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Meet the real Jewish Republican of color being floated to replace George Santos, the fake one
(JTA) — Last Friday, as George Santos completed his second week in Congress, Mazi Melesa Pilip was contemplating the relief Shabbat would bring — and also the sting of the betrayal she felt by her fellow Long Island lawmaker.
Among the welter of falsehoods that Santos scattered throughout the byways of the Great Neck area in northern Long Island he and Pilip both represent — Santos in Congress, Pilip as a Nassau County legislator — Santos has pitched himself as a Jewish and Black Republican who overcame hardship to earn multiple degrees.
All lies, but as it happens those descriptors apply to Pilip, an Ethiopian Jew who won’t count out a run for Congress if Santos ever accedes to demands, including from fellow Republicans, to resign. (Santos says he intends to serve out his two-year term.)
“I’m not going to lie to you, people are definitely asking me to run,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview as she drove while shopping for Shabbat. “That doesn’t mean nothing.”
Pilip said her journey into American politics was propelled by her experience advocating for fellow Ethiopian immigrants in Israel — where she moved as a child through the Operation Solomon airlift and lived until marrying her American husband — and by her children’s experience with antisemitism in their Long Island schools.
“I am a strong believer, if you see something’s not working well for your community, or for yourself, you have to be involved,” she said. “You can’t just complain from outside.”
A Politico reporter, Olivia Beavers, reported on Twitter last week that Pilip was one of two Republicans the Nassau County Party is considering running should Santos step down. (The other is Jack Martins, a state senator; both he and Pilip ousted Democrats in a recent Republican sweep of Nassau County.)
Right now, Pilip said, she is focusing on serving her constituents through the Nassau County legislature. Any decision about replacing Santos, she said, is up to Joseph Cairo, the GOP chairman in Nassau County.
“The only person who can make a decision on who’s going to run will be the chairman,” Pilip said. “Time will show — it’s too early to say anything to be honest. I will continue to serve my residents and I love serving the people. I want to be a voice for the people, and anything I can do to help more people, I will definitely consider it.”
Cairo has not said yet who he would like to run to replace Santos, but two things are clear: He wants Santos to go, and he likes Pilip, a lot.
Cairo convened a press conference last week of leading Nassau County Republicans calling on Santos to step down because of the multiple lies he told while running and because he faces multiple criminal investigations. In unrelenting reporting since last month, reporters have detailed how Santos lied about his education, his job experience, his charitable giving and his family background.
“Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I’m calling for his immediate resignation,” Cairo said at the press conference.
Cairo had led an effort to diversify GOP candidates on the island, and a year ago, at Pilip’s swearing-in ceremony, he explained why: He was an Italian American whose parents favored Republican ideals but felt unwelcome in the GOP until they helped integrate it themselves, in New Jersey and then on Long Island. It had become his mission to bring more minority candidates into the fold, and he recruited several of them to run in the 2021 local elections.
Pedram Bal, a Persian Jew and the mayor of Great Neck, told Cairo he should look at Pilip, an Ethiopian-Jewish immigrant who was active in efforts to revitalize Great Neck, and who had been vice president of her synagogue, Kol Yisrael Achim. It was an easy sell, Cairo said, and it paid off.
“An Orthodox Jewish woman, a religious refugee from Ethiopia is elected as a Republican to the Nassau County legislature!” he marveled at the inauguration.
Of the many lies Santos has told about himself, the Nassau County Republicans at the press conference seemed especially offended by his claims of descent from Holocaust survivors.
“For him to make up this story, that his parents were Holocaust survivors is beyond the pale. It is simply tragic and outrageous, and disgusting,” said Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is the first Jew elected to the position. “He is a stain on the House of Representatives. He’s a stain on the Third Congressional District.”
Pilip calls for the prosecution of the alleged assailant in the violent attack on a Jewish New Yorker in 2021, at a press conference, in Mineola, N.Y., Jan. 29, 2023. (Office of Mazi Melesa Pilip)
Jewish Republicans have been at pains to call on Santos to quit: The Republican Jewish Coalition said he will not be welcome at its events. With much fanfare, the RJC had presented Santos and Max Miller, a freshman Republican from Ohio, as the next generation of Republican Jewish leaders at its annual conference in Las Vegas in November. Miller last week also called on Santos to resign, saying in a statement that Santos sought to “benefit from the murder of millions of Jewish people.”
When Pilip spoke at the press conference, she did not address his lies about his heritage. “I’m also paying for the lies told by Congressman George Santos,” she said. “People trusted him, people campaigned for him, including me, as a county legislator. At this point, the trust is no longer there. Therefore, he should resign.”
