Uncategorized
Jewish orphans evacuated from Odessa to Berlin at Ukraine war’s start are headed home again
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) – A year after Rabbi Mendy Wolff spirited 120 children and staff away from the Mishpacha Orphanage in this war-torn country to the safety of Berlin, he is preparing to bring them home.
That’s not because the war is over — far from it. One year after Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, fighting grinds on and much of Ukraine has been plunged into austerity conditions.
Instead, the children of Mishpacha are headed back to Odessa because of the high cost of keeping them fed, housed and educated in Germany. Chaya Wolff, Mendy’s mother and the wife of Odessa’s chief rabbi, Avraham Wolff, said the price tag was 750,000 euros — close to $800,000 — a month. They’ll join other Ukrainians who have returned to their homeland as it became clear that the war would not end quickly.
“We could have bought seven buildings for the [Jewish] community in Odessa with that money,” she said from Odessa, where she stayed along with her husband after the Russian invasion to care for remaining Jews in the city, where the Wolff family operates Chabad of Odessa. “But now the money is finished and it’s time to bring our children home.”
Mendy Wolff said that when he first headed to Berlin several days after Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, he expected to return home in a matter of days. He had become the orphanage’s director overnight, when his parents tasked him with getting the children out of Ukraine. He and his wife, Mushky, had instructed their charges to pack two of each item of clothing.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier talks with refugee children from the Jewish community in Odessa at a Chabad center in Berlin two days after their arrival as refugees, March 7, 2022. (Clemens Bilan – Pool/Getty Images)
“As I was packing, I remember spotting my Megillat Esther on the shelf and thinking I won’t be needing that because Purim is two weeks from now and we’ll be back by then,” Wolff told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to the biblical book traditionally read on Purim.
The journey to Berlin took 53 hours and traversed five international borders, but Wolff and his wife tried to make the atmosphere as fun as possible for the children.
“We sang songs all the way and even though most of the children knew what was happening, we made it feel like summer camp — only in the winter,” Wolff said.
Getting the children out of Ukraine meant pulling strings of all kinds, since most did not have passports or even original birth certificates. Most of the children in the orphanage have parents who are unable to care for them; Wolff got the parents’ permission to take the children out of the country, a challenging task in the chaos after the invasion. “That is why we didn’t escape on the first day of the war,” he told JTA from Berlin at the time.
For 40 children for whom no living relatives could be found, Rabbi Avraham Wolff and his wife, Chaya, signed on as legal guardians. The Chabad emissaries in Berlin managed to secure VIP status for the young refugees to bring them across EU borders as personal guests of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who greeted them on their arrival in the German capital.
The Wolff family operates Chabad of Odessa. Rabbi Avraham and Chaya Wolff are sitting. Rabbi Mendy Wolff, who has overseen the children relocated from the group’s orphange to Berlin, is at the center in the back row. (Courtesy Chabad Odessa)
The children and orphanage staff were joined by other Odessians: university students, single mothers and their own offspring. Their flight and warm welcome in Berlin captured international headlines.
“Everyone knew there was an orphanage coming,” Mendy Wolff told JTA in Berlin shortly after the group’s arrival. “It was an unbelievable hug. It made us feel good in our hearts.”
But even then, the high cost of caring for the children in Berlin was weighing on the volunteers who leapt to help them. “We’ve received an outpouring of support from the community and beyond, lots of clothes and other supplies, but what we really need now are financial donations — only the food for all the children costs about 5,000 euros every day,” one told the Associated Press at the time.
Over the course of the next 11 months, the Hotel Müggelsee, on the banks of Berlin’s largest lake of the same name, would become home to some 300 Jewish refugees. In that time, the group celebrated not just Purim but a full year of Jewish holidays, as well as the gamut of Jewish lifecycle events, from bar mitzvahs to births and brisses. The group recently celebrated the first birthday of the youngest child to make the trek from Odessa, Tuvia, who was just 5 weeks old when he arrived in Berlin.
Jewish children from Odessa in war-torn Ukraine celebrate Purim 2022 with members of the Chabad Berlin Jewish community, March 17, 2022. (Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
For Wolff, the hardest part was grappling with the unknown. “It was very similar to what people experienced at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. You don’t know who it will infect or how many people will die or how long you’ll need to live like this.”
