Uncategorized
A brand-new Jewish ritual object inspires an innovative art exhibit
(New York Jewish Week) — When Andrew Mandel dreamt up a new Jewish ritual object known as a “tzedek box,” he was admittedly most interested in the “tzedek” — the social justice — aspect, and less so the “box” part.
Mandel, a fifth-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in New York, envisioned a new Jewish holiday, Yom HaTzedek (Day of Justice) back in 2018 as a way to make acts of social justice an integral part of religious life. To reinforce the themes of the holiday, Jews would write reflections on each effort made to help the world throughout the year, and save them in a box. “This action is not meant to self-congratulate or to rack up a record of good deeds,” Kveller, the New York Jewish Week’s partner site, wrote in 2021. “Rather, it provides a moment to reflect on the work and develop accountability around consistently being ‘shomer tzedek,’ a guardian of justice.”
When he first conceived of the holiday, the box itself was an afterthought. “I have to confess, at first, the actual box wasn’t particularly relevant to me,” Mandel, 44, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s like — find a shoe box, find a jar. It was shortsighted, but that’s where I was.”
But as Yom HaTzedek shifted from concept to reality — the day is now officially commemorated on Pesach Sheni, or the Second Passover, observed on the 14th day of Iyar (this year May 5) — so too did Mandel’s thinking on the box itself. Conversations with renowned Jewish artist Tobi Kahn and Jean Bloch Rosensaft, director of the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at HUC, led Mandel to believe the aesthetics of the box could help enhance the users’ spiritual exploration of justice.
And now, these conversations have inspired a new exhibit, “Tzedek Boxes: Justice Shall You Pursue,” which will open at the Heller Museum on Thursday. The exhibit features 29 tzedek boxes created by contemporary Jewish artists. They include one of Kahn’s series of seven wooden tzedek boxes, “Zahryz III,” and Eli Kaplan-Wildmann’s customizable cardboard “Pop-up Tzedek Box,” which has been massed-produced for 8,300 participants and two dozen synagogues that have all participated in the new holiday.
The exhibit’s aim, said Rosensaft, echoes the museum’s mission “to encourage the interpretation and renewal of Jewish values, tradition, and practice through the creativity of contemporary artists in works that will advance justice in our world.”
If the tzedek box sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard of its cousin — or version 1.0, if you will: the tzedakah box, a receptacle for collecting coins to be donated to charity. The words “tzedek” and “tzedakah” have the same Hebrew root: justice.
“It’s not just that we don’t really use coins anymore,” Mandel said. “There’s more ways of making change than [just] philanthropy — whether it’s advocacy, whether that’s direct service and volunteer work, whether that’s just listening and learning. A tzedek box creates an umbrella for all those different actions so we can all live out our values together to improve the world.”
In the exhibit, the artists’ tzedek boxes capture different facets of social justice: in Jewish tradition (images of doves, or flowing rivers); motivation for social action (references to heroes and past injustices such as the Holocaust); the causes people care about (the environment, food insecurity) and symbols of generous behavior (an open heart, an open mind).
“I’m not an artist myself,” Mandel said. “But now I have seen these contributions of wildly diverse, often quite moving representations of justice and righteousness, it really opens things up to how multifaceted this process [of tzedek] is. Your box really matters.”
Reva Jane Solomon’s tzedek box, “Mommy’s Justice,” is a homage to her mother’s love. (Courtesy the Heller Museum)
In Reva Jane Solomon’s “Mommy’s Justice,” the tzedek box takes the form of a purple jewelry box, an homage to her mother’s love meant to encourage small acts of compassion and justice. Holly Berger Markhoff’s “Justice Knows No Other” is a wooden box featuring an interactive scroll on which to record one’s deeds, creating a continuous chronicle of righteousness.
Kahn, whose cityscape-inspired tzedek box evokes the Jewish obligation to care for humankind, said he hoped the exhibit would inspire all Jews to adopt the ritual. “If you believe in something you should actually do it,” he said. “I’m thrilled that many people are making their own because that’s how ritual starts.”
