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A Berlin rabbi has been fired amid mounting allegations that he preyed on young women
BERLIN (JTA) — As a teenager in Berlin, Adelle was honored when a rabbi began showing interest in her spiritual development. Rabbi Reuven Yaacobov’s offer of personal instruction was an appealing prospect to the Russian-speaking immigrant with no documentation of her Jewish heritage.
Over time, Yaacobov’s private lessons escalated to phone calls and text messages and, ultimately, an invitation to a Shabbat dinner at his apartment, located so far from her home that she would need to stay over to avoid the prohibition on traveling on Shabbat.
There, Adelle was surprised to discover that Yaacobov’s wife was away and she was the only guest. After setting up the couch for Adelle, Yaacobov told her she needed a massage. There were points in her body, he said, where her energy was blocked.
He began with her back but ultimately told her that the points that needed attention — he called them chakras, a Hindu term, and sefirot, a term from Jewish mysticism — included her uterus.
“He said, ‘If I am not pressing it now, basically all that hard work I did’ – half an hour of hard work pressing on my back – ‘all that hard work is going to go to waste. If you don’t activate it all the way, it’s not going to work,’” Adelle recalled.
“I was very fresh to Jewish life. I didn’t know much,” she said. “I was not sure, but if it is a rabbi telling you that something is wrong [with you], you know, I kind of accepted it.”
After her formal conversion to Judaism, the touching escalated to pressure to have sexual intercourse, which Yaacobov said was permitted under Jewish law if he took her as a secret second wife.
He told Adelle that through her conversion she had absorbed the spirit of Batsheva, the Biblical woman whom King David famously spotted from afar and took as his wife — even though he had to have her husband killed to make it happen. Yaacobov said that only he, as a self-described descendant of David, had special powers to heal her.
When she balked, he told her that she would “stay a zero, just like you are now” and that her spiritual development would remain stunted.
“He made it very clear that I am a nobody at that point,” she recalled. “And, so, 19-year-old me, from not a very good family background — that was a statement that sounded true.”
Rabbi Reuven Yaacobov stands on stage with security guards during the ceremonial handover of a new Torah scroll that he had written to the Jewish regional congregation in Erfurt, Germany, Sept. 30, 2021.(Martin Schutt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Yaacobov’s hold over her was so complete, Adelle said, that when her Orthodox girls school announced that students could no longer associate with the rabbi, she rejected the warning.
“They summoned me to speak about that, and told me some horrifying things about him, and I was in complete denial,” she said. “I said, ‘No, no, it cannot be, he is a holy person. It cannot be, it’s wrong, you guys are wrong!’ I was fighting against them.”
That was in 2010. For years, Adelle told her story to no one. But eventually, she learned that “there was a whole team of Batshevas” — women like her whom Yaacobov had identified as vulnerable and groomed for sex, leveraging their naivete about Judaism to his advantage.
Now, Yaacobov has been fired from his position as the rabbi of Tiferet Israel, Berlin’s Sephardic synagogue, because of the alleged misconduct. His termination came just one day after Adelle and other women — organized by a onetime champion of Yaacobov named Elena Eyngorn — brought their stories to the Jewish Community of Berlin, the group that oversees most Jewish institutions in the city and employs some of its clergy.
“In view of the seriousness of the allegations, the Executive Board was shocked and outraged and immediately released Rabbi Yaacobov and finally fired him without notice effective May 31,” Ilan Kiesling, the organization’s spokesperson, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
He said Tiferet Israel would be “closed until the facts have been fully clarified” and that worshipers could pray at a nearby synagogue instead. He also said steps would be taken to prevent “such incidents in the future” and noted that a religious court, known as a beit din, might try Yaacobov according to Jewish law.
“The community has promised the victims unlimited support,” Kiesling said.
Yaacobov did not respond to JTA’s queries sent via Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.
Although the women and their advocates are relieved to see Yaacobov lose his pulpit, Yaacobov’s firing — which has not been publicly announced — is raising broader questions about the community and its guardrails. How could his alleged misconduct have gone unaddressed for years? Could someone have taken action earlier?