Like many others, Wolff was certain that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army would crush Ukraine in a matter of days. “With each passing day we saw that the Ukrainians were far more resilient than we had given them credit for and that the Russians weren’t as much as superheroes as we thought.”
The irony that Germany, and not Israel, became the host country for Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe is not lost on the Wolffs. While Mendy is reluctant to express political opinions of any kind, his mother, Chaya, is more forthright, saying that Israel had refused them entry.
Mark Dovev, the regional director of Nativ, the Israeli government office that facilitates immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union, later told JTA that taking in a minor from another country is “tantamount to kidnapping.” Brushing off Dovev’s objections, Chaya Wolff said, “Just as Germany turned a blind eye, Israel could have also taken them in temporarily as refugees.”
The children and staff of Mishpacha Orphanage in Odessa pose outside the Hotel Mugglesee in Berlin, their home for nearly a year since fleeing war in Ukraine. (Courtesy Chabad Odessa)
Since German law bans homeschooling, the children were required to enroll in a local school as well as to learn German. German authorities allowed the student body to largely adhere to the Ukrainian curriculum, however, and they were taught by a handful of the women refugees who happened to be teachers. The hotel, which functioned as a dormitory, doubled as a branch of the local Chabad school — replete with classrooms and a schoolyard.
But keeping the refugees in Berlin came at a steep price, footed by various donors such as the International Fellowship for Christians and Jews as well as private donations. An online fundraiser netted $685,500 in small gifts from more than 5,000 donors — a significant tally, but far short of its $1 million goal. So it was mostly out of economic considerations, then, that the Wolffs decided to close up shop in Berlin and bring the refugees home later this month.
While some Ukrainians who fled the country say they have no intention of returning while the war rages, the Wolffs and their charges are hardly the first Ukrainians to make their way back home. Many of them have cited the high cost of life abroad, along with separation from family and guilt about abandoning their country, for coming back to a warzone. So many Ukrainians were returning last fall that the country’s leaders urged them to wait until this spring to return, lest they tax fragile infrastructure.
Ukrainians queue at the railway station in Przemysl, Poland, to depart for Ukraine, amid a reversal in migration patterns as the Ukraine war ground on, Dec. 20, 2022. (Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
According to Mendy Wolff, his group would be staying in Berlin were it not for budgetary concerns. Still, he said, there were many positive aspects about the decision to return home.
“Psychologically, it’s not easy being here. You’re not living like a human. It’s like living on borrowed time and in a refugee camp, albeit a luxury refugee camp,” he said. “I’m very excited to be in my own bed and my own blankets.”
For both mother and son, the responsibility of bringing the refugees back to a country that is still very much at war weighs heavily. Odessa is faring better than many other southern Ukrainian cities like Mykolaiv and Kherson to the east, which have suffered daily shelling. Still, air raid sirens sound multiple times a day and there is no electricity for 20+ hours. But as long as residents have access to bomb shelters and generators — including the kind made from car batteries that Avraham Wolff recently held a fundraiser to buy — Chaya Wolff describes it as “livable.”
“It’s not an easy decision and we hope it’s the right one,” Chaya Wolff said. “At the end of it all, we’re ‘believers, the children of believers,’” she added, quoting the Talmud.
Toby Axelrod contributed reporting from Berlin.
—
The post Jewish orphans evacuated from Odessa to Berlin at Ukraine war’s start are headed home again appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Columbia University Reaches Confidential Settlement in Antisemitism Lawsuit
Students walk on campus at Columbia University during the first day of the fall semester in New York City, US, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
Columbia University has settled a lawsuit in which Jewish students accused the institution of ignoring campus antisemitism even as incidents of anti-Jewish bigotry escalated in severity and anti-Israel students acted with impunity.
