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Inside the auction house driving the rare-book craze in the Orthodox world
(JTA) – Israel Mizrahi joined dozens of fellow connoisseurs of rare Jewish books last December to watch the livestream of Genazym, the hottest auction house in the market. A bookdealer by trade, Mizrahi was also on the phone being paid to advise a wealthy client who had signed up to make bids.
But as the auction proceeded, Mizrahi’s advice had little use. His trigger-happy client didn’t seem to care about established valuations: He ended up paying about $50,000 for a book estimated at half that price. “He just pressed the button and kept on bidding until the bidding was over,” Mizrahi said. “There was no convincing him out of it. He spent nearly $600,000 that day and there was no sense to it.”
Behavior that confounds veterans of the rare Jewish book market has become routine at auctions organized by Genazym.
Mizrahi recalled the sale in 2021 of a Passover Haggadah printed in the 1920s in Vienna. With attractive illustrations of a prominent 19th-century rabbi named Moses Sofer and his family, the book makes for a nice addition to a collection. It also happens to be very common.
“I sell copies for $100, and I have probably sold 150 copies in my life,” said Mizrahi, whose shop in Brooklyn is a mecca for Jewish book lovers. “It sold for about $5,500 at Genazym’s auction. I currently have it on sale still for $100.”
At the highest end of sale prices, a 16th-century first-edition Shulchan Aruch, a book of Jewish law, commanded $620,000 at a Genazym auction last September, while a copy of Noam Elimelech, a classic rabbinic treatise, printed in 1788, fetched $1.4 million four months later — in both cases at least doubling or tripling what experts thought the items were worth based on past sales of the same texts.
“Genazym has come on like a freight train into the world of Jewish auctions. Some of the prices realized are far beyond what this market has seen before,” said David Wachtel, the former Judaica consultant for Sotheby’s auction house.
Since Genazym’s first auction in 2017, it has sold some 1,900 books, manuscripts and other collectible documents for about $26 million plus commission, roughly $12 million above total starting prices, according to an analysis by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of auction records on Genazym’s website. Genazym has increasingly outperformed the longest-standing Judaica auction firms in New York and Jerusalem.
A page from an illustrated Passover haggadah printed in Vienna in the 1920s. (Courtesy of Genazym)
It’s hard to tell exactly what’s driving the boom because the identity of Genazym’s customers is confidential and few flaunt their collections widely. One of the auction house’s owners, in a rare public comment, ventured that Jewish buyers are craving a connection with their heritage. What’s clear is that at a time when traditional libraries are cutting back on buying Jewish texts, Genazym is tapping into an emerging luxury market among Orthodox Jews — and fueling the rise of religious texts as both a status symbol and investment vehicle in some communities.
“I know the sellers, the customers and everybody involved and there is a new wealthy class of Orthodox Jews that have a limited range of things they can splurge on,” Mizrahi said. “They don’t go to Vegas, they don’t do crazy vacations. They keep kosher. So this is a way that they can splurge and show off.”
Rabbi Pini Dunner, who collects rare Jewish books, said investing in Judaica is likely attractive for some in the Hasidic community, whose religious observance is stricter than that of congregants at his Modern Orthodox synagogue in the Los Angeles area.
“There are people I know here in Beverly Hills who’ve got car collections worth tens of millions of dollars,” Dunner said. “In the Hasidic world that has no currency, just as the wow factor of a Picasso has no currency. An original manuscript or first-edition of the Noam Elimelech has a real wow factor, particularly if you can tell people the book sold for more than a million dollars at a Genazym auction.”
The impression that the Hasidic world has grown wealthier over the last decade or two is widespread and based, at least in part, on the proliferation of luxury products and services tailored for the community in places like Lakewood, New Jersey, and Kiryas Joel, New York. Weddings have become increasingly expensive and elaborate, fine dining options are common, and high-end kosher wine and liquor are more readily available.
“It wasn’t that long ago that sit-down dining was looked down upon or not even available. Now there are a plethora of options,” said Chaim Saiman, a law professor at Villanova University who studies the intersection of commerce and Jewish law. “It’s no secret that $200 bottles of Scotch appear at kiddush clubs all the time. $50 used to be a big deal, then $100 was a big deal, now we are at $200.”
Where the new wealth is coming from is not totally clear. Limited survey and U.S. Census data suggests that Orthodox Jews feel crunched by costs associated with practicing religion and that there are large pockets of poverty among them, particularly in Hasidic communities, according to Mark Trencher, the founder of Nishma Research, a nonprofit dedicated to studying the Orthodox Jewish community. The prevalence of large families also means that generational wealth can be harder to accrue for Orthodox Jews.
But there have always been high earners whose philanthropy has buttressed their communities, Trencher noted. “There are a lot of people in that community that are very successful in their businesses and they have large amounts of wealth,” he said. “Those people generally are huge donors to charities. From a financial perspective, those communities are probably doing much better than you would expect them to.”
