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A Jewish diplomat tells his story in PBS documentary about the Iran hostage crisis
(New York Jewish Week) — After a “traditional, religious” Jewish childhood in Brooklyn where he attended yeshiva, Barry Rosen fell in love with Iran.
Rosen was 22 when he joined the Peace Corps and set out on a two-year stint in Iran in 1967. There, Rosen felt deeply connected to the people and culture of the country — he loved the food, the clothing, the language, and the sights, sounds and smells.
“I was told by members of the Peace Corps that Jewish kids did very well in Iran,” Rosen says at the beginning of “Taken Hostage: The Making of an American Enemy,” a new two-part documentary on PBS that explores America’s role in the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. “I felt to a certain degree that there was a warmth there that I could see in my own family. There was a sense of kinship that I felt for Iranians.”
Twelve years after first arriving in Iran, however, Rosen, would become one of the 52 hostages attached to the American embassy in Tehran who were held by Iranian college students for 14 terrifying, pivotal months. When he returned as a press attaché for the US Embassy in 1979, the country he loved was on its way to becoming the oppressive religious republic it is today.
That year, its citizens staged a revolution and overthrew the corrupt, American-backed shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to make way for Ayatollah Khomeini, the Muslim cleric and “supreme leader.”
In November, 1979, students took control of the American embassy and demanded the shah return from exile to be tried for his crimes. Pahlavi, who had always maintained strong relations with the United States, was in New York for cancer treatment.
Barry and Barbara Rosen have spent the last four decades reliving the trauma of their experience while also advocating for hostages worldwide. (Frankie Alduino)
“It’s a story of perseverance,” Rosen told the New York Jewish Week in a Zoom interview from his apartment in Morningside Heights. “You look back and you say, ‘oh my God was that me? Was that us?’ It was so long ago but also the pain of it is very self-evident and it is still near in many ways.”
As a hostage in Iran, Rosen faced mock executions, days in complete darkness — what he calls “modern state-sponsored terrorism.”
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, his wife Barbara Rosen found herself at the center of media attention as she advocated for her husband’s release. She and their two young children, Alexander and Ariana, woke up every morning to an onslaught of press ready to exploit her every move, though she had no information about Barry or the situation in Iran.
“It is part of my DNA. I feel personally responsible [to tell my story],” Barry said, sitting beside Barbara. “I was the first member of this honorary group of hostages taken by Iran and I feel that we owe every hostage something so that they can escape that horror.”
“Taken Hostage” tracks America’s connection with the politically volatile Iran, beginning with a 1953 coup d’etat to depose Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, organized in part by the CIA. The shah consolidated power, modernized the country and maintained strong relationships with the West, especially the administration of President Jimmy Carter, but maintained a fearsome and dictatorial reputation among the citizens of Iran.
The documentary traces the story of the revolution and the establishment of power by Khomeini, who undid the Westernization of the previous decades and declared the country the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Along with Rosen, the documentary features Gary Sick, who was a member of the National Security Council at the time and discusses what it was like to navigate the hostage crisis from inside the White House. Foreign correspondents Hilary Brown and Carole Jerome describe risking their lives to report on the crisis from Tehran.
Rosen was one of three Jewish hostages, and though Barbara did not publicize his Judaism out of fear for his safety, American synagogues and Jewish organizations managed to send him mail.
After a year in captivity, Rosen appeared to the public via broadcast and wished his family a Happy Hanukkah. “I really wanted to make sure the American Jewish community knew that I was safe,” he said.
The hostages were released on the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on Jan, 20, 1981. The settlement unfroze nearly $8 billion of Iranian assets, terminated lawsuits Iran faced in America, and forced a pledge by the United States that the country would never again intervene in Iran’s internal affairs.
Barbara and Barry Rosen at a welcome parade in New York City. (Courtesy Barry Rosen)
Returning stateside was complicated for Rosen, who suffered from PTSD and had to separate his love for Iran from the experience of what had happened to him.
