Uncategorized
Bosnian Jews mourn Moris Albahari, one of Sarajevo’s last Ladino speakers
(JTA) — Moris Albahari, a Holocaust survivor, former partisan fighter and one of the last Ladino speakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s dwindling Jewish community, passed away at the age of 93 last month.
It is believed that he was one of four native Ladino speakers remaining in a country where the Judeo-Spanish language once flourished and was spoken by luminaries like Flory Jagoda, the grande dame of Ladino song, and Laura Bohoretta, the founder of a uniquely Sephardic feminist movement in Bosnia.
Bosnia’s small Jewish community — with barely 900 members throughout the country, 500 of whom live in Sarajevo — are mourning the loss of a living link to communal memory as well as a dear friend.
“From you, uncle Moco, I learned a lot about Judaism, about life, about nature and especially about people. About both the good and the evil,” Igor Kožemjakin, the cantor of the Sarajevo Jewish community, wrote in a memorial post on Facebook, referring to Moris as “Čika,” or uncle, a term of endearment in Bosnian.
“It is a terrible loss, especially for Sarajevo. Our community is very small, especially after the Holocaust,” Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew and scholar of Ladino language and literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We’re not speaking just in terms of prominent members of the community, we’re speaking in terms of family members. Everyone is like a family member.”
When Albahari was growing up in the 1930s, the Jewish community of his native Sarajevo numbered over 12,000. Jews made up more than a fifth of the city and it was one of the most important centers of Jewish life in the western Balkans.
In his youth, the city was part of what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Formed out of the borderlands between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, it was a multiethnic state composed of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Macedonians, Hungarians, Albanians and more. Among them were many Jewish communities both Ashkenazi and Sephardic.
The unique mix of of Muslim, Jewish, Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities, with their mosques, synagogues and churches defining Sarajevo’s skyline, earned the city the nickname “Little Jerusalem.”
Speaking in a 2015 documentary made by American researchers, “Saved by Language,” Albahari explained that his family traced their roots back to Cordoba before the Spanish Inquisition, and through Venice, before settling in what would become Bosnia when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
“We didn’t want to ‘just’ write an article about Moris or Sarajevo; we wanted [the audience] to see what we saw and hear what we heard,” Brian Kirschen, professor of Ladino at Binghamton University, who worked on the documentary with author Susanna Zaraysky, told JTA. “This resulted in a grassroots initiative to create the documentary.”
In the film, Albahari takes the researchers and their viewers on a tour through what was Jewish Sarajevo, giving glimpses of the thriving Ladino speaking community in which he was raised and explaining how ithe language would save him many times, when the Nazis and their Croat allies, the Ustaša, came to shatter it.
“In sharing your story of survival during the Holocaust, you opened doors that remained closed for decades,” Kirschen said in a memorial post on Facebook. “Some of your stories were even new to members of your family, but each survivor has their own timeline. While you experienced great pain during your life, from your story, we also learn about moments of kindness and heroism. Through your story, you also taught us about the power of language.”
Albahari wasn’t yet a teenager when, in 1941, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy invaded Yugoslavia. The Nazis occupied the eastern portion of the country, including what is now Serbia, while they raised up a Croat fascist party, known as the Ustaša, to administer the newly formed “Independent State of Croatia” — often known by its Serbo-Croatian initials, NDH — in the western regions that included the modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Ustaša collaborated in the Nazis’ genocidal plans for Europe’s Jewish and Roma comunities, and they had genocidal designs of their own for the Orthodox Serb communities living in the NDH.
To that end they established the Jasenovac concentration camp, which would become known as the Auschwitz of the Balkans. By the war’s end it had become the third largest concentration camp in Europe, and behind its walls the overwhelming majority of Sarajevo’s Jews — at least 10,000 — were massacred. Including Serbs, Jews, Roma and political dissidents of Croat or Muslim Bosniak background, as many as 100,000 people were killed in Jasenovac.
