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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 post Inside the auction house driving the rare-book craze in the Orthodox world appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Cantorial music movingly sung by women, at this event in Indiana
אויף איין טאָג איז דאָס שטעטל בלומינגטאָן — אַן אוניווערסיטעט־שטאָט אין ווײַטער אינדיאַנע — געוואָרן אַ צענטער פֿון נײַער און טראַדיציאָנעלער ייִדישער מוזיק.
דעם 11טן אָקטאָבער איז פֿאָרגעקומען אַ גאַנצע ריי פּראָגראַמען געווידמעט דער מיזרח־אייראָפּעיִשער ייִדישער קולטור. די פּראָגראַם, „זכּרון פֿאַרוואַנדלט“ (Memory Transformed), האָט אַרײַנגענומען אַן אַקאַדעמישן סימפּאָזיום, אַ קונסט־אויסשטעלונג און אַ קאָנצערט פֿון הײַנטצײַטיקער ייִדישער מוזיק. ס׳איז געקומען אַ גרויסער עולם: סײַ סטודענטן און פּראָפֿעסאָרן פֿון אוניווערסיטעט, סײַ ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן פֿון דער געגנט.
די רײַכע פּראָגראַם איז פֿאָרגעקומען אין בלומינגטאָן, דער עיקר, אַ דאַנק ירמיהו לאָקוווּד, דעם באַקאַנטן מוזיקער, היסטאָריקער און מוזיקאָלאָג, וואָס איז אויך אַ גאַסט־פּראָפֿעסאָר פֿון ייִדישע לימודים אין אינדיאַנער אוניווערסיטעט. לאָקוווּד האָט זיך באַטייליקט סײַ אינעם סימפּאָזיום סײַ אין דעם קאָנצערט. ער איז אויפֿגעטראָטן מיט זײַן קאַפּעליע, The Sway Machinery, מיט וועמען ער שפּילט שוין די לעצטע צוואָנציק יאָר.
כאָטש לאָקוווּדס אייגענע מוזיק איז מאָדערן, פֿאָרשט ער דווקא אַ מער טראַדיציאָנעלן ייִדישן זשאַנער: דאָס חזנות. בעת אַ שמועס מיט מיר האָט ער געזאָגט, אַז ער האַלט דאָס חזנות פֿאַרן עיקר און נשמה פֿון דער ייִדישער מוזיק. זײַן ערשט בוך, „גאָלדענע עפּאָכעס“ (2024) באַהאַנדלט די הײַנטיקע חסידישע זינגער, וואָס באַנײַען דעם סטיל חזנות פֿון אַלטע צײַטן. איצט אַרבעט ער אויף אַ צווייט בוך, וואָס זאָל דערציילן די געשיכטע פֿון חזנות ביזן הײַנטיקן טאָג.
לאָקוווּד פֿאָרשט ספּעציעל די אַלטע פּלאַטעס פֿון אָנהייב 20סטן יאָרהונדערט. חזנות איז אַ מאָל געווען געוואַלדיק פּאָפּולער, ווײַל דער פֿאָנאָגראַף האָט אַרײַנגעברענגט די הייליקע מוזיק אַפֿילו אין וועלטלעכע ייִדישע היימען.
אויפֿן סימפּאָזיום האָט אויך גערעדט אַן אַנדער מומחה פֿון חזנות, ד״ר יהודית בערקסאָן, אַ פֿאָרשערין און פּראָפֿעסיאָנעלע חזנטע אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס. זי האָט גערעדט וועגן דעם אימפּראָוויזירטן אַספּעקט פֿון חזנות, וואָס איז אַ מאָל געווען גאָר וויכטיק. הײַנט זינגען חזנים געוויינטלעך לויט די נאָטן, ווײַל זיי זענען גוט טרענירט אין דער קלאַסישער מערבֿדיקער מוזיק־טראַדיציע. אָבער דאָס אַמאָליקע חזנות איז געווען אַ געמיש פֿון מערבֿדיק און מיזרחדיק, מיט אַ סך אימפּראָוויזאַציע — אַ ביסל ווי דזשעז־מוזיק. דער חזן האָט קיין מאָל נישט געזונגען דאָס זעלבע שטיקל אויף פּונקט דעם זעלביקן אופֿן. יעדע זאַך איז געווען אָריגינעל.
