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A Holocaust survivor and her family saw ‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway play told their story.

(New York Jewish Week) — On a Wednesday evening last month, three generations of a Jewish family made their way to their seats at the Longacre Theater to see “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic Broadway play about the tragedies that befall an extended Jewish family in the first half of the 20th century in Vienna.

The date of the family gathering was a significant one: Nov. 9, the 84th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms known as Kristallnacht. And in the audience was Fini Konstat, 96, who lived in the once thriving Jewish neighborhood after which the play is named, and witnessed the horrors it portrays first-hand. Alongside her were her daughter and her son-in-law, Renee and James Akers, and her oldest great-grandchild, Lexi Levin, 23.

When Konstat was a child, she lived in a “nice apartment” in Leopoldstadt. But exactly 84 years to the day of their theater date, “I was running with my father, seeing all the Jewish stores with all their windows broken,” she told Levin in a short video her great-granddaughter filmed before the curtain rose.

“It’s such a blessing for me to be here with you,” Levin said to her great-grandmother in response. “Ninety-six years old, survived a pandemic, at a Broadway show in New York City.”

Left: Fini as a child on the balcony of her apartment in Leopoldstadt. Right: Fini with her three children in front of the very same building, pictured in 2015. (Courtesy)

Since the beginning of its Broadway run in mid-September, “Leopoldstadt,” with its depiction of a prosperous Viennese family on the brink of destruction, has moved audiences to tears and inspired deep reflections on the Holocaust. Based on the celebrated playwright’s own family history — of which he was barely aware while growing up in England — it has provided a stark counterpoint to news about rising antisemitism and the celebrities who have been purveying it.

But for Konstat, the play was much more personal. “When I heard the word ‘Leopoldstadt,’ this alone gave me lots of thrills and memories,” Konstat, who is known in her family as Mimi, told the New York Jewish Week in accented English. She recalled how Levin, who recently moved to the city, invited her to fly to New York to see one of Broadway’s hottest tickets.

“Leopoldstadt,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “The second district. That’s where we lived.”

At the end of Stoppard’s five-act play, audiences learn that most of the Jewish characters had perished under the Nazis — of the four generations in the show, just three cousins survive to carry on the family’s legacy.

For Konstat too, she and her parents were among the very few in their extended family to survive the Holocaust. “Almost all of them went to Auschwitz or other camps,” Konstat said. “My mother was a twin and only the twins remained alive. [My mother’s] five other siblings and my grandmother perished.”

L-R: Renee Akers, James Akers, Lexi Levin and Fini Konstat at the Longacre Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt on Broadway,’ Nov. 9, 2022. (Courtesy)

In a Zoom conversation held over Thanksgiving weekend, Konstat, surrounded by two of her daughters, two of her granddaughters and three of her great-granddaughters, shared what the play meant to her — and how her family has restored what she lost.

In the months after Kristallnacht in 1938, Konstat and her parents hid in a neighbor’s apartment; Konstat recalls hiding under the duvet when German soldiers showed up. Eventually the family fled to Turkey, and then to India, before settling down in Mexico City. There, the teenage Fini met her husband David, also a survivor who escaped Poland. The two of them began to write the rest of their story — starting with the birth of the first of their three children in 1948.

Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Fini and David Konstat were open about their experiences during the war, instilling a sense of pride and duty to remember in their children — something that eventually extended to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“They were proud to speak about how they survived this,” said the Konstats’ middle child, Renee Konstat Akers. “Their life was an odyssey. They had the courage to do things that you would never think were possible. We grew up grateful knowing how our family survived in that incredible way.”

Each child moved to different places as they grew up and got married. Manuel, the oldest, stayed in Mexico. Renee married an American and moved to the Midwest, and Denise, the youngest, to Houston. Each became deeply involved in their Jewish communities, sending their children (Konstat’s grandchildren) to Jewish day schools, celebrating Jewish holidays and participating in synagogue life.

“The word ‘miracle’ really does not feel like an understatement in this scenario,” said Sherry Levin, one of Konstat’s grandchildren. “When we think about what it took for my grandmother and grandfather to survive and how they were able to intersect in Mexico, and such an amazing multi-generational family has come to fruition, it feels miraculous.”

