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Biden plan to combat antisemitism demands reforms across the executive branch and beyond
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden unveiled a multifaceted and broad strategy to combat antisemitism in the United States that reaches from basketball courts to farming communities, from college campuses to police departments.
“We must say clearly and forcefully that antisemitism and all forms of hate and violence have no place in America,” Biden said in a prerecorded video. “Silence is complicity.”
The 60-page document and its list of more than 100 recommendations stretches across the government, requiring reforms in virtually every sector of the executive branch within a year. It was formulated after consultations with over a thousand experts, and covers a range of tactics, from increased security funding to a range of educational efforts.
The plan has been in the works since December, and the White House has consulted with large Jewish organizations throughout the process. The finished document embraces proposals that large Jewish organizations have long advocated, as well as initiatives that pleasantly surprised Jewish organizational leaders, most of whom praised it upon its release.
Among the proposals that Jewish leaders have called for were recommendations to streamline reporting of hate crimes across local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, which will enable the government to accurately assess the breadth of hate crimes. The proposal also recommends that Congress double the funds available to nonprofits for security measures, from $180 million to $360 million.
One proposal that, if enacted, could be particularly far-reaching — and controversial — is a call for Congress to pass “fundamental reforms” to a provision that shields social media platforms from liability for the content users post on their sites. The plan says social media companies should have a “zero tolerance policy for hate speech on their platforms.”
In addition, the plan calls for action in partnership with a range of government agencies and private entities. It says the government will work with professional sports leagues to educate fans about antisemitism and hold athletes accountable for it, following instances of antisemitic speech by figures such as NBA star Kyrie Irving or NFL player DeSean Jackson.
The government will also partner with rural museums and libraries to educate their visitors about Jewish heritage and antisemitism. And the plan includes actions to be taken by a number of cabinet departments, from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the USDA.
“It’s really producing a whole-of-government approach that stretches from what you might consider the obvious things like more [security] grants and more resources for the Justice Department and the FBI,” said Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union. “But it stretches all the way across things that the Department of Labor and the Small Business Administration can do with regard to educating about antisemitism, that the National Endowment of the Humanities and the President’s Council on Sports and Fitness can do with regard to the institutions that they deal with.”
An array of Jewish organizations from the left to the center-right echoed those sentiments in welcoming the plan with enthusiasm, marking a change from recent weeks in which they had been split over how the plan should define antisemitism. Still, a handful of right-wing groups blasted the strategy, saying that its chosen definition of antisemitism diluted the term.
Despite the relatively united front, there are elements of the strategy that may stoke broader controversy: Among a broad array of partner groups named in the plan is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose harsh criticism of Israel has led to relations with centrist Jewish organizations that are fraught at best. The call to place limits on social media platforms may also upset free speech advocates.
Biden recalled, as he often does, that he decided to run for president after President Donald Trump equivocated while condemning the neo-Nazis who organized a deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“Repeated episodes of hate — including numerous attacks on Jewish Americans — have since followed Charlottesville, shaking our moral conscience as Americans and challenging the values for which we stand as a Nation,” Biden wrote in an introduction to the report.
The administration launched the initiative last December, after years during which Jewish groups and the FBI reported sharp spikes in antisemitic incidents. The strategy was originally planned for release at its Jewish American Heritage Month celebration last week, but was delayed, in part because of last minute internal squabbling over whether it would accept a definition of antisemitism that some on the left said chilled free speech on Israel. Some right-wing groups were deeply critical of the new strategy for not accepting that definition to the exclusion of others.
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) praised the breadth of the plan, and said the delay seemed to produce results.
“The White House has taken this very seriously. The phrase that something is still being worked on can often be a euphemism for a lack of concern,” he said. “In this case, it seems to have resulted in an even more comprehensive and hopefully more effective result.”