This isn’t the first new Jewish ritual object that the Heller Museum launched into the mainstream. In 1997, it featured an exhibit of Miriam’s cups — a goblet filled with water that’s placed alongside Elijah’s cup at Passover as a call to include women and their stories in the seder. The exhibit helped introduce the now widespread practice to Jews around the world.
Rosensaft sees the tzedek box exhibition as a similar call to action. “One of the pillars of Judaism is the notion that we, as a people, have been affiliated by horrific episodes of injustice, intolerance and genocide,” she said. “We cry ‘never again,’ but we know we cannot say that if we are not prepared to work towards the causes of human rights and freedom in our own time.”
To this end, Rosensaft paired the tzedek boxes with a concurrent exhibit, “One Nation,” in which artists of all backgrounds were invited to create works that comment on the state of America past, present and future.
“A lot of that hope for the future hinges on individuals taking action to solve the problems afflicting American society,” Rosensaft said.
“Tzedek Boxes” and “One Nation” are on view at the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum, (1 West 4th St.), from Jan. 26 through May 18. Or you can download the free Bloomberg Connects App and visit the Heller Museum page to virtually visit all the museum’s exhibitions, including “Tzedek Boxes” and “One Nation.”
—
The post A brand-new Jewish ritual object inspires an innovative art exhibit appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Cornell University Clears President of Wrongdoing After Incident With Anti-Israel Protesters
Cornell University students walk on campus, November 2023. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Cornell University absolved its president, Michael Kotlikoff, of wrongdoing following an incident in which anti-Israel protesters accused him of lightly impacting a student and an alumnus with his car as they participated in a mob which had surrounded the vehicle to prevent his leaving a parking space.
As seen in viral footage shared on social media and reported in local outlets, Kotlikoff was walking to his car on April 30 when an anti-Zionist group converged on him, demanding a chance to interrogate him about free speech and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kotlikoff resolved to go home, however, telling the group that he would not answer any more questions and asked them to stop recording.
After the protesters refused to comply, Kotlikoff denied the protesters their move to form a blockade around his parking spot, reversing out of it even as the student and alumnus held their positions to hold him still.
All the while, the mob banged on the vehicle, creating what the school described as a sense of imminent danger.
“The actions taken by these individuals on April 30th, which included following President Kotlikoff from an evening event into a parking lot and impeding his ability to leave, are inconsistent with university policies governing expressive activity and our standards for respectful conduct, safety, and the prohibition of intimidation,” the university’s Ad Hoc Special Committee of the Board of Trustees said in a statement on Friday announcing its decision after reviewing the incident. “President Kotlikoff has declined to pursue a complaint against the students involved.”
Noting it considered evidence gathered by the Cornell University Police Department (CUPD), including video footage and a sworn statement from Kotlikoff, the committee said the person at the scene who reported that Kotlikoff’s vehicle had made contact refused treatment from the EMS team and would not provide a sworn statement to CUPD. None of the individuals at the scene gave sworn statements about the incident.
The committee added that “appropriate action” was taken against at least one of Kotlikoff’s “non-student” harassers and called on students to appreciate the importance of “robust debate” and “peaceful protest,” values it extolled Kotlikoff for upholding “over the course of his decades long tenure at Cornell.”
Cornell University is no stranger to radical anti-Zionist activity. In 2023, a history professor there cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — a cornucopia of evils which included torture and gang rape. That same semester, an ex-student, Patrick Dai, threatened to perpetrate mass murder and sex crimes against Jewish students.
Anti-Zionists activists at Cornell have also heavily featured blood in their political messaging. Last year, they doused a statue in red paint and left behind a graffitied message which said “occupation=death.”
Kotlikoff, whom trustees appointed to the university’s top position in 2024 at the peak of student protests over the Israel-Hamas war, is a veteran of several clashes with the school’s anti-Israel faction.
