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German zoo gets $26 million from widow of animal-loving Holocaust survivor
(JTA) — The zoo in Cologne, Germany, has gotten its first check from the $26 million gift promised by the widow of a Holocaust survivor who credited the city’s residents for saving him during the war.
Elizabeth Reichert willed the funds to the Cologne Zoological Garden in 2017 in honor of her husband Arnulf, who died in 1998. Both Reicherts were born in Cologne and met during World War II, when Elizabeth was part of the local anti-Nazi resistance network and Arnulf, a German Jew, was in hiding with the network’s help.
“They only survived the war in Germany thanks to the help of courageous people from Cologne, who offered hiding places to the Jew Arnulf Reichert,” the zoo said in a statement in German this week.
Though they moved to Israel and, after five years, America after the war, Arnulf and Elizabeth maintained affection to the city for the rest of their lives.
“We were born in Cologne and we remember forever Cologne,” Reichert said in 2017.
In the United States, they settled in New Jersey, where the couple started and ran a successful pet wholesale business. They never had children. Reichert chose the zoo out of all institutions in Cologne because of her and Arnulf’s love of animals.
“Arnulf wanted to give the money someplace where it would do good,” Elizabeth Reichert said in 2017 when she announced the planned gift. “When you think about leaving money, memories play a major role.”
Reichert died in February 2021, at the age of 96, and it was not until recently that her estate was settled and funds could be disbursed. The zoo reported that it had received the first payment from the trust, of more than $700,000 dollars, and said it expected annual disbursals to top $1 million in the future. The gift, a zoo official said in 2017, was unusual in Germany where large philanthropic gifts are rare and would be used to improve the zoo for animals and visitors alike.
The zoo said it is planning to name its South American section after Arnulf Reichert.
Athletes run past sea lions at the Cologne zoo during the Zoolauf, where children and adults can run past animals, June 24, 2022. (Roberto Pfeil/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Reichert had been giving a monthly donation of over $7,000 since announcing the gift. But her giving to the zoo goes all the way back to 1954, when she and Arnulf donated a soft-shelled turtle they brought from the Jordan River to Germany by boat on a nine-day journey, feeding it cold cuts of meat along the way.
Cologne’s zoo is not the first in Europe to be associated with Holocaust survivors. Zookeepers in Warsaw sheltered 300 Jews from the Nazis inside the zoo, in a dramatic story that was the subject of a novel and then a 2017 movie adaptation starring Jessica Chastain.
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Iranian Artist Releases Song ‘Auschwitz’ About Regime’s Brutal Crackdown on Protesters
A demonstrator lights a cigarette with fire from a burning picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the Iranian embassy during a rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, in London, Britain, Jan. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
Iranian singer Mehdi Yarrahi released a new song on Wednesday titled “Auschwitz” about the Iranian government’s deadly crackdown on protesters.
The track’s lyrics were written by Hossein Shanbehzadeh, an Iranian blogger who was arrested in 2024 after posting a single dot in response to a tweet from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In the song “Auschwitz,” Yarrahi sings: “I come from Auschwitz of night transfers, I come from a killing field of youth … Before us rises the peak of a white morning. Behind us, bitter memories, deaths.”
A music video for the song shows images of protesters in the streets of Iran being attacked, as well as photographs of the many Iranian protesters who have been killed by the regime.
The anti-government protests started in Iran on Dec. 28 over economic hardship and developed into nationwide demonstrations calling for the end of the Iranian regime’s dictatorship. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said on Wednesday that at least 7,000 people were killed in the unrest, with another 11,730 additional cases still under review. The group also noted that tens of thousands of people have been arrested.
However, two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials told Time magazine that as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone. Some reports have put the figure even higher, suggesting the regime could have perpetrated one of the deadliest crackdowns in modern history.