Some of the initiatives in the plan focus less on directly confronting antisemitism and more on promoting tolerance of and education about Jews.The Biden Administration will seek to ensure accommodations for Jewish religious observance, the accompanying fact sheet said, and “the Department of Agriculture will work to ensure equal access to all USDA feeding programs for USDA customers with religious dietary needs, including kosher and halal dietary needs.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League CEO who was closely consulted on the strategy, said promoting inclusion was as critical as fighting antisemitism. “Is FEMA giving kosher provisions after disasters going to solve antisemitism?” he said in an interview. “No, but… it’s an acknowledgement of the plurality of communities and the need to treat Jewish people like you would any other minority community, and I think I’m very pleased to see that.”
In the months since Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, convened a roundtable to launch the initiative, the Biden administration has pivoted from focusing on the threat of antisemitism from the far-right to also highlighting its manifestation in other spheres — including amid anti-Israel activism on campuses and the targeting of visibly religious Jews in the northeast. Those factors were evident in the strategy.
“Some traditionally observant Jews, especially traditional Orthodox Jews, are victimized while walking down the street,” the strategy said in its introduction. “Jewish students and educators are targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses, often because of their real or perceived views about the State of Israel.”
The proposal that may provoke controversy beyond American Jewry is the Biden Administration’s calls to reform the tech sector, which echo bipartisan recommendations to change Section 230, a provision of U.S. law that grants platforms immunity from being liable for the content users post. Free speech advocates and the companies themselves say that if the government were to police online speech, it would veer into censorship.
“Tech companies have a critical role to play and for that reason the strategy contains 10 separate calls to tech companies to establish a zero tolerance policy for hate speech on their platforms, to ensure that their algorithms do not pass along hate speech and extreme content to users and to listen more closely to Jewish groups to better understand how antisemitism manifests itself on their platforms,” Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s top Homeland Security adviser, said during a 30-minute briefing on the strategy on Thursday. “The president has also called on Congress to remove the special immunity for online platforms and to impose stronger transparency requirements in order to ensure that tech companies are removing content that violates their terms of service.”
Neo-Nazis and white supremacists encircle counterprotesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 11, 2017. (Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In the weeks before the rollout, a debate raged online and behind the scenes amid Jewish organizations and activists about how the plan would define antisemitism. Centrist and right-wing groups pushed for the plan to embrace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition. Among its examples of anti-Jewish bigotry are those focusing on when Israel criticism is antisemitic, including when “double standards” applied to Israel are antisemitic.
Advocates on the left say those clauses turn legitimate criticism of Israel into hate speech; instead, they pushed to include references to the Nexus Document, a definition authored by academics that recognizes IHRA but seeks to complement it by further elucidating how anti-Israel expression may be antisemitic in some instances, and not in others. Others sought to include the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which rejects IHRA’s Israel-related examples.
In the end, the strategy said the U.S. government recognizes the IHRA definition as the “most prominent” and “appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.”
A number of the centrist groups pressed for exclusive reference to IHRA, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Those groups praised the strategy and focused only on its embrace of IHRA. So did the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog.
“I would like to congratulate the Biden administration for publishing the first ever national strategy to combat antisemitism,” Herzog wrote on Twitter. “Thank you, @POTUS, for prioritizing the need to confront antisemitism in all its forms. We welcome the re-embracing of @TheIHRA definition which is the gold standard definition of antisemitism.”
Some center-right groups like B’nai Brith International, StandWithUs and the World Jewish Congress, praised the strategy while expressing regret at the inclusion of Nexus. Right-wing groups, such as the Republican Jewish Coalition and Christians United for Israel condemned the rollout.
RJC said Biden “blew it” by not exclusively using the IHRA definition. The Brandeis Center, which defends pro-Israel groups and students on campus, said the “substance doesn’t measure up.”
Groups on the left, however, broadly praised the strategy. “We call on our Jewish communities to seize this historic moment and build on this new strategy to ensure that the fight for Jewish safety is a fight for a better and safer America for all,” said a statement from six left-leaning groups spearheaded by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice.
