Uncategorized
A new mural in Nolita celebrates a Holocaust rescuer
(New York Jewish Week) — In the heavily trafficked neighborhood of Nolita, a larger-than-life mural has popped up on the corner of Spring St. and Elizabeth St. Bright orange and pink paint spell out the words “Saved 3,000 Jewish Lives” next to a black and white portrait of Holocaust rescuer Tibor Baranski.
The mural, an art piece designed to combat hate and spark conversation, is the brainchild of “Artists 4 Israel,” a non-profit organization that aims to “prevent the spread of antisemitic and anti-Israel bigotry by helping to heal communities that have been affected by hate through art,” according to its CEO and co-founder Craig Dershowitz.
“Our rallying cry is art over hate,” Dershowitz said. Baranski’s portrait, painted by Fernando “SKI” Romero, a renowned graffiti artist based in Queens, is part of the organization’s “Righteous Among the Nations Global Mural Project.” It aims to establish a network of murals painted in cities around the world that feature other “Righteous Among the Nations” members who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.
“His story was beautiful and it really touched me,” Romero, who is Dominican, said of Baranski, who collaborated with Artists 4 Israel on deciding whom to feature in the New York mural. “The want to paint something came very easily with something so selfless.”
The Baranski mural in Nolita is the third installment of the mural project; eventually there will be 10 murals around the world, said Dershowitz. Each subject is given a mural in their home state or country where they aided Jews: In Portugal, a mural of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a diplomat who helped arrange passports for Jews has become a popular tour bus stop. In Greece, a mural of Mayor Loukas Karrer and Archbishop Dimitrios Chrysostomos led to national media coverage.
Though Baranski was Hungarian, he lived in Buffalo, New York for nearly six decades and felt at home in New York, which is why the Artists 4 Israel chose him for the mural in Manhattan.
In 1944, Baranski was 22 and studying to become a Catholic priest in Slovakia when the Russian Army invaded and he was forced to return to Budapest, where he grew up.
He never returned to the seminary, and abandoned his dream of becoming a priest. Instead, he dedicated the next years of his life to orchestrating the escape of more than 3,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
After arriving in Budapest, Baranski headed to the Vatican embassy residence of the Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta, where a long line of people were requesting help. The Vatican embassies in Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal were some of the only places where Jews and other refugees were able to secure letters of protection and necessary documents to leave their countries.
Carol Romeo, who said her family survived the Holocaust, pauses to touch the mural of Holocaust rescuer Tibor Baranski created by Fernando “SKI” Romero, a Dominican-American artist born and raised in Queens. “I never knew he existed,” she said of Baranski. “And he lived here in New York. Everyone should know his story.” (CAM and Artists4Israel)
Pretending to be a priest, Baranski managed to arrange a meeting with Rotta, where he secured documents for a Jewish family he knew. As the story goes, Rotta soon recruited Baranski to help organize protection letters, baptismal certificates and immigration certificates for Jews trying to escape Hungary. He also helped coordinate food and housing for the escapees. Over the next two months, Baranski saved 3,000 Jewish lives, according to official records — though his sons have said he believes the number was closer to 15,000.
After the war, Baranski was imprisoned by the Soviet army for five years for his anti-communist beliefs. He became a freedom fighter during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 before moving to Rome to start a refugee camp with his wife Katalin.
Eventually the couple moved to Canada and then settled in Buffalo, where they were active members of the community and raised their three children, Tibor Jr., Kati and Peter.
Baranski, who died in 2019, was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations in 1979, and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
In an obituary in the New York Jewish Week, writer and close friend of Baranski’s Steve Lipman recalls an anecdote Baranski often repeated: “’Why do you, a Christian, help Jews?’ Uncle Tibor told me the Nazis asked him. ‘You are either silly or an idiot,’ he would answer. ‘It is because I am a Christian that I help the Jews.’”
For Dershowitz, who is based in Los Angeles, one of the goals of the murals — and his organization at large — is fighting antisemitism through education about Israel and the Holocaust. By making the art public and accessible, Dershowitz hopes people of all backgrounds will enjoy the art, and learn from it.
“These murals are very much for everyone to enjoy,” he said. “For the most part, they’re not geared towards the Jewish community as much as they’re geared towards a younger demographic, regardless of their religion or cultural heritage.”