Pictured here on their 40th anniversary, Fini and her husband David met in Mexico City after both had fled Europe. They were married 54 years before David died in 2001. (Courtesy)

Reviews of the show have ranged from rhapsodic to resistant, with some critics suggesting the play is simplistic and obvious in its story-telling or that it is less a well-crafted play than a well-meaning lesson on the Holocaust.

But just as the Merz family clashes and argues about everything from antisemitism to intermarriage to socialism in “Leopoldstadt,” each generation of the Konstat family that saw “Leopoldstadt” that night came away with something different —  a reaction influenced by their age, their Jewish identity, their nationality and their relationship with their family.

For Konstat, the arc of “Leopoldstadt” was so familiar that it hardly stirred her. “It was just very happy watching it and enjoying it and enjoying my children with me, “ she told the New York Jewish Week. “I didn’t think about anybody else.”

Akers, too, felt an intense familiarity with the story, and, perhaps toughened by her own family history, didn’t experience an intense emotional reaction. Her own parents’ lives gave Akers a sense of purpose in her life — for example, in the 1990s, she was passionate about helping resettle Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union. With her own children, she instilled in them a strong sense of Jewish purpose in their work, their education and their family.

“I was a sandwich in between seeing my mother and my granddaughter,” she said of her “Leopoldstadt” experience. “I was emotional thinking of my mom who went through it, but I was more emotional about seeing my granddaughter be so moved. It really hit her at her core.”

Indeed, it was the youngest member of the family present that night who was most shaken by the play.

“It really felt like a gift to my family and to me, specifically, to be able to see what Mimi’s life looked like before the war,” Lexi Levin said, surmising that, as a fourth-generation survivor, she is among the first in her family to be able to start processing the loss on a grander scale.

“For the first time in my life, I really felt the magnitude of her loss,” she added. “I’ve known her story and I’ve been inspired by her story to be involved with my own Jewish causes, but I have never been able to access and truly empathize with her grief and what it meant that she lost the entire family she had before this one that she created.”

Turning to her great-grandmother, as if trying to make her understand the exact precision of the show, Levin explained, “It’s a play about generations and the family was large and then it was small.”

“You made it large again,” she said, referring to the generations of family that had assembled — in the Broadway theater and again over Thanksgiving weekend. “Look at this room.”

Pictured on her 90th birthday in 2017, Fini Konstat now has three children, ten grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. (Courtesy)

There was a coda for the family after the curtain went down. The day after the show, the family wanted to see the 1907 “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings, which currently hangs at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. A version of the portrait’s true story — how a painting of a socialite from a prominent Viennese Jewish family was looted by the Nazis and the family’s efforts to get it back — features in the plot of “Leopoldstadt.”

The gallery, however, was closed on the only day the family could visit. After a call to the management at the gallery, which showcases the German and Austrian art collections of  Jewish philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, the gallery’s director arranged a private tour.

“It felt like we were in a puzzle and everything was finally coming together,” said Akers. “It was an emotional, emotional time.”

When the week was over and the emotions were spent, Konstat and the Akers returned home with a reignited passion for their family story. But there was yet another twist: In addition to the whirlwind trip Levin planned for her grandparents and for Mimi, she had been undergoing the laborious process of applying for Austrian citizenship. Six members in Konstat’s large family have undertaken the process over the last two years.

“Part of the motivation was knowing Mimi’s story, and knowing that she survived because her mother had citizenship in Turkey,” Levin said. “That story was just inspirational to me, knowing that dual citizenship was what saved our family.” She convinced her brother and mother to apply for Austrian citizenship as well.

The day after her grandmother and great-grandmother left New York, Levin called them with news from her small apartment in Manhattan: An Austrian passport had arrived in the mail. The curtain was rising on another act.

Konstat was surprised at how interested her family was in getting Austrian citizenship. “I feel very good,” she said. “I’m very happy.”

“Does it make you emotional?” Levin asked her during the Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.