בערקסאָן האָט אויך גערעדט וועגן די פּריוואַטע, קאָנטראַבאַנדישע רעקאָרדירונגען, וואָס געוויסע ליבהאָבערס פֿון חזנות פֿלעגן מאַכן בסוד. זיי האָבן אַרײַנגעשמוגלט אַ רעקאָרדיר־אַפּאַראַט אין אַ תּלית־בײַטל אָדער אונטערן מאַנטל און רעקאָרדירט דעם חזן, אַפֿילו ווען מע טאָר נישט, שבת אָדער יום־טובֿ. די אָ ייִדן זענען געווען גרייט צו ריזיקירן מיט דער אייגענער נשמה, אַבי צו פֿאַרמאָגן דאָס געזאַנג פֿון זייער באַליבטן חזן. אויף אַזעלכע רעקאָרדירונגען הערט מען אָפֿט אַ סך אימפּראָוויזאַציעס.
אויפֿן סימפּאָזיום האָט אויך גערעדט דער היגער ייִדיש־פּראָפֿעסאָר, דובֿ־בער קערלער. ער האָט דערציילט וועגן ייִדישע לידער, וואָס דער עולם האַלט זיי אָפֿט פֿאַר אַלטע פֿאָלקסלידער, כאָטש אין דער אמתן זענען די מחברים גוט באַקאַנט. למשל, „דער רבי אלימלך“ האָט געשריבן און קאָמפּאָנירט דער פּאָעט משה נאַדיר (יצחק רײַז), וואָס האָט געוווינט אין ניו־יאָרק. אַ סך פֿון די פּאָפּולערסטע לידער אונדזערע שטאַמען באמת פֿון אַמעריקע, נישט פֿון מיזרח־אייראָפּע.
לאָקוווּדס מוזיק מיט זײַן קאַפּעליע איז אַ יחיד־במינו, אַ געמיש פֿון עטלעכע מוזיקאַלישע זשאַנערס און סטילן: חזנות, ראָק, פֿאָנק, בלוז. באמת זענען זיי אַ מאָדערנע „אינדי“־ראָק־קאַפּעליע, וואָס זינגט תּפֿילות אויף לשון־קודש. עס איז טשיקאַווע צו הערן פֿאַרכאַפּנדיקע לידער מיט אַזאַ ריטעם און קלאַנג, אַז עס ווילט זיך טאַנצן, און זען, אַז די ווערטער האָבן אָנגעשריבן רבנים מיט הונדערטער יאָרן צוריק. אויפֿן קאָנצערט, למשל, האָבן זיי געשפּילט „אָדם יסודו“, אַ טייל פֿונעם פּיוט „ונתנה תּוקף“, וואָס ייִדן זאָגן ראָש־השנה. דאָס שטאַמט לויט דער מסורה פֿון הרבֿ אַמנון פֿון מײַנץ אין 11טן י״ה.
נאָך דעם איז אויפֿגעטראָטן אַ צווייטע גרופּע: „די אומשטאַרביקע חזנטעס“, וואָס באַשטייט פֿון עטלעכע פֿון די בעסטע חזנטעס פֿון אונדזער דור: יהודית בערקסאָן אַליין, רחל וועסטאָן, שאַהאַנאַ מעקיני־באַלדאָן און ריקי רויז. זיי האָבן געזונגען קלאַסישע תּפֿילות פֿונעם אַלטן רעפּערטואַר פֿון די גרויסע חזנים און חזנטעס פֿון אַ מאָל: „אַחינו“, „רצה במנוחתינו“, און „שׂים שלום“. די ווירטואָזקייט פֿון די חזנטעס האָט געמאַכט אַ געוואַלדיקן רושם אויף מיר און איך בין זיכער אויך אויף די אַנדערע.
איין ליד איו געווען טיילווײַז אויף ייִדיש: „איך בענק אַהיים“, געזונגען פֿון רחל וועסטאָן, וואָס איז באַקאַנט פֿון אַן אַלטער רעקאָרדירונג פֿון דער משפּחה מאַלאַווסקי, מיט דער באַקאַנטער חזנטע גאָלדי מאַלאַווסקי. הערנדיק דאָס ליד האָט דער עולם מסתּמא דערפֿילט, ווי איך אַליין, אַ בענקשאַפֿט נאָך דער אַלטער היים אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע, און נאָך דער אַמאָליקער ניו־יאָרק, וווּ חזנות און ייִדיש האָבן געלעבט אויף אַ ברייטן פֿאַרנעם.
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Why this Zionist Israeli is running with an Islamist party
(JTA) — KIBBUTZ EIN HAHORESH, Israel – He’s been called a “terror supporter” and a “traitor,” and even accused of devious steps to enable Islamists to “infiltrate” Israel’s next government. But Yoav Segalovitz, the Jewish parliamentarian who recently broke strict taboos by teaming up with an Arab Islamist party, is unperturbed.