Many of those high earners make their money through entrepreneurship rather than professional success in the white-collar world. Many nursing home chains — an industry valued at an estimated $171 billion and where growth is expected — have Orthodox owners. Amazon has also created new opportunities for Orthodox businessmen. Orthodox landlords, meanwhile, have benefited from skyrocketing real estate prices in places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
A page from a 16th-century first-edition Shulchan Aruch, a book of Jewish law, which fetched $620,000 at a Genazym auction. (Courtesy of Genazym).
Recent reporting in The New York Times about the Hasidic education system has provided a window into another stream of revenue for private businesses in the community. Entrepreneurs in the community have responded to the increased availability of government funding for special education in New York in recent years by establishing companies to service Hasidic schools, with the government footing the bill. In one example highlighted by the Times, a married Hasidic couple opened such a business in 2014 when they were 21 and 19 years old; in 2022, their company received more than $38 million in government funding.
The owners of another set of companies providing services to Hasidic schools appear to have used their windfall to purchase rare books through Genazym. The owners were indicted in January for allegedly billing the government for more than $1 million in childcare services that they never provided and otherwise defrauding the government out of more than $2.8 million.
Prosecutors are seeking to have the alleged fraudsters forfeit seven books and other documents as listed in a federal indictment. They include manuscripts with a rabbinic signature and rare books of blessing and Jewish law, all of which match items listed on Genazym auctions, where they sold for a total of about $274,000.
Buying Jewish texts at auction can seem like a savvy investment for buyers seeking to safeguard or grow their wealth. Before Genazym launched, a typical Genazym buyer might have invested in U.S. Treasury bills or the stock market, according to Wachtel, the former Sotheby’s consultant.
“I think Genazym has been able to convince people that this is a good vehicle for establishing and growing wealth,” he said. “That also dovetails with your ability to, let’s face it, show off. Somebody comes to your house, you can show them a first-edition Shulchan Aruch. But you’re not going to say, hey, come look at my T-bills.”
The auction house’s tactics appear tailor-made for this growing market. Its motto is “Own your heritage,” and it’s printed on the catalogs the company distributes through popular Orthodox magazines like Ami or Mishpacha or podcasts, places where people with no prior interest in books might encounter the hype. The catalogs also appear in synagogues in heavily Hasidic areas like Brooklyn or Lakewood, but without the prices printed on them so as not to violate a Jewish prohibition against discussing financial matters on Shabbat.
The descriptions in the catalogs emphasize any links that exist between the items for sale and notable rabbis from history, especially figures who established rabbinic dynasties that continue to exist today and who are revered by yeshiva-educated Orthodox Jews. The link might be a signature of a rabbi in a ledger from an old fundraising tour that took place 200 years ago. Or it might be that an important rabbi owned the book in question or even prayed out of it. Like a pair of pants of a prominent Israeli rabbi that drew widespread attention when they briefly went up for auction last month, these texts are seen by some as conferring holiness onto those who possess them. By virtue of their pedigree, these artifacts might even be seen as a segula, or Jewish protective charm.
In its promotional materials and live auctions, Genazym also uses more colloquial and hyperbolic language to describe its items than traditional auction houses, which tend to stick to the kind of terminology used by academic scholars.
“Genazym found a formula to make books and manuscripts really exciting for the layperson, especially in the Orthodox community,” said Yoel Finkelman, a former curator of the Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel. “They are not using the vocabulary of experts, they’re using plain ordinary language, like ‘very old’ or ‘very rare.’ No one at Sotheby’s would ever refer even to a thousand-year-old book that way.”
Genazym’s unique approach extends to the delivery of items to buyers. A traditional buyer in the rare Jewish book market, like Michelle Margolis, Columbia University’s Jewish studies librarian, might only care that the book they bought is safely delivered. But with Genazym, the books come wrapped in a proper clamshell and velvet bag. “I rolled my eyes when my delivery arrived, but at the same time that’s a lot of investment,” Margolis said, adding that many other auction houses have been cutting costs, for example, by doing away with their customary printed catalogs.
Jacob Djmal, who lives in Brooklyn, has dabbled in Judaica collecting for many years, an interest he picked up from his grandfather. He remembers suddenly seeing Genazym’s advertising everywhere. “They started reaching out to you in every way possible, finding a demographic that wasn’t aware before. Every Genazym auction I have people texting me — ‘Did you hear about this? Did you hear about that?’ — as if something is happening that had never happened before.”
Sometimes, that is true. A breakout moment came during the December auction, when Genazym cleared $4.4 million in sales, about $2.6 million above total starting prices.
“If there was any doubt that Genazym were now the most commercially remarkable rare book auction house on Earth, the results of their latest Judaica auction this week put paid to that: essentially almost every lot sold for at least twice [the estimated amount],” a major British book collector living in France said on his anonymous Twitter account, which has around 110,000 followers, in December.