In fact, the Jewish Community of Berlin, the local police and an Orthodox rabbinical court in Moscow all received complaints about Yaacobov’s behavior with women in the past. The complaints predated the sweeping cultural shift around responses to sexual misconduct, known as #MeToo, that began in 2017 when the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of being a serial sex abuser.
“If Elena was able to do this in two weeks, to pressure the head of the community and get it done and get him to lose his job, how come all the powerful people that knew about it for years couldn’t take him down?” Adelle asked. “How come?”
Yaacobov has long been a popular spiritual leader in a subset of Berlin’s large community of Russian-speaking Jews. Born in Uzbekistan and ordained by the Midrash Sepharadi Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Yaacobov, 46 and a married father of three, also studied at the Moscow Yeshiva in Russia and the Shavei Gola Yeshiva in Jerusalem before being hired by the Jewish Community of Berlin 17 years ago, according to a biography that was removed from the organization’s website this month.
Inner view of Berlin’s Tiferet Israel Sephardic Synagogue, as seen in 2016. (MaorX via Wikimedia Commons)
In addition to leading Tiferet Israel, Yaacobov has worked as a sofer, or ritual scribe, as a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and also as a mohel, performing brit milah, or traditional circumcision, on male infants. Sources in the community say he has performed circumcisions since being fired from his synagogue position. On his social media accounts, he posts inspirational videos and notes in Russian.
“Never, ever let others convince you that something is difficult or impossible,” he wrote in a post last week. “When you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it.”
The full scope of the allegations against Yaacobov is still unfolding. JTA has met with two women who say Yaacobov lured them into sexual relations, using pseudo-religious justifications, and spoken with a third who said she got away before he touched her. The women are being identified by pseudonyms because they asked that their names not be published.
Others told JTA they are aware of additional survivors. Eyngorn said she has spoken directly with nine, including the three with whom JTA spoke; new accounts continue to emerge, she said, as word spreads about her inquiries.
What is clear is that the testimony given to the Jewish Community of Berlin instigated immediate action — offering a sharp contrast to what happened at multiple other junctures when people raised concerns about Yaacobov’s behavior.
At least twice, women went to law enforcement but no charges resulted. In one case, Berlin’s top prosecutor declined to investigate the report it received, telling an attorney that because their client was a legal adult at the time of the incident and appeared to have been able to leave the scene if she wanted, there was no grounds for a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, a woman who left Germany for Moscow gave a statement to the rabbinical court there over a decade ago, according to Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, then the chief rabbi of Moscow. Goldschmidt, the longtime head of the Conference of European Rabbis, said he passed the complaint along to Lala Suesskind, then president of the Jewish Community of Berlin. He was not aware of any action taken in response.
Suesskind told JTA that she did not recall hearing from Goldschmidt but said she had received a different tip about Yaacobov’s behavior — which she dismissed as a rumor.
She said a Berlin rabbi whom she would not name had come to her with reports of sexual impropriety by Yaacobov during her tenure, which lasted from 2008 to 2012.
“I said, ‘Then bring the women to me.’ No one came. No one did anything,” Suesskind said. “I am someone who does not react to rumors and doesn’t spread them. I had no facts.”
Lala Suesskind, then president of the Jewish Community of Berlin, stands during a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from Berlin to concentration camps during the Holocaust, Oct. 18, 2011.(Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The turning point against Yaacobov came this spring after Liza Khurgin, a volunteer at a Berlin conference for Russian-speaking Jews held in March, raised concerns about his behavior following a lecture he delivered on the topic of “Kosher Sex.” She told JTA she had objected to Yaacobov’s “sexist” comments and left early — then began to get repeated messages from the rabbi.
“I don’t know how he got my Telegram contact,” she said, referring to a secure text platform. “He started to message me that I looked sad and someone broke my heart and he can help. He started to call on Telegram and tried to contact me again on Facebook, and I did not reply.”
She added, “It was not appropriate. It was very weird. You don’t expect a rabbi to act this way.”
