his retirement, Frankel published an article in The New York Times acknowledging that before and after World War II, the publication had a policy of “reluctance to highlight the systematic slaughter of Jews.”
Frankel died on March 23 at age 94.
Ted Comet
A Jewish communal leader and longtime Upper West Sider, Comet founded New York’s Celebrate Israel Parade (originally the Salute to Israel Parade). In the 1960s, he helped organize some of the first large demonstrations in support of Soviet Jewry. He was also a founder of the annual Israel Folk Dance Festival. Following his wife Shoshana’s death in 2012, he conducted tours of the tapestries she made telling the story of the trauma she endured as a teenager fleeing Belgium during World War II and in the years beyond.
Comet died at age 100 on March 19.
Helena Weinstock Weinrauch
Helena Weinstock Weinrauch survived a 500-mile death march to Bergen-Belsen and eventually found her way to New York. After her husband of 56 years, Joe Weinrauch, died in 2006, she discovered, at 88, the solace and joy of ballroom dancing. Her story of survival and resilience was the subject of a 2015 documentary, “Fascination: Helena’s Story.”
Weinrauch died at her home on the Upper West Side on May 25, one week shy of her 101st birthday.
Tom Lehrer
The New York-born mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer enrolled at Harvard University at just 15 years old. Though his post-college music career was relatively brief, he gained a cult following for musical parodies like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and “The Vatican Rag.” Lehrer described his family’s relationship to Judaism as “more to do with the delicatessen than the synagogue.” But his iconic song “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica” became what he called “a sort of answer to ‘White Christmas.’”
Lehrer died Jul. 25 at the age of 97.
Wesley LePatner
One of the highest-ranking women at Blackstone and a mother of two young children, Wesley LePatner was an alumna of Yale University, a board member for UJA-Federation of New York and an active member of various Jewish communities in New York and Massachusetts. On July 29, a gunman opened fire at her office building, 345 Park Ave., killing three people including LePatner. “She was the most loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and relative, who enriched our lives in every way imaginable,” her family said in a statement.
LePatner died Jul. 29 at the age of 43.
Julia Hyman
Julia Hyman was also a victim of the shooting at 345 Park Ave. A Manhattan native, Cornell graduate and an associate at Rudin Management, Julia Hyman was a fan of the United States women’s soccer team and Jewish singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, her friends and family recalled at a memorial service in July.
Hyman died July 29 at the age of 27.
Saul Zabar
The son of the immigrant Jewish founders of the iconic Upper West Side grocery store and delicatessen Zabar’s, Saul Zabar served as the president and principal owner of the “food emporium” for more than seven decades. Zabar was known for his hands-on approach, often working behind the fish counter — the gem of his family’s market. Zabar’s is known for serving traditional Ashkenazi foods like bagels, babka, deli meats, fish salads, pickles and rugelach. On an average week, Zabar’s sells 2,000 pounds of smoked fish and 8,000 pounds of coffee each week to about 40,000 customers, according to The New York Times.
Rabbi Alvin Kass
The longest-serving NYPD chaplain, Rabbi Alvin Kass served New York’s police for 60 years. His career included managing the NYPD’s 9/11 response, and in the days following the terror attack, hosting Rosh Hashanah services at LaGuardia Airport for first responders. He attended the funerals of every NYPD officer who was killed on 9/11, including two who were Jewish. Kass was the third Jewish chaplain to work for the NYPD. In 1981, he attempted to disarm a Jewish hostage-taker by bribing him with a pastrami sandwich from Carnegie Deli.
Mayer Moskowitz
The early life of Rabbi Mayer Moskowitz, longtime educator at the Upper East Side’s Ramaz School and Camp Massad in the Poconos, was forever altered by the Holocaust.
Born in Czernowitz in what was then Romania and today Ukraine, Moskowitz watched the Gestapo shoot and kill his father, a 30-year-old Hasidic rabbi, in their synagogue. In the following years, he would be deported to a ghetto, separated from his mother and sister, escape the ghetto, make a life for himself in Israel, and learn his mother and sister had both survived the war, leaving his new life in Israel behind to join his mother in New York City, where he became a prominent teacher of thousands of students, including Israeli president Isaac Herzog. Moskowitz recounted his life story in his autobiography, “A Memoir of Sanctity.”
