In today’s hyper-connected world, the quest for a partner often begins with a swipe or a click. But a century ago, our great-grandparents began their search differently. While a shadkhn, or matchmaker, continued to bring most Jewish couples together in the old country, by 1908, a fascinating innovation had taken root in the big cities of Warsaw and Vilna: the newspaper marriage ad.

Among the many newspapers that were printed in Yiddish in Eastern Europe, one focused exclusively on helping people, mostly men, find a spouse. Called “Lands-shadkhn” (“Land Matchmaker”), it included dozens of paid advertisements by young people embracing these novel  “matchmakers.” Experienced matchmakers may themselves have used these newspapers as a tool in their search for brides and grooms.

The Lands-shadkhn was a premium product, costing 18 kopecks per issue, a significant sum compared to the more common one-kopeck papers. Customers bought it, not to read the news but to find a romantic partner, similar to today’s Tinder Platinum.

Yet, even within this highly regarded paper, there was always the danger of scammers, as we read in Yiddish literature, including Sholem Aleichem’s stories. That’s why correspondence was routed only through the editorial office. Instead of direct contact, people used anonymous nicknames like “A Worker,” “A Dentist,” “A student,” or a fictional name like Clara.

Although the newspaper was published in Warsaw, its circulation of 5,000 copies was likely distributed to other cities in Eastern Europe, as seen in one ad that mentioned Odessa, Ukraine.

One ad was from a foreman’s assistant, who hoped to open his own factory with the help of his future bride’s dowry. Originating from Lithuania, he sought a bride from a misnaged (religious but non-Hasidic) family. His monthly earnings of 100 rubles were quite high for that period. The common salary of highly-qualified workers then was 25-35 roubles, and unskilled workers could be paid as low as 10 roubles.

One young dental student was seeking a wife whose parents would support his studies at a dentists’ institute.  This profession was already respected back then and promised a good income. It was customary at the time for the Jewish parents of a young married daughter to take care of their son-in-law while he was receiving his education so that he could eventually support his family.

One 37-year-old hatter from Rostov-on-Don was seeking a woman that could be not only his wife but also a good assistant for his goldene gesheft (successful business).

In most cases, the ad buyers were young Jews within the average marriageable age. One stark exception was a 50-year-old bokher (bachelor) who described himself as “young and strong, well-respected and well-to-do.” He said that he wasn’t seeking a dowry, but “a loving heart.”

The 50-year old bachelor says he is a statskiy sovetnik (State Councilor, in Russian). A position of this stature was considered highly prestigious in the Russian Empire, especially for Jews. Only a few Jews achieved this privilege.

One striking ad was from a spirited 20-year-old woman who wrote explicitly that she didn’t want to marry “a bourgeois man.” For a woman to actively seek a husband on her own was a bold move then.

These ads are more than mere historical curiosities; they are intimate windows into the lives of real people, providing insights into Jewish society of prewar Eastern Europe. Through them we learn about young women who read and wrote in Polish, Russian and Hebrew, about men’s occupations and even their clothing. One man, for example, said he wore long clothing (a sign of religious modesty), but was “not a fanatic.”

The word nadn (dowry) echoes through nearly every ad. In those days, there was no Jewish marriage without a dowry, which consisted of about several thousand rubles. Interestingly, the word nadn is one of the few Hebrew words that the spouse seekers used in the ads. Another Hebrew term is yikhes, a high pedigree.

Most of their Yiddish, though, is loaded with borrowed German words, as a way of “proving” the speakers’ supposed sophistication, a common practice among upwardly mobile Yiddish speakers of that period. The word khasine (wedding), for example, is replaced by the German Hochzeit.

It’s not clear whether the German-inflected text was the customer’s own language, or perhaps inserted by the editor in order to make the wife seeker look more fashionable. Or maybe the customer had simply hired literate people to create an attractive ad for them.

These century-old advertisements provide a fascinating peek into the mindset of young people seeking marriage at the turn of the 20th century. It makes us wonder what future generations might say, when reading today’s profiles of people seeking a partner on OkCupid.

The post How young people once used Yiddish personal ads to find a partner appeared first on The Forward.

DUMA, WEST BANK — For three decades, Rabbi Arik Ascherman has devoted himself largely to helping Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank. He heads Torat Zedek, which means Torah of Justice — a group that is out in the field trying to protect them from one of the most intensive waves of settler violence since 1967.

