Uncategorized
A new children’s book will depict the Jewish Theological Seminary’s devastating 1966 library fire — and how its neighbors responded
(JTA) — Just before locking down in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s book author Caroline Kusin Pritchard was waiting to pick up her two toddlers from preschool at Congregation Beth Am in Palo Alto, California, when she saw a thin volume poking out of a shelf in the synagogue library.
The 56-page book, called “Fire! The Library is Burning,” by Rabbi Barry Cytron, detailed a historical event she had never heard of before: the 1966 library fire at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights.
The fire was a devastating event for the seminary, the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism. It destroyed some 70,000 books and 40 Torahs in the library’s collection, some of which had been saved from Poland. No people were hurt and few rare books were burned, but because of the way the library was constructed, in a windowless tower, the only way to put it out was to dump water from above, resulting in sweeping damage even to volumes that escaped the flames.
What grabbed Kusin Pritchard’s attention was not the fire itself, but the way New Yorkers who lived and worked near the school responded to it — volunteering to evacuate books from the library and protect them from lasting damage.
That response is the focus of her upcoming children’s book, “The Keeper of Stories,” announced this week and due out in the fall of 2024. The episode, Kusin Pritchard said, feels all the more meaningful at a time when activists and local governments across the country are banning books — including some about the Holocaust — and restricting them from school library shelves.
“I just never thought a story about saving books would feel radical in 2023,” she said. “People are proactively going out of their way to strip books from public libraries and school shelves.”
The message of “The Keeper of Stories,” Kusin Pritchard added, is that “it didn’t matter to people what necessarily was in the books. They just knew there was inherent value and the story is being told and to save and protect books more generally, like these sacred gatekeepers of our humanity.”
The book is on the road to publication at a time of significant change for the JTS library, a large and storied institution with 400,000 volumes that includes a notable collection of rare Jewish books. The library downsized its space after a 2015 real estate deal and has more recently drawn scrutiny for auctioning some of its rare books. The longtime lead librarian who led the efforts to recover from the fire, Menahem Schmelzer, died last year.
Schmelzer, a Holocaust survivor born in Hungary who served as JTS’ head librarian from 1964 to 1987, spoke to Kusin Pritchard about his recollection of the fire, which happened to occur on his birthday.
“He was able to share just gorgeous, textured memories about what the experience was like for him,” she recalled.
“There’s a refrain throughout about ‘the keeper of stories,’” Kusin Pritchard added, referencing the book’s title. “This idea of, ‘who are the keepers of stories?’ Is it the building involved? Is it the pages of the book?”
Kusin Pritchard is the author of other children’s books with Jewish themes. “Gitty and Kvetch,” released in 2021, features a character who is always complaining; “Where is Poppy?”, out next year, is about a girl’s first Passover after her grandfather’s death. The new book, meant for readers in elementary school, will be illustrated by Selina Alko, who is Jewish and has previously illustrated books about interfaith holiday celebrations and the effort to save Czech children from the Nazis.
“The Keeper of Stories” will depict the steps that JTS’s neighbors took to save the books that didn’t burn. They formed an impromptu chain to pass books out of the library, pack them in boxes and, in turn, clear the boxes out to make more space for additional evacuated books. Volunteers also mobilized to place paper towels between each page of books soaked by the firehoses that were in danger of growing mold.
“These volunteers came from across the city and dried these books with paper towels and you can still see the places where they taped them and glued them back together on some of these actual books, on the pages.” Kusin Pritchard said. “Their stories still kind of exist in person.”
Initially, Kusin Pritchard wrote the draft from the perspective of the person who came up with the idea of using paper towels to preserve the books — an effort that caused a run on the towels nearby. But she soon realized that the story was about more than one individual’s efforts to save the contents of a library, so none of the characters is named.
“This wasn’t about this one person,” Kusin Pritchard said. “It was about how everyone came together. Preschoolers, students down the street, the pastors, the company that heard about this and sent paper towels, or General Foods who had these freeze dryers and they sent their food scientists to try and freeze dry the books. It was a collective.”
Kusin Pritchard said she usually writes lighter fare, but as the parent of three young children — 6, 4 and 2 years old — she said she isn’t worried about frightening readers.
“Kids can take on and handle a lot more than we give them credit for,” she said.
She also hopes to show her young readers that they can play a role in safeguarding books, too.
“In a world where book banning seems more and more normalized,” she said, “a story about saving books feels really resonant.”
—
The post A new children’s book will depict the Jewish Theological Seminary’s devastating 1966 library fire — and how its neighbors responded appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Qatar’s Sudden Moral Outrage on Gaza Reconstruction Rings Hollow
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani speaks on the first day of the 23rd edition of the annual Doha Forum, in Doha, Qatar, December 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Qatar delivered one of the most revealing geopolitical moments of the year when its prime minister, Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani, announced that Doha will not pay to rebuild Gaza.