Greenblatt said it was predictable that groups on the left would take the win and that groups on the right would grumble — but that it was also beside the point. IHRA, he said, was now U.S. policy.
“This document elevates and advances IHRA as the way that U.S. policy will be formulated going forward and across all of the agencies,” Greenblatt said. “That is a win.”
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The post Biden plan to combat antisemitism demands reforms across the executive branch and beyond appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Mamdani once vowed to arrest Netanyahu. Now he won’t join protests against him.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday that he will not join protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city to address the United Nations annual gathering next week and pushed back on the suggestion that he ever encouraged New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader.
“I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly,” Mamdani told reporters. “To New Yorkers, I have never encouraged them to protest. What I have always told them is that they have the right to do so in the city.”
But two months ago, when Mamdani was asked what New Yorkers frustrated with Netanyahu should do when the Israeli leader came to the city for the annual fall U.N. event, the mayor repeatedly pointed to protest as an option. “I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” Mamdani said at a July 22 press conference. “It is something that has been a part of what makes our city so special: that New Yorkers can express themselves, whether they are in support or in opposition, no matter the topic.”
Mamdani’s July remarks came after a legal review the mayor ordered concluded that he lacks the power to order the arrest of Netanyahu, a pledge he made during his mayoral election campaign.
In July, when a reporter followed up directly, “Are you urging them to protest?” Mamdani stopped short of saying yes. But he again pointed to protests as a way for New Yorkers who oppose Netanyahu to make their voices heard. “I’m simply saying that this is a city where — if anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect,” Mamdani said. “I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision,” he added.
From arrest pledge to protest rights
Mamdani had campaigned on ordering Netanyahu’s arrest based on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in November 2024, which accused the Israeli prime minister, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu has rejected the charges. The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC months after it issued the warrants.
After taking office, Mamdani ordered a legal review and acknowledged in July that New York City does not have the authority to execute the ICC warrant.
He made that announcement in an unusual video address describing Netanyahu as “a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” and declared that the Israeli leader would not be welcome in New York, home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
The address drew criticism from Jewish leaders who questioned why the mayor was devoting so much attention to an arrest he acknowledged he could not legally carry out. The criticism came amid growing tension between Mamdani and parts of New York’s Jewish community over his rhetoric about Israel. Jewish organizations have also raised concerns about it contributing to a hostile climate for Jews across the city.
It was against that backdrop that Mamdani was pressed at the July press conference about what he would tell Palestinian supporters who had welcomed his promise to arrest Netanyahu, and were disappointed that he could not fulfill it. That is when he turned to protest as a remaining option. “I want to make it very clear that that welcome ends with me,” Mamdani said. “ I will not be welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu or any other war criminals when they come to this city.”
Netanyahu is expected to arrive in New York City next Wednesday under heavy security measures and address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday before returning to Israel. One Israeli media outlet reported that the official plane carrying the Israeli leader, known as “Wings of Zion,” will land at Newark International Airport in New Jersey instead of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York due to concerns that Mamdani could try to prevent the aircraft from remaining parked at JFK during Netanyahu’s visit.
Protests against Netanyahu are planned outside his hotel and near the United Nations during his address. Jewish groups are also planning a mass rally against antisemitism on Wednesday.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Mamdani drew a sharper distinction between encouraging protests and defending the right to hold them. “We respect that right,” he said. “And this is a city that is proud of the Constitution, proud of the First Amendment; we’ll continue to do so.”
Mamdani cited the same First Amendment right when asked about students from Ramaz and SAR, two prominent Modern Orthodox schools, who are planning a prayer vigil outside the mayor’s residence on Friday morning in support of Israel. “They can have a vigil, or I’ve heard some describe it even as a ‘protest,’” he said. “Whatever it is intended to be, they have the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion. Though, he added, he would “probably be somewhere else across the city” when they gather.
