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Bipin Joshi was in Israel for 23 days before Oct. 7. This week, he was buried in his native Nepal.
This story was excerpted and adapted from the book “10/7: 100 Human Stories,” winner of the National Jewish Book Awards’ 2024 Jewish Book of the Year and The Natan Fund’s 2025 Notable Book Award.
Bipin Joshi wasn’t supposed to be sent to the Gaza border.
At 23, the tall young man carried his family’s aspirations on his shoulders — he was their firstborn son, their vessel of promise.
Home was Kanchanpur in Nepal’s fertile westernmost reaches, where the Mahakali River nourishes borderlands renowned for abundant harvests. There, Bipin first envisioned transforming agricultural knowledge into prosperity — he dreamed of a banana plantation that would secure his family’s future.
Israel was meant to be just a brief detour on his path to building something lasting back home.
When he enrolled in the Learn and Earn program that purported to offer students from Africa and Asia the opportunity of earning relatively high wages while taking classes in high-tech agriculture. Bipin had been assured placement in Israel’s heartland. But his assignment was changed at the last moment, and he was placed at Kibbutz Alumim, two miles from the Gaza border. Yet any disappointment he felt gave way to relief: He would be working with Himachal Kattel, his best friend and roommate from college in Nepal. In Alumim, the two Nepali young men resumed their familiar schooldays routine, sharing a modest room where, after exhausting days of fieldwork, they would unwind with cold beers and songs from home.
A month later, Himachal and Bipin were some of the only students left alive from their cohort, nearly 3,000 miles from their home in Nepal, when Hamas attacked Alumim.Through the lemon and orange orchards, dozens of Hamas terrorists rampaged the Kibbutz, shooting indiscriminately. They killed 22 Thai and Nepali citizens, kidnapped eight, and injured a few more.
Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu | Sept. 13, 2023
Himachal, a 25-year-old from a small village in the mountains of Gorkha, sported a large red Tika on his forehead at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. This was a blessing from his older sister, Niruta. He was the youngest of four siblings.
All 17 students awaiting their midnight flight were adorned with Tikas, a token of pride and blessing from their families.
In Nepali culture, they serve as good-luck charms and vouchsafes for significant journeys. Many parents had come to the airport, some in tears, others bearing gifts. It was a long goodbye — their children were leaving for 11 months.
They were making the trip for the money, and the education: they were supposed to earn more in a year in Israel than they’d earn in a few in Nepal, as well as gain skills that would advance their careers.
Aged between 22 and 25, most of the students had been raised in poverty.
Prabin Dangi, 24, was hoping to support his chronically ill mother back home, but found that despite his education, good jobs in Nepal were scarce. This was a common dilemma in his family, as one of his brothers was working in Dubai and another in Saudi Arabia for the same reason. His mother pleaded with him, her youngest son, not to leave, but he was determined to provide her with the best possible care.
Students take part in a candlelight vigil in Lalitpur, Nepal, on Oct. 9, 2023, in memory of Nepali citizens who were killed in Kibbutz Alumim, in Israel. (Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images)
Ananda Sah, 25, had promised his grandmother that he’d build a house for her. Dipesh Raj Bista, 24, planned to finance his younger brother’s medical studies, being the sole supporter of his family after the death of his father.
And Joshi traded his musical ambitions and writing talent for practical skill: He wanted to learn advanced agricultural techniques that he could apply back home.
The group was sent to a classic “old-style” kibbutz named Alumim, where they shared responsibilities and lived communally. The kibbutz population — a community of 500 — was a mixture of religious jewish immigrants from Arab countries, members of the U.K.’s largest Orthodox Jewish youth movement, agricultural workers from Thailand and now, them as well.
Thai labor, along with Nepali labor, became Israel’s agricultural backbone after Palestinians (who had previously replaced Israeli farmers) were restricted from working in Israel in large numbers following the first intifada in the 1980s. Security concerns about terror attacks led Israel to seek an inexpensive workforce sourced from countries uninvolved in the conflict.
Kibbutz Alumim | Sept. 14-Oct. 6
The students arrived in Israel in mid-September: warm, sunny days.
Soon after arriving, the students’ expectations collided with reality. The communal socialist principles they’d heard about didn’t seem to apply to them.
Their accommodation consisted of small cramped rooms equipped with bunk beds to maximize space.
