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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.
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Pete Hegseth compares media to the Pharisees, ancient Jewish sect derided by Christians
(JTA) — Almost exactly seven years after a presidential candidate stopped referring to “Pharisees” in response to allegations of antisemitism, another prominent political Pete has invoked the term.
And this time, it’s not just Jews but Christians who are finding the allusion offensive.
In 2019, it was Pete Buttigieg, then an Indiana mayor on the verge of declaring his Democratic presidential run, who compared an adversary to Pharisees, the sect of ancient Jews who are portrayed as hypocrites in the New Testament.
“There’s an awful lot about Pharisees in there,” Buttigieg told the Washington Post while speaking about then-Vice President Mike Pence, a Republican who frequently touted his Christian values. “And when you see someone, especially somebody who has such a dogmatic take on faith that they bring it into public life, being willing to attach themselves to this administration for the purposes of gaining power, it is alarmingly resonant with some New Testament themes, and not in a good way.”
Scholars of ancient Judaism and liberal Jewish leaders objected, saying that the term carried antisemitic implications even if not intended that way. Just days later, Buttigieg’s team announced he would no longer use the term, saying, “We appreciate the people who have reached out to educate us on this.”
Now, it’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who has derisively name-dropped the sect, understood to be precursors of modern rabbinic Judaism in their approach to Jewish practice.
Speaking to members of media on Thursday, Hegseth said he had thought of the Pharisees in church when his minister preached about a New Testament story describing Jesus entering a synagogue and healing someone sick.
“The Pharisees — the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time — they were there to witness, to write everything down, to report,” he said. “But … even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.”
An 1843 engraving of Jesus with the Pharisees by Friedrich August Ludy, after a painting by Johann Friedrich Overbeck. (Getty Images)
To Hegseth, the comparison was clear amid critical coverage of the U.S. war on Iran. “Our press is just like these Pharisees. Not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he said. “The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative.”
The invocation alarmed some Jews who heard it, according to posts on social media. They were responding with an awareness that in Christian tradition, the Pharisees have come to be thought of as “hypocrites, fools and a brood of vipers, full of extortion, greed, and iniquity,” as the Jewish scholar of early Jewish-Christian relations Amy-Jill Levine put it in a 2015 article arguing that Christian criticism of the Pharisees is antisemitic.
But this time, the comparison triggered a sharper outcry among some Christians and conservatives, because it likened Donald Trump and the U.S. military to Jesus at a time when the president has roiled some of his Christian base by posting an AI image of him as a Jesus- or God-like figure. (He said the image was depicting him as a doctor rather than Jesus, then deleted the picture.)
“Hegseth and Trump need to leave the religious jargon out of this,” wrote Peter Laffin, a senior editor at the conservative Washington Examiner, on X. “It is grotesque to compare the press to Pharisees, because it implies that they, Hegseth and Trump, are Jesus. “This is a hole they need to stop digging.”
The Jesus image closely followed Trump’s sparring this week with Pope Leo XIV. After the pope criticized the Iran war, Trump lambasted him on Truth Social, saying he should “get his act together” and implying that Trump played a role in his appointment. The pope rejected Trump’s criticism, adding fuel to a feud that has captivated Catholics around the world and even reshaped elements of Italian politics.
Soon after Hegseth’s speech, Pope Leo XIV tweeted again: “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”
Hegseth’s comments come as the Trump administration has injected overtly Christian ideas, references and practices into government activities. They were not his only comments citing scripture to draw criticism this week. He has also been mocked for quoting a biblical verse — Ezekiel 25:17 — using not the text found in Jewish or Christian texts but the one used by a character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” to justify violence.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish groups urge Trump to prioritize Americans held in Iran during ceasefire talks
(JTA) — The American Jewish Committee is calling on President Donald Trump to make the return of Americans in Iranian custody an “urgent national priority,” as his administration works to preserve a fragile ceasefire with Iran.
“The United States must be unequivocal: the wrongful detention or hostage-taking of Americans will not be accepted or sidelined,” the ADJ said in a statement issued jointly with other North American groups. “Our adversaries must recognize that harming Americans has lasting consequences, and Americans must be assured that their government will pursue their return with unwavering resolve.”
Along with the AJC, the call came from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and United Against Nuclear Iran. The co-founders of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum U.S., the American branch of the group that advocated for the Israeli hostages in Gaza, also signed on.
The groups celebrated the Trump administration’s record of negotiating hostage releases, writing that it had “already demonstrated an extraordinary record in recovering Americans from hostile regions, securing the release of over 70 Americans since January 2025, including every last hostage held in Gaza, living or deceased.”
The groups wrote, “The ability of the U.S. to lead in the recovery of not just Americans held in Gaza, but to secure the release of all hostages taken by Hamas showcases that the time to act decisively is now.”
Among those in captivity is Robert Levinson, a Jewish retired FBI special agent who went missing in Iran in 2007 during a business trip. Levinson’s family announced that he had died in Iranian custody in 2020.