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Renoir’s paintings have been stolen again. Their history may never be found.
The timing was as swift as Auguste Renoir’s brushstrokes. In the pre-dawn darkness of Sept. 8, thieves in camouflage and helmets took less than three minutes to saw through a wire-mesh fence and carry off four paintings from the neo-Provençal villa in the south of France where the artist spent the final years of his life.
Perhaps spooked by the city’s newly acquired police dog, the looters dropped two works as they fled from the Musée Renoir across the hillside above Cagnes-sur-Mer, through ancient olive groves, orange trees and figs. Two Renoir works remain missing — a reminder of the peculiar power these paintings exert, not only on those who love them, but on those who covet them and yearn to possess them at almost any cost.
Three of the four stolen works were MNRs — Musées Nationaux Récupération, the French designation for “orphan” works recovered after World War II but never restituted because their rightful owners could not be identified or located. French museums hold them provisionally, a limbo that for some has lasted more than 70 years.
For one of the missing Renoirs, the latest theft amounts to a double tragedy: wartime spoliation followed by modern looting.
German property records show that, during World War II “Jeune femme au puits” was “confiscated by SS man Brandl,” an apparent reference to Hermann Brandl, a Nazi officer and black marketeer who went by the pseudonym “Otto,” and led an organization that bought goods and artworks outside normal channels. Recovered in Bavaria, the painting passed through the Munich Central Collecting Point and was returned to France.
The painting is small and unfinished, oil on wood. A woman in a blue apron stands at a well, drawing water. We do not know her name, but Renoir preserved her gesture and her face. History did not preserve who she was.
I find that omission difficult to leave alone.
I felt something similar in Paris in 2019, when I first stood before another Renoir, “La Petite Irène,” in an exhibition at the Musée Maillol. The portrait had not been publicly exhibited in Paris for 73 years. Yet there was little to explain the tragic history of the girl in blue — or the fact that her portrait itself had been looted during the German Occupation.
In 1946, a French critic had encountered the portrait in a Paris exhibition of artworks recovered from Germany. He wrote that the painting brought him to his knees and asked: “Who was Mlle. Irène Cahen d’Anvers?”
Seventy-three years later, I was asking essentially the same question.
The question became a search. The search became an investigation. The investigation became a book.
Irène Cahen d’Anvers was eight when Renoir painted her, with cascading ginger hair, a distant gaze and lips pressed red as if bitten. She was born into a family of art collectors who were also part of one of Belle Époque France’s great Jewish banking dynasties. She survived the German Occupation. Her sister Élisabeth, her daughter Béatrice de Camondo and her two grandchildren did not. All were victims of the Holocaust.
Before the arrests, Irène’s son-in-law Léon Reinach entrusted her Renoir portrait to the Louvre for safekeeping in 1939. The museum evacuated it with treasures including the Mona Lisa and the French crown jewels to the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley.
But it was not safe there. In 1941, a Nazi looting unit arrived with a list of works belonging to private Jewish collectors and seized Irène’s portrait along with other paintings. Reinach boldly demanded its return, enlisting senior French museum officials in an unsuccessful campaign. Instead, the portrait eventually passed through Hermann Göring’s art-looting network.
After the war, Monuments Men investigators traced it to a Bavarian farmhouse owned by a murky art merchant near Neuschwanstein castle, a repository for looted art. In 1946, the portrait was returned to Irène, who later described it as “a remembrance of my youth and of all.”
Yet three years later, she sold it to Emil Bührle in a choice that seems almost incomprehensible. Bührle was a German-born Swiss arms manufacturer whose wartime fortune was built in significant part on weapons sales to Nazi Germany. He had also bought looted paintings during the war and, afterwards, was forced to restitute them — only, in several cases, to buy them back because he could not bear to part with them.
French archival records show that museum officials fiercely opposed the sale of “La Petite Irène.” Bührle’s own broker acknowledged that the Louvre had been interested in acquiring it, and a French commission voted to deny the export license needed to remove the Renoir from France.