Their days began around 4 a.m., when they’d gather in the cramped, gray kitchen to cook the lunch they’d bring with them to the fields, before heading out to do arduous physical labor under the sun, which typically lasted until approximately 4 p.m.
Prabin, Padam and Rajan were responsible for managing the kibbutz’s irrigation system. Their duties included carrying heavy pipes out to the fields, assembling the pipes and connecting them to the irrigation system, and fixing malfunctions.
Himachal and Bipin worked together in the orchards, trimming trees, and picking and packing pomelos and oranges. The work was simple, not technically advanced; it was difficult for them to ignore a sense of disappointment.
Each evening of the three weeks the Nepalese cohort spent there, many students called home, reassuring their families that their time in Israel, though it was draining, was a wise investment in their future.
They clung to the hope that their situation would improve once the university opened in October – the “Learn” portion of the program, which involved attending classes at Ben Gurion Negev University once a week.
On Oct. 3, an earthquake struck Nepal, and many were concerned for their families. Padam Thapa called home anxious on October 6. His sister-in-law, Mekhu Adhikari, told him about the frightening aftershocks. Ganesh Nepali urged his elder brother to look after their parents and stay safe, as their family home had sustained structural damage.
Kibbutz Alumin, the Foreign Workers Zone | Oct. 7
Himachal had stayed up until 3 a.m., engrossed in the final season of “Vikings” on Netflix. Saturdays offered the only chance for sleeping in.
Drifting off with his earphones in, he didn’t hear the sirens. At 6:30 a.m., Bipin woke him, urging, “We need to get to the shelter quickly.”
In the other room, Prabin, still half-dressed, rushed to the bunker, witnessing rockets slicing through the sky.
Padma (screen) and Pushpa (podium) Joshi, the mother and sister of Nepalese national Bipin Joshi held hostage by Palestinian militants in Gaza since 2023, address a demonstration organized by the families of hostages calling for action to secure their release in Tel Aviv on Aug. 16, 2025. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
The 17 students were confined in the open-door shelter for more than an hour, waiting for instructions. This was the first missile attack they’d ever experienced. They’d been reassured before that rocket attacks from Gaza were common but rarely harmful, and told that staying inside a shelter would keep them safe. To pass the time, they divided into teams, playing Ludo on their phones.
Meanwhile, Rafi Babian, a kibbutz member and the security officer of the Sdot Negev Regional Council, was worried: The sheer number of missiles being fired was unusual. He headed to the council’s headquarters to activate the emergency center. En route, he was warned at the Reim intersection about the presence of terrorists nearby and soon after received an alert about terrorists approaching the gate of his home, Kibbutz Alumim. He notified the kibbutz a few minutes before Hamas arrived. By 6:45 a.m., the entire kibbutz emergency response squad, comprising a dozen members, was armed and ready. Fifteen minutes later, about 20 terrorists were at the kibbutz gate.
The Nepali students didn’t know any of this. They assumed the noises they heard were from missiles. They didn’t know that terrorists riding motorcycles and mopeds were already firing RPGs.
The emergency squad prevented the terrorist from reaching the kibbutz’s residential area — a few civilian-volunteers and soldiers were killed in the battle — but no kibbutz members were harmed.
The terrorists, having been repelled, went looking for another target. They found the workers’ quarters, near the cows and orchards.
From their shelter, the students heard loud Arabic being spoken by the approaching terrorists. Thinking the Arabic was Hebrew, they were relieved: someone had come to help them.
Dipesh Raj Bista stepped out of the shelter, followed by Ganesh Nepali, who just needed to use the restroom.
Outside the shelter, they were met by two men in black, pointing guns at them. Realizing these weren’t kibbutz-members, Dipesh Raj Bista yelled, “We are Nepalese!”
Gunfire was the response.
Dipesh and Ganesh were killed on the spot.
Soon after, a grenade was thrown into the shelter where the 15 other students were hiding. Bipin immediately realized what happened and threw the grenade back out. But he couldn’t catch the grenade that followed, and five of the students were injured. Ananda Shah was severely bleeding, clutching a pillow to stifle his screams. Lokendra Singh Dhami, bleeding too, was whispering about his wife, his 5-year old daughter, and his 2-year-old son.
Prabin, Himachal and Bipin weren’t hurt. They had huddled in a corner of the room, squeezing so tight together that it was hard to breathe. Together, they called one of their bosses, pleading, “Please help us, we’re in trouble.”