Khurgin urged the conference organizers never to invite Yaacobov again. The organizers in turn informed Eyngorn, a former president of Germany’s Federation of Jewish Students who had nominated him to speak. Having known Yaacobov for years — he even performed her son’s bris — she was shocked.
“Before accusing someone you have to check,” Eyngorn told JTA. “I started to investigate and … realized this story had a much longer history and was more terrible than I imagined.”
Stories started spilling out, spanning years and all following a similar trajectory. Eyngorn said several women told her about how Yaacobov “groomed” them over weeks and months — after checking their age, gradually winning their trust and fealty, and ultimately swaying them to accept intimate touching and submit to sexual acts by claiming that a secretive Jewish court had prescribed this treatment for them or — in another variant — claiming that only he, supposedly a descendant of King David, could rescue their souls.
Twisted invocations of scriptures and religious law are common among sexual predators who happen to be rabbis, said Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual guidance counselor and rosh yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University in New York, and a longtime advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in the Orthodox world.
Blau recalled being consulted about a different rabbi who had been accused of abusing teens.
“They were people who at this point knew very little about Jewish law, and therefore it was possible for him to manipulate them to think what he tells them is permissible is permissible,” Blau said. “He is the rabbi who is bringing them into Judaism, defining Judaism in his terms, and that gives him a certain measure of control over them.”
While the two women who met with JTA were not legally minors at the time of the alleged misconduct, they described themselves in hindsight as impressionable and vulnerable.
Sara, who first came under his sway when she was 18, recalled Yaacobov progressing from lessons in Kabbalah and Jewish law to telling her how to walk, do her hair and nails in order to be attractive to men. The next step seemed to follow logically: photographing her in her underwear, supposedly in order to check her “chakras.” He also told her he was a physiotherapist, which further undermined her skepticism, she recalled.
Afterward, “I just left in a kind of shock,” Sara told JTA. “I thought something is obviously seriously wrong with me; that is why all of the things are happening to me that I find so difficult. So he will fix them, right? And this is the discomfort I will have to go through.”
In their final meeting, she said, he told her that a secret Jewish court required her to perform oral sex on him. He insisted he was only acting in accordance with her spiritual needs — while making her swear not to tell anyone because of the risk of consequences in the “spiritual realm.”
Estie was a bit older than the other women who talked to JTA, no longer a teenager, when Yaacobov started chatting with her after she attended a lecture he gave on family values.
She had been going through a difficult phase, having just ended a relationship. “He said, ‘I will help you,’ and he immediately started to give me advice on how to get a good guy,” she said. After they met once in public, he invited her for “training.”
From there, her story mirrored those of Adelle and Sara.
“He said, ‘Your chakras are closed, you need to open up,’” Estie recalled. Then, he invited her to his home. She was looking forward to meeting the wife and children he spoke of so warmly, and bought some kosher candy as a gift. But when she arrived at his apartment, she discovered she was alone with him.
“He said he wanted to give me a massage,” she said. “It was a weird, uncomfortable situation. I am alone with a rabbi in his apartment and he wants to give me a massage – a full-body massage. He said, ‘You should be more open, you should open your buttons.’”
Estie said she made up an excuse and left. “I did not let him do it. I got out with very little damage.” Afterward, she said, he called her incessantly.
“He said he can help me and I am denying his help, and he made me feel really bad about myself,” she said.
Estie said she had been able to cope with her trauma, in part by jokingly referring to Yaacobov as “Reuven the Masseur.” But she said she was “shocked” when she found out, through Eyngorn, that other young women had been in a similar situation to hers.
“I didn’t know that it was his hobby. I didn’t know he was so bad, that he did much worse things,” she said.
“I really trusted him,” she added. “I told him my story about my breakup and I cried. He looks for people who are weak or vulnerable at the moment. He told me, ‘I will help you.’”
Adelle, Sara and Estie were all immigrants to Germany from the former Soviet Union; about 90% of German Jews today have roots there. While Estie was exploring her Jewish roots on her own, Adelle and Sara were attending an Orthodox school created to serve young Russian-speaking women amid a broad push to connect immigrants with the Judaism they had been prohibited from accessing under communism.