Announced last week by the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, the Jewish advocacy group which filed the complaint in partnership with Kasowitz LLP, the terms of the resolution remain strictly confidential, with the parties involved declining to disclose whether the university paid an exorbitant cash amount to avoid a trial to prevent further public embarrassment. What has been shared with the public disclosed Columbia’s agreeing to appoint an official who specializes in matters relevant to federal civil rights laws, offer educational programs on antisemitism, create new scholarships related to Israel, and “consider” adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
The definition is widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
“This settlement represents an important step toward ensuring that Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia can learn in an environment free from discrimination and hostility,” Oleg Ivanov, executive director of the Center for Legal Justice, said in a press release. “We thank our attorneys for their dedication, and we are hopeful that the commitments made in this agreement will lead to meaningful and systemic change for Jewish students on campus.”
Marc Kasowitz of Kasowitz LLP commended the university’s “commitment and approach to implementing effective long-term changes and meaningful actions to combat antisemitism” while calling on “other colleges and universities to do the right thing” and “follow Columbia’s lead.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the plaintiffs in the case accused Columbia University of violating their contract, to which it is bound upon receiving payment for their tuition, and contravening Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. They sought monetary damages as well as injunctive relief.
The complaint says that students chanted “F— the Jews,” “Death to Jews, “Jews will not defeat us,” and “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab” on campus grounds after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, allegedly violating the school’s code of conduct and never facing consequences.
Faculty engaged in similar behavior. On Oct. 8, 2023, professor Joseph Massad published in Electronic Intifada an essay cheering Hamas’s atrocities, which included slaughtering children and raping women, as “awesome” and describing men who paraglided into a music festival to kill young people as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
Three hundred faculty signed a letter proclaiming “unwavering solidarity” with Massad, and in the following days, Students for Justice in Palestine defended Hamas’s actions as “rooted in international law.” In response, former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik, opting not to address their rhetoric directly, issued a statement mentioning “violence that is affecting so many people” but not, the complaint noted, explicitly condemning Hamas, terrorism, and antisemitism. Nine days later, Shafik rejected an invitation to participate in a viewing of footage of the Oct. 7 attacks captured by CCTV cameras.
The complaint goes on to allege that after bullying Jewish students and rubbing their noses in the carnage Hamas wrought on their people, pro-Hamas students were still unsatisfied and resorted to violence. They beat up five Jewish students in Columbia’s Butler Library. Another attacked a Jewish students with a stick, lacerating his head and breaking his finger, after being asked to return missing persons posters she had stolen.
Following the incidents, pleas for help allegedly went unanswered and administrators told Jewish students they could not guarantee their safety while Students for Justice in Palestine held its demonstrations. The school’s powerlessness to prevent anti-Jewish violence was cited as the reason why Students Supporting Israel (SSI), a recognized school club, was denied permission to hold an event on self-defense. Events with “buzzwords” such as “Israel” and “Palestine” were forbidden, administrators allegedly said, but SJP continued to host events while no one explained the inconsistency.
Columbia University, which recently paid $200 million to terminate a federal investigation of antisemitism at the institution, settled another campus antisemitism lawsuit in June that was brought by a Jewish student at the School of Social Work who accused faculty of unrelenting antisemitic bullying and harassment.
According to court documents, Mackenzie “Macky” Forrest was abused by the faculty, one of whom callously denied her accommodations for sabbath observance and then held out the possibility of her attending class virtually during pro-Hamas protests which made the campus unsafe for Jewish students. Her Jewishness and requests for arrangements which would allow her to complete her assignments created what the Lawfare Project described as a “pretext” for targeting Forrest and conspiring to expel her from the program, a plan that involved fabricating stories with the aim of smearing her as insubordinate.
Spurious accusations were allegedly made by one professor, Andre Ivanoff, who, according to the suit, was the first to tell Forrest that her sabbath observance was a “problem.” Ivanoff implied that she had failed to meet standards of “behavioral performance” while administrators spread rumors that she had declined to take on key assignments, according to court documents. This snowballed into a threat: Forrest was allegedly told that she could either take an “F” in the field placement or drop out, the only action that would prevent sullying her transcript with her failing grade.
The terms of that settlement are also buried under a confidentiality agreement.