If there was any doubt that Genazym were now the most commercially remarkable rare book auction house on earth, the results of their latest Judaica auction this week put paid to that: essentially almost every lot sold for *at least* twice estimate…. 1/https://t.co/iAC4sQudIz pic.twitter.com/eeunjqWzAs
— Incunabula (@incunabula) December 13, 2022
It remains to be seen whether Genazym can challenge Sotheby’s Judaica division as the destination for sellers with the rarest and most valuable books. Last year, a medieval prayer book sold for $8.3 million at Sotheby’s and this year, the New York auction house is accepting bids for the oldest known copy of the Hebrew Bible, which is expected to fetch as much as $50 million.
But Djmal considers especially remarkable about Genazym is not just the high prices but also the way in which rare books have caught on among Orthodox youth as something cool. “My son and his friends in yeshiva are talking about these items,” Djmal said. “These books represent rabbis they have heard about from a young age.”
The team behind Genazym’s success is led by three brothers from the Stefansky family who live in Jerusalem and New York. Before starting an auction house they worked for many years as private dealers in the rare book market. Their names, Chaim, Moshe and Bezalel, rarely appear anywhere and they almost never grant interviews. Chaim Stefansky made an exception for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and requested that this article not put him in the spotlight nor portray Genazym’s success as a product of his business acumen.
Stefansky said Genazym has tapped into a universal and deep-seated desire of people to strengthen their identities by connecting with the past. The Jewish community, he said, has been poorly served by an emphasis on historical and even current persecution.
“Always, we are victimized and we cry,” Stefansky said. “What we have in common maybe is that your grandmother and my grandmother were sharing the same bed in Auschwitz. Give me something positive of my past to be proud of. Your heritage has not only sorrow but also a happy, rich, and huge intellectual tradition. So Genazym comes and tells people about their heritage. It’s yours. It belongs to you.”
He said the same thing can be done with any ethnic or religious group.
“If you go to the Irish community and press the right buttons in terms of what you know that every Irish person is extremely proud of, I think you’ll be very successful,” Stefansky said.
He rejected the impression that Genazym’s buyers come primarily from the ranks of the nouveau riche in the Hasidic world.
“It’s coming from all sections,” Stefansky said. “People will say that there’s a lot of fresh money in the market. But we also have very good old money. We have institutions. And, also, the regular man. Mostly, the regular man, who never knew he could have access to any of this.”
One of the only customers who agreed to be identified and interviewed for this article is Rick Probstein, who says he’s spent more than $100,000 at the company’s auctions. He can’t remember when he started seeing Genazym catalogs but he had never collected Judaica before, which is perhaps surprising given that he’s an Orthodox Jew who’s been working in the collectibles business since he was a child trading baseball cards.
Today, at 53, Probstein is one of the largest sellers of sports collectibles in the world, operating through a dedicated account on eBay. “I run a humongous business — I am doing something like $160 million a year,” he said of his sales volume.
Probstein, who lives in Passaic, New Jersey, had long felt a pang of guilt about the lack of Jewish content in his collection. “I collect things but what do I have of my own heritage?” he recalled thinking to himself. “So when I started getting the catalogs, I said, ‘I gotta be a good Jew.’ I started bidding on things and I got really into it.”
Once Probstein got started, the Stefansky brothers began checking in on him, providing concierge service and cultivating him as a client.
“This is a boutique run by a Jewish family with a personal touch,” Probstein said “They call me on the phone, saying, ‘Rick, did you get the catalog? What did you think? Here are some items that you could really like.’”
Bidding on Genayzm items is not purely sentimental for Probstein. “I’m putting real money into it because I think that from an investment standpoint, it has a lot of upside,” he said.
Still, the items he buys tend to have personal significance.
“I am partial to items relating to the Chofetz Chaim,” Probstein said, referring to the rabbi and Jewish scholar Yisrael Meir Kagan, who died in 1933. Probstein’s oldest son is named Yisrael Meir in his honor. The Chofetz Chaim also appeals to Probstein because of his writings about lashon hara, the prohibition in Jewish law against speaking evil of people. “I think that speech is important and he’s sort of the embodiment of that,” Probstein said.
Genazym has sold six letters and a handwritten blessing signed or written by the Chofetz Chaim at prices ranging from about $16,000 to $68,000.
Ever since Probstein started collecting Judaica, these items have served as a draw for family and friends visiting his home.
“People in my community that come over for kiddush [refreshments after Shabbat service] know that I have this stuff and they always want to see it,” Probstein said. “Nobody ever looks at my sports memorabilia collection because it’s in my office but my Judaica stuff is in my house. They look at the letters and talk about the historical context. People love it.”
The revelation that so many Jews appear fascinated with their own history and want to engage with scholarly tradition comes at a time when many Jewish libraries have been struggling.
The library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, which has the most comprehensive and significant collection of Jewish books outside of Israel, has seen its footprint downsized amid budget cuts at the Conservative movement seminary. Also under financial pressure, American Jewish University was forced to sell its Bel Air campus in Los Angeles, which housed a library. Hebrew Union College, meanwhile, opted to end its Reform rabbinical training program in Cincinnati and even though the campus library has survived the cuts, financial uncertainty remains.