Judging from what he sees, hears and documents during his daily forays, things are going very badly for those in the way of Israel and its massive settlement project, which includes proliferating outposts and sheep farms that serve, he says, as staging grounds for violence against Palestinians.

“The settlers are winning now,” Ascherman says, driving past outposts southeast of Nablus that are illegal according to both international and Israeli law “Outposts are expanding and Palestinian communities are disappearing.”

Fifty-nine Palestinian communities have been displaced by settler violence since Oct. 7, 2023, with another 16 communities losing about half of their residents, according to the human rights organization B’tselem. About 170 new outposts have been established during that period, it says.

Violence is the engine of that process, with Palestinians and their property becoming exposed targets in remote Bedouin areas and increasingly around larger locales, rights groups say. According to UN figures, settler violence reached a 20-year high in March, just after the outbreak of the Iran war. This has rippled into greater risk for protective presence activists like Ascherman. Two volunteers say they were almost burned alive in their sleep on April 9 in Mukhmas village.

Activists say they feel much more frustrated and less effective because the army is now increasingly barring them from key areas they used to protect. The army says the new restrictions are necessary to prevent friction and disturbances, but activists say locking out outside advocates leaves Palestinians even more exposed to settler violence.

“In Duma there have been days the army comes looking for us. It was never like this before,” said Ascherman, who was hospitalized in June after being beaten with a rifle butt and club by settlers. “We can’t protect people. Instead of protecting people, the situation becomes that the Palestinians feel they need to hide us. Then the question is: At what point do you risk arrest?”

In the June incident, Ascherman and others carrying out protective presence in Mukhmas were attacked by a gang of six settlers, he told the Jewish Chronicle at the time, adding that two volunteers suffered broken elbows. The IDF described the incident as a “violent confrontation” involving Palestinians accompanied by Israelis and other Israeli citizens “that included stonethrowing and mutual physical assaults.”

Ascherman stresses that there have been waves of settler violence throughout his years as an activist.  For decades, settlements went through a formal Israeli government approval process, even as Amnesty International and other human rights groups declared they violate international law prohibitions against an occupying power transferring its nationals into the occupied territory.

But he views the start of the Iran war as an inflection point similar to Oct. 7, which too was followed by a major surge of settler attacks. In both cases, settlers “cynically exploited” the distraction from the West Bank caused by wars to act more violently, he says.

Thirteen Palestinians have been killed during settler incursions since March 1, according to Haaretz, the latest being 29-year-old Odeh Awawdeh near Ramallah on Wednesday a day after 14-year old Aws Hamdi al-Nassan and Marzouq Abu Naim, 32, were killed, also in the Ramallah vicinity.

The UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs says March saw the highest number of Palestinian injuries caused by settlers during the last 20 years. In the week between March 31 and April 6 alone, at least 23 Palestinians were injured by settlers during 47 attacks on persons and/or property, according to the office. The attacks involved arson, physical assaults, stonethrowing and vandalism, it said in a report.

“Attacks on residential areas, on villages, cities and roads are a constant threat to the lives of Palestinians,” says Ramallah-based analyst Jehad Harb, former senior researcher at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. The violence is not haphazard, instead serving a state goal of “ethnic cleansing” in stages, he alleges. Ascherman likewise sees the violence as part of an intensified government dispossession effort, citing what he sees as unprecedentedly tight cooperation during the last several months among settlers, the army and police.

For the perpetrators, the violence is not about claims to a specific property nor is it violence for violence’s sake. Rather, it stems from belief that God endowed the territory of the West Bank to the Jews, making them exclusive owners of all the land there, with the Palestinians seen not only as trespassers but as terrorists, according to Shabtay Bendet, formerly a prominent settler who in 1995 was one of the first permanent residents of the West Bank outpost Rehelim but years later decided to leave the fold and now gives lectures about what he sees as the need to end the occupation.

Direct causes for violence, he says, include “desire to seize more territory and drive away Palestinians, vengeance in the belief that all Palestinians are supporters of terrorism and, for a small minority, a belief that the IDF is not deterring the Palestinians.”

‘Why weren’t you here?’

Torat Zedek, one of the more prominent groups in the field, gives protection by serving as non-violent human shields during settler violence, documenting it, notifying the army, police and media, and funding fences to protect Palestinians and their property, Ascherman says. He adds that he has “too few” volunteers, with between 15 and 20 whom he calls “particularly active.”

