Uncategorized
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.
—
The post A Jewish diplomat tells his story in PBS documentary about the Iran hostage crisis appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Anne Frank and ‘Night’ may soon be required reading in Texas public schools. Is that good for the Jews?
(JTA) — In the years since school libraries became a culture-war flashpoint, Texas has been one of the most active states to pull books from shelves in response to parental complaints — sometimes including versions of Anne Frank’s diary and other Jewish books.
Now, Texas is pursuing a new approach: requiring that Frank’s diary, and several other Jewish texts, be taught throughout the state.
The Texas state education board recently discussed draft legislation that would create the nation’s first-ever statewide K-12 required reading list for public schools. Among the roughly 300 texts on the list: Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night”; Lois Lowry’s young-reader Holocaust novel “Number the Stars”; George Washington’s letter to a Rhode Island synagogue in 1790, and Frank’s diary — the “original edition.”
Each of the works could become mandatory reading for Texas’s 5.5 million schoolchildren as soon as the 2030-31 school year, as the state’s conservative education leaders seek to reverse a nationwide decline in the number of books read or assigned in class while also constraining the texts that activist parents tend to object to. Instead of letting individual teachers put together reading lists that might include “divisive” or progressive content, Republicans in Texas are trying to nudge the curriculum toward a “classical education” said to draw on the Western canon.
Supporters said the list would help ensure every student is on the same page.
“We want to create an opportunity for a shared body of knowledge for all the students across the state of Texas,” Shannon Trejo, deputy commissioner of programs for the Texas Education Agency, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about why the group undertook the list project.
While state lawmakers passed a law mandating at least one required book per grade, the board has decided to implement a full reading list. Trejo said the options had been whittled down from thousands of titles suggested in a statewide teachers survey. They were also cross-referenced with a variety of other sources, including books from “high-performing educational systems” in other states and reading lists from the high-IQ society Mensa.
“We’re trying to help students love reading again,” LJ Francis, a Republican member of the state school board who supports the list, said during the Jan. 28 meeting. “I personally think schools should be teaching more than what we have on this list.”
The proposal underscores a complicated moment for Jewish literature in Texas schools, where books about the Holocaust and Jewish history have recently been pulled from shelves amid parental complaints but are now poised to become required reading statewide. Jewish educators and free-speech advocates say the shift reflects both recognition of Holocaust education’s importance — and continuing tensions over who controls what students read and how those stories are taught.
The overall list largely centers the Western canon and deemphasizes modern works as well as most books about race and identity, although selections from Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass and other Black American authors made the cut. The Bible is also heavily represented, with selections from both the Old and New Testaments on the reading list.
The state’s Holocaust Remembrance Week education mandate means that Jews are one of the few ethnic groups whose stories are fairly well represented on the state’s required reading list. That doesn’t mean that Holocaust educators are unreservedly enthusiastic about the new approach.
“Obviously I’m pleased that they’re including quality Holocaust materials,” Deborah Lauter, executive director of TOLI, the Olga Lenkyel Institute for Holocaust Studies, told JTA. Lauter noted that many teachers trained by TOLI on how to teach the Holocaust in their classrooms — including in Texas — already rely on books that made the list.
But, Lauter said, teachers generally like to develop their own curricula to tailor to their classrooms. “Mandating certain books, I don’t know how teachers would feel about that,” she said.
Lauter also expressed concern about whether the state would be providing materials to help teachers decode the Holocaust texts for their students. Trejo told JTA that fell beyond the scope of the list and the statute.
“It is just the title that is going into the standards for the state of Texas,” Trejo said. “Beyond that, it would be up to publishers to look to, how can I support districts and teachers in teaching this title?”
To literacy activists in the state, the approach was concerning.
“This is censorship as well,” Laney Hawes, co-director of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, told JTA. The overall list, she said, reflects “a very narrow worldview,” and the large number of books on the list would make it difficult for educators to find time for additional texts of their own choosing in class.
At the same time, Hawes said, “there are some really worthwhile books on this list. ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is an incredible book.”
The Jewish titles, Trejo said, were selected with additional input from Holocaust museum experts, local rabbis and Jewish day schools in the state. They also sought input from the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission.
“We were invited to provide input regarding a few specific parts of these proposals,” Joy Nathan, the commission’s director, told JTA in an email.
She named “Blessed Is the Match,” a poem by the Hungarian-born poet and resistance fighter Hannah Senesh, as a reading that her commission recommended for the draft list. “We will continue these direct conversations throughout the process.”
At the state education board meeting, a last-minute amendment proposed by the board’s GOP treasurer sought to remove dozens of works from the list, including Senesh’s poem and Washington’s letter.
The amendment would replace those texts with a new crop of selections, including “Refugee,” a young-adult novel by Alan Gratz that partially follows a German Jewish World War II refugee; Biblical passages on Moses; Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”; George Orwell’s “1984”; and a book about former Polish president Lech Walesa. The amendment also listed “Night” as required in two different grades.