Albahari was 11 years old when the Ustaša came to deport him and his large family to Jasenovac. A former teacher working as an Ustaša guard in the town of Drvar, where the train stopped, warned Albahari’s father, David, about their destination, and he was able to help his son escape from the train.
The teacher helped guide the young Moris to an Italian soldier named Lino Marchione who was secretly helping Jews.
This was the first case when Albahari’s Ladino came in handy. Ladino is largely based on medieval Spanish, with a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Turkish and other languages mixed in. For speakers of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, it’s entirely incomprehensible. But for a speaker of another Romance language such as Italian, it’s not such a stretch to understand, and Moris was able to converse with his Italian savior.
With his family gone, he was taken in by a Serb family, and changed his name to Milan Adamovic to hide his Jewish identity. Still, by 1942, it became clear that neither as Adamovic nor Albahari would he be safe in the town. So he fled to the mountains.
“If there was [a battle] I took clothes from a dead soldier to wear, I lived like a wolf in the mountains, you know. Visiting villages [asking for something] to give me for eating, it was a terrible time,” Albahari recalled in “Saved By Language.”
He would only feel safe in villages under the control of partisan forces. Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe to be liberated from Nazi rule by its own grassroots resistance.
During his time in the mountains, Albahari joined up with a partisan unit aligned with the movement of Josip Broz Tito, who would lead Communist Yugoslavia after the war. By the war’s end, Tito’s partisans numbered over 80,000 and included more than 6,000 Jews, many in prominent positions, such as Moša Pijade, who would go on to serve as vice president of the Yugoslav parliament after the war.
Moris was out on patrol as a partisan when he came upon a group of American and British paratroopers. They raised their weapons at him, thinking he was an enemy. Moris tried to communicate, but he spoke no English.
When he asked the soldiers if they spoke German or Italian, they shook their heads. When he asked about Spanish, one perked up: a Hispanic-American soldier by the name of David Garijo.
In Ladino, Alabahari was able to explain that he was not an enemy but could lead them to a nearby partisan camp where they would be safe.
“Ladino saved my life in the war,” Albahari recalled in the documentary.
At the partisan camp, Morris received even bigger news: The family that he had assumed had all perished after he left the train were in fact alive. The former school teacher and Ustaša guard who had warned his father had met them at the next train junction to help them escape. Furthermore, around half of the Jews in the train car were able to escape using the same hole Moris used during his initial escape.
Ultimately the family all survived the war, unlike so many other Jews of Sarajevo.
“Where is Samuel, where is Dudo, where is Gedala? They never came back,” Albahari lamented, listing missing neighbors while walking through Sarajevo’s old Jewish neighborhood in the documentary. “Maybe we are happy because we are alive after the Second World War, but also unlikely because every day we must cry for these dead people.”
When Moris returned to Sarajevo, it was an entirely different place from the bustling Jewish community he had once known.
Gone was the sound of Ladino in the streets and alleyways of Bascarsija, the market district where so many of Sarajevo’s Jews had once lived. Gone were the synagogues — only one of the many synagogues that had existed before WWII still functions. Gone was the robust Jewish life that was once a central part of Sarajevo.
Moris was still only 14 by the war’s end, so he returned to school and ultimately graduated at the top of his class. He became a pilot and later director of the Sarajevo Airport.
In this new world, Ladino was spoken, if at all, only in the home.
“Always, when I hear Spanish, I hear my father and mother, and all the synagogues, prayers in Ladino and rabbis who spoke Ladino. But that is in the past,” Albahari says in “Saved by Language.”
Eliezer Papo, who is a generation younger than Albahari, recalled that in his youth Ladino had long been reduced to a language of secrets.
“Mostly, Ladino was used when the elders didn’t want youngsters to understand,” Papo said.
Only later, in the 1980s, did community members realize what was being lost and begin to gather to maintain their language, recount what Jewish Sarajevo had been like and share their wartime stories of survival.