In her interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Pilip said she found the fact of Santos’s compulsive lying more offensive than the lies themselves, including about his heritage. She had put her reputation on the line campaigning for him last year.
“I trusted him and I told people to vote for him. I campaigned with him. And so when you do something like this, and then keep every day there’s something new coming about him,” she said. “It’s making you feel uncomfortable because people asking, you know, what’s, what’s going on, Mazi, what happened with this guy?”
Pilip campaigning for the legislative seat in 2021 had bonded with her constituents. Speaking to local media she described how much she enjoyed the hustle of campaigning.
“I was going from synagogue to synagogue, bringing out the vote,” she told Five Towns Jewish Home last year.
“Sometimes I would leave Friday night to go to a shul and I would sleep at someone’s house on Friday night because I’m shomer Shabbat and I couldn’t walk back home,” she told the local magazine for Orthodox Jews. “And then I would go to another synagogue the next day, on Shabbat, to spend time there and talk to people. Only when Shabbat was over would I go home. I did this for two months. It was intense but it was worth it. I met a lot of people. I would go to train stations and park events — any event, large or small, I was there.”
She became a local celebrity, giving birth to twin daughters — her sixth and seventh children — just weeks before the election.
Pilipl, 43, said in her interview with JTA that her involvement in politics was almost inevitable, after she had migrated to Israel on Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift, when she was 12.
“I have always been very active, even as a child in Israel,” advocating for the opportunities she saw that Israelis just a few years older than her were enjoying. Over her father’s objections, she enlisted in the paratroop division of the Israel Defense Forces (she says he is now proud of her service). While at university, she led the Ethiopian Student Union for two years. She has a degree in occupational therapy from the University of Haifa and a degree in diplomacy and security from Tel Aviv University.
“I was a voice of so many young kids who wanted equal opportunity and really my main focus was especially education, because I do believe through education, you can achieve a lot and you can integrate into the society,” she said. “So we were encouraging younger-generation [Ethiopian immigrants] my age to go to higher education. Because we came, you know, from nothing, and we came without any education.”
She met her husband, an American medical student at the Technion, while she was at the University of Haifa. They moved to the United States, where she became active speaking about Israel for Jewish federations and other Jewish groups. Her Instagram handle couples the U.S. and Israeli flags. Her husband, Adalbert, who was born in Ukraine, and whose mother is the child of Holocaust survivors, was especially offended by Santos’s Holocaust lies, Pilip said.
“Why would you use this painful history and create something like this and tell people that his grandparents survived just for the political benefit of it?” she said.
Pilip said her political interests were revived two years ago when her oldest son was preparing for bar mitzvah and he told her about antisemitic comments he endured from a classmate in the Great Neck Public Schools system. “He said, ‘Mom, you know, this child told me, I wish Hitler would kill you all,’” she recalled. She said that perhaps the child had been bullied, and was acting out against others, but it rattled her that he was resorting to antisemitism. “That a 12-year-old child would talk like this? It’s bad.”
So when Bal, the Great Neck mayor, approached her about running for elected office, she was game.
She campaigned on reviving Great Neck’s downtown, but also acting as a bridge in troubled times among the multiple minority communities in the area.
“Promoting understanding, education of cultures, religions and systemic hate has to be addressed from our young people on up,” she said in a candidate’s statement before her election.
Last Friday, however, she was looking forward to a little respite from the Santos follies.
“I’m going to pick up a couple of things from the grocery,” she said “I have to cook for my kids for Shabbat. Shabbat is starting early. So I think I’ll just spend time with my family, my kids. Just a very relaxing time.”
—
The post Meet the real Jewish Republican of color being floated to replace George Santos, the fake one appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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NY woman charged with attempting to send over $30,000 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(JTA) — A New York woman was arrested and charged with attempting to provide financial support to “Palestine Islamic Jihad,” a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Catherine Beth Washburn, 37, of Irondequoit, New York, allegedly sent more than $30,000 in cryptocurrency across 80 transactions to an individual who identified as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighter in Gaza and claimed to have engaged in attacks against Israel, according to the Justice Department.
She was charged with attempting to provide material support and resources, namely currency, to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
“As alleged in the complaint, this defendant, fueled by her self-described hate of Israel and Jewish people, went to great lengths to attempt to provide financial support to terrorist organizations that use violence to further their agendas, including the Palestine Islamic Jihad,” Michael DiGiacomo, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, said in a statement.
Despite Washburn’s alleged attempts to “support violent extremism,” he added, she was “stopped.”