Their profile — young, Russian-speaking Jews on the search for spiritual fulfillment — may have made them targets. “According to my humble understanding it is a matter of finding vulnerable people,” said Rabbi Zsolt Balla of Leipzig, who has counseled Eyngorn and some of the women as they prepare to seek redress in a religious court.
Rabbi Zsolt Balla speaks in a synagogue in Saxony, Germany, June 21, 2021. (Hendrik Schmidt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
“Someone who wants to groom people has to find the common denominator,” and in this situation, Balla said, “it was language.”
Shana Aaronson, the executive director of Magen-Israel, an advocacy group for survivors of sexual misconduct in religious communities in Israel, said it was significant that the rabbi’s alleged misconduct came as the women were being steeped in Orthodox Judaism, where rabbinic leadership confers power.
In Orthodox communities, “we are trained from an early age to do what the rabbi says,” Aaronson said. A predator’s “first step is an overstepping of boundaries, involving themselves in aspects of the person’s life that do not fall into the rabbi’s role: ‘Let me guide you and advise you on this, that and the other thing not related to their spiritual observance.”
Then, she said, they break down emotional boundaries, and ultimately give Jewish legal or “halachic reasoning for why what I am now telling you to do is OK or necessary.” Some will even bring texts to justify their actions, she said.
“Yes, we are taught that this behavior is forbidden, but it always comes back to the fact that the rabbi knows best,” Aaronson said. “It sounds absurd, but even a young woman who is educated is certainly not as knowledgeable as a rabbi. If he says in this case it is allowed, who is she to question that?”
When Adelle realized that she had been victimized, she apologized to her school’s administration for not heeding its warning about Yaacobov. She also began realizing that she needed to unlearn the twisted version of Judaism that he had taught her.
“I started to wake up and reevaluate everything he taught me, everything he said, ever,” Adelle recalled. “Three years of telling me things, three years of nonsense, along with Torah, along with wrong information, wrong halacha, wrong everything. It was like being reborn.”
The girls school was not the only Jewish institution to keep Yaacobov at a distance. ORD, Germany’s Orthodox rabbinical organization, spurned his bid for membership more than once at least a decade ago after a majority of members voted against his application. Their reasons are not public.
Now, ORD is hoping to take action to prevent harm to other women. Rabbi Avichai Apel, a board member, said the group wants to convene a religious court or beit din quickly to adjudicate the claims of Yaacobov’s alleged victims under Jewish law.
A beit din cannot put someone in jail, but it can issue pronouncements that affect a person’s role in the community. It could “issue a public statement saying that [the accused] is not allowed to interact with women or declaring him unfit to serve as a rabbi,” said Blau, who has begun advising ORD about its handling of Yaacobov. “In effect he will have been found guilty.”
Rabbi and Torah scribe Reuven Yaacobov writes sections of a Torah at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, July 10, 2014. (Adam Berry/Getty Images)
The beit din could come to that conclusion, Blau and Goldschmidt said, even if the person facing allegations is not present at its proceedings. And unlike the secular legal system in Germany, Jewish courts do not differentiate between alleged victims who are older and younger than 18.
In Jewish settings, Blau said, “an accused perpetrator is responsible whenever he takes advantage of a power imbalance, irrespective of the age of the victims.”
Apel declined to comment on Yaacobov’s case specifically but said he said he knew that sharing testimonies with rabbis could be hard for the women.
“It is a situation that nobody wants to imagine for himself, it is so terrible, really terrible,” he said. “But unfortunately they have to speak about it.”
He also said he planned to talk with his own congregation about the subject of sexual abuse, to help them recognize and prevent it, and to support survivors.
Goldschmidt said the more witnesses who appear before a beit din, the more likely the rabbinical court is to find in their favor.
“When it is a story of one man against a woman, it is her word against his,” said Goldschmidt,. “But if you are talking about a whole line of people who alleged that a person has been sexually improper with them, in 99% of the cases [it turns out] that where there is smoke, there is fire.”