In March 2025, Yarrahi received 74 lashes as part of his sentencing for releasing a song titled “Rousarieto” (“Your Headscarf”) which criticizes the Iranian regime’s mandatory dress code for women, according to Iran International. The song was released in August 2023 and encourages Iranian women to remove their mandatory head scarves. It came out ahead of the first anniversary of the women’s rights nationwide protests in Iran that led to the Women, Life, Freedom movement, following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. An image of Amini is featured in Yarrahi’s music video for “Auschwitz.”
Watch the music video for “Auschwitz” below.
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Does Jewish law say it’s OK to lie to the high-roller who wants to manage your rock ‘n’ roll band?
The year is 1986.
Last night, as I left for our gig at the Ritz, Migdalia — a stunning Puerto Rican hooker — was back on my stoop, proffering her nasty wares and services. Coming home later that night with an onion bagel and a half-gallon of milk, I see her again, this time with beard stubble pushing up through her makeup. She shoots me a forlorn look and continues pissing, upright, in the tiny foyer of my Hell’s Kitchen apartment.
“Hey,” I say. “Wouldn’t it be better for everyone to pee outside the entryway?”
Once inside, moonlight is glinting off what appear to be diamonds — dozens of them. On closer inspection, I see they’re just bits of glass. Some asshole shot out my back window again.
In the morning, out on 47th Street, a car honks and I head downstairs. It’s a gold stretch limousine. My roadie — and soon-to-be manager — Wess is sitting in back in torn Levi’s, his pasty knees poking through the holes. Today we’re heading to Caesars Atlantic City to meet Jimmy Valenti. Jimmy got my new record from his nephew Bobby, a DJ at a club in Bergen County, and now he wants to help. They say he’s got connections.
The limo driver starts the car and turns around in his seat. “You guys need anyting, jus’ ask. We got shrimp cocktails and plenty o’ booze in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Jimmy’s crazy excited to see the bot’ a youse. He wants ya to know you’ll be flyin’ back to the city in his private chopper.”
We arrive at Caesars and two bellmen with little white towels draped over their forearms greet us at the door. Each towel is embroidered with my last name in gold. I quickly notice Himelman has been misspelled — one m where there should be two. Wess and I trade what-the-hell looks as we ride the elevator to the penthouse.
“Enjoy your stay,” one of the bellmen says, leading us into a room big enough for a grade-school soccer game.
In the center of the penthouse is a kidney-shaped swimming pool overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Draped over a chaise longue are a swimsuit and two enormous towels, both embroidered with my last name — again, spelled incorrectly.
The ornate double doors swing open. In walks Jimmy Valenti, a large, gregarious man with dyed black hair and a Buddhist mala bead bracelet around his left wrist.
“Sit down, boys. Relax,” he says. “I’ll have Scotty send up lunch. You like chops?”
He leads us to chairs near the pool. “Pete, ya know the difference between a stallion and a gelding?”
Before I can answer — and of course I have no idea — Jimmy says, “A gelding is a horse with its balls clipped off.”
He pauses, letting the thought hang there.
“Without capital, that’s exactly what you are — a ball-less perdente. Good news is, I’m here to give you some. What do you need? 500K? A million?”
“Actually,” I say, “I hadn’t really given it much thought.”
The doors open again and two long tables are wheeled in. On the first is a platter of lobster tails on ice alongside a trough of French-fried onion rings. On the other, a crystal bowl of jumbo prawns, three massive Caesar salads, and a tray with enough porterhouse steaks to feed a dozen men.
Jimmy spears a slab of meat with the tip of his steak knife and waves it in my face. “Mangiare!”
“Jimmy,” I struggle to say through bites of the tenderest steak I’ve ever eaten, “I already got a guy helpin’ us out. He’s kind of our manager. Kind of.”
“Oh yeah?” Jimmy says. “What’s he puttin’ in, cash-wise?”
“Well, considering his time and everything, probably around $1,500.”
With a mouthful of bloody meat, Jimmy laughs. In fact, he laughs so hard and for so long I think he’s going to choke to death. He finally catches his breath.