“It does — of course it does. I used to love Austria,” she said. “I was sad to leave. I was disappointed. We never thought of coming back. I was happy to be able to escape. Thank God we made it out of hell.”


The post A Holocaust survivor and her family saw ‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway play told their story. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Mamdani orders review of whether New York can arrest Netanyahu when he visits this fall

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has revived one of his most controversial election promises, raising once again the prospect of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he comes to New York in September for the United Nations General Assembly. It’s a move that legal experts say Mamdani is unlikely to be able to carry out.

In a video interview with The New York Times published Saturday, Mamdani said he ordered a review by the city’s Law Department to consider his options to comply with an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do. But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Mamdani said, remarks that drew a strong online reaction.

In a post to social media on Sunday, Netanyahu’s office dismissed concerns of a possible arrest, calling the ICC a “kangaroo court” and saying that “Mamdani should focus on fixing the damage his policies have caused New York.” In an interview last week, Netanyahu said Mamdani “hates America.”

The United States does not recognize the court’s authority over American citizens or foreign nationals on U.S. soil, and the federal government could likely challenge the legitimacy of such an order.

Mamdani’s statement reflects the tension that has defined his first months in office: balancing the activist politics that propelled him to City Hall with the legal constraints and governing responsibilities of the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

A political gift to Netanyahu

Mamdani’s actions could have unintended consequences abroad.

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who has frequently criticized Netanyahu, warned that even a failed attempt to arrest the prime minister would likely strengthen Netanyahu politically in a tough reelection bid, set for Oct. 27.

“Many Israelis are sick of him and hope to vote him out,” Shapiro wrote on X. “The only possible outcome of a fruitless attempt to arrest him in NYC would be to give him a political boost at home. That would be an own goal.”

Recent polls show that Netanyahu, seeking a seventh term in office, is trailing an opposition bloc led by two contenders — former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot.

A confrontation with New York’s outspoken anti-Zionist mayor could allow Netanyahu to cast himself once again as Israel’s defender against international efforts to isolate and punish the country. Netanyahu already labeled Mamdani as someone who “champions” Hamas and “apologizes” for Iran.

That message could resonate even with Israelis who oppose him. American Jewish opinion illustrates the same complexity. While recent polling shows many American Jews view Netanyahu unfavorably, and that Mamdani is more popular with that group, that has not translated into support for an attempt to arrest Israel’s elected leader.

A Honan Strategy Group poll in December found that although 40% of New York City voters believed Mamdani had a moral obligation to uphold international human rights standards by ordering Netanyahu’s arrest, seven in 10 of the 131 Jewish respondents said doing so would damage New York’s global standing.

In the end, Mamdani may be able to avoid acting at all by pointing to the legal opinion that New York City lacks the authority to arrest Netanyahu.

The law is not on Mamdani’s side 

A photo of Netanyahu speaking from a podium.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the United Nations General Assembly on September 26, 2025 in New York City. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The ICC, based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants in Nov. 2024 for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas confirmed in Jan. 2025 that Deif was assassinated in July 2024 by an Israeli strike on Gaza.

But even if Mamdani wanted to enforce the warrant, New York City has little authority to do so.

Because the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, the NYPD has no legal authority to arrest Netanyahu based on an ICC warrant. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched a sweeping campaign of sanctions, visa bans and diplomatic pressure to “systematically disable” the ICC “brick by brick.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, in a post on X, also pointed to the 1947 U.N. Headquarters Agreement, which requires the United States to allow accredited foreign representatives to attend U.N. meetings, as well as the customary international law doctrine that grants immunity to sitting heads of government traveling on official business. Netanyahu would also arrive in New York under Secret Service protection afforded to foreign leaders.

Even carrying out such an order would appear unlikely.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, has repeatedly kept a distance from the mayor on Israel-related issues. Her public statements on Israel have been unequivocal. In June, Tisch served as grand marshal of the annual Celebrate Israel Parade, which Mamdani skipped. “I understand that for many of you, having a Jewish police commissioner is deeply comforting,” she told Jewish leaders in May.