The irony is extraordinary. Qatar, the same state that hosted Hamas’ top leadership for more than a decade, financed Gaza’s bureaucracy, and positioned itself as Hamas’ indispensable diplomatic back channel, now insists it bears no responsibility for the consequences of the very organization it nurtured.
The sudden rediscovery of fiscal restraint would be amusing if the implications weren’t so revealing.
What Doha is attempting is not moral clarity. It is narrative control. By refusing to participate in reconstruction, Qatar avoids the unavoidable admission that its financial, political, and media patronage strengthened the organization that triggered the current war.
If Gaza was “destroyed,” as Qatari officials tirelessly proclaim, then a basic question follows: destroyed in response to what? Hamas executed the October 7 massacre, built an underground fortress of tunnels, stockpiled rockets in civilian zones, and systematically transformed Gaza into a militarized enclave. These were not accidental byproducts of governance. They were deliberate investments — and Qatar was Hamas’ most generous financial sponsor.
The record is not a matter of political interpretation. US Treasury designations, UN reports, and major independent investigations have repeatedly documented that Qatar-based donors, charities, and intermediaries supported Hamas, alongside Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Mali. Qatari individuals sanctioned by the United States have also raised funds for Jabhat al-Nusra (HTS).
These findings are not Israeli claims; they originate from American counterterrorism authorities and multilateral bodies.
Yet Qatar continues to brand itself as a humanitarian benefactor to Gaza. In practice, its “relief payments” repeatedly functioned as political leverage: money that sustained Hamas’ rule and relieved the organization of basic governing responsibilities, all while allowing Doha to posture as a benevolent mediator.
Meanwhile, other regional powers have made their terms clear regarding Gaza reconstruction. The UAE and Saudi Arabia insist that any reconstruction of Gaza must be tied to a political framework that prevents Hamas from reconstituting itself. Qatar, by contrast, has spent years cultivating an outcome in which Hamas survives as a viable actor, preserving Doha’s influence and its role as a necessary mediator.
If Hamas’ military infrastructure is dismantled, Qatar is left with a failed investment and is now eager to disclaim responsibility for the outcome.
This dynamic is not new. For more than a decade, Qatar and Iran have served as parallel financial engines for Islamist militant groups across the region, using state funds, quasi-state charities, and well-connected private donors to support this activity. Western governments long tolerated the arrangement because Qatar hosts a major US air base, commands immense energy wealth, and uses its media empire to shape regional debate. But the mask is slipping. Doha’s attempt to distance itself from the consequences of its own policy choices exposes a contradiction it can no longer conceal.
This leads to the essential question: who still takes Qatar’s moral lectures seriously?
A state that sheltered Hamas’ leadership now claims neutrality. A state whose sanctioned donors aided extremist networks now positions itself as a humanitarian authority. A state that spent years empowering the group responsible for one of the worst atrocities in modern history now refuses to help rebuild the territory devastated by that group’s actions.
The world should stop pretending not to see the pattern. Qatar’s diplomatic theater cannot hide the facts. The Emirate has influence, resources, and global reach. What it lacks, despite its insistence, is credibility.
Sabine Sterk is CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
Uncategorized
How the Palestinian Authority Encourages Children to Die for Allah
A group of Palestinian children being taught that Israel will be destroyed. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
Instead of encouraging children to reach heights in education and contribute something positive in their lives, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education continues to indoctrinate children to see dying for Allah – Shahada (Martyrdom) – as the great ideal.
This child abuse was once again highlighted last week during celebrations of the UN’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
The Tulkarem Directorate of Education proudly posted photos on Facebook — taken at the school events — of children holding signs glorifying Martyrdom.
One sign portrayed Martyrs as smelling sweeter than a jasmine flower:
“How could a jasmine not envy a homeland that smells of Martyrs?” [Tulkarem Directorate of Education, Facebook page, Dec. 2, 2025]
Another sign proclaimed: “We will live like soaring eagles, and we will die like proud lions; we are all for the homeland and we are all for Palestine.”
These slogans encapsulate the PA’s indoctrination that Martyrdom, even for children, is not tragic or regrettable, but something beautiful, fragrant, and desirable. The PA is encouraging violence, and glorifying the murder of Jews.
Other posters held by students featured the PA map of “Palestine,” which erases Israel and displays the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestinian land:
One sign was accompanied by the slogan: “The compass will never deviate from the path and will continue to point towards Palestine.”
Other students carried large symbolic keys, representing the so-called “right of return,” which the PA teaches is an inevitable immigration to all of Israel’s cities and towns of nearly six million Arab descendants of so-called “refugees.”
The message to the children is that Israel has no right to exist and that the national mission, or “the path,” remains the elimination of Israel.
The events were attended by high-level PA officials, including Tulkarem Education Directorate Director-General Mazen Jarrar, Tulkarem District representative Rasha Sabah, and Fatah Movement Tulkarem Branch Secretary Iyad Jarrad.