Moskowitz died Nov. 11 at 98 years old.
Helen Nash
Starting with “Kosher Cuisine” in 1984, philanthropist Helen Nash wrote cookbooks that proved that kosher cooking “could be as varied, elegant and exciting as one wished to make it,” as she put it. A refugee from Poland, she married Jack Nash, a pioneer in hedge funds, and together they supported numerous Jewish organizations in New York City, including UJA-Federation of New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Israel Museum, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Yeshiva University.
Nash died on Dec. 8 at the age of 89.
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Irish Jews report 143 antisemitic incidents in 6 months through a new reporting system
(JTA) — Jews in Ireland reported over 100 antisemitic incidents through a communal reporting system within six months after it launched, according to a new report.
The findings published early Monday by the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland constitute the first attempt to document antisemitic incidents in Ireland.
Irish Jews, a small community of about 2,200, reported 143 incidents between July 2025 and January 2026. These were dominated by verbal abuse, vandalism, threats, exclusion or discrimination and direct digital hate messages. Physical assault was less common, with only three instances reported.
All incidents were self-reported to the JRCI, which cannot independently investigate or adjudicate them. Ireland does not have an official state mechanism for recording antisemitic incidents, the group said. And while the police record hate crimes based on nationality, ethnicity or religion, they do not isolate crimes motivated by antisemitism.
The JRCI said that 30% of incidents were triggered by cues of Jewish identity or Israeli origin, such as a Jewish symbol, an accent or speaking Hebrew in public. Such patterns often crossed the boundaries of hate driven by nationality, ethnicity and religion.
“These dynamics cannot be adequately addressed through generalized anti-racism frameworks alone,” JRCI chair Maurice Cohen said in a statement. “Antisemitism presents distinct characteristics requiring targeted policy responses.”
Cohen called for “a dedicated, standalone national plan to combat antisemitism in Ireland.”
Of the reported incidents, 25 included “Holocaust distortion” or antisemitic conspiracy theories. These findings add to a Claims Conference survey in January, which said that 9% of Irish adults believed the Holocaust was a myth, while another 17% believed the number of Jews killed had been greatly exaggerated. Half of Irish adults did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
At the same time, a November 2025 survey by the European Commission surfaced broad recognition of antisemitism in Ireland. 41% of respondents said that antisemitism was a problem in the country and 47% said it had increased over the past five years.
At a ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, Ireland’s taoiseach (or prime minister) Micheál Martin said, “I am acutely conscious that our Jewish community here in Ireland is experiencing a growing level of antisemitism. I know that elements of our public discourse has coarsened.”
Martin has strenuously criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying at the United Nations last year that Israel committed genocide and demonstrated “an abandonment of all norms, all international rules and law.” Catherine Connolly, a socialist politician who has faced backlash for saying Hamas is “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people,” was elected as Ireland’s president in October.
Ireland has historically supported the Palestinians, a stance often linked to the country’s own history of British imperial rule, and formally recognized a Palestinian state in 2024.
In Martin’s Holocaust commemoration speech, he also condemned the most recent event to inflame the Irish Jewish community. Late last year, a proposal to rename Herzog Park in Dublin — named for Chaim Herzog, the son of the first Irish chief rabbi who became Israel’s sixth president in 1983 — was decried by Irish Jews who said it would erase Irish Jewish history. The proposal was later tabled.
Martin, who also denounced the proposal when it was active, said the Jewish community “has every right to be deeply concerned and to express that concern.”
Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization and an Irish Jew who grew up in Dublin, said the JRCI report showed a picture of antisemitic incidents that were separate from “a debate about the policies of Israel or a debate about the Palestinian state.”
“When you have discontinuation of service because somebody is heard speaking Hebrew, or has a Jewish-identifying symbol on them, that’s not about a political position on the spectrum towards Israel,” said Taylor. “That’s something that crosses into antisemitism.”
Ireland’s chief rabbi Yoni Wieder said the report reflected experiences he already heard from his congregants.
“The report does not claim that antisemitism has become a daily reality for all Jewish people in Ireland — it has not,” said Wieder. “What it does show is that antisemitism surfaces often enough, and in ordinary enough settings, that it cannot be dismissed as rare or confined to the margins of society. This means that for many, Jewish belonging in Ireland feels more fragile than it should.”
