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Could dementia be the key to saving endangered Jewish languages?
One day, when Sabrina Hakim was out for a walk with her father, he started speaking a language she could not understand.
Sabrina figured he must be speaking Judeo-Kashi, a variety of Judeo-Iranian. Her father spoke this language as a child in the Iranian city of Kashan before he moved to the capital, Tehran. Since Jewish people haven’t lived in Kashan in decades, at least not in large numbers, the language “faces possible extinction,” according to Rutgers University linguist Habib Borjian.
Sabrina felt that in order to best care for her father, she had to learn this language. “I would just ask him questions, like, how do you say ‘Are you hungry?’ How do you say ‘I’m tired?’” she told me. “I was asking questions about words or phrases that we could use in his care.”
As time went by, her interest in Kashi evolved from purely practical to cultural. She started scrawling notes on the backs of receipts, and now, Sabrina says she has some 200 pages of notes from conversations with her dad, and she is helping to create a dictionary of the language.
Sabrina’s father, who died in February, is one example of someone whose dementia helped his descendants work with professional linguists to preserve a rare Jewish language. Since dementia affects shorter-term memory more than longer-term memory, it’s not unusual for multilingual people with dementia to begin speaking the language they learned first. As a 2009 study put it, “the language with the best recovery may be the earliest acquired language, the language of greater use, or the language spoken in the patient’s environment.”
Sarah Bunin Benor, a linguist and the director of the Jewish Language Project, said that, while she has long been aware of this phenomenon, she has noticed it most recently with speakers of Judeo-Iranian languages. Historically speaking, that makes sense: In the mid-20th century, when people who are now elderly were children or young adults, many Jews from small cities all across Iran moved to Tehran, oftentimes to avoid antisemitism or enhance economic opportunities.
In Tehran, these people might have spoken their hometown language with their families, but standard Farsi with pretty much everyone else. They had also studied Torah and knew some Hebrew. But even as their brains held room for three languages — and later, when they fled Iran altogether, for yet a fourth language in the country where they wound up — those hometown languages remained deeply rooted in their minds.
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Ashton, an 18-year-old from Great Neck, New York, had always been close with his grandmother, Mommy Po-Po, who began showing signs of dementia more than a year ago. (Ashton requested to be identified only by his first name so as to keep the details of his grandmother’s condition private)
Mommy Po-Po was born around 1939 in the small Iranian city of Tuyserkan in Hamadan province. Though she later moved to Tehran, she continued speaking Judeo-Tuyserkani, a language Borjian told me is at even greater risk of extinction than Judeo-Kashi.
Ashton’s aunt and Mommy Po-Po’s youngest child, Dina, told me that her mother usually speaks Judeo-Tuyserkani when she’s confused. In the last few months, Dina said, “whenever she talks to me, she feels that we live still in Tuyserkan, and I’m one of her sisters.”
Dina thinks memories of Tuyserkan comfort her mother. “I think she likes to go back there, when everything is OK, when my father was alive, when her father was alive, when she had her mother next to her,” she said. “I think she feels warmer when she thinks about back then.”
Around the same time that his grandmother’s illness was worsening, Ashton got in touch with Borjian, who was studying Judeo-Tuyserkani but didn’t know anyone who actually spoke it. “He gave me a huge list of words, and he said please translate all these” into Tuyserkani, Ashton said. He worked with his great-aunts, who still live in Iran, to get the words translated.
Now, Ashton, like Sabrina, is creating a dictionary. He has also started recording interviews with Mommy Po-Po, which he hopes to use in a documentary. Ashton “speaks better than me in Farsi and Tuyserkani,” Dina said.
Sabrina has also gotten praise from her family about her new language skills.
At first, when she started speaking Kashi with him, he might respond in Farsi, “een chert-o-perta chiye?” What’s all this gibberish? “My accent was so bad,” Sabrina said. But as time went by, her Kashi became more and more comprehensible. “Maybe about a month before he passed, one time I was saying something, and he said, ‘where did you learn to speak Kashi? You’ve never been to Kashan.’”
Of course, he’s the one who taught it to her.
The post Could dementia be the key to saving endangered Jewish languages? appeared first on The Forward.
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Argentina’s Milei Visits Rebbe’s Ohel, Grave of Chabad Leader, in New York, Reaffirms Strong Support for Israel
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Argentina’s President Javier Milei visited the Rebbe’s Ohel, the resting place of Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens, New York on Sunday during his US diplomatic tour, reaffirming his strong support for Israel and solidarity with the Jewish community amid rising Middle East tensions.
Alongside Rabbi Simon Jacobson, chairman and publisher of The Algemeiner, the Argentine president visited the mausoleum of the world-renowned Jewish thinker and spiritual leader.
Over the years, the site has drawn not only devoted Jewish pilgrims but also leaders and public figures from around the world seeking guidance, inspiration, and a moment of reflection.
Milei’s visit to the Ohel marked his first stop in New York, a spiritually significant and politically symbolic gesture that comes amid surging antisemitism around the world and ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where the US and Israel continue to wage a military campaign against Iran.