The spiraling violence is broad in geographical scope and becoming so recurrent that it is increasingly getting coverage in mainstream Israeli media. Last month, dozens of settlers raided the Bedouin area of Khirbet Humza in the northern Jordan Valley. Settlers sexually assaulted a man in front of his family, beat girls and threatened to kill children and rape women, according to witnesses quoted by Haaretz. In one tent, six masked settlers used clubs to beat a resident and two protective presence activists, who were among six people that needed to be treated at a hospital, according to one of the activists who had been assaulted.

Qusra village, in the Nablus district, suffered three settler attacks during the week beginning March 31, according to the UN, which said settlers killed a Palestinian man there and injured eight people. The UN said settlers attacked houses, stole sheep and vandalized vehicles.

For Ascherman, an emotional turning point came even before the war, when a settler fatally shot a 19-year old Palestinian-American, Nasrallah Abu Siyam, in Mukhmas, in an incident that his family said had started with armed settlers stealing goats. Mukhmas is a place Torat Zedek tries to help, but Ascherman was elsewhere at the time. “I felt guilty that I was not there. Palestinians asked me ‘Why weren’t you here?’”

The army spokesman’s office sent a statement to the Forward stating that the army’s mission in the area “is to maintain the security of all residents of the area” while preventing terrorism and harm to Israeli citizens.

But members of the ruling Israeli government coalition are being more brazen in voicing intent to oust Palestinians. The senior Israeli minister for Judea and Samaria, Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds the finance portfolio and is head of the Religious Zionism party, told a party meeting in late February that the government should “encourage migration” of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Last year he unveiled a map showing the Palestinians would be confined in the future to six disjointed urban clusters on less than a fifth of the West Bank.

Settlers and their backers say that Palestinian attacks that are launched against Israeli targets are the main problem in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names of the West Bank area. The protective presence activists just make the situation worse, according to Moshe Solomon, a member of the Knesset from Religious Zionism.

“They work against Jews in Judea and Samaria, which is the heritage of our forefathers. They come to harm the fabric there. I’m against violence against them but their provocations can’t be allowed,” he said. Solomon said that where he used to live in the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem, “non-Jewish locals” got along with Jews until the moment when “external actors, whether Jewish or European, would arrive and cause ferment and chaos.”

‘Fire dripping like water’

The activists stress that the Palestinians bear the real cost of the mayhem and bloodshed. But they themselves — some Israelis and some international visitors, are themselves increasingly targeted.

On April 7, two volunteers were nearly burned alive on the outskirts of Mukhmas village, northeast of Jerusalem, at around 2 a.m. on a hill overlooking a chicken farm that settlers often pelt with stones, they told the Forward. Noah Benninga, 48, said he awoke to see “fire dripping like water from the ceiling,” which was made of nylon.

“I started to shout. Later we understood they had poured gasoline and lit it. There was a strong smell of gasoline. They may have poured around, but only the nylon caught fire,” he said in an interview.

“I’m not sure they knew there were Israelis inside and I don’t think they care. For them it’s all the same thing,” he added.

After he shouted for help, Palestinians rushed to put out the embers, which had not spread to nearby wood, he recalled. He attributed what he considers a narrow escape to the arsonists not having enough time to complete their job.

“More serious things have also happened there to us: burning of buildings, injuring activists. One of our women activists was beaten unconscious,” Benninga said. He called the police but they did not come, he said. He then filed a complaint, sharing with the Forward the police’s confirmation of receiving it. The Israel Police’s spokesperson’s office did not respond to questions about the incident.

Two days later, when Ascherman and this reporter visited the area, settlers in black were again descending towards the chicken farm. This time they contented themselves with a show of presence, but they have often attacked the property, Ascherman said.

Frozen zones

The army is now making it much harder for activists to reach areas that need protection, according to Ascherman. He shared with the Forward closed military zone orders applicable to protective presence personnel. With the West Bank under military occupation, the army is entitled to declare zones closed to everyone except security forces and others at the discretion of commanders. In practice they are not enforced against settlers, creating a situation where Palestinians lose their protective presence and face greater danger, activists and Palestinians say. On initial closure, those excluded are required to leave the area. If they make a return entry, they are subject to arrest.

The army, citing what it said is the need to prevent friction and disturbances, recently issued a one-year closure order for parts of Duma, effectively depriving of protective presence the tiny Bedouin community of Sheqara, which, according to Torat Zedek activists, had been intensively targeted by settlers bent on using violence to drive out the Palestinians.