Genazym’s populist approach might hold lessons for Jewish institutions and university libraries with significant Judaica collections that hope to engage the public around books.
“The lesson is to lay off the snobbery a little bit,” said Finkelman, the former Judaica curator at the National Library of Israel, which is slated to reopen in a new and more accessible space later this year. “The goal of public institutions is to enable preservation but also to enable public access and public education. There are great stories in books and archives.”
Finkleman said he has encountered sneering reactions to the way Genazym promotes books, and they are similar to the response in the United States when the pop star Lizzo played a crystal flute that belonged to James Madison on stage at the Library of Congress.
“There are echoes of the same thing here,” he said. “Get out of the snobby ivory tower and realize you are preserving history for people.”
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The Hebrew word “stav” didn’t always mean the fall season
יעדעס יאָר אין נאָוועמבער, ווען עס קומט דער האַרבסט און מע האַלט נאָך אין סאַמע זומער (מיט אַ וואָך צוריק בין איך נאָך געגאַנגען אין אַ העמד מיט קורצע אַרבל), זאָגן די סקעפּטיקערס אַז דאָ אין ישׂראל זײַנען אייגנטלעך פֿאַראַן נאָר צוויי סעזאָנען: אַ לאַנגער זומער און אַ קורצער ווינטער. די ציניקערס זאָגן נאָך אַז די צוויי סעזאָנען הייסן אין דער אמתן „דער הייסער סעזאָן“ און „דער ווייניקער הייסער“ – און עס איז נישט אין גאַנצן איבערגעטריבן.
דער תּנ״ך למשל, וואָס האָט גוט געקענט די נאַטור פֿון ארץ-ישׂראל, האָט קיינמאָל נישט געשריבן וועגן די פֿיר סעזאָנען — זומער, האַרבסט, ווינטער און פֿרילינג. אַפֿילו אינעם וואָרט „סתּיו“ (האַרבסט), וואָס ווערט דערמאָנט אין שיר השירים ב, יא: „כי הנה הסתו עבר“, מיינט מען נישט דעם האַרבסט, נאָר דווקא דעם ווינטער. אויך די משנה, וואָס באַשרײַבט די פֿיר „תּקופֿות“ פֿון יאָר (מסכת ראש השנה א, א: „בארבעה פרקים העולם נידון“), דערמאָנט מען נישט אונדזערע באַקאַנטע סעזאָנען.
ערשט אין דער נײַער העברעיִשער ליטעראַטור הייבט מען אָן שרײַבן וועגן דעם „סתּיו“ מיטן טײַטש האַרבסט. דער העברעיִשער שרײַבער אליהו מרדכי ווערבעל (1880-1806) פֿון גאַליציע האָט אין זײַן בוך „לימודי הטבע“ באַניצט דאָס וואָרט „סתּיו“ ווי „האַרבסט“, אפֿשר צוליב דעם וואָס דער ווינטער האָט שוין געהאַט אַ נאָמען: חורף. דאָס איז אַ פּנים געפֿעלן די נײַע העברעיִשע שרײַבערס, וואָס האָבן אַ סך געשריבן וועגן דעם אייראָפּעיִשן פּייזאַזש. האָבן זיי אַדאָפּטירט דעם נעאָלאָגיזם און געשריבן למשל וועגן „נוּגֵה סְתָו אוֹ עַז חֹרֶף“ (אַ טרויעריקער האַרבסט אָדער אַ שטאַרקער ווינטער – ח. נ. ביאַליק); „עברו ימי החג ושמי הסתיו רבצו על הארץ“ (עס זײַנען פֿאַרגאַנגען די יום-טובֿדיקע טעג און אַ האַרבסטיקער הימל איז געלעגן איבערן לאַנד – ש.י. עגנון).
הײַנט צו טאָג איז דער טערמין „סתּיו“ אַזוי באַקאַנט, אַז מען האָט שוין פֿאַרגעסן אַז טויזנטער יאָרן האָט לשון-קודש זיך באַגאַנגען אָן אים. דאָס וואָרט „סתּיו“ איז נאַטירלעך אַפֿילו פֿאַר קליינע קינדער, און אַ סימן דערפֿון זײַנען די צייכענונגען וואָס מײַנע טײַערע פּלימעניקעס האָבן מיר לעצטנס געוויזן פֿונעם קינדער-גאָרטן: שיינע ברוינע ביימער, באַדעקט מיט האַרבסטיקע בלעטער.