“I see you in a rock video with some big-titted broad, walkin’ hand-in-hand near that giant globe they got down at Epcot Center. Romantic as hell. You ever been there? We shoot a real classy video for your song, “Only You Can Walk Away” for around 100, 150 grand. Then we pull some strings and get MTV to play the shit out of it.”
He leans in. “Whaddya say, Pete? You a stallion or a gelding?”
Jimmy pulls out three cigars. “Cubans,” he says, and from under the table produces a gold bucket of matchbooks, each bearing a close-but-no-cigar version (Samson Laraunce) of my band’s name, Sussman Lawrence, embossed in gold letters.
He cuts the tip of a cigar with the steak knife and asks, “Pete, I gotta know. You a horse with balls or no balls? Which is it?”
He looks out at the dark waves.
As I struggle to come up with the right answer, I can’t help imagining some unfortunate future in which I’m forced, at the barrel of a gun, to sing at Jimmy’s cousin’s wedding, his uncle’s birthday, his nephew’s christening, and his great-aunt’s wake.
Clearly, I am the gelding.
“It sounds amazing,” I say. “I’ll just need a day or two to think it over.”
Jimmy reaches for the phone. “Scotty, can we fly these boys back to the city in the bird, or is the weather too rough?”
A couple days later, back in Hell’s Kitchen, I compose this simpering, utterly gelding-esque letter:
Dear Mr. Valenti,
Thank you for your graciousness and generosity. This past month I’ve been offered a position as a broker with Merrill Lynch, and today, regrettably, I’ve decided to join the firm.
Should I ever decide to pursue a career in music again, please know you’ll be the first person I call.
Today, decades later, I search for a justification for my lie. Since nothing else seems to apply, I turn to Halacha, Jewish law, and settle on this: pikuach nefesh — the saving of a life — overrides nearly every commandment. Given the circumstances, a credible argument can be made that my life would have been at risk if I failed to perform or show up when asked; therefore, lying was permitted.
That said, I should also mention that the man did not have the best personal hygiene. I’m not certain that alone rises to the level of pikuach nefesh, but it didn’t help.
As for the “bird,” Jimmy was right. The weather was too rough. Scotty had the limo we came down in “all refreshed ‘n’ replenished.” The same driver took us all the way back to Hell’s Kitchen. Migdalia was there, sitting on the front stoop. I stopped into a bodega and picked up a tuna sandwich for the both of us.
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In two controversial ads, a tale of how not to fight antisemitism — or support Israel
Multimillion dollar ad campaigns aimed at scaring Jews, or scaring others on Jews’ behalf, are not working.
They are not effectively combating antisemitism. They are not strengthening Jewish life. And they are not persuading Americans to embrace Israel or its government’s current course of action. They are, in fact, backfiring.
That was recently made clear in two very different contexts: A New Jersey Congressional race, and the Super Bowl. The reactions to two disparate ads — one attacking former Rep. Tom Malinowski, and one advocating an approach for fighting antisemitism that some found dated — sent the same message.
We Jews are tired. We are tired of being told that the only way to be Jewish in the United States is to defend Israel’s indefensible actions. We are tired of being blamed for every policy choice the Israeli government makes. We are in a precarious moment in history, possibly a pivotal one — and we are tired of being shown half-hearted solutions. We are tired of being afraid.
Fear is not a strategy. It is a reflex. And acting reflexively will not help us build a strong future.
A telling political miscalculation
The United Democracy Project, the super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, spent at least $2.3 million attempting to defeat Tom Malinowski in the race to replace now-New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill in the House of Representatives. Malinowski is no fringe critic of Israel. He is a longtime supporter of the Jewish state, who has said he would not deny the country what it needs to defend itself.
His only deviation from AIPAC orthodoxy was that he refused to rule out placing conditions on U.S. aid. For that, he became a target.
The AIPAC-backed ads themselves did not mention Israel at all. Instead, they criticized Malinowski for a vote on immigration enforcement funding during President Donald Trump’s first term, in a clear attempt to paint him as unreliable on domestic security issues. The goal, as a spokesperson for the PAC stated openly, was to push votes toward the group’s preferred candidate in the crowded primary.