“We brought this lawsuit to hold Columbia accountable for what we alleged was a deeply troubling failure to protect a Jewish student from antisemitic discrimination and retaliation,” Lawfare Project litigation director Ziporah Reich, whose organization represented Forrest, said after the case was resolved. “When Jewish students report harassment and seek accommodations, their concerns must be taken seriously. The civil rights of Jewish students are simply not negotiable.”
Uncategorized
Iran Has One-Third of Its Missile Launchers Left, IDF Assesses
Smoke rises following an explosion, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 7, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
After less than two weeks of fighting, Iran has lost roughly two‑thirds of its ballistic missile launchers, according to a new Israeli military assessment, as Israeli and US strikes intensify across the country and target Tehran’s strategic missile capabilities.
On Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said a new battlefield assessment revealed that a sweeping campaign against Iran’s missile infrastructure has destroyed roughly two-thirds of its launchers, leaving only about one-third still operational, Hebrew media reported.
Working with the US military, Israeli officials said sustained airstrikes, coordinated by Israeli military intelligence, crippled Iran’s missile capacity — destroying about one-third of its launchers and damaging another third enough to render them unusable, sharply limiting Tehran’s ability to conduct large-scale operations.
Out of an estimated 500 mobile and stationary ballistic missile launchers previously in Iran’s arsenal, the Islamist regime is now believed to have about 160 operational launchers remaining.
According to IDF data, Iran still possesses roughly 1,500 ballistic missiles of various ranges.
However, Israel estimates that more than 80 percent of Iran’s launching capabilities aimed at Israeli territory have already been destroyed, with officials expecting the figure could rise to as high as 95 percent within days, dramatically reducing the scale of future attacks.
In an interview with Israeli news outlet N12 on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran could end “soon,” though he declined to provide a specific timetable.
“There’s almost nothing left [to attack Iran]. A little bit here and there … Any time I want it to end, it will end,” Trump said.
During a press conference, Trump also said the United States had inflicted unprecedented damage on Iran’s military and strategic infrastructure.
“We have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we’re not finished yet,” he said.
“We’re leaving certain things that if we take them out, or we could take them out by this afternoon, in fact, within an hour, they literally would never be able to build that country back again,” he continued.
While Trump has publicly suggested that the war has achieved most of its objectives and could end soon, senior Israeli and American officials say there is still no indication of when the conflict might end.
This week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the campaign would continue “without any time limit” until Israel achieves all of its war objectives.
“The Iranian leadership that survived is a bunch of cowards who prey on women, children, and the elderly in the streets, specializing in massacres and killing civilians — and they are already threatening to murder and slaughter anyone who protests,” the Israeli official said.
“We will continue to act relentlessly, striking day after day, target after target, to crush the regime and dismantle its strategic goals in Tehran and across Iran,” Katz added. “We will continue these efforts to give the Iranian people the opportunity to rise up and overthrow the regime. Ultimately, that outcome depends on them.”
As the war continues to escalate, US officials said Tuesday that American intelligence detected Iranian preparations to lay naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical and narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. Sources told Reuters on Wednesday that the Iranians have deployed about a dozen mines so far, although the exact number is unclear.
Trump told N12 that recent US strikes — during which 16 Iranian mine-laying boats were destroyed — disrupted Tehran’s plans to threaten the shipping route.
“The war is going great. We are well ahead of schedule. We have caused more damage than we thought possible, even within the original six-week period,” Trump said.
“They’re paying for 47 years of death and destruction that they caused,” he continued, referring to the time that Iran’s Islamist regime has been in power. “This is retribution. They’re not going to get away with it.”
Iran on Wednesday said the world should be ready for oil at $200 a barrel as its forces hit merchant ships. Oil prices skyrocketed earlier in the week to nearly $120 a barrel before settling back to around $90 due to fears about supply disruption.
Almost two weeks into the war, the Israeli Air Force has intensified strikes across Iran and expanded operations farther south into areas where US forces are also active, signaling a broadening campaign against Iranian targets.
In the latest boost for US forces, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said on Wednesday is country will host American refueling planes, surveillance, and satellite communications gear for Washington’s operations against Tehran. However, he added, the equipment is “defensive” and carries no munitions.
Despite the military gains, Israeli officials acknowledge there is still no certainty that the campaign will lead to the overthrow of Iran’s ruling regime.