דווקא צוויי ווערטער וועלכע האָבן אַ סך צו טאָן מיטן האַרבסט זײַנען פֿאַראַן אויף עבֿרית, אָבער אויף די אייראָפּשיע שפּראַכן (און ייִדיש בתּוכם) — נישט. די ווערטער זײַנען „יורה“, דער ערשטער רעגן וואָס קומט נאָך אַ לאַנגן, טרוקענעם זומער, און „שלכת“ – אַ בלעטער־אָפּפֿאַל, די פֿאַלנדיקע בלעטער פֿון בוים אין האַרבסט. „ונתתי מטר ארצכם בעתו יורה ומלקוש“ (דברים יא, יד: „װעל איך געבן דעם רעגן פֿון אײַער לאַנד אין זײַן צײַט, פֿרירעגן און שפּעטרעגן“ – יהואשס איבערזעצונג). יאָ, מיר האָבן ווייניק רעגן דאָ אין לאַנד, אָבער אַ סך ווערטער דערפֿאַר: גשם, מטר, מבול, זרזיף, טפטוף, רביבים, יורה, מלקוש אאז”וו.
דאָס צווייטע וואָרט, „שלכת“, ווערט דערמאָנט אין ישעיהו ו, יג: „כאלה וכאלון אשר בשלכת“ („װי אַ טערעבינט און װי אַן אײכנבױם, װאָס נאָר זײער שטאַם בלײַבט װען בלעטער פֿאַלן“). „שלכת“ איז אָן קיין שום ספֿק פֿון די שענסטע ווערטער אין עבֿרית. אין אַמעריקע און אין אייראָפּע זײַנען פֿאַראַן פֿאַלנדיקע בלעטער, און איר האָט שיינע לידער ווי Les Feuilles Mortes („האַרבסטבלעטער“( פֿון זשאַק פּרעווער. אָבער מיר, ישׂראלים, האָבן אַ באַזונדער פֿײַערלעך וואָרט דערפֿאַר — „שלכת“, און איר קאָנט אונדז נאָר מקנא זײַן. די ווערטער „יורה“ און „שלכת“ זײַנען געוואָרן אַ מין „מאַדלען-קיכל“, מיט אַ סגולה צו דערוועקן פֿאַרבאָרגענע טעמים און זכרונות.
דאָס האָבן גוט פֿאַרשטאַנען די ייִדישע שרײַבערס וואָס זײַנען אַהין געקומען, און געזוכט נײַע ווערטער פֿאַר די נאַטור-פֿענאָמענען אין ישׂראל. די אַמעריקאַנער דיכטערין רחל פֿישמאַן, וואָס האָט זיך באַזעצט אין קיבוץ בית-אלפֿא, נאָענט צו דער נאַטור, האָט זייער שיין געשריבן ווערן דעם יורה: „שמאָלע פּלײצעס / האָט דער יורה. / און דאָך / שמײכלען אים אַלע נאָך. / די מענער קלאַפּן אים פֿרײַנדלעך. / אױף זײַן דינעם רוקן / קינדער לױפֿן / װילן אָנרירן זײַן גרױ העמד. / ער גיט אײן בליק / מיט זײַנע פֿײַכטע אױגן / און גײט װײַטער“ („זון איבער אַלץ“, זײַט 47).
איז זײַט מיר מוחל, סקעפּטיקערס און ציניקערס: דער האַרבסט עקזיסטירט דאָ דווקא יאָ, און נאָך ווי! עס הייבט זיך אָן מיט די ערשטע טעג ווען מע בעט „ותּן טל ומטר לבֿרכה“ און עס דויערט ביז אַרום חנוכּה, ווען עס ווערט שוין עפּעס ווינטערדיק. פֿאַרשטייט זיך, עס איז נישט דער פּרעכטיקער האַרבסט פֿון צפֿון-אַמעריקע, מיט די וווּנדערלעכע פֿאַרבן; און נישט „דער גאָלדענער האַרבסט“ פֿון מזרח-אייראָפּע, וואָס מען האָט אַזוי שיין באַזונגען אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור.
מיר באַנוגענען זיך מיט אַ ביסל: דאָ און דאָרטן, דער עיקר אין די בערג, לעבן ירושלים צי אינעם גליל, קאָן מען זען אַ בוים אין שלכת. יעדעס יאָר נעם איך פֿון דאָס נײַ אַ פֿאָטאָ פֿון אַ קאַרשן-בוים אין ירושלים, ווען זײַנע בלעטער ווערן סוף-כּל-סוף גאָלד; און אויפֿן וועג צווישן תּל-אָבֿיבֿ און ירושלים באַמערק איך די האַרבסטיקע ביימער. ביסלעכווײַז אין חודש חשוון אָדער כּסלו קומט צו גאַסט אַ וואָלקנדל אָדער רעגנדל, און דער עיקר: עס ווערט אַ ביסל קילער – אַ מחיה. עס איז אַ סך פֿריילעכער ווי דער פֿרילינג, ווײַל דאָ אין לאַנד הייבט זיך אָן גרינען אין סאַמע ווינטער, און אַרום פּסח זײַנען ס׳רובֿ בלומען אויף יענער וועלט, ווײַל עס קומען די באַרימטע „חמסינען“, די הייסע ווינטן פֿון מדבר.