“He never took his story to the places of revenge, but he took it and his life experience to a place of ‘Never again,’ not just ‘Never again for Jews’, but never again for anybody,” said Papo.
Like many Sarajevans, World War II would not be the last major conflict Albahari would see. Less than 40 years later, war would once again come to Sarajevo with the break-up of Yugoslavia.
From 1992-1995 the city remained under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces looking to break away from what would become Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moris joined with other Jews of Sarajevo in working to provide aid to their fellow Sarajevans during the harsh period.
Sarajevo’s synagogue was turned into a shelter and a soup kitchen. The community ran a network of underground pharmacies and a message service allowing Sarajevans to get word to family and friends outside of the city during what became the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
“Moris was an inspirational persona to many members of Jewish community and La Benevolencija,” Vlado Anderle, the current president of that local Jewish humanitarian organization told JTA. “He was a man with such inviting spirit and energy.”
When the dust settled on the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the new Bosnian state rose from its ashes, Moris found himself once again in a new role.
During the communist era in Yugoslavia, religious activity was discouraged. Sarajevo’s Jews emphasized the ethnic character of Jewish culture rather than the religious one. In the new Bosnia and Herzegovina, that was no longer true. So the community worked to reconnect with their religious identity as well.
“Everybody looked up to the people who had Jewish upbringing before the Second World War,” Papo recalled. “This doesn’t mean that they were rabbis. Just that they knew it better than anyone else.”
Moris, whose formal Jewish education ended in his preteen years, was appointed president of the community’s religious committee.
As such it often fell on him to represent Judaism to the Bosnian society at large, often in a very creative way, according to Papo, who in addition to being a scholar of Ladino is ordained as a rabbi and serves the Sarajevo community as a rabbi-at-large from Israel.
In one case, while being interviewed on a major Bosnian television station, Moris was asked why Jews cover their head with a kippah or other hat during prayer. Moris’ response, or rather creative interpretation, as Papo called it, was made up on the spot.
Moris’ interpretation began with the ancient temple in Jerusalem where Jews once had to fully immerse in a ritual bath before entering.
“Since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed it was reduced to washing the uncovered parts of the body only, before entering a synagogue, similarly to Muslims: the feet, the head, the hands…” Papo recalled him saying. But in Europe, as Moris’ answer went, they began to cover more and more of their body. “In Europe they started wearing shoes, so the feet were not uncovered anymore, and then they started wearing a hat, not to have to wash their head… you know it’s Europe, one could catch a cold if going out with wet hair…”
“A few months later, I came to Sarajevo, and found that everyone has heard this explanation and is talking about it, not just people in the community, but in the street,” Papo said. “And you know, I let it pass, I couldn’t correct them, it was just so beautiful. That was his genius.”
“Identity is all about telling stories. And Moris was one of the great storytellers of the community,” Papo added. And through his stories he expressed an identity which was “made of the same contradictions that Sephardic Judaism is made of, that Sarajevo is made of, that Bosnia and Herzegovina is made and that Yugoslavia was and is made of and that the Balkans are made of.”
Albahari is survived by his wife and a son.
—
The post Bosnian Jews mourn Moris Albahari, one of Sarajevo’s last Ladino speakers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
I’m an empathetic Zionist. But it’s time for all of us to stop counting our dead.
There are, and always have been, several types of Zionism, as Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s Yom Kippur sermon reminded me. I first had to declare the type of Zionist I am in 1994 at a meeting at the Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles that brought together Arabs and Jews to create a speakers’ bureau that would advocate for Middle East peace at synagogues, churches and mosques in southern California.
Approximately 20 people gathered in a small room and a moderator asked each of us to speak briefly about what brought us to the meeting. One by one as the people in the room spoke, they listed the atrocities both Jews and Palestinian Arabs had suffered, including the Holocaust, the Nakhba, the mutual massacres that had taken place in British Palestine before 1948, the suicide bombings and the destruction of Palestinian homes. When it was my turn to speak, I began, “I am a Zionist.”