“There are always crazy people, and it doesn’t matter what they say on television; I think when you’ve chosen your path, you just have to ignore it all,” he said in a recent interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
It has been just over a month since Segalovitz, 67, a veteran member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, made his unprecedented decision to leave the centrist Yesh Atid party for Ra’am, an Arab-Israeli party with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, in the hopes of bridging the gap between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
“Are all the old patterns going to change in the coming month? Absolutely not,” Segalovitz, a former deputy minister for public security and a former police investigator, said. “But I’m thinking long term, not just about these particular elections. From my perspective, this is a long-term story. It’s not about the here and now.”
At a recent campaign event in the well-worn communal dining room of Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, an agricultural community in the Emek Hefer region of central Israel, Segalovitz explained to a group of around 80 Jewish voters why he made the radical decision as a self-declared Zionist to team up with an Islamist party.
“I wanted to have an impact,” he said, describing how he knew it would somehow be related to the Arab community in Israel that makes up around 21% of the total population.
“I knew I wanted to break down the paradigms that exist; I wanted to cross the bridge; the only question was how I could do this,” Segalovitz said, speaking to the small crowd of kibbutz members and residents of the surrounding communities.
Microphone in hand, the neatly dressed former police officer described how, when tensions were high and societal divisions deeper than ever during the final days of the previous Knesset, he asked himself how he could make a meaningful difference in Israeli society.
Segalovitz said that at first he considered creating a brand new joint Israeli-Arab party. But he quickly realized that he could make greater change by joining forces with Ra’am, an Arab party whose leader, Mansour Abbas, is already known for his own paradigm-breaking political moves.
Abbas, a deeply religious conservative Muslim who, in his own words, identifies as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was the first Arab party leader to join an Israeli government, breaking deep-rooted taboos in his own community. In 2021, his bold move to join former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in a ruling coalition helped to briefly oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power.
While the move signaled an unprecedented shift in Israeli politics, it was also fraught with tension and ultimately proved to be deeply unpopular with much of the Israeli public and some in the Arab community. Ultimately, Ra’am’s inclusion in the Bennett-Lapid government was one of the factors that led to its rapid downfall.
If including an Arab party in the government was controversial before Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, today it is close to unthinkable. In the run-up to the Oct. 27 election, most predominantly Jewish parties have avoided saying publicly that they would consider including Ra’am, or any other Arab party, in a future coalition. And, beyond Ra’am, the other Arab party – the Joint List – remains emphatically against any such alliance.
But recent polls suggest that bringing Arab parties into a governing alliance could be the only way to secure the parliamentary majority needed to form a new government. With Segalovitz now running on Ra’am’s list, such a prospect may be slightly more realistic.
However, the challenges of reaching such an arrangement were evident at the recent Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh meeting.
An aging audience of casually dressed kibbutzniks sauntered into the sparse hall curious to hear Segalovitz’s story. They gave him a warm and polite reception, and grilled him with questions after listening to him speak. But most said they were not swayed to vote for him.
“He’s very brave for doing what he did,” said Elie Aloni, 80, a resident of nearby Beit Herut. But she continued to say that she would not vote for Ra’am because she’s already committed to the left-wing Democrats Party.
Aloni said her party’s leader, Yair Golan, had already stated that he wanted to see Ra’am join the government, and she hoped that would happen. She was also hopeful that having an Israeli Jew on Ra’am’s list would make it easier for the party to be included in the next coalition.
But she acknowledged that, after Oct. 7, including Arab parties in a government could prove difficult.
“I’m a peace activist, but even I have become disillusioned,” she said. “After Oct. 7, it has become more difficult to trust the Arabs. But they are not going to disappear, and neither are we.”
Segalovitz knows that his support is unlikely to come from Jewish voters. Instead, he has been focusing on reaching the Arab community and encouraging them to exercise their democratic rights.
Since joining Ra’am in early September, he has traveled around the country to address Arabic-speaking audiences – Muslims, Christians and Druze – about why he joined the party and what he hopes to achieve. The meetings are conducted in Hebrew because, as he admits, he does not speak a word of Arabic.
Segalovitz told JTA that despite the cold reception, including some outright attacks, from Israeli Jews, the Arab community has overwhelmingly embraced him – even though there is some skepticism.
Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, who has researched political trends in Israel’s Arab community for years, called Segalovitz’s decision to join Ra’am “pioneering.”
However, he noted that the Jewish MK has also faced attacks from within the Arab community from those who struggle to accept an openly Zionist Israeli joining their political ranks.