Mamdani’s foreign policy reach has already been limited. Last month, the U.S. State Department blocked a planned meeting between Mamdani and Colombian President Gustavo Petro in New York, a fierce Israel critic, who had his visa revoked last fall after he appeared at a pro-Palestinian rally in Manhattan and was attending a UN Security Council session under strict terms. Earlier this month, the Trump administration stopped a meeting between Ana María Archila, Mamdani’s commissioner for international affairs, and Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Why does Mamdani keep talking about it?

Congressional candidate Brad Lander with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Palestinian activist Moshen Mahdaw on June 14. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

While the legal answer is largely settled, the political one is not.

By keeping the question open, Mamdani signals support to the pro-Palestinian movement that fueled his rise, while acknowledging the institutional limits of his office.

Targeting Netanyahu was central to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. After leading chants of “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” during a protest in Oct. 2023, Mamdani first pledged to arrest Netanyahu shortly after he declared his candidacy. He later repeated the pledge, including in front of Jewish audiences, arguing that he did not want New York to be a place where leaders accused of war crimes felt welcome.

The approach follows a similar pattern Mamdani confronted with a politically charged issue earlier this year. As anti-Jewish incidents continue to make up a majority of reported hate crimes, the city considered placing buffer zones around houses of worship, spurred in part by a November protest outside the Park East Synagogue that included antisemitic slogans.

After expressing reservations about the legislation, Mamdani referred the bill to the city’s Law Department before ultimately allowing it to become law without his signature, only after the City Council passed it with a veto-proof majority.

Mamdani vetoed a companion bill that would potentially limit pro-Palestinian demonstrations, particularly on campuses. (The council later passed a modified version, and the state passed a 50-foot buffer zone bill that equally applies to all community centers and schools being used for services, education and religious observance across the state.)

Mamdani’s real test

Whether Mamdani’s careful balancing act satisfies either side may become clear when Netanyahu arrives in New York this September.

While the mayor cannot dictate U.S. foreign policy or enforce ICC warrants, City Hall still plays an important role in coordinating logistics, demonstrations and municipal services during the annual gathering of world leaders.

Mamdani can influence how unwelcoming New York feels to the Israeli leader.

The Israeli prime minister’s appearance at the United Nations is expected to draw massive demonstrations, putting City Hall’s handling of protests and policing under intense scrutiny.

History suggests that symbolism matters.

In 1995, Mayor Rudy Giuliani triggered a diplomatic dispute after ejecting Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat from a United Nations anniversary concert at Lincoln Center. President Bill Clinton, protesting the move, invited the Palestinian leader to a White House reception.

For all the attention given to Netanyahu’s return to New York, he may not arrive alone. During a White House meeting last year, Netanyahu laughed off the threat as “silly” and quipped that he might travel to New York “with President Trump.” Trump responded: “I’ll get him out.”

Now, that exchange may prove to have been less a joke than a preview of where the real power lies.

The post Mamdani orders review of whether New York can arrest Netanyahu when he visits this fall appeared first on The Forward.

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A Jewish couple fell in love with rural Oklahoma. Then they built a cemetery there.

Linda Fitzerman did not want her children making burial decisions through tears.

For years, she and her husband, Todd Boone Fitzerman, told each other they needed to settle the question. They were not interested in cremation. They wanted a traditional Jewish burial. And they did not want their children, someday, to face the cost and pressure of deciding where that burial should take place.

“They just need to show up and cry,” Linda said. “They don’t need the additional pain of having to make financial decisions.”

The answer, when it came, was not one they had expected. They created a small Jewish burial ground in Sulphur, Oklahoma, a city of about 5,000 people in the Bible Belt, near the ranch the Fitzermans bought during the pandemic and had come to love.

At Oak Lawn Cemetery, a city-owned burial ground with green grass, rolling terrain and ponds, the Fitzermans purchased a group of plots to create a circular family burial section. Four corner pillars crowned with Stars of David mark the site. Beneath the grass, the pillars are connected by buried rebar, creating a distinct boundary around the section. Linda designed the stainless steel Stars of David, which a friend welded into place.

Nearby, five young trees are taking root: two Chinese pistache trees and three Autumn Blaze maples. The Fitzermans planted them with the city’s permission and have been carefully tending them for the past year, using large water barrels to help them through the early seasons.