My Zionism was anchored in 20 years of conducting archaeological excavations in Israel, and a 1986 trip to the Soviet Union to help Jews emigrate to Israel, during which I was arrested three times by the KGB. I was an American, but an active Zionist.
I continued, “But it is time for all of us to stop counting our dead. Jews and Arabs both have enough suffering to go around. We don’t need to justify ourselves to each other by enumerating the terrible losses we have experienced. Let’s focus our attention on understanding and making peace with one another.”
My words had an impact. We moved forward to plan the bureau. I was paired with a leader of the Palestinian community in LA who looked like he could be my older brother. We spoke at universities, synagogues and churches for two years, at a time when the promise of peace was bolstered by the Oslo Accords. But when Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in 1996, I felt I was no longer speaking about an Israeli government that shared my aspirations, and that phase of my life ended.
Today, in the post Oct. 7 world, I feel like I am sitting in that same meeting room, only it encompasses way more than 20 people. Often, when I hear or read about the present Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I hear about the 1,200 people killed on Oct. 7, and the tens of thousands killed thereafter. The death of every child is tallied and the sufferings of every hostage recalled. We can do better.
I am an empathetic Zionist. I support the Jewish state of Israel, and I also feel empathy for its victims. My definition of empathy bridges radical differences between individuals and forces a person to look through another person’s eyes. Sympathy allows one to feel the pain of someone closely related; empathy allows one to understand a thoroughly different person. As a Jew, I sympathize with the Oct. 7 victims, the hostages and their families; but I also empathize with the Palestinians who have suffered and died in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
I believe today, as I did in 1994, that the first step toward empathy is a cease fire, not only on the battlefield, but on the frontlines of the constant bickering about who has suffered more. After almost 100 years, the time has come to empathize with the victims instead of counting them.
And we should begin with the children. A child’s suffering can change minds, whether the trauma is witnessed firsthand or through a photograph or a written description. Who in my generation can forget the 1972 picture of the Vietnamese “napalm girl,” nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked and screaming after a South Vietnamese napalm attack on her village severely burned her back? The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo influenced public opinion and the anti-war movement. As Anne Frank had triggered worldwide empathy for Holocaust victims, Kim Phuc made the Vietnam war seem insupportable.
Who today are the children who can teach us about Gaza? I would choose three: Ariel and Kfir Bibas, four years old and nine months old respectively, and five-year-old Hind Rajab.
Kfir and Ariel Bibas were kidnapped along with their mother Shiri from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7 and murdered in captivity; their bodies were returned to Israel on February 20, 2025.
Hind Rajab was five years old when she and her uncle, aunt and three cousins left Gaza City by car. Israeli shelling killed all in the car except Hind and her cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh. Layan telephoned the Palestine Red Crescent Society and was heard pleading for help and screaming as she was shot. Hind, still alive, stayed on the telephone for three hours. She died from IDF gunfire, and when the Red Crescent workers finally arrived, they too were killed.
Who are the adults today who can teach us to empathize with those children? I would choose two: Noam Chayut and Aziz Abu Sarah.
Noam Chayut was an Israeli soldier patrolling the West Bank. In his memoir, The Girl Who Stole my Holocaust: A Memoir, written in 2007, he describes an encounter with a 10-year-old “scrawny” Palestinian girl wearing “light colored clothes.” On the outskirts of a village there were children playing, she among them. With no particular intent, Noam approached and smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She was terrified, frozen for a second, which allowed Noam to look into her eyes. Then she ran away. But what he saw in her eyes was himself. He saw the soldier, the occupier and he saw someone else, someone evil. He did not see himself as evil, but she did. He empathized with her terror, and it changed his life.