What was waiting for Rosen was “a huge outpouring of love and support from everyday people in the United States,” he said. “I think that was the most joyful part of it. There’s no doubt about it that everybody in the United States thought they knew me. At least in New York, it seemed as if American New Yorkers looked at me as a New Yorker who went through the pain. So I think that was a tremendously helpful and healing thing.”
Both Rosens were disappointed with the behavior of the United States. “It was an embarrassment of the foreign policy establishment. They wanted to wipe it out immediately,” Barry recalled. “They never held Iran accountable for what it did.”
“There was so much that each of the people needed to do to heal, and then after a year, there was never any follow up on any kind of medical or psychological investigation,” Barbara said. “We were both very disappointed in our own government and the way we were treated.”
Barry went on to a career in research and education — he conducted a fellowship at Columbia University doing research on Iranian novelists, served as the assistant to the president of Brooklyn College, and eventually was named the executive director of external affairs at Teachers College at Columbia.
The Rosens, who now have four grandchildren, wrote a book about that period in their lives.
“Personally, I don’t like going back and thinking about it or reflecting on this. It wasn’t a very happy time. It was a difficult time in my life,” Barbara told the New York Jewish Week.
But the documentary, the Rosens said, manages to tell the story of the crisis while reminding viewers how deeply personal it was for those involved. It’s a lesson the Rosens have taken with them as they watched and experienced similar crises over the last few decades, from the war in Ukraine to unrest in Iran over the death in September of a woman who was detained for breaking the hijab law.
“All history is a personal event. Each thing that happens is happening to people,” Barbara said. “It was a story of people being plucked out of their normal jobs, their diplomatic life, the security of just feeling that you’re safe. All of a sudden, you’ve lost all of that. You’re tied up in a chair for a month and not allowed to speak to somebody. Families here had no idea what’s happening to their loved ones in Iran.”
“It’s easier for human beings to think about the abstract issue rather than the personal issue. Get into personal issues, people start to walk away, they feel uncomfortable,” Barry added.
Despite everything, Barry still feels an attachment to the culture and people of Iran that he experienced in his early twenties, calling himself a “child of divorce” between the United States and its former ally, a relationship that he said he doesn’t see improving in his lifetime.
He also continues to tell his story because of his lifelong work with hostage victims around the world. Currently, there are three American hostages and more than a dozen international hostages in Iran. Barry works with Amnesty International, Hostage USA and Hostage Aid Worldwide to advocate for their release.
“I want to make certain that the American government and the American people stand by all those who were taken by Iran and all governments that take hostages, whether it’s China, Russia, Venezuela — but for me, especially Iran,” he said. “I say this because I really feel the need to make this an important issue. The American public needs to understand this very well. People’s lives are being taken away.”
“Taken Hostage,” an “American Experience” documentary, will air on PBS in two parts on Nov. 14 and 15. The film is also available to stream on pbs.org.
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The post A Jewish diplomat tells his story in PBS documentary about the Iran hostage crisis appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer
Public schools have been barred from sponsoring official prayer since the Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling in Engel v. Vitale, a landmark decision that cemented the principle of church-state separation in American law.
Now, lawmakers in several states are advancing measures that aim to bring prayer back into public schools — with potential to reverse decades of precedent as politicians push for Christian prayer to return as a commonplace part of the school day.
In Tennessee, a bill introduced last month would require public schools to set aside time for voluntary prayer and the reading of “the Bible or other religious text.” Students would opt in to the prayer period by getting their parents to sign a consent form, which also requires participating students to waive their right to sue.
Texas enacted a nearly identical law last year, empowering school boards to institute prayer and Bible-reading periods in schools across their districts by March 1 — a move more than 160 religious leaders urged school boards to reject in an open letter last month.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton encouraged students to use the time to recite the Lord’s Prayer “as taught by Jesus Christ.”
In Florida, a proposed amendment to the state constitution would allow students and teachers to lead prayer over a loudspeaker at school-sponsored events — even though the Supreme Court ruled student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games unconstitutional two decades ago.