Yet somehow those objections fell away. The broker’s correspondence showed that he bargained over the price and currency exchange rates with Irène and her banker. Bührle ultimately paid 240,000 Swiss francs — roughly $1.5 million in today’s dollars.
To understand Irène’s decision, I had to understand what the war had done to her.
During the Occupation, Irène left her grand Paris residence for a smaller apartment on Rue de la Tour in the 16th arrondissement and lived under the Italian surname of her former second husband. She survived by hiding in plain sight in occupied Paris, moving within a world of older Jewish women who survived by rotating among friends and discreet addresses. Helped by political connections and by a Catholic conversion decades earlier, she had obtained a coveted certificate declaring that she was not Jewish..
After the war, survivors returning from Auschwitz wrote to that Rue de la Tour apartment. Their painful letters told Irène what had happened to her missing family.
Her daughter Béatrice had survived arrest, Drancy and deportation to Auschwitz, where she was put to work in an ammunition factory. Newly uncovered records of letters from survivors indicate that she was murdered on Jan. 3, 1945, with more than 800 other prisoners, only weeks before Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, which is now known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Béatrice died knowing that her two adult children were already dead, according to former prisoners who later wrote to Irène. Léon Reinach — the son-in-law who had fought to recover Irène’s portrait — also died at Auschwitz. Irène’s sister Élisabeth, painted beside her younger sister Alice in Renoir’s “Pink and Blue,” was murdered after deportation as well.
What, then, did Irène see when she looked at Renoir’s image of the eight-year-old girl she had once been?
A family relic? A remnant of a vanished world? A Jewish identity she had spent a lifetime navigating? Or simply losses too great to absorb?
The correspondence surrounding the 1949 sale offers one practical explanation. Bührle’s intermediary wrote that Irène, then 77, wanted to prevent the portrait from being sold at auction after her death because, given its value, it was unlikely any single heir could keep it.
It is an almost mundane explanation for a painting burdened with so much history: She wanted to avoid the public spectacle of an auction and Bührle had the fortune to pay for it quickly.
After the sale, “La Petite Irène” largely disappeared into Bührle’s private collection in Zürich. Only in recent years, now that the Bührle archives have been opened to greater scrutiny and much of the collection has gone on long-term loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich, has the history behind the painting received sustained public attention.
Today “La Petite Irène” hangs alone against an expanse of green in an austere reflection room at the Kunsthaus. Recently, the museum created the gallery around the portrait, inviting visitors to contemplate Irène’s story, record their reactions on a digital screen or draw responses to a history that is finally being confronted.
When I first saw the painting in Paris in 2019, I was struck not only by the girl but by the silence surrounding her. Now that silence is beginning to recede. The history has become part of the portrait’s biography — and part of the mystery of her gaze.
And now another Renoir has disappeared.
The woman in “Jeune femme au puits” still has no name. We know more about the travels of her painting than we know about her: taken during the war, recovered in Bavaria, returned to France, stolen again.
Paintings outlive the people who make them, own them, covet them, steal them and fight to recover them. Perhaps that is part of their strange power.
They carry what we remember — and what we fail to remember.
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Translation series connects English readers to prewar Eastern European Jewish life
דאָס איז איינער פֿון אַ סעריע קורצע אַרטיקלען אָנגעשריבן אױף אַ רעלאַטיװ גרינגן ייִדיש און געצילעװעט אױף סטודענטן. די מחברטע איז אַלײן אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע. דאָ קען מען לײענען די פֿריִערדיקע אַרטיקלען אין דער סעריע.
אַ דאַנק אַ סעריע נײַע ענגלישע איבערזעצונגען פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּעיִשע ייִדישע ווערק, האָבן ענגליש־לייענערס הײַנט אַ געלעגנהײט זיך צו באַקענען מיטן ייִדישן לעבן־שטייגער פֿאַרן חורבן.