When the activists had to leave, the 12 families of Sheqara, fearing for their safety, also relocated — ending up in other places in Duma or in the town of Salfit.

“The solidarity activists were prevented from being with us and without them we couldn’t stay” and face the violence alone, said Deif-Allah Arare, who had a permit to work in Israel prior to Oct. 7, 2023, and like many others in the West Bank has been without a job since. A settler’s vehicle could be seen in his former living compound on April 9, while he had moved to a tiny concrete rental apartment on the other side of Duma. “How would you feel if there is a settler in your house?” he asked. “He stole not only the house, but the entire life, there is no life now. My land is gone, my house is gone, the place of my children. They stole everything.”

“My children all the time say, we want to be in Sheqara,” he added “They destroyed our lives.”

The IDF spokesman’s office denied the army allows settlers to remain in closed zones while excluding activists “As a rule, the IDF enforces the closed zone equally against anyone who violates it. The purpose of the enforcement is to maintain order and prevent friction in the area.” it said in a written response to a query by the Forward.

Herd of Justice, a group that documents settler violence, provided the Forward with video showing settlers running through Sheqara and one of them pepper spraying activist Yael Rozmarin in the face during a March 1 confrontation that was followed by another confrontation on March 2. Rozmarin said both confrontations and others at the site previously were started by the settlers. “On March 1 the soldiers joined the attack and on March 2  they did not prevent it from continuing.” she said  A settler was photographed  armed with a rifle in what Herd of Justice said was the March 1 confrontation.

The IDF, in its response, did not address the events of March 1, but it said that on March 2 “forces were dispatched to the area following a report of Palestinians hurling rocks at Israeli civilians. Upon arrival, the soldiers acted to disperse both Israeli and Palestinian civilians.”

The IDF added: “There were other incidents reported, including Israeli civilians vandalizing property in Duma and Israeli civilians attacking Palestinians in the area, for which a local security coordinator was dispatched and conducted a search but found no evidence substantiating the claims.” Local security coordinators in the West Bank are local settlers who are employed by the ministry of defense.

Doron Meinrath, a retired IDF colonel turned protective presence activist, alleges that the Israeli army has no qualms about violent dispossession of Palestinians by settlers. “In general the army very much supports what the settlers are doing,” said Meinrath, who is part of the group Looking the Occupation in the Eye. He used to be director of planning in the IDF General Staff and before that a commander of troops in the West Bank.

“I don’t think the army supports the most severe forms of violence, like murder. But ongoing violence, theft, harassment and anything that makes people’s lives more hard to bear, it does support.”

In area C, the rural territory under full Israeli control that comprises most of the West Bank, “the army has no problem with harassments. The opposite is the case. It would be happy if area C was empty of Palestinians and also area B,” said Meinrath, referring to places that are under Israeli security control and Palestinian Authority civil control. That would leave Palestinians only in area A, the non-contiguous urban clusters in Smotrich’s plan.

Meinrath said his experience shows that the IDF’s attitude towards the protection activists is “very negative and hostile. If there are activists and settlers, the settlers are favored. Socially, the soldiers pal around with the settlers and in practical terms when they make a closed military zone they enforce it against the activists, not the settlers.”

The IDF spokesman’s office, in a statement sent to the Forward, declares that the military opposes settler violence. It says police, who are members of the same police force that operates inside sovereign Israeli territory, bear primary responsibility for dealing with violations of the law by Israeli citizens. But, the statement said, soldiers are required to stop violations “and if necessary to delay or detain the suspects until the police arrive.”

“In situations where soldiers fail to adhere to IDF orders, the incidents are thoroughly reviewed and disciplinary actions are implemented” the IDF statement said.

Meanwhile, Benninga, the activist who described being almost set on fire in Duma, says he will return there. ”It was the first time I experienced such a thing. Maybe it can be an educational experience for activists to help them understand what Palestinians go through all day, every day.”

The post ‘The settlers are winning now’: West Bank activists aiding Palestinians are increasingly targets themselves appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — While many of his classmates at his Orthodox high school in Los Angeles spent the last year juggling school and social life, Jackson Shrier was studying the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible, for five hours a day.

He was training for the Chidon HaTanach, or International Bible Quiz, a centerpiece of Israel’s Independence Day festivities that was founded by the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and held annually for over 60 years.

