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Asaf Zamir and Maya Wertheimer, prominent Israelis heading home after years in NYC, are wed by NYC mayor Eric Adams
(JTA) — With just a few weeks before his planned return to Tel Aviv after resigning in March as Israel’s consul general in New York City, Asaf Zamir set out Friday for an iconic Israeli experience: getting married abroad.
Zamir and his wife Maya Wertheimer, the Israeli actress and model, had a Reform Jewish wedding in 2017 in Israel. But Israel does not recognize non-Orthodox Jewish weddings and does not have the option of civil marriage, so their union had never carried legal weight.
That changed after the couple’s ceremony on Friday at the New York Public Library, which was officiated by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and witnessed by two Jewish friends, comedian Alex Edelman and artist Rebecca Moses. Now, when the couple returns to Israel after nearly two years in New York, their marriage can be recognized by their native country following some paperwork.
The couple’s choice was a common one among young Israelis — many of whom choose to wed abroad. Some couples travel to tie the knot because their marriage is not allowed under Orthodox Jewish law, as in the case of same-sex marriages or interfaith marriage. Others do so because of an aversion to getting married under Israel’s haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate, which has a monopoly on legal Jewish weddings in Israel. A recent study found that about a third of Jewish Israelis who got married abroad could have qualified to be wed in Israel, but chose not to.
But the entire enterprise was something of a surprise to Wertheimer, who documented the day for her 535,000 followers on Instagram.
“He suggests to me in a taxi: ‘What do you say we’ll get married?’ I didn’t get it … here in the taxi?! Like this and without prior preparation?!?!!” she wrote. In fact, Zamir — whom Wertheimer called “the most romantic man in the world” — had worked with Moses and the designer Vera Wang to produce a two-piece gown for Wertheimer, and the couple תalong with their toddler daughter Asiaת were soon in front of Adams exchanging vows. They emerged onto the library’s wide steps alongside Bryant Park for photographs.
“A dreamy day, a dreamy couple, a dreamy ceremony and love reigns!” wrote Moses, who said her job had been to conscript Wang, one of the most well-known wedding dress designers, to make a bespoke gown for Wertheimer with just two days’ notice.
The wedding is a splashy capstone for an eventful two years in New York City for the couple. Zamir moved ahead of Wertheimer in 2021 after being appointed to the consul general role, Israel’s top diplomatic position in the city with the biggest Jewish population, by the short-lived centrist government that had unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Wertheimer, a model and actress, joined him with Asia several months later.
Their time in New York overlapped with the pandemic; the death of Wertheimer’s father, one of Israel’s most prominent businessmen, of cancer at age 70; and Netanyahu’s return to power. Although Zamir’s appointment was for a three-year term, he was summoned to Israel after criticizing the proposed judicial reforms of Netanyahu’s right-wing government and resigned in protest soon after. Wertheimer had just appeared in a Tel Aviv fashion show and protest, carrying an oversized plane ticket showing a return flight from New York to Israel.
In recent months, the pair has embraced spring in New York City, with Wertheimer chronicling their adventures in New York, including frequent meals out with Israeli and American friends. (The pair decided to stay to finish out Asia’s preschool year.) She wrote recently that she had fallen in love with New York after initially being apprehensive.
“I did not understand New York. Winter here was so harsh. There’s no sun, there are no friends, there is no family,” she wrote in Hebrew. But then, she went on, “As soon as the end began, I lifted my head and realized that this city is actually really amazing.”
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French Jewish Girl Assaulted Near Paris, Adolescents Arrested for Antisemitic Attack
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Three teenage boys assaulted a 14-year-old Jewish girl and threatened to kill her in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on Friday, police said, resulting in a trip to the hospital for the victim and arrests for two of the 12-year-old suspects.
The incident began when three younger boys approached an older teenage girl to ask why she failed to observe Ramadan, according to local media reports. After she disclosed her Jewish identity, the three reportedly began calling her a “dirty Jew” and one threatened, “I’ll kill you on the Koran.” They then allegedly beat her, especially on her face.
The assault required a trip to the emergency room, where hospital staff described her as in a state of shock.