Having enacted a zero-tolerance disciplinary policy, Kotlikoff has pursued criminal investigations against protesters who break the law, as happened in September 2024 when a mass of them disrupted a career fair because it was attended by defense contractors Boeing and L3Harris. The incident resulted in at least three arrests, and, later, severe sanctions, including classifying five students as “persona non grata,” which, Cornell says, bans from campus “a person who has exhibited behavior which has been deemed detrimental to the university community.”
Anti-Zionist student groups have tried and failed several times to initiate mass demonstrations or make other big moves during these final weeks of the academic year.
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) “peacefully” took down an encampment it established in April to protest the institution’s financial ties to Israel after school officials rushed to the scene to take names and issue disciplinary referrals, deterring others joining in.
At Smith College in Massachusetts, SJP activists last month were granted a meeting with high-level officials at a later date in exchange for the group’s ending an unauthorized encampment established on campus to protest the board of trustees’ decision to reject a proposal inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Jewish Man Brutally Attacked in London After Speaking Hebrew
Jewish man beaten in London on May 17, 2026, after speaking Hebrew. Images circulating on social media show the victim’s face heavily bloodied and bruised, with multiple visible cuts and swelling in the aftermath of the assault. Photo: Screenshot
British police are searching for a group of attackers after a young Jewish man was brutally assaulted in the north London area of Golders Green following an incident in which he was overheard speaking Hebrew, the latest outrage in a surge of antisemitic violence and harassment shaking the city’s Jewish community.
On Sunday night, a 22-year-old Jewish man was violently attacked by a group of four to five unidentified individuals outside his home in Golders Green, one of the most visible centers of Jewish life in London, around 2 am, after they allegedly overheard him speaking Hebrew during a phone call.
According to multiple media reports, masked men walking nearby heard the man speaking Hebrew on his phone and began chasing him while shouting antisemitic insults.
Once they caught up with him, the group allegedly demanded to know if he was Jewish, before dragging him across the road, ripping his clothes, and stealing one of his shoes.
The attackers brutally beat him, according to reports, repeatedly kicking him until he was left close to losing consciousness, with images later circulating on social media showing his face covered in cuts and bruises.
Local law enforcement arrived at the scene shortly afterward, but the suspects had already fled. The victim was later taken to hospital for treatment of his injuries and has since been receiving medical care.
As authorities continue their investigation, the assault is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, with no arrests made so far.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British charity, strongly condemned the incident, warning of a sharp escalation in threats facing Jewish communities and calling for urgent action to confront the rising tide of violence.
“It is plain for all to see that Jewish lives are under threat in their own communities. We cannot wait any longer for real intervention against this horrific wave of violence against Britain’s Jews,” the statement read. “We are in dire need of urgent action.”
In the United Kingdom, the Jewish community has faced a mounting wave of antisemitic violence, intimidation, and street-level harassment over the past two years following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with the escalation deepening concerns over public safety.
Over the past couple months, however, the rate and intensity of incidents have spiked, with arson attacks, stabbings, and other forms of violence.
Recently, an increasingly popular antisemitic TikTok trend in London has led to arrests and convictions after young men filmed themselves using cash to mock and harass members of Orthodox Jewish communities.
Videos circulating on social media show young men walking through heavily Jewish areas of London carrying fishing rods with money attached to the line in an apparent attempt to “fish for Jews.”
In a separate incident last weekend in Stamford Hill, a man allegedly whipped several Haredi Jewish women with a belt before spitting at volunteer responders who arrived at the scene. Witnesses said he also shouted racist insults, antisemitic slurs, and threats at both the victims and the volunteers.
Hours later, in nearby Amhurst Park in north London, a Jewish child was allegedly assaulted outside a school after a woman screamed antisemitic insults and punched the minor.
Three weeks ago, an assailant stabbed two Jewish men in Golders Green — an attack that prompted the British government to raise the national terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe” for the first time in over four years.
In March, arsonists set fire to four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Hatzola organization in the area. Weeks later, a synagogue and the former premises of a Jewish charity in north London were also targeted.
