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A Hanukkah menorah in the window for eight days? Try an Israeli flag for two years
There’s a robust online debate over whether Jews this year should publicly display their menorahs given the rise in antisemitism. Here’s my suggestion: Ask Elon Rubin.
Rubin owns Sundays Cycles, a custom bicycle shop in Santa Monica, California, that since Oct. 7, 2023, features a large Israeli flag in its window. Every time I drive down Main Street, passing boutiques, restaurants, nail salons and Pilates studios, I see that flag, draped inside several square feet of the glass storefront. It is meant to be seen.
“I’m an Israeli citizen,” Rubin told me when I met him at his store last month. “After everything that happened on Oct. 7, it was the least I could do.”
What drew me into the store was the simple, quiet defiance of Rubin’s decision, which stands in stark blue-and-white contrast to the constant, hand-wringing debate American Jews are engaged in over such symbols.
Those concerns bubble up to the surface like sufganiyot in hot oil around Hanukkah, when Jews are commanded to place their menorahs in windows so that they are visible to all.
The Talmud says the menorahs must be displayed to “publicize the miracle” of Hanukkah.
But more and more American Jews are worried — as their European Jews have been for many years now — about announcing their Jewishness to the outside world.
Some 42% of Jewish Americans report feeling unsafe wearing or displaying Jewish symbols in public since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and 40% have avoided doing so, up from 26% in 2023.
Those fears aren’t new, but they have risen as have antisemitic attacks, anti-Israel protests and online threats.
When I walked into Rubin’s spacious, hospital-clean bike shop, I asked if he shared those fears.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he said.
One look at Rubin and here’s the obvious rebuttal: That’s easy for you to say. The 46-year-old, born in Herzliya to an American mother and a father from Libya, came to the United States in 1998 and made a profession of his cycling obsession. He is shaved, muscled, tattooed and speaks in rapid, commanding sentences.
Over the years, numerous people have shouted at him from outside the store to take down the flag.
“I say, ‘Come in here, let’s have a conversation,’” he said. “Not a single person has come in.”
Other reactions have not been as passive. Graffiti reading “Free Palestine” has appeared on the store window, and vandals have thrown numerous eggs at the place. He’s had death threats on his phone messages, including, ”I hope you die Jew” and “Your days are numbered.”
His Yelp and Google review rankings have been tanked by malicious one-star reviews.
Last March, a Jewish anti-Israel activist, Medea Benjamin, entered his store and called the Israeli flag shameful.
“What about the genocide?” she asked Rubin.
“There is no genocide,” he said.
Her Instagram post of the incident, which racked up 127,719 likes, prompted a deluge of negative reports to Instagram about the bike shop’s account. Instagram suspended his account, Rubin said, and has yet to reactivate it.
“Ten years of organic growth, gone,” he said.
But Rubin said the flag has also generated support. “For every negative,” he said, “we’d probably get two or three positives.”
Israeli tourists detoured inside to meet Rubin and thank him. American Jews, and some non-Jews, told him they appreciated the show of support.
The oddest reaction, he said, are from Jews who have urged him to take the flag down because, they said, it incites hate.
“Like it’s the new swastika,” he said.
But Rubin evinces neither fear nor loathing.
He doesn’t have “blind support” for the current Israeli government, he said, but he loves his country. Just because someone flies the American flag doesn’t mean they support President Trump, he pointed out.
It’s true that the Israeli flag, the symbol of a country embodied in conflict, is not exactly comparable to a menorah, seen largely as a religious symbol. Congregations have been divided over whether to display it on the bimah, as some congregants found it loathsome.
But someone prone to attack Jews might not make the fine distinctions between a menorah, a flag with a Star of David, and a Star of David hanging around a child’s neck, or on a Torah ark. The lines between these symbols are often blurry, but so is the logic of people who attack others just for displaying them.
I asked Rubin if he ever, in the past two years, considered taking down the flag, lighting the menorah in the backyard, so to speak.
“So then what are you?” he said. “You’re a Jew in silence, you’re a Jew in secret.”
Symbols aren’t arguments. They demonstrate but rarely convince, and nuance is not their strong suit. But to Rubin, their power lies not in the message they send to others, but in what they say to ourselves.
“Together,” he said, “we have more strength than we realize.”
The post A Hanukkah menorah in the window for eight days? Try an Israeli flag for two years appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine Has ‘Irrefutable’ Evidence of Russia Providing Intelligence to Iran, Zelenskiy Says
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (not pictured) and European Council President Antonio Costa (not pictured) on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Ukraine‘s military intelligence has “irrefutable” evidence that Russia continues to provide intelligence to Iran, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after meeting the head of military intelligence.
“Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East,” he said on X.
Kremlin last week dismissed a Wall Street Journal report that Russia was sharing satellite imagery and improved drone technology with Iran as “fake news.”
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Belgium Deploys Soldiers to Reinforce Security at Jewish Sites
Belgian army personnel patrol a street as part of a deployment of soldiers outside Jewish institutions in Antwerp and Brussels following attacks at Jewish sites in Belgium and other European countries, in Antwerp, Belgium, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Soldiers were deployed on the streets of leading Belgian cities on Monday to bolster security for the Jewish community, after what officials said were antisemitic attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The move follows an explosion this month at a synagogue in Liege that authorities called an antisemitic act.