“President Trump has brought more than 70 Americans home since January 2025,” Levinson’s family said in a statement. “We urge him to make Bob and every American held in Iran a priority in these talks — and to demand that the men responsible for our father’s abduction finally account for what they did. After 19 years, please help our family get the truth we need to move forward, and give our heroic father the justice he so rightfully deserves.”
The statements came as Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, a condition that Iran has said was essential for any longer-term peace deal with the United States and Israel.
On Friday, Trump told Axios that he expected a permanent deal with Iran to be reached “in the next day or two,” and negotiators for the two countries are expected to meet over the coming days.
The potential deal, which has largely focused on suspending Iran’s nuclear activity, is not expected to include any provisions about the release of American hostages, which are often handled through separate negotiations. In 2023, former President Joe Biden negotiated the release of five American prisoners in Iran in exchange for releasing $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets.
There are signs that the United States is interested in securing the release of Americans in Iran. In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Iran as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention,” writing in a release at the time that “for decades, Iran has continued to cruelly detain innocent Americans, as well as citizens of other nations, to use as political leverage against other states.”
While it is unclear exactly how many American hostages are currently in Iranian captivity, United Against Nuclear Iran currently maintains a list of 13 individuals.
“The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran, steps that could end this designation and associated actions,” Rubio said. “We encourage it to do so.”
The Jewish and pro-Israel group are calling on the Trump administration to “make the safety, security, and freedom of Americans held captive in Iran a top priority and ensure this is integrated into broader strategic discussions regarding Iran.”
They added, “We stand ready to work with the Administration to bring every American held in Iran home safely and swiftly. There is no time to waste—the moral and strategic imperative is clear.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Trump’s antisemitism envoy says US will bar World Cup attendees tied to antisemitism abroad
(JTA) — Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, said this week that the United States will bar individuals from attending the World Cup who are accused of fostering antisemitism in their home countries.
“The president and the secretary of state have made it perfectly clear that people who want to sow discord in this country are not welcome here,” Kaploun told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday. “People who want to bring their brand of hate to the United States with antisemitism are not welcome. Coming to this country is a privilege. It’s not a right.”
Kaploun’s comments on a potential ban were first reported by Euractiv, which said he told a European Jewish Association conference in Brussels that the United States was “holding countries accountable for ministers who are saying things, and they are not being allowed into the country.”
But Kaploun dismissed Euractiv’s report that the United States would institute a ban specifically on European politicians, instead saying that “everybody is judged as an individual.”
“If there is a minister that is promoting, you know, there are people who are promoting right-wing antisemitism or left-wing antisemitism,” Kaploun said. “Either way, coming to the United States is a privilege, not a right, and everybody is judged on making sure that they’re going to be coming to this country, that they’re going to not ferment hate.”
The FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in cities across the United States, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19, will be the organization’s largest event to date, featuring 48 national teams.
The countries that qualified include several that have battled openly — and in some cases literally — with Israel, such as Iran, Turkey and South Africa. (Israel, which has faced widespread calls to be banned from the Union of European Football Associations, will not participate, having lost in qualifying competition last year.)
Participating countries also include several where antisemitism is seen to be on the rise or where U.S. officials have sparred with leaders over issues related to Jewish safety — for example Belgium, where the U.S. ambassador recently challenged the health minister publicly over the arrest of mohels who performed Jewish circumcisions.
Kaploun, who was confirmed as antisemitism envoy in December, has taken aim at antisemitism in Europe in recent months, including in January when he split with the president of the Conference of European Rabbis over the root of antisemitism in the region.
Kaploun’s comments came as FIFA President Gianni Infantino confirmed at CNBC’s Invest in America Forum on Wednesday that Iran would participate in the World Cup, despite its ongoing war and fragile ceasefire with the United States and Israel.
“The Iranian team is coming for sure, yes,” Infantino said. “We hope that by then, of course, the situation will be a peaceful situation. As I said, that would definitely help. But Iran has to come. Of course, they represent their people. They have qualified. The players want to play.”
On Thursday, Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House FIFA World Cup task force, told Politico that the Trump administration did expect Iran to be in attendance.
“I’m not going to speak for the Iranian team, but I will say that the president, when I’ve talked to him, has invited the Iranian team here,” Giuliani said. “The president of FIFA made a statement, I think, yesterday, that they’re going to be coming. So we expect them here.”
Discussing who could be affected by potential bans, Kaploun pointed to those involved in the October decision by England’s Aston Villa Football Club to prohibit Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending a match, as well as individuals tied to the violence in Amsterdam last year that left several Maccabi Tel Aviv fans injured.
“Those people who are responsible for what occurred in Amsterdam at the soccer matches, or that are responsible for the lies that ended up resulting in tourists, people, not being allowed to come to a soccer match — those people who do those things will be held accountable and aren’t welcome to come to the United States of America,” Kaploun said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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