Instead, Analilia Mejia, a left-leaning organizer who openly stated she believes Israel committed genocide in Gaza, surged to the lead. She declared victory on Tuesday.
In other words, after $2.3 million in negative ads, the candidate who most directly accused Israel of genocide appeared to benefit the most.
Many of AIPAC’s choices in this matter could be criticized, including their stance that openness to any conditions on aid is anti-Israel or worse, antisemitic. But perhaps the most important one was their decision to treat the issue of support for Israel as one that must be smuggled into a race under cover of unrelated issues.
If the case for unconditional support of Israel’s current government is strong, then why cloak it in ads about ICE? If such support is as morally and politically sound as its architects insist, it should be able to stand in the open.
The choice to obscure it suggests something else: that traditional, narrow support for the current Israeli government and its military campaigns no longer carries the traction it once did. Voters can sense when an argument is being rerouted through unrelated fears. And when they do, it breeds not persuasion but distrust.
Post-it advocacy
Then there was the Super Bowl.
An ad funded by Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly known as the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, ran during the game. In it, a teenage Jewish boy walks down a school hallway, not knowing that someone has put a Post-it on his backpack reading “dirty Jew.” He looks small and isolated.
A larger Black classmate notices, covers the note with a blue square, then puts another blue square on his own chest in solidarity. The message is that allies can stand up to antisemitism.
But the image felt oddly untethered from the current moment. It asked viewers to see Jews primarily as vulnerable targets of crude prejudice. It did not speak to the nuance of Jewish life in America today. It did not grapple with the political entanglements or technological shifts shaping public debate. It flattened Jewish identity to an experience of persecution.
The same broadcast gave us a chance to understand the risks of that approach — of acting like minorities live in a state of constant endangerment.
Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny headlined the halftime show with a performance that was an act of cultural declaration. His staging celebrated Puerto Rican life and heritage, in all its complexity. There were the sugar cane fields, where enslaved people were forced to labor before emancipation, turned into a site of essential but emotionally mixed heritage. There were joyful community scenes interspersed with critiques of infrastructural failure. He performed almost entirely in Spanish, ending with a roll call of countries across the Americas and a message of unity that transcended borders and expectations.
That was a radical act at a time when this country is rife with state violence largely targeting Spanish speakers from many of those countries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, deportations, and threats against immigrants that have left families terrified and communities in crisis. Just days before his performance, Bad Bunny used his Grammy acceptance speech for Album of the Year to demand “ICE out,” a protest call to make clear that immigration enforcement’s brutality was unacceptable and dehumanizing.
The contrast could not be sharper.
Bad Bunny’s presence, his language choice, his celebration of heritage spoke to millions; it was the most-watched halftime show ever. It’s hard to imagine it being so successful if he had focused exclusively on the Latinx experience of persecution in the U.S.
Cultural vitality is an essential partner to moral clarity in building a stronger future. That building means saying no to violence, but also yes to life, even when it is complex and unsettled. It means joy. It means pride.
The AIPAC-funded ad against Malinowski and the Blue Square Alliance-funded one about fighting antisemitism made the same mistake. Fear alone does not persuade people to seek change. Faith in the good that life has to offer must be part of the picture.
In the classic Jewish text The Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak delivers a vocal celebration of our identity. “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” he says, “you’re goddamn right I’m living in the past.”
It’s a funny line. But it’s also a reminder.
We come from a civilization of argument, poetry, exile, reinvention, baseball heroes, mystics, storytellers, radicals, comedians, ping-pong hustlers and stubborn moral voices. We do not need to be reduced to frightened caricatures. We do not need to outsource our dignity for protection. We do not need to insist on adherence to dated principles in order to prove our belonging.
If we are going to invoke thousands of years of Jewish history, let it be the history of ethical wrestling, cultural creativity, and unapologetic presence. Let it be a Judaism that refuses both erasure and weaponization.
That is the Jewish future worth living for.
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