The response was short: “I’m so sorry, I can’t help you. There are terrorists attacking all over, I’m hiding too.”
Narayan Prasad Neupane wasn’t as gravely injured as the others: despite having lost three toes, he could still walk. He happened to have remembered the number of the Israeli emergency medical services and called for an ambulance. The operator, speaking English, assured him that help would arrive.
Soon after, two men in blue uniforms entered the shelter. “Please don’t hurt us,” the few students still alive begged.
“We’re the police, the Israeli police,” the men assured them.
“Please, take us to a hospital … these people are dying … get us out of here.”
“There are still terrorists outside,” the police said. “It’s impossible to move you now, but we’ll be back. Everyone who can walk, you need to move to a different place; it’s not safe in the shelter. Go to the kitchen or to your room.”
“And leave the wounded here?”
They had no choice.
Nepal’s interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki pays respects after draping the country’s national flag over the coffin of Bipin Joshi at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Oct. 20, 2025. (Prakash Mathema / AFP via Getty Images)
Bipin, Himachal, Rajan, Prabin, Prabesh and Padam, leaping over the corpses and injured bodies of their friends, made their way into the dining room.
There, a few Thai workers were also hiding. Some of their friends had been murdered while sleeping in their beds.
Narayan, Lokendra and Dhan decided to move to the residency area. Upon hearing a car outside, Narayan went out to check if it was the ambulance he was waiting for. He was shot twice by a passing terrorist.
Crawling back into the room, covered in blood, water was his last request.
Kibbutz Alumim, Kitchen | Oct. 7
A defensive wall of Persian rice sacks — that’s what they constructed to shield themselves from further grenade attacks. Prabin came up with the idea, and they quickly stacked the sacks on top of each other.
It was a small kitchen; options for shelter were limited. Most of the Nepalese and Thai workers crouched behind the “rice wall,” under a wooden table, with Parmod hiding under the sink. Bipin, positioned in the middle and not shielded at all, grew increasingly worried about their friends left in the shelter.
As time passed without any sign of rescue, Bipin considered going back to help them. “We need to think about our next steps. Will you come with me and help bring our friends here?” he asked Himachal.
They sought the opinion of a Thai worker who’d been hiding in the kitchen before them. His name was Phonsawan Pinakalo, a 30-year-old tractor driver who’d arrived in Israel four years earlier, to earn a salary that was four times what he would’ve earned in Thailand. They communicated using Google Translate, going back and forth between Nepali and Thai.
Phonsawan’s response was unequivocal: “Don’t do it. If you do it, you’ll die. We’ve heard the terrorists walking around here for hours.”
On the other side of the table, Rajan tried to reassure his roommates Prabin, Prabesh, and Padam. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. Help will come soon.”
Exhausted by their ordeal in Israel, Prabesh declared, “If we survive, we’re heading back to Nepal as soon as possible.”
An hour and a half later, Hamas terrorists broke down the kitchen door, shouting “Allah-hu Akbar” and shooting indiscriminately. The makeshift wall of rice sacks offered no protection.
The bullets pierced the sacks and hit them. Blood and rice was spilled on the floor.
“Prabin, how bad is your leg?”
“It’s bad. I can’t feel much of it. And you, Himachal?”
“You see the holes in my chest and shoulder, right? It’s getting harder to breathe.”
“We need water. I can’t bear this.”
Struggling, Himachal rose from their hiding spot under a cheap wooden table to fetch water. As he moved, he aggravated his chest wound and lost more blood. He managed to collect some water in a shallow plate, but half of it spilled as he returned to Prabin on the kitchen floor.
Israelis attend a farewell ceremony for Bipin Joshi at Ben Gurion Airport on Oct. 19, 2025. One holds a sign that says, “Sorry you got caught up in our disaster.” (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
It wasn’t enough. Prabin’s throat was parched and he was writhing in agony.
“Pramod, do you have any water to give me? I beg you.”
Pramod didn’t respond. Hidden under the sink in a small plumbing cabinet, he was the only student unharmed, unseen by the Hamas shooters.
“Pramod, there’s water in the sink above. I beg you, I can’t move to get it. I’m so thirsty, I might scream, and they’ll come again and finish us off.”