אמת, מען קאָן אויך נישט לייקענען אַז מיטן האַרבסט קומען הײַנט אויך מעלאַנכאָלישע טענער. דעם 7טן אָקטאָבער דערוועקט בײַ אונדז די פֿרישע זכרונות פֿון דעם טראַגישן שׂמחת-תּורה 2023 און די בלוטיקע יאָרן וואָס זײַנען געקומען נאָך אים, און דאָס האַרץ ווערט פֿאַרקלעמט. דער נײַער יאָרצײַט פֿאַראייניקט זיך מיט אַן אַלטן: דאָס יאָר האָבן מיר דעם 4סטן נאָוועמבער אָפּגעמערקט 30 יאָר זינט מען האָט דערמאָרדעט דעם פּרעמיער-מיניסטער יצחק רבין. נאָך אַ סך יאָרן האָט מען באַנײַט די יערלעכע מאַניפֿעסטאַציע אין כּיכּר רבין (רבין-פּלאַץ), וואָס מע האָט אויפֿגעהערט טאָן מיט צוואַנציק יאָר צוריק. אָבער צוליב דעם וואָס די מאַניפֿעסטאַציע איז הײַיאָר פֿאָרגעקומען אַ קורצע צײַט נאָך דעם פֿײַער-אָפּשטעל אין עזה, זענען די געפֿילן געווען געמישטע: פֿון איין זײַט — פֿול מיט טרויער, צער און זאָרג; פֿון דער צווייטער —אַ פֿריש ווינטל פֿון האָפֿענונג, האַרבסטיקע גרוסן פֿון ערגעץ-וווּ.
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Jewish conservatives are looking to JD Vance to draw a line against the antisemitic right. He hasn’t delivered.
(JTA) — Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss and Dan Senor were mostly in lockstep as they condemned antisemitism on the right during an event for Jewish conservatives on Sunday night.
But despite their shared concern about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, they were divided on how to think about Vice President JD Vance, who hasn’t publicly disavowed either the influential podcast host or the white supremacist he recently interviewed.
“I’m worried, but I’m not alarmed,” said Senor, a columnist and host of the podcast “Call Me Back,” about the groundswell of antisemitic expressions on the right.
“You’re not alarmed?” interjected Weiss, the newly named editor-in-chief of CBS News.
“I’m not alarmed because I am struck that every leader that is under pressure from this online mob is still standing strong,” said Senor, who pointed out that President Donald Trump has been steadfastly pro-Israel. “Who has fallen? No one has fallen.”
Weiss pressed the issue, singling out Vance: “But what does it mean that the vice president of the United States had Tucker Carlson on his show, when he had hosted Charlie Kirk’s show?”
The question, referring to Vance’s tribute to the slain leader of Turning Point USA, drew applause from many of the more than 1,000 attendees at the 2025 Jewish Leadership Conference, held in Manhattan and organized by the conservative Tikvah Fund.
The exchange aired a growing debate within the Republican party and the right as a whole. Stoked by Carlson’s friendly sit-down with Fuentes, and Carlson’s own harsh criticisms of Israel, it has led to calls within the party that its leaders disavow the antisemites in its midst. Influential Jewish conservatives, who see Republicans as a much more reliable friend to Israel than the Democrats, are eyeing key figures like Vance as counterweights to the right’s increasingly isolationist and emboldened antisemitic forces.
But so far Vance — a likely 2028 presidential candidate — has not delivered any rebuke to Carlson, Fuentes and the growing antisemitic “groyper” movement on the right. Instead, he has drawn concern over what his critics say is a weak response: He did not push back on skeptical questions about Israel, including one laced with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, at a Turning Point USA event at Ole Miss. He also downplayed the significance of the text messages shared among Young Republicans, which included jokes about gas chambers, racist slurs and praise of Hitler. Vance dismissed the invective as “jokes” and said that critics should “grow up.”
Vance’s failure to call out what others see as troubling isolationism and blatant antisemitism has become a talking point at Jewish gatherings.
Scott Jennings, a conservative political commentator for CNN, spoke about the U.S.-Israel relationship at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington on Sunday. Jennings did not name Vance, but alluded to him as a presidential candidate in 2028. “Hopefully the people who run to replace this administration understand the benefit of this, that it’s a good thing and not something to be ashamed of,” he said, referring to support of Israel.
Meanwhile, donors at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas two weeks ago were not shy about their views on Vance.
“In 2028 you can bet, if he’s the nominee, I won’t vote for him,” said Ed Wenger, who called Vance “Tucker Central.”
The vice president, Wenger said, “sounds like he tolerates religions” other than Christianity, rather than embracing them. “Well, I don’t need Vance to tolerate Judaism or me.”
Valerie Greenfeld’s thoughts on Vance in 2028 were quick and straight to the point. “Marco Rubio for president,” said Greenfeld, an author attending the RJC summit.
Jewish activist Shabbos Kestenbaum, who spoke during the RJC’s summit, criticized Vance’s response to the conspiracy-laced question at the Turning Point USA event.
“When you have a vice president who is unable to condemn the obvious antisemitic, conspiratorial, victim-blaming mentality of young people, that is incredibly concerning,” Kestenbaum said in an interview. “And I am very concerned about JD Vance’s inevitable run for the presidency. This is not someone who I have seen has been able to show the moral clarity that a leader needs.”
Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member and former White House press secretary, did not criticize Vance, but said about the vice president’s response to antisemitism within the party, “This is going to be one of those issues that’s going to define his future.”
“The number of candidates who emerge to run for president will be significant on the Republican side, and that’s going to begin in earnest in about one year,” Fleischer said. “And I think JD’s going to have to earn it like everybody else, and be very curious to see what he has to say.”
While Vance hasn’t weighed in on the Carlson-Fuentes controversy, he did defend Carlson’s son, Buckley, in an X post on Saturday. An X user had asserted that Tucker Carlson’s brother “idolizes Nick Fuentes” and asked whether Buckley, who serves as an aide to the vice president, is “also a vile bigot.”
“Every time I see a public attack on Buckley it’s a complete lie,” Vance wrote, later adding that “*everyone* who I’ve seen attack Buckley with lies is a scumbag.” His tweets did not mention Fuentes.
Saul Sadka, a pro-Israel influencer with nearly 65,000 followers on X, recently called out Vance’s exchange about Buckley Carlson and his failure to condemn his father. The vice president has “decided that trying to impress the schoolyard bullies by performatively picking on Jews is the way to become popular as the new kid in school,” wrote Sadka.
Vance’s boss also ignored the Carlson-Fuentes tensions for weeks, only to brush aside concerns about Carlson, who joined him on the campaign trail last year. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump said on Sunday. “If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. People have to decide.”
And while Trump hosted Fuentes and rapper Kanye West for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 (Trump later claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was), some still see him as a bulwark against the anti-Israel and antisemitic waves represented by the groypers.
Kestenbaum said he is “so proud to support President Trump,” but is concerned about the power vacuum that will be created once his second term ends.
“I’m just concerned that when President Trump reaches his term limit, and when there is an open Republican primary, that we will see the nefarious far-right actors that President Trump has so clearly kept at bay, and has made clear have no room in the Republican Party — I’m concerned that they will be let in,” Kestenbaum said.
At Sunday’s Tikvah conference, Shapiro, the conservative political commentator and founder of the Daily Wire, cautioned against dismissing the threat of figures like Fuentes — whom he called a “basement dweller” — and the far-right influencer Andrew Tate, and their influence on younger, more online generations.
“They haven’t aged into the voting population yet,” Shapiro said about their audiences. “And so I think one of the things that we have to be very careful of is trying to write that off as not a problem.”
Weiss concurred, saying, “It’s a great lesson of the left over the past 15 years that everything was downstream of online culture.”
Senor, responding to Weiss, agreed that Vance should say more about the rising tides. “I am patiently waiting for the vice president to come out, like a number of other leaders have come out in recent weeks,” he said. Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell both criticized the Heritage Foundation for standing by Carlson.
Jonathan Silver, the moderator and Tikvah’s chief programming officer, cut in at that point, saying there’s “comfort to be had in the fact that elected leaders have acted in such a patriotic, American way,” before shifting the conversation more specifically to asking why Fuentes appeals to young people.
Many attending the Tikvah event seemed also to be waiting for a strong statement from Vance condemning Fuentes and Carlson.
“I’m willing to be patient — but only so patient,” said Neil Cooper, referring back to Senor’s comment that he’s “patiently waiting” for Vance to comment on Carlson.
Luke Moon, a leader of a Christian Zionist non-profit, expressed concern about an emerging “neo-isolationist” wing of Republicans who oppose supporting Israel.
Moon said he’s even noticed a recent shift in how Vance has posted about Israel on social media.
“JD went to Israel a couple weeks ago, and they didn’t post pictures of him at the [Western] Wall,” Moon said. “Now I appreciate that as a Christian he should go to the Holy Sepulchre. But he had also previously gone to the Wall.”
Others did not take issue with Vance, saying they believed the threat at hand was being blown out of proportion.
“That’s just a small little group of people. Only people involved in journalism take that stuff serious,” said Edward Shapiro, a retired professor who has moved from New Jersey to Florida.
He added, “They’re such fringe characters.”
As for Weiss, who was named to head CBS News after four years at the helm of the consistently pro-Israel Free Press, she said she hoped to use her new position to counter the voices like the ones at the center of Sunday’s discussion.
“The choices that it feels like we have sometimes — which is [the progressive streamer] Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson, or Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, the kind of people who are rising in the podcast charts — those don’t actually represent our values,” Weiss said. “And I don’t think that they represent the values or the worldview of the vast majority of Americans.”
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In Israel, she’s a national heroine — Americans are starting to understand why
Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II
By Douglas Century
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $30
In Israel, Hannah Senesh, the 23-year-old poet and paratrooper who died trying to save Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, is a national heroine. Her verses are memorized by schoolchildren and encoded in prayerbooks, her kibbutz home is a memorial, and Israeli streets and settlements bear her name.