That dedication paid off last week, when Shrier placed second in the competition, fending off Jewish teens from around the world who similarly had prevailed in local competitions.

Shrier, 15, went by his Hebrew name, Akiva, during the competition and wowed the judges with his Hebrew proficiency. He was not the only American to place highly in the contest: Joshua Appelbaum of Washington, D.C., finished in third place, while Hadassah Esther Ritch of Highland Park, New Jersey, came in fourth.

In fact, While the winner of the showdown was Hodaya Cohen, an Israeli 11th-grader, this year marked a banner showing for the Americans, their strongest performance since 1973.

“When you’re an American, you know, usually the top American is like third or fourth, maybe fifth, but second place is like a special either way,” Shrier said. “So when I got second place, I was just quite a bit shocked.”

Shrier, who attends YULA High School in Los Angeles, said that, unlike in the United States, many of the Israeli competitors attend religious schools where preparation for the contest is built into the school day, sometimes for as many as 10 to 12 hours.

After first learning about the competition from a camp counselor before entering sixth grade, Shrier steadily ramped up his study. He escalated his investment even more following his win at the American Nationals last May.

The intense preparation paid off for Shrier, who said he felt well prepared to answer a spate of questions that included knowing which of four ancient Israeli cities “appeared exactly twice in the book of Judges” and, in the days of King Ahab, “what was a sinful build that happened.”

“I was very happy,” Shrier said of the moment he learned he had placed second, following a lightning-round face-off with Cohen. “It was a little shocking for me.”

During the competition, all of the American participants spoke in Hebrew, a feat that drew praise from the competition’s judges and host, the Israeli news anchor Sarah Beck.

“It’s very exciting to hear a young man from America quote pesukim in Hebrew,” said Liron Ben-Moshe, a past winner who writes the questions for the quiz and sits on its judging panel, using the Hebrew word for Bible verses. Ben-Moshe was one of several judges this year who, in addition to being steeped in Bible knowledge, lost close family during Israel’s recent wars.

“When they see the kids quote pesukim in Hebrew, they were very surprised,” said Ritch’s mother, Avigail. She adding that the judges had offered to give the students a “bonus” for their fluency in the language.

For Ritch, who is an 11th-grader at Bruriah High School for Girls in New Jersey, studying for the competition had been a worthwhile time commitment.

“I love learning Tanach and often spend time reading it because I gain so much from it,” Ritch said in a text message. “Tanach is a core part of Jewish identity, and studying it brings guidance and meaning into everyday life. Participating in Chidon has changed me forever and deepened my connection to it.”

This year, the competition included 16 participants from seven countries outside of the United States and Israel, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Mexico, Panama and Canada.

“The quiz is far more than a knowledge competition — the Bible is the cultural and moral identity of the Jewish people, a compass that has guided us throughout the generations,” Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch said during the broadcast.

While some of the international participants attended the competition remotely due to the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Shrier and his American counterparts all made it to Jerusalem for the contest, which was taped in advance of Independence Day on Wednesday.

“I wasn’t really thinking about that so much, just because I really wanted to come,” he said about the war. “I’d been studying for the Chidon a long time, so, you know, for me, just the main focus was getting here.”

For Shrier’s mother, Abigail, a writer with roles at the Manhattan Institute and The Free Press, the experience carried both pride and concern. She joined her son in Israel for the competition.

“We’re always concerned that there might be war when our kids are in Israel,” she said. “But Jack was absolutely single minded and determined to participate in this to the full extent, and we watched him really show dedication that my husband and I have never seen before.”

While in Jerusalem for the competition, the students are hosted by the Bible Quiz Camp, where they are able to study together and connect with peers who share their intense focus on Tanakh.

“Every time before this, I have been the one person to find myself around Tanakh, and that’s nice and all, but there’s not really a lot of people to talk to,” Appelbaum said. “So it’s nice having other people who have the same shared interest, and also just generally being in Israel is nice. It’s nice to be in the place that I’ve been studying about.”

For Abigail Shrier, watching her son compete reflected a moment of connection and shared purpose for Jewish teens around the world.

“There’s a lot of negative forces right now acting on the Jewish people, but there are also a lot of positive things happening,” she said. “And this worldwide Jewish competition, to learn as much Tanakh as you can, to cheer for each other and study together and learn as much as you can of the Tanakh is, is really one of the most positive things.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post These American teens ranked high in Israel’s International Bible Quiz, in strongest US showing in 50 years appeared first on The Forward.