The story of Moses, the board member said, made the amendment’s cut because “there are a lot of parallels between Moses leading the people out of Egypt and the American Revolution.” Debate on the topic dragged into the night, with board members arguing whether requiring Bible passages would violate the Establishment clause and which Biblical translation had superior literary merit.
Following the amendment, the board agreed to postpone a vote on the required books until April to give members time to review both lists. Another board member, pushing for greater racial diversity in the list, submitted his own titles for review as well.
Once voted on, the legislation would enter a public comment period prior to being formally adopted at a later meeting.
A long list of public commenters at the meeting opposed the law on various grounds, including that it was overly prescriptive, lacked proper balance between classical and modern literature, included more books than could realistically be taught, overly emphasized Christian texts over other religious works, and lacked racial and gender diversity. One teacher said that “Night” is traditionally taught at a different grade level than the law mandates.
Among those who testified against the policy was Rebecca Bendheim, a middle-school teacher at an Austin private school and author of young-adult novels about Jewish and LGBTQ identity. “I believe the list underestimates what Texas students can do,” Bendheim said.
A handful of commenters voiced support for the measure. Matthew McCormick, education director at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, which backed the law, said that it covers “important historical eras such as the Great Depression and the Holocaust.”
He added, “By approving this reading list, the board has the opportunity to enact a generational change by ensuring that every public school student has a strong foundation in literacy and literature.”
At Wednesday’s meeting, the board also voted on new required civics training for teachers and new required vocabulary lists, which would be extracted from the required books.
The state’s embrace of Jewish curricula comes after one Texas school district recently pulled “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” another young-reader Holocaust novel, following a “DEI content” weeding process aided by artificial intelligence. A state law currently on the books in Texas places classroom restrictions on “instruction, diversity, equity and inclusion duties, and social transitioning.”
While Jewish texts are generously represented on Texas’s list, works by and about authors of other identities are not; the high school list, for example, features no Hispanic authors. An estimated 245,000 Jews live in Texas, or less than 1% of the population, according to Brandeis University demographics; Hispanics, by contrast, form 40% of the state population, more than the white share.
The state offered lists of approved Holocaust materials teachers may select from when marking Holocaust Remembrance Week last month. Those approved materials, provided by the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, include many of the texts now required in the legislation.
The proposed legislation concerns activists in the state who oppose book bans and restrictions on students’ “right to read.” Hawes, a Fort Worth mother of four children in the state education system, first became an activist after her district removed the “Graphic Adaptation” of Frank’s diary from its shelves in 2022.
That district returned the book after public outcry. But other districts both in and outside of Texas followed suit by pulling the same edition, along with other Jewish books including “Maus” and “The Fixer,” over the last few years.
Seeing Frank’s diary on the state’s required reading list now, Hawes said, “feels weird to me.”
She noted that the draft legislation specifies that the “original edition” must be taught. The 2018 illustrated adaptation, which includes a passage of Frank discussing a same-sex attraction that had been excised from the original published edition, has been opposed by conservative parents across the country.
In a slideshow by the Texas Educational Agency that outlines the proposed requirements, Frank’s diary is portrayed as an “anchor” text for the 7th grade. “Blessed Is the Match,” an ode to self-sacrifice for a higher cause, and Washington’s letter, a landmark statement of religious tolerance, are listed as supplemental texts for the diary.
The goals of the unit, the agency states, are “factual accounts of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust” and “foundational American ideals of religious liberty and tolerance.”
The Biblical passages, the agency notes, are intended to fulfill a statewide requirement that school districts have “an enrichment curriculum that includes: religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature.” Christian activist groups within Texas, and several elected officials, have pushed for years to promote Evangelical Christian texts in public schools.
The inclusion of Washington’s letter, which assures the Newport congregation that Jews will find safe haven in the United States, also struck Hawes as suspicious. The list contains numerous texts promoting patriotism but does not include any material addressing ongoing antisemitism in America.
“This is making us think that George Washington solved antisemitism. And he didn’t,” she said.
Lauter said that if Texas’s policy of statewide Holocaust book requirements becomes a broader trend, she would welcome it — despite her concerns.
“I think it’s a positive. We support more Holocaust education in schools,” she said. “It’s certainly better than the opposite, which is banning books.”
The post Anne Frank and ‘Night’ may soon be required reading in Texas public schools. Is that good for the Jews? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Arrests and clashes with police as Australians protest Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s Sydney visit
(JTA) — Thousands of protesters demonstrated across Australia on Monday against Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who traveled to the country at the invitation of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following the Bondi massacre.
Upon arrival, Herzog visited the site of the antisemitic terror attack in Sydney, where 15 people were killed while attending a Hanukkah event in December. There, he laid a wreath and met with the family members of the victims of the attack.
“Standing here at Bondi – an iconic symbol of Australian life, now scarred by the December 14th massacre – I embrace our Australian Jewish sisters and brothers still reeling from this trauma,” wrote Herzog in a post on X. “My visit to Australia, to all of you, is one of solidarity, strength, and sincere friendship from the State of Israel and the people of Israel.”
As Herzog commenced his four-day visit, dozens of protests organized by Palestine Action Sydney erupted across the country by activists who labeled him as a war criminal.