Eyngorn said that, in her view, the situation is not just a fire but a conflagration. In the days after Yaacobov was terminated, she said her phone rang “every second moment” with people angry that she had worked against him.
“Women from his synagogue were accusing me: ‘You fired such a great rabbi! We are women and it never happened to us!’” she recalled. “I said, ‘It also did not happen to me; that is not an argument at all.’”
Since then, she said, some of them have called back or written to apologize, saying that they, too, have stories about Yaacobov.
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The post A Berlin rabbi has been fired amid mounting allegations that he preyed on young women appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Non-Jews Must Stand Up to Indifference: Antisemitism in Modern Europe
Protesters hold up placards against British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his visit to Golders Green, northwest London, following a terror attack on April 29, 2026, in which two men were stabbed, in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/Pool via REUTERS
Fears and anxieties are running high among British Jews, and among Jews across Europe more broadly. There is only so long that a community can project strength and resilience while its members are being stabbed in broad daylight, and while vile antisemitic graffiti stains the walls of cities like Berlin.
At some point, the question must be asked: how much can a society tolerate before its silence becomes complicity?
This is not a theoretical concern — it is already visible in policies, media coverage, and public debate.
What is perhaps most disturbing is not only the rise in antisemitic incidents, now at record highs in many parts of Europe, but the muted response to them. Similar hatred towards other minorities would provoke outrage and sustained debate.
Yet when Jews are targeted, reactions are often subdued and short-lived. Coverage exists, but in everyday conversations and workplaces, the urgency is largely absent.
Living in Germany, I have found that antisemitism is rarely a topic of concern among non-Jews. It does not seem to stir deep emotional reactions or sustained attention. It exists, but almost in the background. This indifference is not neutral. It is part of the problem.
Many Europeans today do not personally know a single Jewish person. Their understanding of Jews is often filtered through biased media narratives.
There is a vague awareness of a connection between Jews and Israel, but little real understanding. Seen mainly through conflict and accusations, Israel often becomes a reason for disengagement. Even when Jewish co-workers may exist, their identity may remain hidden. I was reminded of this when my son told me about a Jewish boy on his football team who was mocked by teammates when they heard that one of his parents is Jewish. I encouraged my son, as captain, to confront such behavior immediately.
When I share such incidents with non-Jewish friends, they are often genuinely shocked and condemn it, unable to believe such things still happen in Germany today. For a moment, this is reassuring. Yet the concern rarely lasts as people move on with their lives.
But antisemitism is never just a “Jewish problem.” It is a societal one.
History has shown, time and again, that what begins with Jews does not end with them. Antisemitism is not an isolated prejudice; it is often a symptom of broader ideological movements that seek control and dominance. Whether in the forced religious expansions of the medieval period, the racial ideology of Nazi Germany, or modern Jihadist movements that weaponize religion, the pattern is clear: once a society tolerates the dehumanization of one group, it opens the door to the erosion of freedom for all.
This is why today’s indifference is so dangerous. It reflects not only a failure to protect Jews, but an unwillingness to confront the deeper threats.
There is yet another dimension to the issue of antisemitism that is often overlooked: the position of non-Jewish allies.
Across Europe and beyond, there are Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and other righteous individuals who stand up against antisemitism and support Israel, often at significant personal cost.
They lose friendships, face tensions within their families, and encounter hostility in their workplaces. Unlike Jewish communities, which are bound by a strong sense of shared identity and belonging in Am Israel, these allies often stand alone. They do not always have a community to turn to.
This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: what happens to these individuals if antisemitic rhetoric continues to escalate into physical violence? Jews, despite the immense challenges, have Israel — a homeland that represents refuge and continuity. For Diaspora Jews, aliyah remains an option, however challenging it may be.
But what about those who stand with them, who have tied their moral convictions to the fight against antisemitism? Who protects them?
They may well be the next in line — not because of who they are, but because of what they represent: resistance to hatred, commitment to truth, and refusal to conform to dominant narratives.