די סעריע, „ייִדישע שטימען“ — אַ בשותּפֿותדיקער איניציאַטיוו פֿון ייִװאָ און דעם פֿאַרלאַג בלומסבערי — איז שוין צו ניץ געקומען סײַ לערערס פֿון קורסן, וווּ די סטודענטן פֿאַרשטייען ניט קיין ייִדיש, סײַ לייענערס מיט אַן אינטערעס צו דער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
„ייִדישע שטימען“ באַשטייט פֿון ביכער װאָס זענען קײן מאָל פֿריִער ניט איבערגעזעצט געװאָרן אױף ענגליש. זיי נעמען אַרײַן אַ ברײטע גאַמע אידעעס און פּערספּעקטיװן װאָס האָבן צוגעטראָגן צו דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער קולטור אין (און מחוץ) מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
זינט 2023, װען די סעריע איז לאַנצירט געװאָרן, זענען אַרױס פֿינעף בענד, װאָס צװײ פֿון זײ — „מיסיסיפּי“ און „די חסידישע װאַרשע“ — זענען ערשט דערשינען מיט אַ פּאָר װאָכן צוריק. ביז איצט האָט מען איבערגעזעצט בלויז ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע װערק אָבער מיט דער צײַט װעט מען איבערזעצן טעקסטן פֿון אַנדערע לשונות, אַזױ װי פּױליש און העברעיִש, וואָס מע האָט ביז איצט ניט איבערגעזעצט אויף ענגליש.
די סעריע, סובסידירט פֿון דער משפּחה פֿון האַריעט יאַסקי, װערט רעדאַקטירט פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט און עליסאַ בן-פּורת. (איך אַלײן אַרבעט מיט זײ װי אַן אַסיסטענטקע). קװינט איז אַ היסטאָריקערין פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער, און בן-פּורת איז אַ היסטאָריקערין פֿונעם ייִדישן לעבן אין רוסלאַנד און אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. ס׳איז דערפֿאַר נישט קײן חידוש אַז דער סעריעס קוקװינקל איז אַ היסטאָרישער. כאָטש די איבערגעזעצטע װערק רעפּרעזענטירן פֿאַרשײדענע קאַטעגאָריעס — למשל פּיעסעס, זכרונות און דערצײלונגען — איז דער עיקר זײער היסטאָרישע רײַכקײט.
„מיר קלײַבן אױס טעקסטן װאָס װאַרפֿן אַ שײַן סײַ אױף ברײטע טענדענצן, סײַ אױף ספּעציפֿישע פֿראַגעס װעגן ייִדיש לעבן אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע, און אין אַנדערע לענדער װוּ מיזרח־אייראָפּעיִשע ייִדן האָבן געװױנט װי אימיגראַנטן אָדער פּליטים. אַפֿילו די ׳ליטעראַרישע׳ װערק װי דערצײלוגען און פּיעסעס פֿאָרשן מיר פֿון אַ היסטאָרישן שטאַנדפּונקט“, האָט מיר קװינט געזאָגט.
צוליב דעם דאָזיקן שליחות שפּילט אַ װיכטיקע ראָלע דער אַרײַנפֿיר צו יעדן באַנד, װאָס איז תּמיד געשריבן פֿון אַ היסטאָריקער. אַ מאָל איז דער מחבר פֿון דער הקדמה אױך דער איבערזעצער, און אַ מאָל נעמען אונטער באַזונדערע מענטשן די צװײ אױפֿגאַבעס. „דעם היסטאָריקערס אַרבעט אינעם אַרײַנפֿיר איז אַרױסצוציִען און צוצובינדן די ביאָגראַפֿישע, גײַסטיקע און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע אַספּעקטן פֿונעם װערק, אױף אַן אופֿן װאָס איז גלײַכצײַטיק װיסנשאַפֿטלעך און צוטריטלעך צו אַלע לײענערס, אַרײַננעמענדיק די װאָס האָבן פֿריִער ניט געװוּסט קײן סך װעגן דער טעמע,“ האָט בן-פּורת געזאָגט.