As a young Palestinian man, in 1998, Aziz Abu Sarah visited Yad VaShem with trepidation. He felt if he “empathized with the enemy it would be a betrayal of his own pain,” he wrote in The Future is Peace. But he went anyway, and after he arrived at the underground chamber memorializing the death of one and a half million Jewish children he “walked out of the museum a different person.”
Both Noam and Aziz looked at children they were taught to regard as enemies. And the adversaries who populated their world became human. It is imperative that the deaths of Hind Rajab, Ariel and Kfir Bibas teach us about the trauma of our perceived foes. If we cannot empathize with them and their families, I doubt that Israelis and Palestinians can come to any understanding.
I recognize the very problematic long term political and structural problems inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But how will we ever learn how the other side thinks and feels if we do not try to understand each other’s pain? Seeking mutual empathy can be the beginning of a path to a new and peaceful community.
The post I’m an empathetic Zionist. But it’s time for all of us to stop counting our dead. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Let my people grow: Jewish online cannabis retailer braces for new federal law to take effect
For the past several years, Jewish cannabis company Tokin’ Jew has offered a little something to take the edge off just about every Jewish occasion.
High Holidays have you feeling stressed? Try “High, Honey,” the company’s THC-infused honey stick. Passover Seder dragging on a little too long? An edible called “4 Cups,” the first officially certified kosher-for-Passover THC gummy, will help get you through it.
Now the company that brought the world cannabis-infused chocolate Hanukkah gelt and THC-laced hamantaschen is facing a decidedly less festive future. In a couple months, the products responsible for the majority of its business will no longer be legal due to a change in federal law.
And it’s not just Tokin’ Jew. The new restrictions, set to take effect in December, threaten to upend a multibillion dollar e-commerce industry that has flourished for nearly a decade.
For co-founders Ben Kraim and Will Cohen, who have spent years building a business around the unlikely intersection of Judaism and cannabis, the change threatens to undo much of their lives’ work.
“It’s not easy being a Jewish weed brand, Kraim told the Forward. “Our brand is incredibly niche, so the prospect of losing access to the customer base we worked hard to build up is especially upsetting.”
What began as a humble meme account has grown into a thriving online operation, selling everything from novelty Judaica gifts and smoking accessories to kosher-certified edibles with clever names like “Apple of My Chai” and “Guava Nagila.”
The company has also cultivated a devoted community, bringing together observant and secular Jews, along with cannabis enthusiasts of all backgrounds, through a shared appreciation for Jewish humor and high-quality kush.
Now, Tokin’ Jew Flower, the division of their company, which Kraim said accounts for approximately 60 to 70 percent of sales, faces an uncertain future.
The legal foundations for Tokin’ Jew dates back to the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized products containing no more than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC by dry weight. That provision created an opening for companies to manufacture and ship hemp and hemp-derived products, including THC gummies, across certain state lines without needing to abide by the state-by-state licensing systems governing recreational marijuana use.
A booming industry followed. But Kraim acknowledges that the relatively lax federal regulations created opportunities for “bad actors” to sell questionable products.
“I think everybody in this industry knew things were a little too good to be true,” he said.
What he and many others expected, however, was tighter rules, not the effective elimination of their business model.
“We all thought eventually the federal government was going to create more regulation in this space,” he said, adding that he would have welcomed stronger oversight.
“We like to joke that it’s our Jewish guilt that keeps us from selling a subquality product. But we absolutely support stricter regulation – something that would have been entirely feasible.”
Instead, another provision tucked into the federal spending bill signed by President Trump in November 2025 dramatically narrowed the definition of legal hemp. Under the new rules, finished products containing more than 0.4 milligrams per container of total THC and similarly intoxicating cannabinoids will no longer qualify as federally legal hemp.
The restrictions were originally scheduled to go into effect November 2026, but Congress granted a brief extension that pushed the deadline back to December 11.
According to Kraim, it is not only companies like theirs that will be affected. Growers, manufacturers, packaging businesses and warehouses may have to shut down altogether.