This is the hallmark of an unhealthy society — not only the presence of hatred, but the isolation of those who oppose it.
There is a broader irony: many who champion progressive values like anti-oppression, anti-colonialism, and human rights, fail to see how their silence or selective outrage contributes to the problem. In overlooking antisemitism, they undermine the very principles they claim to uphold.
The solution is neither simple nor immediate. But it begins with something fundamental: speaking.
We must continue to talk about antisemitism. We must do it consistently and persistently. There is a lesson in the propaganda strategies of the past: repetition shapes perception. Just as the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels demonstrated how repetition can amplify lies, it can also strengthen truth.
Silence allows distortion to take root. Speaking up on the other hand, creates the possibility of change. There is still hope that people will listen. Because the cost of silence is not only borne by Jews. It is borne by society as a whole.
Paushali Lass is an Indian-German intercultural and geopolitical consultant, who focuses on building bridges between Israel, India, and Germany.
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I Confronted the Palestinian Authority: I Saw a Culture of Fear and Discrimination Against Christians
Palestinian Olympic Committee President Jibril Rajoub, who is also the secretary-general of Fatah’s Central Committee, holds a news conference to update the media about challenges facing Palestinian sports ahead of the Olympics in Paris, in Ramallah, in the West Bank, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
“Excuse me. This is not true. This is not true. Excuse me … I never supported killing civilians or kidnapping kids and women. Never! Even in the past. Okay?” shouted Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub during an interview that I independently conducted with him at his office in Ramallah last summer.
The secretary-general of Fatah’s Central Committee, Rajoub is one of the most powerful figures in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is widely regarded as a potential successor to President Mahmoud Abbas. Previously sentenced to life imprisonment for lobbing a grenade at an Israeli army bus, Rajoub later became infamous for torturing political dissidents during his stint as the head of the West Bank’s Preventive Security Force from 1994 to 2002.
As a 19-year-old American student living and working in the largely Palestinian Christian town of Beit Sahour, landing the interview was surprisingly easy.
After confirming a time with Rajoub’s assistant, I hopped into an orange minivan (a common form of public transportation in the West Bank), and headed to Ramallah from Bethlehem. During the ride, I asked my driver — who knew that I was scheduled to meet a Palestinian politician — what his main grievances with the PA were. He replied, “They don’t do anything for us.”
I told him that I’d bring this criticism up. He immediately blurted out, “No, don’t do that!”
At the behest of Rajoub’s assistant, I arrived at the entrance of a corporate office building in an upscale Ramallah neighborhood. Moments later, Rajoub’s assistant appeared, and I was led to a different building. Upon entering this other building, which I did not know, I was greeted by a gigantic mural of former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat.
While waiting for Rajoub, who was half an hour late to the interview, I chatted with Fatah-affiliated staff members, who explained that the building was the meeting ground for members of the Fatah Central Committee.
As I asked Rajoub various questions — such as, “What do you think is the most legitimate criticism directed toward the PA today?” — I came to realize that he was a master at evading accountability.
Throughout the interview, Rajoub became increasingly fed up with me, often uttering phrases such as “listen” and “excuse me.” But it was when I attempted to ask Rajoub about his comments following Hamas’ terrorist actions on October 7, 2023 (which he ridiculously blamed Israel for) that he cut me off and started yelling. After I became visibly intimidated, Rajoub had the nerve to tell me, “I’m more democratic than you expect.”
As I left Rajoub’s oversized office, he asked, “Where are you going next?” After I told him that I was returning to Bethlehem, I realized my mistake. I thought, “If they didn’t know before, the PA definitely knows where I live now.”
On the drive back, I was silent and aloof. Thinking that I may be targeted by the PA, the days following the interview filled me with dread. I knew that some American citizens had been tortured by PA forces. When I volunteered at a summer camp, I told a Palestinian Christian colleague about what happened in the interview. She replied, “If we [as Palestinians] asked [Rajoub] what you did, we’d be sent to Jericho.” In the PA’s Jericho prison, Palestinians are routinely tortured.