“We are babysitting them for at least two years,” Linda said.

The burial section was dedicated in 2025. Todd’s brother, Rabbi Marc Boone Fitzerman of Tulsa, advised them on how to create a designated Jewish space within a public cemetery. Psalms and other prayers were recited at the site. There was no minyan, Todd said, but “spiritually we are there.”

To the Fitzermans’ knowledge, no other Jew is buried in Oak Lawn Cemetery.

The Jewish cemetery space at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Sulphur, Oklahoma.
The Jewish cemetery space at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Sulphur, Oklahoma. Courtesy of Todd Boone Fitzerman

A pandemic, and a plan

The cemetery project grew out of a life they did not plan to build in Oklahoma. Todd, 67, and Linda, 65, are both from the Detroit area and were raised in Conservative families. They met in Dallas when their children were young and have been married for 24 years. Dallas remains home. The couple still runs a business there, Local Oven, a gluten-free baking company.

But during the long uncertainty of the COVID pandemic, they began thinking about land.

“We felt so bottled up, and we wanted to get out,” Linda said.

They first responded to an advertisement for 10 acres near water in Texas. The search widened. Todd’s son suggested that 50 acres would be enough room to shoot on the property. Eventually, Todd found 158 acres outside Davis, Oklahoma, about two hours north of Dallas. They began building a working ranch. Todd’s son keeps cattle there. The Fitzermans now divide their time between Dallas and Oklahoma, spending roughly half the week in each place.

“It is a beautiful ranch,” Linda said. “It’s very calming to be out here, really beautiful, nothing like the city.”

Todd described hearing coyotes at night, watching the cattle roam, and the pleasure of “playing cowboy” for part of the week. Linda said she had not known, when they bought the land in 2021, “how important Oklahoma was going to be.”

“It was never a plan,” she said. “It just sort of evolved.”

Their relationship with the area deepened through the people they met there. Todd and Linda said one local friend, who lives across from Oak Lawn Cemetery and owns a large construction company, helped introduce them around Sulphur when they were new. He had also acquired plots in the cemetery through a trade arrangement for excavation work. Seeing what he had done opened a possibility they had not considered.

For years, Linda said, they had found “nothing intriguing” in Dallas cemeteries. Many Jewish plots cost $7,000 or $8,000. One cemetery with a Jewish section had plots priced around $36,000.

“Why would I spend money like that?” Linda said.

In Sulphur, plots were $300 each. For $4,500 total, they could create a family burial place tailored to them.

“We finally had an opportunity that just presented itself,” Linda said.

The circle layout itself came from her memory. In Michigan, she said, part of her family is buried in an older Jewish cemetery arranged not in straight rows, but in a circular shape.

“I thought that was really nice,” she said. “I liked it.”

So Linda and Todd approached the city and asked whether they could create a Jewish cemetery section in Oak Lawn. The response, they said, was strikingly easy.

“We shared that with the city and they said, ‘Yeah, sure,’” Linda said. “I’ve never seen any place give me the green light on every question.”

The city’s one practical concern was that everything remain level enough for its crews to mow. It allowed the Fitzermans to select the location, a corner where two cemetery roads meet. It also permitted them to plant the trees on easement land beside the plots.

“The city is 100% accepting,” Linda said.

Todd put it similarly. “The city could not have been more accommodating,” he said.

The Fitzermans say their religion has never been a problem. “It is the Baptist Bible Belt,” Linda said. “Everyone here has been so willing to accept us. They are inquisitive and curious. Our religion has not been an issue for anyone.”

Todd said that not everyone in Sulphur knows they are Jewish, “but lots of people know we are Jews.” When Todd’s son held his Jewish wedding on the ranch, he said, many non-Jewish guests had never attended one before. Friends asked questions. Guests wore kippot or cowboy hats. Tallitot belonging to Todd, his father and his son’s other grandfather formed the wedding canopy.

“There were more Jews in Sulphur for my son’s wedding than ever before,” Todd said.