These official PA education events, which glorify violence, romanticize Martyrdom, erase Israel from the map, and instill lifelong hatred towards Israel, are all part of the ongoing PA campaign to ensure that the next generation denies Israel’s right to exist and is willing to fight and seek death to achieve its goals.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
Uncategorized
Africa’s Collapse Is a Threat to America and Israel
A woman from El Fasher prays surrounded by displaced women, in a camp in Al-Dabbah, Sudan, Nov. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
Regions in Africa are collapsing. Across most of the continent’s 54 countries, governments are tyrannical, Islamist, or both. Many have ceased to function as states, splintering into warring ethnic and religious tribes. The resulting civil wars are not modern conflicts bound by Geneva Conventions, but extermination campaigns. State collapse breeds terrorism, narco-trafficking, and mass migration. Whatever happens in Africa never stays in Africa.
Western discourse about these horrors is predictably partisan. One camp demonizes the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for backing anti-Islamist warlords; the rival camp vilifies Qatar, Turkey, and Iran for bankrolling political Islam. Meanwhile China quietly locks entire governments into multi-generational debt, Russia swaps Wagner mercenaries and weapons for gold and diamond mines, and Europe issues pious statements about human rights while signing migration-control deals with whichever militia currently controls the coast.
The contradictions have become absurd. A Wall Street Journal investigation recently suggested that the UAE deliberately funneled roughly $20 million to Al Qaeda in Mali by paying ransom for an Emirati businessman, from the ruling family, and several Malian politicians. The unspoken accusation was that Abu Dhabi had chosen to fund global terrorism.
Yet the transaction is almost identical to repeated American practice. Washington has unfrozen billions in Iranian assets and granted major concessions to Moscow to secure the release of detained US citizens. In recent years, paying hostage-takers has become standard behavior, not evidence of secret jihadism sympathy.
When Sudan gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, the terrorist used Khartoum to plan the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Gulf of Eden.
Bin Laden is dead. His host, Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime, was overthrown in 2019. Yet the military and paramilitary forces that once served Bashir — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — staged a coup in 2021, ejected the civilian transitional government, and plunged the country into a new civil war in April 2023.
Washington believes Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood — in its various iterations — instigated the war and are now backing SAF commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against RSF’s General Muhammad Daglo — aka Hemedti. The US has imposed sanctions on both generals and on Burhan’s Islamist allies.
Together with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), America has proposed a “Quad” peace plan in which both Burhan and Hemedti step aside and hand power back to civilians. Hemedti pretended to agree to the deal. Burhan vowed war to the bitter end. Short of deploying troops on the ground, the Quad has no tools to force the warring parties to accept the plan.
A Burhan victory risks Sudan sliding back into the global Jihad hub it was in the 1990s, potentially allying with Islamist insurgencies across the Sahel. Senior Islamist militia commander Mosbah Abuzeid, a key Burhan ally, regularly appears draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, promising his fighters will one day “liberate Jerusalem.” A Hemedti victory, by contrast, installs in Khartoum a ruler accused of genocide, but whose ambitions appear national rather than transnational.
Neither outcome offers Sudan — or the world — anything resembling stability. The pattern repeats across the Sahel and beyond.
In Niger, site of the 2017 ambush that killed four US Green Berets, the military seized power in 2023. Washington rushed aid to the new rulers, reasoning that keeping Islamists out of power mattered more than the junta’s gross human-rights violations.
In neighboring Mali, a brutal military regime battles Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been trying to topple Bamako by attacking roads, fuel convoys, and population centers.
As America retreats into neo-isolationism, incorrectly identified as “America First,” the post-1945 order is fading away. A multilateral free-for-all system has replaced it.
Ranked by footprint, the main players in Africa today are China, a patchwork of European nations, the US, wealthy Gulf states, and Russia. Each courts local tyrants, bankrolls chosen factions, and carves out resources, ports, or basing rights.
Radical Islamist networks — fed by a loose global coalition — have turned the Sahel, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa into human abattoirs. Their opponents answer with equal savagery, often genocide. Libya has been a failed state since 2011. Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia, and eastern Congo are locked in interconnected wars that have already killed millions and displaced tens of millions.
Africa’s tragedy is structural: Predatory elites, tribalized politics, and the total collapse of any legitimate monopoly on violence ensure that extremists of every stripe flourish while moderates are exterminated. External patrons aggravate the problem while pointing fingers at one another.
The consequences will not stay in Africa. Surging Islamist terrorism, exploding narco-routes, and new waves of desperate migrants will crash against Europe’s shores. Instability will radiate into an already combustible Middle East. Israel and America’s allies will be forced to spend ever-larger resources to contain African terrorist sanctuaries, on top of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Blaming this or that foreign meddler feels good, but changes nothing. Until America and its partners commit to coherent, muscular political settlements backed by real power — instead of sporadic sanctions and press releases — the continent will remain trapped in an escalating cycle of atrocity. The only alternatives on the table today are hypocritical half-measures or abandonment. History has already shown that neither works. Failure usually costs the whole world, dearly.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).