What this experience revealed to me was that Palestinians in the West Bank live in a constant state of fear due to authoritarian PA rule, which severely restricts basic freedoms. But I quickly noticed that this culture of fear doesn’t affect each group in Palestinian society equally.
“There is a level of [discrimination] organizationally. There’s always a favoritism [toward] Muslims versus the Christians. I’ve seen that happen over and over again,” said Christy Anastas, a Christian Bethlehemite, who fled due to religious and political persecution. The West Bank’s culture of fear disproportionately affects Christians, the most vulnerable demographic.
In 1950, Bethlehem and the surrounding villages were 86% Christian. In 2017, Christians constituted approximately 10% of Bethlehem’s population and 1% of the West Bank’s.
While the number of Christians has marginally increased since the PA’s first census in 1997, the percentage of Palestinian Christians has rapidly dwindled, which is partly the result of emigration. Christian flight is the consequence of various factors, including economic hardship, political instability from the Mideast conflict, theological reasons, better opportunities abroad, corrupt and repressive Palestinian governance, and religious discrimination/extremism.
A 2020 study found that Christians are overwhelmingly worried about the presence of Salafist groups (77%) and armed factions such as Hamas (69%). Two-thirds were fearful of rising political Islam and Sharia-based PA rule. Finally, 70% reported hearing statements that Christians would “go to Hellfire,” 44% believed that Muslims don’t wish to see them in the land, and an identical percentage perceived discrimination when seeking jobs.
Additionally, Christians are commonly cursed on mosque loudspeakers. Rajoub himself has made anti-Christian comments. Unlike Muslims, who similarly experience PA repression, Christians face discrimination in many areas of daily life because of their religion.
Sometimes, anti-Christian discrimination is subtle. “As a Christian who went to an Islamic university uncovered, I used to get sexually harassed the whole time just because I had a cross and I didn’t have a headcover. I personally experienced that over and over again. It’s subtle. You can’t go up and say, ‘It’s because I am a Christian.’ You can’t prove it. That’s part of the problem,” Anastas explained. Other times, discrimination manifests in anti-Christian violence. In December 2025, Muslims severely beat a Christian man in Beit Jala. Some days later, Muslim extremists set ablaze a Christmas tree in Jenin’s Holy Redeemer Church.
However, most Palestinian Christians are afraid to speak about this discrimination.
“They will not talk about it [discrimination] publicly. They will not talk about it in groups,” said Luke Moon, Executive Director of the Philos Project. When I asked Anastas what happens when Christian-Muslim issues do occur, she told me that Palestinians are “always trying to manage it within the society, shut it down, and think, ‘It’s the Israeli occupation trying to create fractions between us.’”
Since Palestinian society perpetually aims to project a false image of unity, it’s uncommon for stories of anti-Christian violence to appear in international media. Consequently, it’s typical for these media outlets to inaccurately place the blame for Christian suffering entirely on Israel, while ignoring the problems within Palestinian society.
A 2024 study found that Christians don’t typically report incidents of harassment (or worse) to the police because it may instigate further oppression. As I questioned Maurice Hirsch, the study’s first author, about the interviews he conducted with Christians, he said that his sources “cannot be named. These people suffer the effects of PA retribution.”
Similarly, Anastas explained that the consequences of reporting discrimination are unpredictable: “Sometimes you go into Stockholm syndrome, where you’re inside an oppressive system, and you’d rather make friends with the oppressive system to be able to survive, versus try and fight it, because you never know what the consequences are. The consequences are unpredictable. Sometimes, you can get away with it. Sometimes, you can get killed for it.”
What I experienced in Ramallah was not simply an interview with a senior Palestinian official, but a glimpse into the culture of fear that operates in the West Bank. This casts a shadow on the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
By maintaining an atmosphere of fear, the PA undermines the possibility of reform. A society that intimidates its own citizens (and especially religious minorities), engages in torture, discourages self-criticism, and incentivizes martyrdom is not a viable partner for peace. Until this changes, moderate Palestinians won’t have the ability to create a future where values such as freedom, justice, and peace with Israel are upheld.