Together with Foreign Secretary Pablo Quirno, Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni, and Secretary General of the Presidency Karina Milei, the Argentine leader began his diplomatic tour in Miami earlier this week, marking his 15th visit to the United States.
Organized by the Argentine Embassy as part of Argentina Week, in partnership with Bank of America and J.P. Morgan, this latest tour aims to strengthen diplomatic ties with allied leaders while attracting new investment to Buenos Aires.
On Saturday, Milei participated in the “Shields of the Americas” summit in Miami, which brought together political leaders and business figures from across the continent.
He also attended a luncheon hosted by US President Donald Trump and was honored with an award at the Hispanic Prosperity Gala.
While in New York, Milei spoke at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, delivering a speech that underscored his commitment to fighting terrorism and promoting stronger international cooperation.
“I feel like the most Zionist president in the world,” the Argentine leader said during his speech.
He also reaffirmed his support for Israel and the United States amid the current escalation in the war with Iran, declaring, “We are going to win.”
Since the start of the war, Milei has voiced strong backing for the US and Israel’s military campaign against Iran. At the same time, his government has heightened security alerts amid growing concerns that Iran and its terrorist proxies could activate sleeper cells abroad in retaliation.
While in New York, he is also set to attend The Algemeiner‘s annual gala, where on Monday he will be honored for his “unwavering moral clarity, principled leadership, and steadfast support for Israel and the Jewish people.”
Milei will conclude his tour with a visit to Chile to attend the presidential inauguration of newly elected president José Antonio Kast.
Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels and in the process breaking with decades of Argentine foreign policy tradition to firmly align with Jerusalem and Washington.
Last year, Milei formally launched the Isaac Accords with the aim of strengthening political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
The Argentine leader called his country a “pioneer” alongside the United States in promoting the new framework, emphasizing its role in fostering closer ties between Israel and the region across key strategic fields.
Milei also announced plans to relocate the country’s embassy to Jerusalem next spring, fulfilling a promise made last year, as the two allies continue to strengthen their bilateral ties.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization.
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French Jewish Girl Assaulted Near Paris, Adolescents Arrested for Antisemitic Attack
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Three teenage boys assaulted a 14-year-old Jewish girl and threatened to kill her in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on Friday, police said, resulting in a trip to the hospital for the victim and arrests for two of the 12-year-old suspects.
The incident began when three younger boys approached an older teenage girl to ask why she failed to observe Ramadan, according to local media reports. After she disclosed her Jewish identity, the three reportedly began calling her a “dirty Jew” and one threatened, “I’ll kill you on the Koran.” They then allegedly beat her, especially on her face.
The assault required a trip to the emergency room, where hospital staff described her as in a state of shock.
Paris law enforcement arrested two suspects that evening and seek to identify the third.
Another suburb of Paris also saw an antisemitic incident on Sunday when vandals hit a Kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, spray-painting “dirty Jew” in red across the building’s windows.
A kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, near Paris vandalized with antisemitic graffiti reading “Dirty Jew.” Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitic vandals hit Kokoriko, another Kosher restaurant in Paris, just two weeks earlier. Investigators say the criminals sprayed acid on tables, walls, and the floor, rendering silverware and plates unusable.
That attack came just days after the French Interior Ministry last month released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks, according to the data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The surge in antisemitism appears to have carried into this year. Last month, a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant.
“How do you find the words to explain to a 13-year-old child that he is being attacked because he is Jewish? Who will be able to restore his confidence in the future tomorrow?” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), said of the incident.
One-third of last year’s antisemitic incidents in France explicitly referencing Palestine or the war in Gaza, indicting that anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling antisemitism.
The prominence of anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism has prompted French leaders to propose legislation combating this type of hate, as announced by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last month at CRIF’s annual gathering,
“To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel’s right to exist. It’s a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology,” Lecornu said, announcing that the government would introduce a bill to criminalize anti-Zionism. “There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This ‘blurring’ must stop.”
Lecornu declared that “hatred of Jews is hatred of the Republic and a stain on France.”
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Belgian Synagogue Damaged in Blast Considered Antisemitic Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
An explosion hit a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege early on Monday in what authorities said was an antisemitic attack that caused damage but no injuries.
The explosion, which happened around 4 am (0300 GMT), blew out the windows of the synagogue, as well as those of a building on the opposite side of the road, public broadcaster RTBF said.
The cause was not clear, but prosecutors said the case had been passed to federal authorities, which normally investigate incidents linked to terrorism or organized crime.
Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin called the explosion “a despicable antisemitic act that directly targeted the Jewish community of Belgium.”
He said security measures around similar sites will continue to be reinforced.
Eitan Bergman, Vice-President of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), said the targeting of the synagogue was deeply shocking.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up. Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock,” he told Reuters.
Police have cordoned off the largely residential street on the bank of the river Meuse opposite Liege city center.
Federal prosecutors declined to give further details of the incident.