Although there are some Jewish Israeli members of Arab parties, namely the communist-leaning Hadash, they often identify as anti-Zionist. Segalovitz’s arrangement with Abbas is slightly different. He has not formally joined the Islamist party but rather forged an agreement whereby he will retain the freedom to vote independently on issues including religion and state, national security and LGBTQ rights.
“His move is revolutionary; he is not a post-Zionist or an anti-Zionist like some Jewish members of Hadash,” Milshtein said. “He [Segalovitz] is creating connections with a traditional religious party and it’s just bizarre.”
Segalovitz’s presence in Ra’am, which emerged from the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, historically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, has also prompted questions across the Arab world about how Abbas can continue to be associated with the movement that also includes more extreme groups such as Hamas, Milshtein said.
But Milshtein said the two men were “pioneering” in much the same way.
“It’s kind of a mirror: Mansour breaks all kinds of taboos, and so does Segalovitz,” he said, adding that many Jews respected Segalovitz, and even supported his decision, “even if they won’t end up voting for him.”
Ra’am’s changes started in the 1990s when Israel’s Islamic Movement split into two, enabling the southern branch, the political home of Ra’am, to seek political engagement with state institutions as a way to make changes within the community. Abbas’s ascent to the leadership brought Ra’am’s current goals into even sharper focus.
Abbas, 52, a dentist by training, succeeded in breaking the party’s organizational ties with the religious leadership, allowing it to work even more harmoniously with institutions in Israel and focus on improving life for the country’s Arab citizens.
At this point in Ra’am’s history, Segalovitz’s arrival could be a significant political asset. The party’s focus is on improving life for Israel’s Arab community, and Segalovitz brings experience tackling violent and organized crime, one of the sector’s most pressing concerns.
As head of the Israel Police’s Investigations Unit from 2009 to 2013, and as deputy public security minister from 2021 to 2022, Segalovitz focused on violent crime. As deputy minister, he headed a government program aimed at addressing violent crime, successfully reducing homicides in the Arab sector by some 16%, the lowest level since 2014.
After Netanyahu’s return to office in 2022, Segalovitz’s program was scrapped. Since then, the murder rate has soared, with organized crime reaching beyond the Arab community. According to statistics compiled by the Abraham Initiatives, the number of murders in the Arab sector more than doubled between 2022 and 2025, rising from 116 to 252.
“Today, Israel has similar crime rates to those in South American countries,” said Segalovitz, referring to the organized crime that has been surging in the Arab community. He pointed the finger at Netanyahu and his government for failing to address deeper social and economic problems in Arab society.
Segalovitz is also a firm believer in some type of national community service for the Arab sector, akin to the mandatory military service most Jewish Israelis must undertake.
“Arabs make up 21% of Israel’s population,” Segalovitz said. “They are involved in every area of daily life in Israel, in medicine, economics, education and more. We live together with one another, and we need to decide how to manage a future partnership.”
“Our future does not allow us not to work in partnership with each other,” he said. “We have partnerships in all areas of life, except in politics.”
While running with Ra’am is his way of trying to change that, Segalovitz is under no illusion that his efforts will translate into votes. Instead, he sees his candidacy as a small first step toward a longer-term shift in Israeli politics.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Why this Zionist Israeli is running with an Islamist party appeared first on The Forward.
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From Holocaust survivor to Nazi hunter to Entebbe hero
(JTA) — When Boaz Dvir flew from the United States to Israel in late September to screen his new film, “To Kill a Nazi,” he didn’t expect its story to become newly relevant. But just as Dvir arrived, the thwarting of an apparent hijacking of a flydubai flight bound for Israel offered an uncanny echo of the history his film recounts.
The film tells the largely overlooked story of Michel Cojot, a French Jewish Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter who helped fellow hostages during the Entebbe hostage crisis and later provided intelligence that aided the Israeli rescue mission. For Dvir, the timing was striking.
“As I’m driving around, what do I hear?” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Somebody tried to hijack a plane from Dubai to Israel and do a 9/11 type of terrorist attack? And the passengers saved the day? Ordinary guys?
“And of course, people brought it up everywhere I went, because the parallels are uncanny.”
Michel Goldberg was born in Paris in 1938. After the Nazis invaded, his father Joseph Goldberg was captured and sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed. According to his 1982 memoir “Namesake,” Michel was raised in France’s so-called “free zone,” which the Nazis would also occupy starting in 1942, and took his last name from his stepfather after his mother remarried.