Meanwhile, a federal bill introduced by Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) last month would withhold federal funding from public schools that “restrict voluntary school prayer,” and new guidance from the Department of Education released last week allows teachers to pray with students.
Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Supreme Court’s church-state separation precedents like Engel v. Vitale aren’t in immediate jeopardy — but they are steadily being undermined.
“Teachers have a little bit more right to pray in public schools than they did last time. And then it just kind of slowly builds,” Nartowicz said. “The very principles of religious freedom in public school are very clearly under attack.”
A Jewish plaintiff
In 1951, the Board of Regents of New York proposed that public schools start the day with what it called a “non-denominational” prayer. Students were able to opt out with a parent’s signature.
“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen,” the prayer read.
Five families sued, arguing that the school-organized prayer violated their constitutional rights. They came from a range of religious backgrounds, including Judaism, atheism, Unitarianism and humanism.
But the case quickly took on a Jewish character, as a Jewish parent named Steven Engel became the lead plaintiff, and a broad cross-section of Jewish organizations became involved with the case. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith and the Synagogue Council of America — which represented 70 Jewish organizations spanning Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — all filed briefs urging the court to strike down school-sponsored prayer.
According to Bruce Dierenfield, author of The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America, when the court released its decision the blowback was intense — and, at times, antisemitic.
The Supreme Court received the largest amount of hate mail in its history. Politicians called to amend the Constitution and impeach the justices, and 15 states refused to immediately discontinue prayer and Bible reading in their schools. An angry protester burned a cross in plaintiff Lawrence Roth’s family driveway.
“Some people say this case produced more of a backlash than almost any other case in American history,” Dierenfield said. “It seemed to be the death knell of ‘Christian America.’”
A changing landscape
In the decades after Engel, the Supreme Court repeatedly reinforced the ban on school-sponsored prayer, controversially ruling that even required moments of silence could be unconstitutional if intended to encourage prayer.
That line shifted in 2022. The court sided with Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Washington state who had been placed on leave for praying at midfield immediately after games, sometimes joined by players.
The school district’s actions “rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
The Kennedy ruling “was kind of a slap at the absolutism of Engel,” Dierenfield said. “It epitomizes somewhat of a new day.”
The decision also hinged in part on disputed interpretation of facts: The majority argued that Kennedy had engaged in “short, private, personal prayer,” while the dissent said he prayed with students in a setting where they could feel pressured to participate.
The case highlighted the often-blurry line between voluntary and coercive prayer, a tension made more complicated by peer pressure and the authority teachers and coaches hold over students.
According to Nartowicz, teachers and students are free to pray or read religious texts as long as they don’t disrupt or pressure others — but that boundary is crossed when teachers pray with students. Even though new policies make prayer and Bible-reading periods opt-in, he said, the practice can still feel coercive.
“If a teacher’s praying, because teachers have so much control over students, a student might say, Oh, I need to pray in order to make sure I’m in the good favor of so-and-so to get a good grade in their class,” he said.
Rabbi Michael Shulman of Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, Tennessee, who wrote an op-ed speaking out against his state’s school prayer bill, shares similar concerns.
He said children at his congregation are often the only Jewish students at their schools, and a school-sponsored period for prayer would only worsen their feelings of alienation.
“Anytime religion and government mix, there’s a danger of signaling that this is what the state is promoting — which beliefs are normal, which ones are not,” Shulman told the Forward. “So when public schools, that are state institutions, promote this, it really changes the meaning of what ‘voluntary’ is.”
‘Exactly the right time’
School prayer advocates are explicit about their goal: They want the Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, to take up their case.
It’s unclear if the court will choose to weigh in. In November, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a case where a lower court had upheld a ban on broadcasting a pregame prayer over the loudspeaker at a high school football game.
But proponents of school prayer aren’t giving up. The Tennessee bill states that “the idea of separation of church and state departs from the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the State of Tennessee” and lists 11 Supreme Court decisions, including Engel, as examples of rulings that it says conflict.