In February and March 2026, the FBI obtained alleged communications between Washburn and the Islamic Jihad fighter in which she told him that she wished “every day were October 7th.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is an Iran-backed Palestinian terror group that attacked Israel alongside Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, during which its fighters abducted and killed Israeli citizens, including Dror Or, who was killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, and Oded Lifshitz, who was killed in captivity, and Gadi Mozes and Arbel Yehud, who were abducted by the group and released in January 2025.
“[I]f I lived in Gaza, I would fight alongside the resistance,” Washburn allegedly wrote, adding that she hated Jews “very much,” and that she wished Israel “would disappear.”
In one message, Washburn allegedly stated, “I feel excited every time I see news of the killing of an occupation soldier.”
Attempts to reach Washburn for comment by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency were unsuccessful.
According to the criminal complaint, Washburn is a leader of the Direct Action Movement for Palestinian Liberation, an extremist anti-Zionist group. The group, which operates in the United States and abroad, was launched last spring and engages in “direct action” to “protest, attack, destory [sic], sabotage and shut down Zionist and U.S infrastructures & business and all its affiliates,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In August 2025, an affiliate of the group, Jermaiah Yusuf Sawaqed, 25, of Everett, Massachusetts, was charged with vandalizing the Massachusetts State House with paint.
Washburn made an initial appearance Tuesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark W. Pedersen and was detained.
The post NY woman charged with attempting to send over $30,000 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad appeared first on The Forward.
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Columbia University pledged to revamp Mideast offerings. Students of the subject say fragmented courses fall short.
New president Jennifer Mnookin took the helm of Columbia University July 1, vowing to chart a steady course following a tumultuous Gaza War protest movement and Trump administration threats to pull funding that led the Ivy to make a controversial pledge for reforms.
The government also threatened a takeover of the department called Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department (MESAAS), which has long been associated with the Palestinian cause and known as a hub for scholarship critical of Israel.
Columbia’s July 2025 agreement, issued in response to allegations that the protests amounted to discrimination against Jews on campus, pledged to “conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting with the Middle East” to ensure offerings are “comprehensive and balanced.”
Nearly a year later, the department has been left untouched, according to its chair, Gil Hochberg.
“No requests, suggestions, recommendations, changes were made or enforced by the university on MESAAS as a department. Our academic autonomy has been respectfully preserved,” she said in an interview with the Forward. “The department itself has not been directly or indirectly affected.”
Columbia has made other moves to offer more courses that cover Israel. But undergraduates who study the region say that fragmentation makes pursuing a major challenging.
Orpaz Zamir, a Middle East Studies major at Columbia who hopes to pursue a career in Mideast policy, said courses focused on the conflict are limited. “If you want to study about Israel and Palestine, there are only two classes you can take,” referring to a sociology course taught by Professor Yinon Cohen and the course taught by Massad. He took both.
Massad, the only professor currently teaching about the conflict in MESAAS, has been the department’s chief lightning rod. His article a day after the Oct. 7 attacks, describing the Israeli victims as “colonists” and videos of the attacks as “awesome,” sparked a petition with 70,000 signatures to remove him from Columbia. Massad, who is tenured, has been teaching the course Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies for years. Among his students was Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former Columbia Gaza encampment leader who last week defeated a longtime New York congressman on an anti-Israel platform and drew criticism for her refusal to condemn the Oct. 7 attacks. As an undergrad, she called Massad her favorite professor.
In Spring 2024, a visiting professor, Mohamad Abdou, was fired amid the Congressional hearings on campus antisemitism because of a social media post he made shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks that read: “I’m with the muqawamah [the resistance] be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.”
Activist faculty made headlines but also spoke to a broader reality, as identified by an internal Columbia University antisemitism task force that found in its December 2025 report that “Columbia lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy, and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.”
The same report concluded: “Many Jewish and Israeli students reported that if they want to study the Middle East at Columbia, there currently are not enough options that don’t treat Zionism and Israel as fundamentally illegitimate.”
Exam questions
Students interviewed by the Forward describe experiences consistent with those findings. Zamir said he found Cohen’s course on Israel more balanced than Massad’s, though concluded the assigned readings disproportionately favored the Palestinian perspectives.
“To the Palestinian side, he would give entire chapters and long readings, and then for the pro-Israel side it would be mostly a few pages of an article,” said Zamir. “There’s one book that they did give to us that was a bit more pro-Israeli, but it was pro-Israeli in the bad sense, like it justified ethnic cleansing. It’s not the kind of thing that I would support.”
In Massad’s course, Zamir saw discussions of the conflict reflect a particular ideological viewpoint.
He recalled Massad questioning evidence of Hamas sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attacks and disputing claims that Hamas intentionally targets civilians. Zamir also found the questions on exams to be problematic. On one exam, Zamir said, two out of three questions had to do with how Zionism collaborated with the Nazis. On the final exam, one of three questions asked students whether Israel had the right to exist.