“From today we’re putting soldiers back on the streets in Brussels and Antwerp because safety is a basic right,” Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken said in a post on X on Monday.
The deployment, in collaboration with federal police, will provide security at Jewish sites including synagogues and schools, Belgian authorities said in a press release last week.
Antwerp “is again a little safer … the Jewish community too. We say NO to antisemitism!” Francken said on Monday.
The upgrade in security also follows an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an explosion at a Jewish school in Amsterdam in neighbouring The Netherlands.
Dutch police have arrested five suspects, aged 17 to 19, over the synagogue attack in Rotterdam.
The US embassy in Oslo was also targeted in a bombing earlier this month branded by Norwegian investigators as an act of terrorism. None of the attacks caused injuries.
A Belgian defense ministry spokesperson said on Monday that soldiers would be deployed in three different phases: First in Brussels and Antwerp, later in Liege.
Rights advocates have raised concerns about possible attacks against Jewish communities around the world following the launch of the US and Israeli war with Iran. Four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community organisation in north London were set ablaze on Monday.
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Trump Puts Off Threat to Bomb Iran Power Grid; Tehran Denies Talks Taking Place
Streaks of light illuminate the sky during an interception attempt amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, as seen from Tel Aviv, Israel, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he had given orders to postpone for five days the attacks he had threatened against Iranian power plants, and said the US was in talks with Tehran about ending the US-Israeli war on Iran.
However, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, mooted to be the leader representing Iran in contacts with the US, posted on social media that no talks had been held with the US.
As reciprocal airstrikes continued, financial markets had broadly welcomed the reports of efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Even after Qalibaf’s comments, the Brent crude oil benchmark was down around 8% to about $103 a barrel.
Iran has effectively closed the key Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
Trump wrote early in the US morning on his Truth Social platform that the US and Iran had had “very good and productive” conversations over the past two days about a “complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East.”
OIL DROPS, STOCKS RECOVER ON PROSPECT OF PEACE TALKS
He later told reporters that his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had been negotiating with Iran before the war, had had discussions with a top Iranian official into the evening on Sunday, and would continue on Monday.
“We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement.”
“All I’m saying is, we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal,” he told reporters before departing Florida for Memphis.
He declined to say who the US was speaking to in Iran but said it was not Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was wounded in the Israeli attack at the start of the war that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Washington.
“We’re dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” Trump said.
An unnamed Israeli official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Qalibaf, increasingly influential, was representing Iran and that talks on ending the war could be held in Islamabad as soon as this week.
A reporter for the US news outlet Axios also said mediating countries, which he named as Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, were trying to convene an Iranian-US meeting in Islamabad this week including Witkoff, Kushner, and Vice President JD Vance.
Trump said he had spoken with Israel, which he said would be “very happy with what we have.”
Although Mojtaba Khamenei holds the ultimate authority in Iran, and the foreign ministry led past negotiations with the US, Iran experts say the realities of wartime decision-making have effectively shifted control to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which now exerts decisive influence over key areas including foreign policy.
A source briefed on Israel’s war plans said Washington had kept it informed of its contacts with Tehran, and that Israel was likely to follow Washington in suspending any targeting of Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on talks or on Washington’s decision to suspend strikes on some targets.
Global markets rose sharply, with US stocks up more than 2%.
On Saturday, Trump had warned that Iranian power plants would be destroyed if Tehran failed to “fully open” the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping within 48 hours. Trump set a deadline of around 7:44 pm EDT (2344 GMT) on Monday.
The IRGC threatened retaliation, saying it would attack Israel’s power plants and those supplying US bases if Trump followed through with his threat.
MARKETS AND ECONOMIES IN TURMOIL
Iranian media reported that they had on Monday attacked targets in Israel and US bases in the region.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in the war the US and Israel launched on Feb. 28, which has devastated Iran’s leadership and military capabilities while driving up fuel costs and accelerating global inflation fears.
However, the threat of strikes on Gulf electricity grids raised fears of mass disruption to desalination for drinking water, and further rattled oil markets.
While attacks on electricity could hurt Iran, they could be catastrophic for its Gulf neighbors, which consume around five times as much power per capita.
Electricity makes their gleaming desert cities habitable, in part by powering the desalination plants that produce 100% of the water consumed in Bahrain and Qatar. Such plants use seawater to meet more than 80% of drinking water needs in the United Arab Emirates, and 50% of the water supply in Saudi Arabia.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said the resulting energy crisis was worse than the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the gas shortage connected to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine put together.
Iran‘s Defense Council escalated its threatened retaliation on Monday, prior to Trump‘s delay, saying Tehran would cut all Gulf routes by laying sea mines if Trump followed through, state media reported.
The Israeli military said early on Monday it had begun its latest broad wave of strikes on infrastructure in Tehran.
Iranian news agencies said six people had been killed and 43 injured in strikes in the western city of Khorramabad.
The Iranian Red Crescent posted a video of a residential building in affluent northern Tehran with most of its facade destroyed and emergency staff rescuing someone on a stretcher from the upper floors.
Across the Gulf, the Saudi defense ministry said two ballistic missiles had been launched towards Riyadh. One was intercepted while the other fell in an uninhabited area.