“I think this is exactly the right time to have this issue brought back into the public square, both because our Supreme Court has, I think, more properly aligned in most recent decisions and because I think we just need to have prayer back in our schools,” Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill’s sponsor, told The Tennessee Conservative.
Meanwhile, Paxton has pledged to defend in court any school district that implements a voluntary prayer period.
For those who remember how fiercely Engel divided the country, a new showdown at the Supreme Court feels almost inevitable.
“I sit on tenterhooks all the time about seeing that somebody’s going to bring a suit saying that they have the right to have organized prayer in public schools. I would not be the least bit surprised to see a case — see the Engel case come up again in the Supreme Court,” Jonathan Engel, Steven Engel’s son, said in a 2023 documentary. “So we may have to fight this battle again.”
The post Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer appeared first on The Forward.
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Gunmen Kill Three People and Abduct Catholic Priest in Northern Nigeria
A police vehicle of Operation Fushin Kada (Anger of Crocodile) is parked on Yakowa Road, as schools across northern Nigeria reopen nearly two months after closing due to security concerns, following the mass abductions of school children, in Kaduna, Nigeria, January 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Nuhu Gwamna/File Photo
Gunmen killed three people and abducted a Catholic priest and several others during an early morning attack on the clergyman’s residence in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state, church and police sources said on Sunday.
Saturday’s assault in Kauru district highlights persistent insecurity in the region, and came days after security services rescued all 166 worshippers abducted in attacks by gunmen on two churches elsewhere in Kaduna.
Such attacks have drawn the attention of US President Donald Trump, who has accused Nigeria’s government of failing to protect Christians, a charge Abuja denies. US forces struck what they described as terrorist targets in northwestern Nigeria on December 25.
The Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan named the kidnapped clergyman as Nathaniel Asuwaye, parish priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Karku, and said 10 other people were abducted.
Three residents were killed during the attack, which began at about 3:20 a.m. (0220 GMT), the diocese said in a statement.
A Kaduna police spokesperson confirmed the incident, but said five people had been abducted in total and that the three people killed were members of the security forces.
“Security agents exchanged gunfire with the bandits, killed some of them, and unfortunately two soldiers and a police officer lost their lives,” he said.
Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Sunday that Nigeria’s security crisis was “increasingly getting out of hand”. It accused the government of “gross incompetence” and failure to protect civilians as gunmen kill, abduct and terrorize rural communities across several northern states.
A presidency spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pope Leo, during his weekly address to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, expressed solidarity with the victims of recent attacks in Nigeria.
“I hope that the competent authorities will continue to act with determination to ensure the security and protection of every citizen’s life,” Leo said.
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Israeli FM Sa’ar Stresses Gaza Demilitarization, Criticizes Iranian Threats in Talks with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano. The meeting included a one-on-one session followed by an expanded meeting with both countries’ bilateral teams.
Sa’ar told the media, “We support the Trump plan for Gaza. Hamas must be disarmed, and Gaza must be demilitarized. This is at the heart of the plan, and we must not compromise on it. This is necessary for the security and stability of the region and also for a better future for the residents of Gaza themselves.”
He also commented on Iran, saying, “I praise President Peña’s decision in April of 2025 to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. The European Union and Ukraine have also recently done so, and I commend that. The Iranian regime is murdering its own people. It is endangering stability in the Middle East and exporting terrorism to other continents, including Latin America. The attempt by the world’s most extremist regime to obtain the most dangerous weapon in the world, nuclear weapons, is a clear danger to regional and world peace.”
Sa’ar added that Iran’s long-range missile program threatens not only Israel but other countries in the Middle East and Europe. “The Iranian regime has already used missiles against other countries in the Middle East. European countries are also threatened by the range of these missiles,” he said.
Lezcano praised his country’s decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem. “Paraguay’s sovereign decision to open its embassy in Jerusalem was made in faith and responsibly. It reflects the coherent foreign policy that we consistently and clearly hold with regard to Israel,” he said. He added that Paraguay “unequivocally and unquestionably supports the right of the State of Israel to exist and to defend itself,” a position reinforced after the October 7, 2023, attacks.