He pleaded again and again, until Pramod made a small hole in the sink pipe and collected some of the murky water in a pot. Extending his hand from the cabinet, Pramod whispered, “Here, this is all we have.”
Prabin lapped up the mixture of water and urine. His roommates, Rajan and Prabesh, lay under the table as well: They were dead, killed immediately.
Padam, a fourth roommate, took longer to die. “I am dying, bhauju,” he managed to send a short text-message to his sister-in-law, then plead with his friends to help him: “Kill me. I can’t stand this anymore, kill me with a knife if you can.”
“Please, friend, bear this pain. The police will come for us,” Himachal said, though he believed they were all doomed. Beneath the table, he noticed his own breathing growing heavier and heavier, matching the heavy breathing of Padam and Parbin.
Oct. 8 – The Present
The men who arrived in Israel as “neutral” replacements for Palestinian workers ultimately returned to their home countries either empty-handed or in coffins.
Out of the 17 Nepalese students at Alumim, 10 were killed, four injured, two survived unharmed — and Bipin was taken hostage alongside Phonsawan.
From their hiding spot in the kitchen, Himachal and Prabin overheard one of the terrorists questioning the two hostages about their religion, to which Phonsawan responded, “Buddhist, Buddhist, Thailand, Thailand.”
Two hours later, Bipin and Phonsawan were seen with their captors being pushed into a-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
With the onset of war, the thousands of Thai and Nepalese workers in Israel left the country, causing the collapse of the Israeli agricultural sector.
In the midst of harvest season, Israel was once again in desperate need of guest workers. In December 2023, the government of Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, announced it would send about five thousand young people to work in Israeli agriculture. Hundreds of Sri Lankans also joined, putting money over safety.
Men take the coffin of Bipin Joshi, to a car after a farewell ceremony for Bipin Joshi, a young Nepalese man who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023 and later died in captivity in Gaza, at Ben Gurion airport on Oct. 19, 2025. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Himachal and Prabin spent several months in Israeli hospitals, lonely, unable to communicate adequately, facing a range of complex surgeries and medical procedures. Eventually, they managed to recover and even continue their studies, earning their master’s degree from Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Rehovot last month.
At some point, Phonsawan was added to the list of dead; his body was returned and flown to Thailand this week. But Bipin’s fate remained unknown.
During two years of war, Bipin’s family lived in agonizing uncertainty, not knowing whether their son was alive or dead. They were disappointed through two ceasefires, when Thai citizens who’d been taken hostage were released, and as government officials expressed “grave concern” for his life. Clinging to hope, they did everything in their power to raise public awareness about their son, a young man trapped in a foreign conflict.
Their worst fears were confirmed last week when Bipin’s corpse was returned to Israel, on the first day of a new ceasefire that brought with it the release of all 20 living hostages in Gaza.
“With immense pain, we received the worst news imaginable. Our dear son, Bipin — brother and soulmate to our daughter Pushpa — was murdered in Hamas captivity. Bipin left us full of excitement, setting out for a year of study in Israel. We never imagined that the hug we gave him then would be our last,” the Joshi family said in a statement.
Family members mourn during the funeral ceremony of Bipin Joshi at his residence in Kanchanpur, Nepal, on Oct. 21, 2025. Prakash Chandra Timilsena/AFP via Getty Images)
“Before you were taken, you managed to send a message to your cousin, asking him to be strong and always look toward the future. It is hard to imagine a future without you, Bipin,” the statement continued. “Every flower in the garden we planted for you will remind us of you — every orchard, every field. You are part of the landscape of Nepal, and now also part of the landscape of the Land of Israel.”
On Monday, Bipin made his journey home. The first stop was a ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, where a top government official praised his heroism and addressed him directly, saying, “I am sorry. It shouldn’t have ended this way.”
Then, Bipin’s body was flown to Kathmandu, where Prime Minister Sushila Karki draped Nepal’s flag over it during a brief ceremony at the airport.
And from there, his coffin was taken to his village where on Tuesday morning, after a night in which his family was reportedly accompanied by so many who had provided comfort over the last two years, his body was cremated in a ceremony on the banks of the Mahakali River. Government representatives were present, and the photograph that had become famous in Israel and beyond was on display. Bipin was home in Kanchanpur, the borderland district whose soil nurtured his dreams and now his memory.