Uncategorized
Iran’s Executions More Than Double in 2025, Making Up 80% of Global Total, New Data Shows
A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier.
The Islamic regime in Iran led the world in documented executions last year, with 2,159 people killed out of a total of 2,707 across 17 nations, according to a report released on Monday by Amnesty International.
Iran’s executions surged since 2024, when the regime carried out at least 972. All executions were conducted through hanging.
Following Iran, the next countries with the highest totals included Saudi Arabia, 356 or more; Yemen, 51; the United States, 47; Egypt, 23; Somalia, 17; Kuwait, 17; Singapore, 17; Afghanistan, six; and the United Arab Emirates, three.
Three countries executed one person: Japan, South Sudan, and Taiwan. In the US, nearly half of all executions took place in Florida. In total, Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for 93 percent of documented global executions.
Notably, the 2025 total did not include “the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes continued to be carried out in China, which remained the world’s lead executioner.”
China “continued to execute and sentence to death thousands of people but kept figures secret,” stated the report, which explained other countries did not disclose their death penalty numbers including North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Belarus.
“In the face of the state secrecy that continued to surround data on the death penalty, disclosures and commentary by the Chinese authorities once again pointed to an intentional use of the death penalty to send a message that the state would not tolerate threats to public security or stability; and would impose severe punishment to maintain order,” the report said.
According to Amnesty International, 2025 saw the highest number of executions globally since 1981, with Iran leading the surge.
“This alarming spike in the use of the death penalty is due to a small, isolated group of states willing to carry out executions at all costs, despite the continued global trend towards abolition,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International. “From China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Kuwait, Singapore, and the USA, this shameless minority are weaponizing the death penalty.”
Callamard warned that the use of the death penalty sought to “instill fear, crush dissent, and show the strength state institutions have over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities”
The report showed a disturbing trend among the executions: that 46 percent of offenders (1,257) received the sentence for drug convictions, with 998 in Iran, 250 in Saudi Arabia, 15 in Singapore, and two in Kuwait. Amnesty documented 11 public hangings in Iran and six in Afghanistan — spectacles meant to terrorize communities as much as punish individuals.
Amnesty published its findings weeks after a joint-annual report released by the European groups Iran Human Rights (IHR) in Norway and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) in France found Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, a 68 percent leap from the 975 killed in 2024 and the highest seen since tracking began in 2008.
In March, the Human Rights Activists News Agency released a report on broader crackdowns in Iran last year, identifying that 78,907 people were arrested on ideological or political grounds from March 2025 to March 2026. In addition, the group found at least 6,724 protesters, including 236 children, were killed, with an additional 11,744 cases still under verification. Researchers also discovered 105 women were murdered with seven classified as “honor killings,” and that 68 were victims of sexual violence.
While men dominated the list of executions in the annual report, Iran executed 61 women and Saudi Arabia executed five.
Regarding methods of execution deployed, hanging was the preference of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore, and South Sudan. Countries using firing squads included Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Taiwan, the UAE, and Yemen. China, the US, and Vietnam rely on lethal injections while some US states use nitrogen gas asphyxiation.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s only state to continue beheading as a method of execution. The kingdom maintains the practice in accordance with Islamic law which mandates death for a wide range of offenses including adultery, sorcery, and apostasy.
The report noted that last year in Yemen, 18 people were convicted and sentenced to death “for sexual acts that do not constitute internationally recognized offenses – including sexual relations among consenting adults of the same-sex, and drug-related offenses.”
Saudi Arabia has also executed people convicted of offenses as children. Researchers described how on Aug. 21, 2025, the government executed Jalal Labbad (who was born on April 3, 1995) for his alleged “participation in protests in 2011 and 2012 against the treatment of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority in Al-Qatif, as well as his attendance at funerals of individuals killed by security forces. On Aug. 1, 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) convicted and sentenced him to death for alleged offences committed when he was 16 and 17 years old.”
Amnesty claimed success in its campaign to end capital punishment which started in 1977, noting that at the time 16 countries had banned the practice and today the number has reached 113.