Paris law enforcement arrested two suspects that evening and seek to identify the third.
Another suburb of Paris also saw an antisemitic incident on Sunday when vandals hit a Kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, spray-painting “dirty Jew” in red across the building’s windows.
A kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, near Paris vandalized with antisemitic graffiti reading “Dirty Jew.” Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitic vandals hit Kokoriko, another Kosher restaurant in Paris, just two weeks earlier. Investigators say the criminals sprayed acid on tables, walls, and the floor, rendering silverware and plates unusable.
That attack came just days after the French Interior Ministry last month released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks, according to the data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The surge in antisemitism appears to have carried into this year. Last month, a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant.
“How do you find the words to explain to a 13-year-old child that he is being attacked because he is Jewish? Who will be able to restore his confidence in the future tomorrow?” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), said of the incident.
One-third of last year’s antisemitic incidents in France explicitly referencing Palestine or the war in Gaza, indicting that anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling antisemitism.
The prominence of anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism has prompted French leaders to propose legislation combating this type of hate, as announced by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last month at CRIF’s annual gathering,
“To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel’s right to exist. It’s a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology,” Lecornu said, announcing that the government would introduce a bill to criminalize anti-Zionism. “There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This ‘blurring’ must stop.”
Lecornu declared that “hatred of Jews is hatred of the Republic and a stain on France.”
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Belgian Synagogue Damaged in Blast Considered Antisemitic Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
An explosion hit a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege early on Monday in what authorities said was an antisemitic attack that caused damage but no injuries.
The explosion, which happened around 4 am (0300 GMT), blew out the windows of the synagogue, as well as those of a building on the opposite side of the road, public broadcaster RTBF said.
The cause was not clear, but prosecutors said the case had been passed to federal authorities, which normally investigate incidents linked to terrorism or organized crime.
Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin called the explosion “a despicable antisemitic act that directly targeted the Jewish community of Belgium.”
He said security measures around similar sites will continue to be reinforced.
Eitan Bergman, Vice-President of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), said the targeting of the synagogue was deeply shocking.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up. Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock,” he told Reuters.
Police have cordoned off the largely residential street on the bank of the river Meuse opposite Liege city center.
Federal prosecutors declined to give further details of the incident.
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Much of Iran’s Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium Likely to Be in Isfahan, IAEA’s Grossi Says
A satellite image shows a closer view of the destroyed tunnel entrances at Isfahan missile complex after reported airstrikes, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Isfahan, Isfahan Province, Iran, March 8, 2026. Photo: Vantor/Handout via REUTERS
Almost half of Iran’s uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons-grade, was stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan and is probably still there, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday.
The tunnel complex is the only target that appears not to have been badly damaged in attacks last June by Israel and the US on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Diplomats have long said Isfahan has been used to store 60% uranium, which the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in a report to member states last month, without saying how much was there.
IRAN STILL HAS HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM STOCKS
The IAEA estimates that when Israel launched its first attacks in June, Iran had 440.9 kg of 60% uranium. If enriched further, that would provide the explosive needed for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.
“What we believe is that Isfahan had until our last inspection a bit more than 200 kg, maybe a little bit more than that, of 60% uranium,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Paris.
He said the stock was “mainly” at Isfahan, and some held elsewhere may have been destroyed.
“The widespread assumption is that the material is still there. So, we haven’t seen – and not only us, I think in general all those observing the facility through satellite imagery and other means to see what’s going on there – movement indicating that the material could have been transferred,” Grossi said.
Iran has not informed the IAEA of the status or whereabouts of its highly enriched uranium since the June attacks, nor has it let IAEA inspectors return to its bombed facilities.
Iran’s nuclear program is one reason Israel and the US have given for their current attacks on Iran, arguing that it was getting too close to being able to produce a bomb, despite Trump saying in June that US strikes had obliterated the program. The IAEA has said it has no credible indication of a coordinated nuclear weapons program.
All three Iranian uranium-enrichment plants known to have been operating – two at Natanz and one at Fordow – were destroyed or badly damaged in June.
“There is an amount [of 60% uranium] in Natanz also, which we believe is still there,” Grossi said.