Since its foundation in 2009, Artists 4 Israel’s principal mission has been to bring diverse groups of graffiti, street and mural artists to Israel to create projects that “benefit people in a direct, on-the-ground way,” such as painting murals in hospitals, bomb shelters and army bases. The organization has worked with more than 5,000 professional and amateur artists from 32 countries around the world, according to its website.
“When [the artists] come back [from Israel], they’re able to talk about the country and they’re able to speak about the Jewish people and be a window into the reality of Israel in the Middle East to their millions of followers,” Dershowitz explained.
In 2020, when COVID-19 arrived and international travel halted, the organization switched gears and started bringing their advocacy to cities around the world with the “Righteous Among the Nations” project.
For the artist Romero, the work has been especially gratifying. The 44 year-old artist has been involved with Artists 4 Israel since its inception and has visited Israel three times, painting murals for battered women’s shelters, community shelters and army bases.
“I’m creating art with purpose, which is beautiful. I’m also creating a dialogue. There’s a conversation,” Romero said. “This is one of those murals that touches home and it makes you really feel good. It is art that just separates itself from a lot of the noise out there.”
Painted over the course of two days, the mural will remain on the downtown corner for the next nine months.
At the unveiling party last month, which included a performance by singer Neshama Carlebach and blessings led by Rabbi Menachem Creditor, Baranski’s son Tibor Jr. retold his father’s story and emphasized the strong Catholic faith that guided him.
“Tibor Baranski was the merger of intellect and faith,” said his son, who drove from Buffalo for the event. “My father’s deeply held belief in God was uncompromising. It was the core driver in his saving thousands of innocent Jewish lives in 1944 in Nazi-occupied Hungary.”
“I will quote my father since his words captured the essence of our Catholic faith and what this mural that Fernando painted commemorating him represents: ‘Love each other, love each other sincerely. God is love. Love destroys hatred,’” he added.
—
The post A new mural in Nolita celebrates a Holocaust rescuer appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Looming large over Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations: Argentina’s Javier Milei
(JTA) — During his three days in Israel this week, Argentinian President Javier Milei made a strong impression.
There he was, weeping again at the Western Wall. There he was, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor for his leadership and support for Israel. And there he was, lighting a torch for the Independence Day festivities as the first foreign leader ever to do so.
There Milei was, grabbing a microphone and dancing raucously on stage to the Spanish-language song “Libre” at both the rehearsal for the national ceremony and the live event on Tuesday.
And there he was, ostensibly the reason that the far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the ceremony before it began. Ben-Gvir left after being asked to vacate his seat to make way for Milei, in an arrangement that some speculated was meant to prevent Ben-Gvir from being photographed in the same frame as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Milei’s presence in Israel Sunday through Tuesday offering a powerful symbol of his continued support for Israel even as so many other world leaders have distanced themselves. Milei is a longtime philosemite who has said he aims one day to convert to Judaism.
“In life there are partners and there are friends,” Milei said in Spanish during the Independence Day ceremony. “Partners come together for a moment of shared interest. Friends forge unbreakable bonds for life. I am pleased to say that Argentina and Israel are not merely partners, but friendly nations.”
The Independence Day ceremonies projected an image of resilience at a challenging time for Israel, where wars on two fronts are currently in ceasefires announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Among the others chosen as torch-lighters, seen as one of Israel’s most significant honors, were soldiers who have participated in the years of war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Two of the chosen torch-lighters drew sharp criticism. One was Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbinical judge who has drawn scrutiny for publicly praising demolition operations in Gaza. In February, the Ombudsman of the Israeli Judiciary ruled that Zarbiv had violated a code of ethics by expressing his views on controversial issues.
“I light this torch in honor of the bulldozer and excavator operators, the trailblazers, destroyers of the enemy and the dismantlers of terrorist infrastructure who protect the lives of our soldiers,” he said at the ceremony.
A cousin of a woman killed in captivity also also denounced the selection of Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, who faced calls for his resignation in February after telling Haaretz that demonstrations demanding the release of hostages were aiding Hamas. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, wrote in a post on Instagram that his selection was “spitting in the faces of families” of the hostages.
Last year, torchlighters for the ceremony included former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, NBA player Deni Avdija and the American Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose appointment was criticized by some Israeli leaders as inappropriately political.
The day’s official programming will end with a ceremony awarding the Israel Prize, the nation’s top civilian honor. Among those receiving the prize this year are the artist Yaacov Agam and Chantal Belzberg, the CEO of a nonprofit that aids the families of fallen soldiers.