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What It’s Like to Be in High School and Run for Cover From Rockets in Israel
FILE PHOTO: A drone view shows people stand around apparent remains of a ballistic missile lying in the desert, following an attack by Iran on Israel, near the southern city of Arad, Israel October 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
I found myself barefoot as I sprinted across a courtyard in the early hours of Shabbat, pulled from my sleep by the sound of a siren. This was not the soft, steady siren that gently welcomes Shabbat in cities across Israel. This was different — a sharp, urgent, rising and falling sound that demanded immediate shelter.
There was no time to think, or put on shoes — only to move. I ran to the nearest shelter alongside a group of others torn from their beds, my heart pounding in sync with the alarm.
I am one of 13 girls in the inaugural cohort of the Nelech Program, spending a semester of 10th grade in Israel. On Shabbat Zachor, February 28th, we were gathered for a school Shabbaton, expecting a weekend of connection and calm. Instead, we were met with uncertainty. Without our phones, we didn’t know that this siren marked the beginning of a war with Iran. We assumed it was a missile alert. But the distinction didn’t matter in that moment. A siren is a siren, and it sends you running.
That first alarm was the beginning of a Shabbat spent moving in and out of shelters, a pattern that would continue for weeks. Nelech’s goal is to give American students a glimpse into the life of a typical Israeli 10th grader. What I experienced instead was something deeper: a glimpse into the resilience of a people living in Israel during wartime.
Life quickly changed. Sirens became part of the rhythm of our days and nights, waking us up at unpredictable hours. Schools closed. Parents stayed home with their children. Public spaces like beaches, hiking trails, and movie theaters went quiet. Every outing required awareness: Where is the nearest shelter? How quickly can I get there? Gatherings were limited and celebrations were postponed or reshaped. Weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, even daily prayers, were adapted to fit the reality that everyone learned to navigate.
And yet, throughout all of this, something remarkable revealed itself. On that first Shabbat, as we hurried in and out of the shelter, the Israeli girls comforted us. They checked in, made sure we were okay, and then, unbelievably, began to sing. Songs of emunah and “Am Yisrael Chai.” The sound of voices singing together transformed the space. Someone found an Israeli flag, and suddenly the shelter was filled not just with fear, but with strength, unity, and life.
I began to notice this everywhere. Israelis have an incredible ability to face fear with strength, and to answer uncertainty with connection. At a bat mitzvah I attended during the war, a siren interrupted the celebration. But instead of ending, the party moved into the shelter. The music continued and the dancing intensified. The joy didn’t disappear, it adapted.
There is also a strong sense of responsibility toward one another. During sirens, people open their homes to strangers without hesitation. In those moments, there are no strangers, only people who need each other.
I felt this same unity on Yom HaZikaron — Israel’s memorial day. When the siren sounds on that day, it is flat, steady, and unbroken. A sound of mourning. The entire country comes to a standstill, once at night and once during the day. Cars stop in the middle of highways. Conversations stop. For a few minutes, an entire nation, as one, remembers those who gave their lives. Everyone remembers a name, a face, a story.
On Yom Ha’atzmaut — Israel’s independence day — the same nation that stood in silence rises together in joy, honoring not just loss, but life.
Before coming to Israel, a siren was just a sound, an interruption or background noise to me. Now, it has more meaning. It is fear, but also courage. It is loss, but also unity. It serves as a reminder of both vulnerability and strength.
As I write these lines, I am still here. Yom Yerushalayim is approaching, then Shavuot. Plans are still made with a question mark. Schedules shift. The possibility of another siren is never far.
But neither is something else. People still find each other. Celebrations don’t disappear; they move, they shrink, they adjust. And when the siren fades, the singing begins again.
Aliza Pollack, from White Plains, NY and a student at SAR High School, is a participant in the Nelech Program — a unique initiative of the Ohr Torah Stone network and the Tzemach David Foundation bringing North American 10th graders to Israel for an immersive semester of living and learning.