While Israeli officials have declared their desire to overthrow the Iranian regime, Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he seeks regime change or would be content with destroying Iran’s military capabilities and apparatus for internal repression.
Uncategorized
New ADL Campus Antisemitism Report Card Shows Some Improvement on Addressing Hostile Climate
Protesters gather at the gates of Columbia University, in support of student protesters who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has released a new annual “Campus Antisemitism Report Card,” in which its researchers assigned grades to major US colleges and universities based on how the institutions responded to the issue in accordance with civil rights laws and their own professed values.
Released on Monday, the report rewarded some elite colleges previously accused of ignoring antisemitism with letter grades considerably above what they earned in past academic years. Most notably, no Ivy League institution merited an “F” this year, while Columbia University, Princeton University, and Yale University all improved on last year’s close to failing “D” grade by earning a “C.”
A “C” grade, a mark again given to Harvard University and Cornell University in this year’s report, indicates lingering areas of inertia in performance. Pomona College, Northwestern University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Chicago were assigned a “C” too, indicating that elite higher education across the country remains a problematic space for Jewish youth.
Meanwhile, four colleges, including Evergreen State College, Scripps College, California State University, Los Angeles, and The New School in New York City received an “F,” the only institutions in the cohort to fail the ADL’s assessment.
“The data confirms what we’ve said from the start: maintaining a safe campus climate is a matter of will,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Universities that have taken a comprehensive approach — reviewing policies, clarifying expectations, and strengthening enforcement — are seeing meaningful progress. Some of the strongest gains are coming from institutions that have engaged deeply with our recommendations and translated them into lasting institutional practice, rather than symbolic commitments.”
The 2025-2026 academic year has seen a continuation of the barrage of antisemitic incidents that led Jewish community advocates to describe the issue as a “problem,” with anti-Zionist activists continuing to disrupt events, harass Jewish students, and stage demonstrations related to how Israel conducts its foreign policy and manages its conflict with the Palestinians.
In October, for example, masked pro-Hamas activists breached an event held at Pomona College in California to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists raped, murdered, and abducted women, children, and men during their rampage across southern Israel.
Footage of the act circulated on social media showed the group attempting to raid the room while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas dogma. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they mounted on their own as campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance, according to video of the incident and witnesses who spoke to The Claremont Independent.
Following the incident, an anonymous group claimed credit for storming the event in a disturbing open letter.
“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” said the note, which the group released on social media, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”
In January, a sophomore and right-wing social media influencer at the University of Miami verbally attacked a Jewish student group, leading the school to defend free speech while saying that “lines can be crossed” in response.
“Christianity, which says love everyone, meanwhile your Bible says eating someone who is a non-Jew is like eating with an animal. That’s what the Talmud says,” Kaylee Mahony yelled at members of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) who had a table at a campus fair. She added, “They think that if you are not a Jew you are an animal. That’s the Talmud. That’s the Talmud.”
In December, an unidentified perpetrator twice vandalized the Chabad Jewish Center at Michigan State University (MSU) during the Hanukkah holiday. According to local reports, the vandal hurled rocks at and defaced the building’s entrance, shattering its glazing. Video footage of the suspect’s second trip to the Chabad center shows the vandal graffitiing the swastika, the emblem of Nazi Germany, next to which he spray-painted a message that said, “He’s back.”
That was not the first antisemitic incident to target a Jewish cultural center in the state of Michigan this academic year. In October, a man trespassed the grounds of the Jewish Resource Center, which serves University of Michigan students, and kicked its door while howling antisemitic statements.
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to survey results released in February by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism. Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
Higher education institutions have an added incentive to address antisemitism, as the reelection of US President Donald Trump brought to Washington, DC a chief executive who went on to fulfill his promise to tax the endowments of those that do not.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order which directed the federal government to employ “all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” Additionally, the order initiated a full review of the explosion of campus antisemitism on US colleges across the country after Oct. 7, 2023, a convulsive moment in American history to which the Biden administration struggled to respond during the final year and a half of its tenure.
“This failure is unacceptable,” Trump said. “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.