Calls to disinvite Herzog were also made by Jewish groups in Australia, including the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, which published a letter in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday signed by roughly 1,000 Australian Jews who opposed the visit.
Ahead of the expected protests, The New South Wales government declared that Herzog’s visit was a “major event,” a distinction that expanded police powers to include directing the motion of demonstrators, closing specific locations and maintaining separation between opposing groups. Those who denied police directions were subject to fines of up to $3,862.
Alex Ryvchin, the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, condemned the protest efforts in a post on X last week, writing that it is “shameful that so many resources are required to keep Australians safe from other Australians but that is the sad reality of our times.”
“There is no point appealing to them or reasoning with them because they are extremists driven by irrational motives,” wrote Ryvchin. “It is for the police and government to maintain order, keep Australians safe and protect us.”
On Monday, Palestine Action Group failed to legally challenge the restrictions in a Sydney court.
Despite the heavy restrictions on protests, large crowds of protesters gathered in Sydney on Monday, with many shouting pro-Palestinian slogans and carrying posters that read “Arrest Herzog” and “I’m not antisemitic, I am anti-genocide.”
Police used tear gas and pepper spray on some protesters in Sydney who attempted to continue their march after police intervened. New South Wales Police said that 27 people had been arrested during the protests, including 10 for assaulting police and 17 for failing to comply with directions and related offenses.
Palestine Action Group Sydney condemned the police actions in a post on Instagram, writing, “Tonight saw a sickening frenzy of police violence against 30,000 peaceful, anti-genocide protesters.”
In Brisbane, a city in Queensland, protesters were also heard shouting the common pro-Palestinian slogan “From the river to the sea” a day after the Queensland government announced it would propose a new law criminalizing public use of the slogan as well as the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
On Monday night, thousands of people gathered for a speech from Herzog at an event center in Sydney were barred from leaving as police worked to dispel the lingering protest presence outside.
The post Arrests and clashes with police as Australians protest Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s Sydney visit appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
1 in 3 American Jews were targeted by an antisemitic incident last year, AJC survey finds
(JTA) — One-third of American Jews reported being the target of an antisemitic incident in 2025, according to a new survey published by the American Jewish Committee.
The finding marked no change over the previous year, suggesting that American Jews could be settling into a distressing new normal in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
“Things aren’t getting markedly better,” said Ted Deutch, the CEO of the AJC, in an interview. “I don’t think that we can afford to accept it as a baseline. We can’t accept that, and America shouldn’t accept that.”
Surveying 1,222 American Jewish adults from Sept. 26 to Oct. 9, the AJC found a plateau in several indicators of sentiment.
Overall, 55% of American Jews reported avoiding specific behaviors in 2025 due to fear of antisemitism, including steering clear of certain events and refraining from wearing or posting things online that would identify them as Jewish.
The finding also marked no change since 2024, when 56% of Jews reported changing their behavior for fear of antisemitism, but was up from 46% in 2023 and 38% in 2022.
This year’s respondents were also asked if they felt “less safe” as a result of several high-profile recent antisemitic attacks, including the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in April; the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., in May; and the firebombing of a demonstration for the Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, in June.
About a quarter of respondents said the attacks had made them feel “a great deal” less safe, while 31% responded “a fair amount” and 32% responded “a little.”
Overall, according to the report, two-thirds of respondents said that they believed Jews in the United States were less secure than a year ago.
Deutch said the findings of the group’s latest report should serve not only as a warning for Jews, but as a “warning sign of the cracks in the foundation of our society” for the wider public.
“This is about more than just what’s happening to Jews,” he said. “We’ve always been first, the Jews have always been a canary in the coal mine, and we have to take this seriously. The broader community has to take this seriously for the benefit, not just of our Jewish community, but for our society and our democracy.”
For the first time, the AJC also asked American Jews whether they approved of the way President Donald Trump was responding to antisemitism in the country.
Roughly two-thirds of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s actions, though views split sharply along partisan lines, with 84% of Jewish Democrats disapproving of Trump’s response at least somewhat compared to 9% of Jewish Republicans.
The survey comes as some Jewish leaders have lamented what they have described as the inefficacy of efforts to combat antisemitism.
Last month at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, political theorist Yoram Hazony decried what he described as an “an extremely high level of incompetence by the entire anti-Semitism-industrial complex.” Bret Stephens, the right-leaning Jewish New York Times columnist, argued in an address last week that the Jewish community should abandon its efforts to combat antisemitism and instead invest in strengthening Jewish life.
For Deutch, the decision between combatting antisemitism and strengthening Jewish education and infrastructure was a false choice.
“It’s not a trade-off. We can’t afford to choose one or the other,” said Deutch. “We don’t have the luxury of deciding that we’re either going to invest in more education for our leaders and for ourselves and helping to create the next generation of well educated Jewish leaders, or engaging with the broader community and leaders across the broader community about the scourge of antisemitism.”
The post 1 in 3 American Jews were targeted by an antisemitic incident last year, AJC survey finds appeared first on The Forward.