Trump was also invited to receive the prize, getting a public invitation in February following an earlier announcement by Netanyahu. He will not be present.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Looming large over Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations: Argentina’s Javier Milei appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking
Harpo Marx’s wife, Susan Fleming, once remarked that, when you got him talking, you couldn’t shut him up.
The proof was there for those who chanced to see him in the 1930s and ‘40s, screening clips of the films he made with his brothers. If a crowd was good, he’d deliver what was known as “Red’s Speech,” a reference to the red wig he wore on stage.
The speech grew more verbose with each recitation, with input by Harpo’s friend, the critic Alexander Woollcott, a fount of $5 dollar words. It got so long, in fact, that Harpo would take it out in the form of a long script that spilled off the stage down the aisle.
“There’s always been this fallacy that Harpo never spoke on stage,” said Marx historian Robert S. Bader, author of Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage and Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother. When he did, he would often make a joke about the mute persona he adopted in 1914, opening his remarks with “as I was about to say in 1915.”
In 1964, Harpo was hitting the speaking circuit. He spoke at events for the United Jewish Appeal, having grown more connected to his Jewishness after a 1963 trip to Israel. On these occasions, Bader said, Harpo “might have looked like a local councilman, just wearing a business suit,” and would sneak in a line from his bar mitzvah speech: “For 13 long years, I have toiled and labored for your happiness.”
Advised to retire from performing after a number of heart attacks, Harpo reasoned that, so long as it was for charity and he didn’t get paid, it couldn’t count as work.
That rationale led to Harpo’s appearance at benefits for a number of symphony orchestras. On March 20, 1964, he gave his final performance at a concert for the Riverside Symphony Orchestra in California, playing a suite of songs about the moon, an original composition and conducting a particularly manic take on Haydn’s “Toy Symphony.”
This time, Harpo not only spoke, giving a lively recitation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, he did something unprecedented by allowing himself to be recorded with the understanding the public might someday hear it.
On June 5, 2026 a record of the evening will be released as Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert. It was announced on April 1, but it was no April Fools joke. It’s an outstanding artifact, and it was discovered quite by accident.
John Tefteller, the foremost collector of rare, Marx-related records, was looking for a copy of a 1963 concert with Harpo and comedian-musician Allan Sherman, recorded by Sherman’s son Robert. Looking in the tape box for Pasadena, Sherman instead found the Riverside tape. Oddly enough, Robert Sherman had no memory of recording — or even attending — the Riverside concert.
Bill Marx, Harpo’s son and the arranger of much of his music, says the man on the recording, telling the tale of “Peeduh,” the “boid” and the “huntahs,” is the one he grew up with.
“It was very, very low key,” said Bill Marx, now a celebrated pianist and Juilliard-trained composer, recalling his father’s voice. “I think I would have to say that he was about five or six notes lower than Groucho’s. It was easy to hear him speak. I suppose you could call him soft-spoken. He rarely if ever raised his voice in our house with my two brothers and sisters.”
Instead, he would do something like wake his daughter in the middle of the night to play jacks.
Peter and the Wolf, written for young audiences, was a natural fit for Harpo, and it was his idea to do it. The version of the libretto, co-written by Harpo and Groucho, also features a topical joke for that election year of 1964: “Imagine the triumphant procession. Peeduh at the head, after him the huntahs leading the wolf, then Goldwatuh, Rockefelluh and Nixon.”
That Harpo was a patron of the symphony is no great surprise. He practiced the harp three hours a day and Bill Marx remembers his father’s love of French impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel and Fauré. When Bill played records in his bedroom, without fail his father would knock on the door, ask what he was listening to, and commit to learning it — which he did.
“He just had a great learning thirst, and I had the privilege of watching this man appear in everybody’s life by doing things that he was compelled to do,” Bill Marx said.
As the narrator of Peter and the Wolf, Harpo is wonderfully expressive, evoking the storytelling of an old-time New York-born Zayde (dressed in his traditional costume at the concert, he donned a new accessory: reading glasses). He sounds quite a lot like Chico, his closest brother in age.
Restoring the tape took major work from audio restorer Joel Tefteller (John’s son) and audio engineer Nick Bergh. At one point, in his closing speech, Harpo walked away from the mic, making the original tape almost inaudible.
“He wasn’t used to looking for a microphone,” said Bader. “He didn’t have a lot of time in front of microphones. I don’t think anybody ever had to say ‘Harpo get closer to the microphone’ ever.”
The post Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The post UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage appeared first on The Forward.