Growing up to become a successful banker, Michel teamed with the famed Nazi-hunting couple Beate and Serge Klarsfeld and in 1975, while working in South America, embarked on a plot to find and kill Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo commander who had signed the arrest papers for Cojot’s father, and who was at that point hiding out in Bolivia.
Posing as a journalist, an armed Cojot met the “Butcher of Lyon,” but given the opportunity, Cojot failed to pull the trigger. In his memoir he writes that Barbie instead deserved to live in constant fear of reprisal, and that murder was a “Nazi” solution.
The year after his mission to Bolivia, Cojot and his son were on the fateful Air France flight that, bound from Tel Aviv to France, was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and West German far-left radicals, with 102 Israelis on board. It led to the standoff at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda and the heroic rescue by Israeli commandos.
During the seven-day crisis, Cojot acted as a translator and go-between among the hijackers and passengers. When the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin spoke to the hostages, Cojot translated his English into French. He was even credited with persuading the lead hijacker, Wilfried Böse, to release the non-Israeli hostages. After his release, Cojot provided information to Mossad, including the layout of where the hostages were being held, which greatly assisted the Operation Thunderbolt rescue mission.
Cojot went on to write a book about Barbie’s crimes, and then testified in Barbie’s war crimes trial in the late 1980s. Barbie was sentenced to life in prison; he died of cancer in 1991. Cojot himself passed away in 1999. While the story of Entebbe is very well-known, Cojot’s role in it has often been left out of such tellings. None of the feature films about the rescue, most recently 2018’s “7 Days in Entebbe,” include him as a major character.
Divir hopes to give the forgotten hero the recognition he deserves. The grandson of Holocaust survivors who was born in Petah Tikva a few weeks after the Six-Day War in 1967, the filmmaker remembers the weeklong Entebbe crisis. He was nine years old then.
“I was like most Israeli kids at the time, outside most of the day and playing,” Dvir said. “But my brother and I, who was a year younger, decided that in solidarity with the hostages, we’re gonna ground ourselves, and so we did for that whole week.”
At the end of the week, he remembers his father waking him up and telling him, “The IDF did it.”
“We knew immediately what he meant, and of course we were thrilled for everybody, the released hostages, the military, but we’re also happy to be able to go outside again,” said Dvir.
While histories of the Entebbe affair omitted the actions of Michel Cojot, another Frenchman, pilot Michel Bacos, has often been recognized as a hero of the affair for having refused to be freed in the first release of the hostages. Most obituaries of Bacos, who died in 2019 at age 95, included this.
In fact, Dvir originally planned to make a documentary about Bacos. However, his research, including an interview with Bacos himself, led Dvir, a journalist and journalism professor at Penn State, to doubt Bacos’ version of the events.
But those former hostages kept mentioning another Michel, a genuine hero. “The story that I knew so well, Operation Thunderbolt, that I grew up with, now suddenly took on a whole new meaning,” Dvir said.
The film includes interviews with all four of Cojot’s children, including his son Olivier, who was with him in Entebbe, along with hostages and experts; Cojot himself appears in archival footage.
Dvir also composed the film’s music, which Penn State musicians perform on the soundtrack.
Dvir worked on the project for nearly a decade, even presenting it publicly as a work in progress as early as 2018.
“This project took a lot longer than most of my projects,” the director said.
A familiar voice narrates the film: Jason Alexander, the Jewish actor best known for “Seinfeld.” Dvir’s manager and business partner is a friend of Alexander’s, who agreed to narrate after viewing a rough cut.
“To Kill a Nazi” premiered at the Dances With Films festival in June. It has also screened at the Nashville Jewish Film Festival and the Croatian International Film Festival, and premiered in New York City on Oct. 16 at Regal Battery Park as part of the Chelsea Film Festival.
It’s also set to play the Austin Film Festival at the Boulder Jewish Film Festival, and the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival on Oct. 29; at the Galaxy Theatre in Austin, Texas on Oct. 31; and at the Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival on Nov. 12. Dvir hopes it will be picked up by a streaming service.
Some Jewish and Israeli filmmakers, especially since Oct. 7, have complained that they’ve had difficulty getting their films into festivals.
Dvir said that while “To Kill a Nazi” is “doing very, very well” and has been accepted to film festivals both Jewish and non-Jewish, “it’s been a little more of an effort than I’m used to putting in.”
“I don’t have any proof for it, but my sense is that there are some film festivals to which we submitted that may not have even really watched it or given it a fair shot,” said Dvir, who denounced the apparent boycotts of other films and artists. “At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. Because we can only do so many film festivals anyway. I’m very happy with what we got.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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