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The post Bipin Joshi was in Israel for 23 days before Oct. 7. This week, he was buried in his native Nepal. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Synagogue attacks were part of massive ISIS-inspired plot last week, FBI says
(JTA) — A 21-year-old man from Valencia, Pennsylvania, suggested poisoning food in synagogues as part of a mass attack in support of the Islamic State group last week, according to the FBI.
The suspect, Jonathan Kramer, said in an online forum using the pseudonym “Hamza Al Rashid” that “i wish to inject ricin or cyanide into places such as grocery stores inside water/food with a syringe, or going to food events, preferably synagogues and putting the chemicals in their food and drink…,” according to a sworn FBI affidavit.
The prospective poisoning was part of a broader plot of mass violence that included “repeated attempts to encourage and coordinate violence through encrypted platforms, such as advising others on attack methods, discussing chemical poisons, arson, vehicle attacks, drone delivery explosives and firearm based assaults,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Evanchec said at a press conference last week.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said in a security update on Friday that no synagogue had been specified by the FBI. , “We are in close contact with our law enforcement partners and federal prosecutors, and if we learn of anything concerning, we will share that immediately,” the organization noted.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg announced last Tuesday that Kramer was “preparing for a mass shooting that could have taken many lives, having already secured a rifle and approximately 190 rounds of ammunition for what he called his ‘mission.”
Efforts to reach Kramer’s public defender Jake Morrison were unsuccessful.
FBI agents arrested Kramer in a hotel parking lot in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said. They seized a semiautomatic rifle, five rifle magazines, a rifle bipod and scope, a total of 190 rounds of rifle ammunition and about 30 knives following a search of him, his house and his hotel room.
Kramer was charged with receiving a firearm and ammunition believing they would be used to commit terrorism. He appeared in court last Wednesday to waive a preliminary hearing, according to CBS News. A court date has not been set for Kramer’s next proceedings, the network reported.
Kramer had been on the FBI’s radar since 2023, when he was charged by Pennsylvania state authorities “for his role in a plot to commit a mass casualty incident” and sent to a juvenile detention facility, FBI special agent Gregory Battaglia said in a sworn affidavit.
Nearly eight years ago, 11 worshippers were killed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Synagogue attacks were part of massive ISIS-inspired plot last week, FBI says appeared first on The Forward.
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Proposed U.S. $24.3 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia advances
(JTA) — The State Department has approved a possible $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia — a move that would make the kingdom the second Middle Eastern country after Israel to have the world’s most powerful combat aircraft.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally,” the department said in a statement.
Israel wants the sale attached to a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, but that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. However, there is a small chance that Congress could keep the sale from happening.
When President Donald Trump first confirmed that he was considering the sale last November, Israeli officials told Axios that while they don’t oppose the sale itself, they wanted it “to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel.”
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly brushed off the deal’s significance last fall, a security source at the time warned on CNN that the possibility of Saudi Arabia acquiring “the same capabilities” as Israel was “very concerning.”
The prime minister was more vocal in his opposition to a July announcement from Trump that he was weighing selling the advanced jets to Turkey as well, telling CNN that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is “not exactly a model ally of the United States.”
Israel has already purchased 50 F-35 jets, in two procurement rounds that occurred in 2016 and in 2017, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry. However, local media reports indicate that two of the 50 have yet to arrive, meaning that just 48 are on the ground – the same number of planes that the State Department has approved for Saudi Arabia’s potential purchase.
Israel would have many more F-35s than Saudi Arabia for the time being, because its Defense Ministry announced in 2024 that it would be procuring 25 more of the planes, slated to begin arriving in 2028. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry revealed that it would be procuring yet another squadron of the jets, although the quantity remained unclear.
Congressional approval is not assured; wariness of the Saudi regime, stemming in part from the state-sanctioned 2018 murder of a U.S.-based journalist in Turkey, crosses party lines.
The U.S. Arms Export Control Act requires the executive branch of the government to notify Congress regarding major defense equipment sales to most countries. Congress can then deem a country ineligible to participate in a sale through a joint resolution. The president can then veto the resolution, which Congress would need a two-thirds supermajority to override.
Additionally, U.S. law requires the president to ensure that Israel maintains “a qualitative military edge over military threats” when considering arms sales to other Middle Eastern countries. Israel, per the law, must be able “to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat” from both other nations and “non-state actors.”