“These are people’s entire livelihoods that they now have to just set ablaze,” Kraim said.
“At least we have this brand that can take many shapes and can live on in so many other ways,” he said. “But if you’re a hemp farmer, you are in big trouble.”
The news comes just as Tokin’ Jew has been experiencing explosive growth. According to Kraim, the company now has approximately 250,000 followers across social media platforms, with its Instagram content reaching between 18 million and 22 million people monthly. Orders have roughly tripled over the past year.
But the founders’ relationship with their customers goes beyond sales.
From the beginning, Kraim, who was raised modern Orthodox, and Cohen, who was raised in a Reform community, viewed their company as a way to connect Jews to their identity through humor, particularly those who may feel alienated from more traditional expressions of Judaism.
That same sense of community was on full display when they announced the impending restrictions.
“We were flooded with comments and DMs and emails,” Kraim said, describing messages of sympathy, appreciation and personal testimonials about the company’s products.
What struck him most were the offers of assistance.
“We got tons of messages from people willing to offer a hand,” he said. “‘How can I help? My uncle owns a dispensary. Let’s protest.’ People just coming in hot, trying to help in any way that they can, which is just so beautiful and so Jewish.”
Others began stocking up, taking advantage of the products’ long shelf lives. The company is even considering producing its popular kosher-for-Passover gummies early so customers can buy them before the ban takes effect.
For customers who rely on the products for more than recreation, but relief, Kraim worries about what will happen when home delivery is no longer an option.
He described phoning one of their biggest customers only to discover an elderly Jewish woman on the other end of the line. She told the team how much she relied on their products and how convenient home delivery was, particularly because multiple ailments and limited mobility made it difficult for her to get to a dispensary.
“We were tearing up by the end of the call,” Kraim recalled.
Gabrielle G, a Tokin’ Jew customer since 2024, who declined to give her last name, called the news “truly devastating for the Jewish stoner community.”
“Their Advent calendars were a highlight of my Jewish holidays,” she told the Forward. “I hope they find a solution because TJ feels like family.”
Regardless, TokinJew.com will continue selling accessories, apparel, home goods and Judaica, with plans to expand its offerings.
They’re also planning a gradual move into licensed dispensaries, beginning in New York and eventually New Jersey. But that involves developing separate production, distribution and regulatory requirements for each state, a daunting prospect for a company that spent years developing its national online operation.
“But us Jews are the masters of the pivot,” he pointed out. “We historically have troubles thrown our way, and we always have to figure out our next step.”
For a company whose product line is largely inspired by the Jewish calendar, the date of the new bill feels particularly poignant: The new restrictions are scheduled to take effect on December 11, the evening Jews around the world light the eighth and final Hanukkah candle, commemorating the miracle of a single day’s supply of oil burning for eight.
“We have our plan A, B and C,” Kraim said. “One of which is praying for a Hanukkah miracle.”
The post Let my people grow: Jewish online cannabis retailer braces for new federal law to take effect appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Trump antisemitism official to visit Michigan synagogue weeks before midterms, backed by ZOA
(JTA) — DETROIT – The Trump administration’s antisemitism czar will speak to a Michigan synagogue on Wednesday for a Justice Department event that also doubles as a fundraiser for the state’s chapter of the Zionist Organization of America.
Leo Terrell, who chairs the administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, is attending on behalf of the department. The Justice Department touted the event on its website with a link to a ZOA registration page that solicits donations to become an event co-sponsor.
Federal ethics regulations restrict fundraising by government employees and prohibit the use of government property for unauthorized purposes, though they allow authorized official fundraising and certain official speeches at fundraising events.
Terrell is visiting Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, a Detroit suburb; the synagogue is also listed as a co-sponsor. Other co-sponsors include a local Jewish high school, Mothers Against College Antisemitism and pro-Israel advocacy groups.