In the United States, recognition of Senesh’s achievements has come more slowly. Roberta Grossman’s 2008 documentary, Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, told her story with archival footage, interviews and dramatic recreations. In 2010-11, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted an exhibition, Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.
Now, when the notion of Israeli military heroism seems particularly contested, Senesh has surfaced again. This fall, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene revived David Schechter’s play with music, Hannah Senesh, a collaboration with Lori Wilner that originated in the 1980s. And a major new biography, Douglas Century’s Crash of the Heavens, excavates the brilliant young woman — frustrated, lonely, headstrong, determined — long encrusted in myth.
Century’s powerful book, whose title derives from a Senesh poem, depicts both a unique 1944 Jewish rescue mission and its historical context: the chaotic final months of World War II, when Europe’s remaining Jews were both targeted victims and bargaining chips.
An emigrant from fascist Hungary to British Mandatory Palestine, Senesh was one of a cohort of Jewish volunteers — 37, including two other women — chosen to infiltrate the inferno of Central and Eastern Europe that other Jews were desperate to escape. Trained by the elite fighters of the Palmach, as well as the Royal Air Force and British Intelligence, they had a dual mission: to locate and evacuate downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war, and to save Jews. For the latter, it was almost too late, though the paratroopers did ultimately rescue an unknown number of Jews.
While Senesh is the focus, Century’s cinematic narrative alights periodically on several of her colleagues. Among the most notable was Enzo Sereni, an Italian Jewish intellectual, “a remarkable man with prodigious appetites,” who died in Dachau. The Romanian-born Surika Braverman, phobic about heights, was unable to parachute. But she did fly into Yugoslavia, link up with Tito’s partisans, and later establish the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces. Yoel Palgi, the lone survivor of the three paratroopers who infiltrated Hungary, became a key source of information about Senesh’s ordeals.
Her story, told here with great intimacy and detail, is riveting. Those who knew her underline her uniqueness, including a courage that ultimately impressed even her captors.
Born Anna Szenes in 1921 Budapest, she was the daughter of a celebrated Hungarian Jewish playwright and journalist who died of heart failure at 33. At 13, Senesh started a diary. In 1938, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law restricting Jewish participation in the economy, and her country’s growing antisemitism transformed the teenager into a Zionist.
Accepted to an agricultural school in Palestine, Senesh made aliyah in 1939. She graduated with expertise in poultry farming, but was assigned to the laundry of Kibbutz Sdot Yam (Fields of the Sea), near Caesaria. The location inspired one of her most famous poems, but the daily routine was mind-numbing. She longed to return to Budapest to inspire Jewish resistance and help her mother escape.
As luck would have it, her kibbutz connected her to a fellow Hungarian refugee involved in organizing a secret rescue mission. “I see the hand of destiny in this,” she wrote at the time. “I’m totally self-confident, ready for anything,” she later added.
The mission was delayed, in Century’s telling, by mutual distrust between the British military and the Jewish leadership in Palestine. But Senesh finally was able to train as both a paratrooper and wireless radio operator. She chose the code name Hagar, for the second wife of the Biblical Abraham, “the slave girl who’s redeemed, who speaks directly to the Lord, who is told that she must return home.” Before leaving for Europe, she was able to see her brother, Gyuri, and give him a poignant letter in which she wrote: “Will you sense that I had no choice, that I had to do this?”
After parachuting into Yugoslavia, Senesh joined Tito’s partisans. But within days, the Germans had marched into Hungary, complicating her mission. She crossed the border anyway, and was quickly captured by Hungarian gendarmes — likely because of a betrayal, or more than one, Century suggests.
He graphically describes the vicious beatings and torture she endured, and her stoic silence. One of her fellow paratroopers had declined to give her a cyanide pill, so an easy death was impossible. Her suicide attempts failed. Believing her mother had left Budapest, she finally offered her real name. That led to a heartbreaking reunion between a bruised and battered Hannah and her anxious mother, Katherine. Both spent time in a Gestapo prison, where they had occasional contact.
Katherine eventually was released, and her daughter experienced a mild reprieve: She was able to teach her fellow inmates Hebrew, distribute hand-made dolls as gifts, and counsel a pregnant Jewish prisoner on an escape route. Then came a trial for treason and espionage. In her defense, Senesh eloquently denied betraying Hungary and chastised her judges for allying with Nazism. As Soviet and Romanian troops descended on Budapest, she was abruptly informed of her conviction and an immediate death sentence, with no chance of appeal.
Integral to her legend is that the youthful Senesh went defiantly to her execution by firing squad, declining to beg for a pardon and refusing even a blindfold. She left behind a trove of diaries, letters and simple, emotionally direct poems — a dazzling literary as well as moral legacy.
One poem, from a period of torture and solitary confinement, concludes: “I gambled on what mattered most,/The dice were cast. I lost.” Another famous verse emphasizes redemption, declaring, “Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.” Century’s biography — which also recounts Senesh’s prodigious cultural afterlife — is a stirring testament to both her undeniable gifts and tragic fate.
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