“The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military balance in the region,” the State Department said on Thursday. It called Saudi Arabia “a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” adding that the sale would help “deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense.”
The department maintained that not only would the sale improve Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities, but it would also boost “interoperability” with both U.S. forces and other players from NATO and the region.
As for the potential deal’s logistics, Saudi Arabia has requested 48 of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter Jets, as well as 49 Pratt & Whitney engines, according to the State Department.
The kingdom is also seeking to acquire other non-major defense equipment, such as cryptographic devices, precision navigation, secure communications, simple key loaders and support for electronic warfare databases, maintenance and personnel training.
Producing and delivering these planes can take many years.
Meanwhile, just a day before Trump’s announcement, The New York Times surfaced intelligence concerns that China could acquire F-35 technology by spying on Saudi Arabia or through its partnerships with the kingdom.
U.S. House Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, warned in a statement on X that “Beijing has spent decades stealing American intellectual property” and that this deal could “help them do it.”
“Our own intelligence community is warning that it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party,” Krishnamoorthi added.
The Biden administration reportedly ended a past F-35 deal with the United Arab Emirates — secured by the first Trump administration — due to similar concerns about the country’s connections to China, as well as to Russia.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After outcry, Texas lieutenant governor says schools should teach Holocaust books ‘Night,’ ‘Anne Frank’
(JTA) — The lieutenant governor of Texas says his recent call for the state’s public schools to remove “over 2,000 titles” of “dirty, filthy and vulgar books” was not meant to include books about the Holocaust.
Dan Patrick’s statement, provided exclusively to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday, comes after a month of confusion following a press conference in which he and a conservative Christian activist threatened schools with potential loss of state funding if they did not comply with his directive to purge their libraries.
“I believe Texas students must learn about the Holocaust, and that includes reading books such as ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and other books about the Holocaust,” Patrick told JTA, singling out two books on the removal list he had promoted – one of which, “Night,” that he previously explicitly called for removal from middle schools.
Patrick added that his initiative was “focused on age-inappropriate, sexually explicit books in public school libraries across Texas.” At his earlier press conference, he had directed viewers to an online list compiled by an activist group that features several books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.
Patrick’s threats have teeth. In Texas, lieutenant governors are more powerful than in many other states, playing central roles in shaping the budget and determining the legislative agenda.
Patrick also appeared to walk back some of the harsher proclamations from his Aug. 19 press conference, at which the Republican had stated, “We’re coming for the books.”
“As the law states, local communities have the right to make their own decisions about their public school libraries,” he told JTA Friday.
The lieutenant governor, who is up for reelection this fall, appeared at the conference with Bonnie Wallace, the head of the activist group Recover America, and told viewers to “go to RecoverAmerica.com.” That group has circulated a list of more than 2,100 “Harmful Books in Libraries.” Its list, which it describes as “books with harmful, sexually explicit, and vulgar content,” includes more than a dozen titles of particular import to Jewish readers.
Recover America’s flagged books include both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a comic-book adaptation of Frank’s diary and Bernard Malamud’s novel of a blood libel “The Fixer” — all books that have been removed from school districts in Texas and other states in the past amid broader conservative-led library culture wars. In some cases those books were restored to the districts following public outcry, but spurred deeper dialogue about the state of Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness in public schools.
Patrick’s latest push would go much further than a handful of districts, affecting the more than 5.5 million students in public schools across the state.
One book of particular contention on Recover America’s list was “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s bestselling memoir of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which has been taught in schools for decades. After a Houston Chronicle story noted the book’s inclusion on the Recover America “harmful” list, Patrick initially doubled down on “Night,” saying that it was not appropriate for middle schools owing to its “violence.”
“If ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, were made into a movie, it would likely be rated R,” Patrick wrote on the social network X on Aug. 26. “‘Night,’ which includes depictions of graphic violence and the machine-gunning of babies, should not be available to sixth graders in middle-school libraries. High school is more age-appropriate.”
His tweet appeared to contradict the state’s own K-12 required reading list, passed this summer, which mandates that “Night” be taught in the eighth grade beginning in 2030.
Now, in response to questions from JTA, the lieutenant governor said he would defer to the Texas State Board of Education on the appropriate grade to teach “Night.”
“The State Board of Education decides the appropriate grade level for books and will determine whether ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, is at the appropriate grade level,” Patrick told JTA in his statement.