ביז אַהער באַשטײט די סעריע פֿון די דאָזיקע בענד, װאָס זענען אַלע בראָשירטע ביכלעך גרינג אַרומצוטראָגן אין אַ רוקזאַק און צו לײענען אַבי װוּ:
— „דרײַ ייִדישע פּיעסעס פֿון פֿרױען׃ װײַבערשע ייִדישע פּערספּעקטיװן“, איבערגעזעצט פֿון אַלען לויִס ריקמאַן, מיראָ מניעװסקי און אליע פּיאַצאַ, מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט. דאָס בוך נעמט אַרײַן דרײַ פּיעסעס אָנגעשריבן פֿון דראַמאַטורגינס אין דער רוסישער אימפּעריע, אין פּױלן און אין ברוקלין, ניו־יאָרק, צװישן 1880 און 1920. אַלע דרײַ באַהאַנדלען קאָנטראָװערסיעלע „װײַבערשע“ טעמעס אַזױ װי חתונה און גט, שװאַנגערשאַפֿט, קינדל־קאָנטראָל און פּראָסטיטוציע. דראַמעס װאָס באַטראַכטן איבערלעבונגען דורך װײַבערשע אױגן זענען אַ זעלטנקײט אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור.
— „חורבן דובאָװע׃ אַ פּינקס פֿון אַ טױטער שטאָט“, פֿון רחל פֿײַגנבערג (1926), איבערגעזעצט פֿון סינטיע און אַלבערט מאַדאַנסקי, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון עליסאַ בן-פּורת (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). פֿײַגנבערג באַשרײַבט דאָס לעבן און דעם טראַגישן אוקמום פֿונעם שטעטל דובאָװע אין אוקראַיִנע, װוּ כּמעט אַלע ייִדן זענען בעת דער רוסישער בירגערקריג אין 1919 אָדער פֿאַרטיליקט אָדער פֿאַרטריבן געװאָרן. װען נישט פֿײַגנבערגס רירנדיקע דערצײלונג װאָלט דאָס ייִדישע לעבן אין דובאָװע אין גאַנצן פֿאַרגעסן געװאָרן. איר נאַראַטיװ האָט געדינט פֿאַר אַ גבֿית־עדות אינעם מישפּט פֿון שלום שװאַרצבאָרד אין 1927.
— „די מוטער פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער׃ זכרונות פֿון אסתּר־רחל קאַמינסקאַ“ (1927-1926), איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון מיכל יאַשינסקי (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). קאַמינסקאַ איז געװען די באַרימטסטע ייִדישע אַקטריסע פֿון איר דור — טאַקע אַ „סופּערשטערן“ סײַ אױף דער בינע, סײַ אין ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע פֿילמען. זי איז געװען ספּעציעל באַקאַנט פֿאַר אירע מאַמע־ראָלעס: דער טיטל פֿון דער איבערזעצונג פֿאַררופֿט זיך סײַ אױף דעם, סײַ אױף איר השפּעה אױף דער אַנטװיקלונג פֿון ייִדישן טעאַטער. קאַמינסקאַס זכרונות זײַנען פֿול מיט אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע געשיכטעס װעגן די פֿריילעכע מאָמענטן און די שװעריקײטן פֿונעם טעאַטער־לעבן, און מיט באַמערקונגען װעגן דער טעאַטער־קונסט װאָס זי האָט געהאָלפֿן אױספֿורעמען.