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Yet again, Israel’s public shelters become sites of camaraderie amid steep danger
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Spirits ran high inside a large public bomb shelter in the Israeli coastal city of Jaffa, with loud chatter, singing and greetings of “Happy Iran Holiday,” an incongruous soundtrack to the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran and the hundreds of missiles that followed.
The room itself looked much cheerier than most shelters, with a ball pit and bright Gymboree mattresses left over from its other job in peacetime, when it doubles as a kindergarten.
A day earlier, the shelter became the accidental venue for a bar mitzvah celebration, when worshipers from the synagogue across the road took refuge there.
One particularly raucous group was made up mostly of American-Israelis from the neighborhood. One of them, Steph Graber, said she was in a good mood despite being exhausted from middle-of-the-night runs to the shelter.
“I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the adrenaline of war or something,” she said on Sunday morning. “But also it’s amazing to see the U.S. and Israel as allies working together to reduce the threat from Iran.”
Graber said she had been sheltering elsewhere but had “FOMO” about not being with her friends, so she switched over in the brief lull between sirens.
Martine Berkowitz, a friend of Graber’s, also said the community around her was what made the disruption feel manageable. Sirens kept interrupting even basic tasks, she said, including her attempt to take a shower, which she tried five times.
“My friends live on my corner, so I’m doing great. We’re all together all the time,” she said. During the last Iran flare-up in June, she didn’t have that kind of built-in circle nearby, she said. “Being alone then was really rough.”
The mood wasn’t confined to Jaffa. Across the country, similar scenes played out in shelters and spread on social media, including one from Nachlaot in Jerusalem of people singing “For the Jews There was Light and Joy,” a Purim song marking the story’s turn after Haman’s plot to kill the Jews was thwarted. The parallel to the current moment, as the Jews once again sought to topple a Persian rule who had called for their death, was not lost on anyone.
In a sprawling underground parking lot turned shelter at Dizengoff Center in central Tel Aviv, Shabbat prayers gave way to dancing and songs of “Don’t Be Afraid, Oh Israel” and “Am Yisrael Chai.” Saul Sadka, who was there, posted a video of the revelers, captioning it “joy and stoicism.”
Sadka later said he was struck by the “sense of solidarity,” and noted that it was Shabbat Zachor, when Jews read the passage about Amalek, a nemesis that they are commanded never to forget. “People seem willing to suffer for a while if it means the defeat of the IRGC,” he said.
Another bomb shelter in Tel Aviv struck a less pious tone, turning into a makeshift night club with red lights, a DJ and people dancing.
In one video, one of hundreds of comedic shelter clips circulating online, a comedian quipped, “The nation of Israel lives” — but only as long as the shelter “has wifi and the iPads have battery.”
Natalie Silverlieb was in the mamak, the communal reinforced safe room on her building’s floor. She said the logistics of repeated alerts had become harder since she became a mother.
“Doing this with a baby is crazy,” she said. The room was packed, including other babies and dogs, and she and her partner tried to follow a system that would get their baby back to sleep quickly.
“I’m so, so, so exhausted,” she said. “When I was doing this on my own the last time, I could at least come back to my apartment and just lay on the couch. But now there’s no laying on the couch. It’s go, go, go.”
For Silverlieb, the uncertainty of the past few weeks hadn’t disappeared so much as changed shape. “The waiting for it to end is more stressful than the waiting for it to begin,” she said. “I just hope it ends quickly. It’s a lot, period.”
In a nearby grocery store, another siren, the 30th or so in as many hours, sent shoppers scrambling. In the residential building next door, the shelter downstairs was decrepit and doorless. Children played limbo with a strip of red cloth. One woman began pitching HAAT, a new, mostly Arab-run delivery service she said was giving Wolt a run for its money. A few people pulled out their phones to download the app, trading jokes about whether it would deliver to shelters, and during sirens. Because it is Ramadan, Muslims in Israel are doubly on edge, from fasting on top of the missiles.
Sasha, who lives in the building, said she was “half happy” the waiting was over. The repeated dashes up and down the stairs, she joked, were at least getting her to her daily goal of 10,000 steps. Still, she said, it “won’t help us if the [Iranian] regime doesn’t fall.”