He continued to insist that books in schools should be held to “FCC standards,” referring to the Federal Communications Commission, an agency that governs broadcasting content and does not regulate publishing.
The head of the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, a governor-appointed panel which advised the state on the inclusion of “Night” and other Holocaust texts on its required reading list, did not return a JTA request for comment.
In a statement, the Texas Educational Authority, which drafted the required-reading list, told JTA, “When Texas students learn about the Holocaust, they will be exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. That is why the SBOE placed the book in 8th Grade to ensure age appropriateness for students.”
At the Emmys this week, when “The Librarians,” a documentary about librarians facing book removal threats, won an award, retired Texas librarian Carolyn Foote joined the producers on the stage and held up a copy of “Night” in protest.
“I felt like it was very symbolic to bring ‘Night,’” Foote, a subject of the film and a co-founder of the librarian activist group FReadom Fighters, told JTA. “Having read it, I just know the importance of not forgetting our past. And that’s part of Elie Wiesel’s whole legacy, is remembrance, and so it just felt very important for me to carry that book, coming from Texas.” Another librarian onstage for the win held up “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”
Elisha Wiesel, Elie’s son and chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, told JTA that “Texas deserves credit for recognizing that Holocaust education belongs in the eighth-grade curriculum.” Yet, the younger Wiesel suggested, Patrick’s concerns about the book’s violence were misplaced.
“‘Night’ contains violence because the Holocaust was violent; its purpose is not to shock young people, but to help them understand where hatred and indifference can lead,” he wrote in an email. “With context and guidance, students should not be shielded from this history. They should be equipped to confront it.”
Despite having directed viewers to Recover America’s book list during his press conference, Patrick’s new statement to JTA said, “I do not have a book list.” He pointed instead to a law passed in the state legislature in 2025 regulating school books that he said districts were required to follow.
Yet some districts in the state have removed every book on Recover America’s list from their own libraries out of fear of losing funding, Foote told JTA. While the list nominally contains a ratings system, many of the books do not have a rating.
Besides “Night,” “Maus,” “Anne Frank’s Diary” and “The Fixer,” other books about Judaism and the Holocaust on Recover America’s list of “Harmful Books” include:
- “Annexed,” a young-adult novel about Peter van Pels, who hid in the Amsterdam annex with Anne Frank
- “The Berlin Boxing Club,” a young-adult historical novel based on German boxer Max Schmeling, who helped young Jews during Hitler’s rise to power
- “Black, White and Jewish,” a memoir by Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race Jewish daughter of author Alice Walker
- “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” a nonfiction book analyzing the “caste systems” of Nazi Germany. “Caste” had been included on an earlier, Wallace-spearheaded list of books for removal from a Texas public library in a case that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear in 2025, allowing the removals to proceed.
- “Kasher in the Rye,” a memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher
- “Pride: the story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag,” a children’s picture-book biography of the pioneering Jewish LGBTQ legislator
- “Sophie’s Choice,” the bestselling Holocaust novel for adults
- “The Violin Maker’s Daughter,” a historical novel about a Jewish family of musicians during the Holocaust
- “White Bird,” a young-reader graphic novel about a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France
In response to JTA sharing a list of the above books, Patrick’s statement mentioned only “Night” and Anne Frank by name. The Recover America list is largely made up of romance and fantasy novels, many with an LGBTQ element, while also including classics such as “The Glass Menagerie” and “Cat’s Cradle” and some picture books for children.
Recover America did not immediately return a JTA request for comment Friday on Patrick’s new statement. Wallace, the group’s leader who has also appeared on Patrick’s podcast, previously told the Houston Chronicle that she had “thought long and hard” about including “Night” on her list.
She ultimately did so, she said, because “an eighth-grade student is 13 years old. Do they need to read about soldiers massacring, throwing up babies, and killing them with machine guns?”
She added, “It’s not to say this doesn’t happen in life. And the Holocaust was maybe the worst tragedy in the history of the world.”
For Cameron Samuels, a Jewish alum of Texas public schools and founder of the activist group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, such efforts do not help Jewish students.
“Non-Jewish people are deciding for us what’s best, and making this public policy,” Samuels said. “We can’t readily access these books and stories. And that makes students feel alone. It also means that our classroom peers are not learning authentic Jewish narratives.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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