— „מיסיסיפּי׃ אַ ייִדישע פּיעסע װעגן דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין“ (1935), פֿון לײב מלאך, איבערגעזעצט פֿון עלען פּערעצמאַן, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). מלאך האָט אָנגעשריבן די פּיעסע בתּשובֿה אױפֿן טרויעריק באַרימטן סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין אין די דרום־שטאַטן, װען נײַן אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקער זענען פֿאַלש באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין פֿאַרגװאַלדיקן צװײ װײַסע פֿרױען אין אַ באַן. די װאַרשעװער טרופּע „יונג טעאַטער“, רעזשיסירט פֿון מיכל װײַכערט, האָט געשפּילט „מיסיסיפּי“ איבער 100 מאָל. דער ייִדישער עולם האָט מיטגעפֿילט מיט די שװאַרצע פּערסאָנאַזשן, סײַ פֿון אַ הומאַניסטישן שטאַנדפּונקט, סײַ צולוב די אײגענע איבערלעבונגען מיט אַנטיסעמיטיזם אין פּױלן.
— „די חסידישע װאַרשע׃ ר׳ זלמן און דאָס אַלעקסאַנדער־שטיבל“ (1960), פֿון יחיאל האָפֿער, איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון יונתּן בױאַרין (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). די מעשׂיות דערצײלן די אָפֿט־הומאָריסטישע טווּנגען פֿון ר׳ זלמן, אַן עקסצענטרישער לופֿטמענטש און אַ חסיד פֿונעם אַלעקסאַנדער־רבין. דורך זלמנס אַוואַנטורעס שילדערט האָפֿער דאָס לעבן פֿון אַ װאַרשעװער שטיבל, װוּ מענער האָבן געדאַװנט, געלערנט תּורה, געגעסן און זיך אויסגעטענהט. די דערצײלונגען מאָלן אױס אַ לעבעדיק בילד פֿון פֿאַר־מלחמהדיקן חסידות אין װאַרשע, װאָס איז געבליבן פֿעסט, נישט־געקוקט אױף דער ייִדישער מאָדערניזירונג ביזן חורבן.
אין 2027 און 2028 װעט „ייִדישע שטימען“ אַרױסגעבן:
— די דראַמאַטישע זכרונות פֿון שמעון דזשיגאַן, פֿונעם גאָר באַרימטן קאָמעדיע־פּאָר, דזשיגאַן און שומאַכער (איבערגעזעצט פֿון מרים אייזיקס, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון דיעגאָ ראָטמאַן).
— חיים גראַדעס נישט־פּובליקירט מײַסטערװערק, „די פֿרױען פֿון דער געטאָ“, װעגן אַ גרופּע פֿרױען װאָס האָבן איבערגעלעבט די װילנער געטאָ (איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון דוד פֿישמאַן).
— די פּױליש־שפּראַכיקע זכרונות פֿון יולאַ װאַלד, די טאָכטער פֿון אַ חסידישן קרעטשמער אין דער צײַט פֿון דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה (איבערגעזעצט פֿון מאַרטאַ דודזיק־רודקאָװסקאַ, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון גלען דײַנער).
— אױטאָביאָגראַפֿישע מעשׂיות װעגן די רײַזעס פֿון יוסף יצחק שניאורסון (דעם ריי״ץ), דער זעקסטער ליובאַוויטשער רבי (איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון אלי רובין).
„מיר האָבן כּמעט ניט קײן צײַט אָפּצוכאַפּן דעם אָטעם“, האָט אַליסאַ קװינט געזאָגט. „יעדער פּראָיעקט איז אַן אוצר, מיטן אײגענעם קוקװינקל אױף די דערפֿאַרונגען און געדאַנקען פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּעיִשע ייִדן. ס׳איז אַ פּריװילעגיע זיך צו טײלן מיט אַזעלכע באַטײַטיקע טעקסטן מיט ענגליש־רעדנדיקע לײענערס.“
קױפֿט דאָ אַלע פֿינעף בענד פֿון דער סעריע ( כּדי צו פֿאַרשפּאָרן 20%, ניצט דעם קאָד YIDDISHVOICES בעתן באַצאָלן).
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