A Ukrainian who grew up under Soviet rule, taught her what it meant to live without freedom, she said. “We want to see the Iranian people free and a better Middle East for everyone.”
Evyatar said he doubted the regime would fall “unless the Iranian citizens themselves finish the job.”
Ma’or, another neighbor, said he would “happily sit in my bomb shelter if it meant giving my Iranian friends, both in Iran and out, a chance at a normal life.” He pointed to a friend in Tehran who works as a tattoo artist, an illegal trade under the regime.
“I mean, he’s not even free to give someone a tattoo without going underground,” he said. “I’m baffled by the people cheering [on] the IRGC. People who say this war is illegal are out of their goddamn minds.”
Evyatar said he began Saturday uneasy, but grew calmer as the hours passed and he gauged the pattern of the strikes. The alerts came far more often than the 12-day war, but the blasts felt less intense. “At the beginning I felt scared, like it was June all over again.” Over time, he said, he has learned to tell the difference between the sounds of interceptions, shrapnel and direct impacts.
As he spoke, a loud boom hit outside, rattling the shelter and stopping the conversation. “That, for example, was a June sound,” he said.
It turned out to be shrapnel coming down not far away. The impact was part of a wider series of strikes across central Israel, including one that turned lethal in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, when a public bomb shelter was hit. Nine people were killed including multiple from the same family. Dozens more were wounded, and others still were unaccounted for.
In Beit Shemesh, the strike changed the atmosphere in a city that had so far heard only occasional sirens, during both this round and the last one.
Netanel Alkoby, a Beit Shemesh resident who spent 12 years in the reserves with the Home Front Command, said he has always taken alerts seriously, but that over time a degree of complacency still set in. The strike, he said, “changed our perspective a lot,” forcing him to be more careful, more on guard, and to treat every warning “with the utmost seriousness.”
In the underground shelter at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a sign overhead read “the safest shelter in existence.” Patients hobbled in, some with casts and crutches. With doctors also sheltering there, patients used the moment to buttonhole them with questions.
One staffer watched a line of women form to speak to a physician. “Poor thing, he can’t even enjoy the siren in peace,” she said.
Back in the central Jaffa shelter, a couple in black leather and dark glasses stood apart from the banter around them.
“Any fear and terror that Israeli citizens are feeling right now is a direct result of this violent racist Islamophobic power hungry greedy fascist government,” said the woman, who declined to give her name, referring to the Netanyahu-led coalition.
Asked whether she thought attacking Iran was a bad idea, she said: “I think it’s a bad idea to attack anyone in 2026. We teach toddlers not to fight and here we have fully grown men doing this, dooming all of us.”
“It’s time we take the power from aging white men,” she said.
Nearby, Martine Berkowitz agreed — in part. “Yep, they are behaving like toddlers. And they are aging white men. Who are fighting evil brown men. If it brings freedom to Iran then it was worth it. But if it doesn’t, then it was all for nothing.”
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Netanyahu: ‘Our Forces Are Striking the Heart of Tehran With Increasing Strength’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, in Jerusalem, Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israeli forces had “eliminated the dictator Ali Khamenei” along with dozens of senior officials of Iran’s regime during a statement delivered from the roof of the Kirya, Israel’s defense headquarters.
“Yesterday, we eliminated the dictator Khamenei. Along with him, dozens of senior officials from the oppressive regime were eliminated,” Netanyahu said after a meeting with the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, and the Director of Mossad. He added that he had issued instructions to continue the offensive.
According to Netanyahu, Israeli forces are “now striking at the heart of Tehran with increasing intensity,” a campaign he said will “increase further in the days to come.”
The Prime Minister also acknowledged the toll of the conflict on Israel, calling recent days “painful” and offering condolences to the families of victims in Tel Aviv and Beit Shemesh, while wishing a speedy recovery to those injured.
Netanyahu emphasized that the operation mobilizes “the full power of the Israel Defense Forces, like never before,” in order to “guarantee our existence and our future.” He also highlighted US support, noting “the assistance of my friend, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and of the American military.”
“This combination of forces allows us to do what I have hoped to accomplish for 40 years: strike the terrorist regime right in the face,” Netanyahu concluded. “I promised it — and we will keep our word.”