Peace of mind

For Linda, the cemetery’s Jewish symbols were important. She wanted the pillars to be easy to find. More than that, she wanted them to say plainly what the site was.

“When we see the pillars, they reflect what we are doing, which is our religion,” she said. “Nothing is more stately than the Jewish star.”

“Our little decor, to me, sends a really beautiful statement,” she added. “I’ve always been proud to be Jewish. I wouldn’t want to be buried any other way.”

The Fitzermans have tried to spare their children as much uncertainty as possible. They have assigned the burial titles to their children and their children’s partners, while making clear that use of the plots will remain their choice. They have also documented the practical steps to follow when the time comes, including where a body could be prepared for Jewish burial in Dallas or Oklahoma City.

“You don’t think about it until a family member is going through it,” Linda said.

She views the cemetery as a natural extension of family care. “You are always, always part of your family,” she said. “If you want these, they are there for you.”

Todd described the burial ground in similar terms. It offers “peace of mind,” he said: a final resting place in a community they love and want to be part of.

The trees, Linda noted, will eventually grow large. The Chinese pistache trees can grow to over 25 feet with age. The maples, she said, will be especially beautiful in the fall.

They hope it will be many years before the cemetery is needed.

But the question that had lingered for so long has now been answered. Their children will not have to find a plot, compare prices, choose a cemetery, or wonder whether their parents’ burial wishes were honored.

They will only have to come.

And cry.

The post A Jewish couple fell in love with rural Oklahoma. Then they built a cemetery there. appeared first on The Forward.

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Why Orthodox Jews are pushing back against permanent daylight saving time

(JTA) — For many Orthodox Jews, a typical winter weekday begins early: head to synagogue, gather in a minyan for morning prayers, then rush off to work.

Orthodox Jewish groups say a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent could upend that routine by pushing winter sunrises — and the earliest permissible time for some prayers — an hour later.

Agudath Israel of America is among the groups urging the Senate to reject legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, arguing that the change would create both public safety risks and significant challenges for Orthodox Jewish religious life.

The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act on Tuesday by a wide bipartisan margin. In a statement issued after the vote, Agudath Israel said it understood the appeal of ending the twice-yearly clock changes but opposed making daylight saving time permanent.

The Orthodox advocacy organization warned that permanent daylight saving time would push winter sunrises past 9 a.m. in some parts of the country, forcing many children to travel to school before dawn. It also said the later sunrise would make it difficult for observant Jews to attend morning synagogue services and still arrive at work or school on time, because Jewish law prohibits reciting key morning prayers before prescribed times tied to sunrise.

“The extension of DST will create an extreme hardship on observant Jews,” the organization said. “It would be extraordinarily difficult — if not impossible — to arrive on time for a job and will affect the start time of our schools.”

The Orthodox Union and the Coalition for Jewish Values have also come out against the measure.

In a column for Chabad.org that didn’t take a position on the bill, Menachem Posner also wrote that the change would present a challenge in parts of the country for morning minyan, the 10-person prayer quorum. But he also noted an upside to the extension of daylight saving: a later start time for Shabbat on short winter Fridays.

Shabbat begins at sundown, which during the winter can fall before 4:00 p.m. in parts of the country. “With DST, however, this will be shifted one hour later, so that even on the darkest day of winter, Jews will have one more hour to prepare for Shabbat,” Posner wrote.

Orthodox parties in Israel have also made an issue of changes to the daylight saving calendar. In 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet unanimously approved extending daylight saving time until the first Sunday after Oct. 1, despite objections from haredi parties. The change brought Israel’s clock closer to European practice while still acknowledging Orthodox concerns about morning prayer and a later start time to Yom Kippur that they argued would make the fast more difficult.

This week Agudath Israel also pointed to the brief U.S. experiment with year-round daylight saving time during the 1970s energy crisis, when Congress repealed the policy after widespread public dissatisfaction over dark winter mornings.

The organization said it hoped the Senate would weigh the broader consequences of permanent daylight saving time, including alternatives such as permanent standard time or retaining the current system of seasonal clock changes.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Why Orthodox Jews are pushing back against permanent daylight saving time appeared first on The Forward.

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