It comes weeks before the midterm elections, in which rhetoric on Israel and Jewish safety from the state’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has put local Jews on edge.
The Justice Department is billing the event as the first stop on Terrell’s “American Tour Against Hate,” adding, “All faiths and backgrounds welcome.” Terrell will be in conversation with Mort Klein, national head of ZOA, a usual stalwart Trump supporter who has broken with the president at times on Iran policy.
On its registration page for the event, ZOA Michigan notes that it “brings the Department of Justice directly into dialogue with Michigan’s Jewish community.”
ZOA Michigan also alluded to current tensions between the state’s Jewish community and El-Sayed.
“Antisemitism is reaching across Michigan — in schools, in public spaces, and among political candidates,” the event page reads. “Confronting it requires our community to stand together.”
The ZOA is a hawkish pro-Israel organization that backs the West Bank settlement movement and Israeli right wing government policies. In the U.S., it has also endorsed some of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies.
Federal tax law prohibits tax-exempt houses of worship from supporting or opposing political candidates, but Trump has sought to loosen the restrictions.
Rabbi Aaron Starr, of Shaarey Zedek, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Conservative congregation’s co-sponsoring of the event should not imply that it was endorsing one candidate over another.
“We are looking forward to working with anybody and everybody who wants to combat hate, whether that hate is antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism or any other form of hate,” Starr said. He added that the congregation would soon welcome Jewish Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin for a veteran’s Shabbat.
Starr said the synagogue became a sponsor because it had been approached by ZOA to serve as an event host. “We’re mostly just serving as a venue for the event,” he said, adding that he personally would not be there.
Terrell did not return a JTA request for comment on the event. But he has promoted it extensively on social media and had hinted at the talk, and the ZOA partnership, in a previous email he sent to JTA reporters.
“We hope to see everyone there making it clear hate has no place in America a.k.a the greatest country on Earth,” he wrote at the time. He also thanked ZOA Michigan “for their tireless work on bringing our powerful message into reality.”
ZOA Michigan’s executive director, Kobi Erez, told JTA the event was nonpartisan, but added that he was aware of voters planning to switch parties — an allusion to Democrats who are considering voting for Rogers.
“We are not planning to discuss particular candidates or tell anyone how to vote,” Erez said in an email.
“We do encourage people to examine candidates’ records and statements concerning the safety of the Jewish community and consider whether they will take antisemitism seriously,” he said. “We feel that Jewish safety is at stake now more than ever. We know people who, because of these concerns, plan to vote for a party they have never supported before, and we understand their position.”
Erez said that the point of the event was not fundraising. “We are accepting voluntary sponsorships and donations to help cover expenses and support our work, but the purpose of this evening is to confront antisemitism and connect the community with the Department of Justice,” he said.
Frankel Jewish Academy, a private Jewish high school in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield Township, is also listed as a co-sponsor of the Terrell event. Frankel leaders did not return a JTA request for comment.
Terrell, an attorney, former O.J. Simpson supporter and ex-Fox News contributor, is a senior counsel in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. In that role, he oversees antisemitism taskforces that include staffers from the departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services.
Terrell’s visit comes as Trump, and Republicans more broadly, see an opening for Michigan in the midterms, in part via the Jewish vote. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance will be campaigning in Michigan in the coming days. During Vance’s previous stop in Michigan, he went after El-Sayed for his reaction to the Temple Israel attack earlier this year.
Hundreds of local Jews have signed a petition pledging to vote for El-Sayed’s GOP opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, over their fears of the Democrat’s “extremism” on Jews and Israel, including El-Sayed’s remarks earlier this year about the attack on Temple Israel in the state. He has since apologized for those comments.
A separate petition — spearheaded by Starr and other rabbis — outlines “non-negotiables” that some Jewish leaders have pushed El-Sayed and other candidates to agree to.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Trump antisemitism official to visit Michigan synagogue weeks before midterms, backed by ZOA appeared first on The Forward.