“Because he didn’t give any reason in class for why Israel should exist, it’s very hard to answer that question with anything other than ‘no,’” Zamir said. He said he drew on arguments he had learned outside the course to argue that Israel did have that right — and received full credit for the answer.
Zamir noted that despite their ideological differences, Massad made an effort to make him feel welcomed as the only Israeli in the class, even when fellow students didn’t.
Other students interested in the subject described similar difficulties finding courses they viewed as balanced.
“I was looking up every professor and looking pretty scrutinizingly through the description of every class,” said Zev Huneycutt, a rising senior majoring in Middle East studies, economics and political science.
“In the Middle East studies department, when I would look them up, and they’d have leveled this kind of crazy criticism of Israel, and it’s not stuff like, ‘I have some issues with current Israeli government policies,’ it’s stuff that goes a little farther than that. It’s delegitimizing, and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, I’m not taking that professor then.’”
In February, as part of the agreement with the federal government, Columbia published an internal review committee’s recommendations and commitments from several academic departments to enhance Middle East-focused offerings — almost all of which are set to occur outside the MESAAS department.
Indeed, the first recommendation from the review committee reads: “Expand coursework on the Middle East … by developing offerings that complement — and are clearly differentiated from — courses offered by MESAAS.”
Hochberg concludes that this is because MESAAS is already fulfilling its mandate. She noted that the department was “rigorously reviewed” both internally and externally in 2024 during the standard review process that takes place for every department at Columbia every eight years.
“It would be very strange to have another, and the university would never do that,” she said, adding that the review done in 2024 generated a file of 20 pages of recommendations detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the department. According to Hochberg, none of the recommendations made in internal and external reviews had to do with how Israel is taught at MESAAS.
Hochberg, who was born in Israel and identifies as an anti-Zionist, has previously taught courses on Israeli culture. Serving as chair of MESAAS for the past six years, she said, administrative responsibilities have required her to step back from teaching those courses, contributing to what she acknowledges as a gap in the department’s offerings on Israel.
She contends much of the criticism of an anti-Israel bias within MESAAS has been overblown. “It’s a very vigorous department,” she said. “The picture of it as being like a propaganda machine, it’s just not fair.”
Arab Studies search
Though Columbia has left MESAAS largely untouched, it has made additions to other departments and institutes, including bringing on a visiting professor in the economics department to teach about the Middle East, and arranging a visiting appointment in the History Department to teach the history of modern Israel. Its School of International and Public Affairs has appointed a visiting professor, jointly with Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, to teach on the Jewish world and Middle East policy with courses beginning this fall.
The university also plans to hire a new Edward Said Professor in Modern Arab Studies and Literature, a tenured position that was vacated last August by Rashid Khalidi, a leading scholar of Palestinian history. Khalidi cited the university’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism as part of its agreement with the federal government — which equates denying Jews their right to self-determination in Israel with antisemitism — as his reason for resigning.
One potential candidate, Max Weiss, was active in Princeton’s pro-Palestinian movement, serving as a spokesperson when faculty occupied Princeton’s Clio Hall in April 2024 and 13 people were arrested. Another, Rosie Bsheer, was removed from her leadership post at Harvard after she organized a panel that former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers described as “very likely” antisemitic under the IHRA definition.
The university also plans to launch a new undergraduate major in Global Affairs and Public Policy, which it says will expand Middle East course offerings. But the proposal has drawn criticism. In a June 15 statement, the Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate, a body that sets campus policy, questioned “the role of the Global Affairs and Public Policy major in regard to the federal resolution agreement’s commitment to offer politically prescribed curricula on the Middle East.”
To help expose students to a range of analyses of the Middle East, the internal review committee encouraged cross-listing among the Jewish studies institute, MESAAS and the proposed new program.
But this upcoming school year, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is offering several courses that pertain to the Middle East, including a course on the history of modern Israel and a course on Jews living in North Africa, that are not cross-listed with MESAAS. (The Institute’s director declined to speak with the Forward, saying that she does not discuss Columbia in the media.)
The only Israel-focused course that MESAAS will cross-list for the upcoming year is the sociology course taught by Cohen.
According to Hochberg, “There are absolutely no political barriers to including courses offered by Jewish and Israel studies in the department, and there never have been.”
She said, “I don’t think it’s a hostile relationship between MESAAS and IIJS. There’s just no substantial relationship. But we do cross-list some courses.”
For Zamir, Columbia’s new reforms are unlikely to address what he views as the underlying problem.
“Adding some classes in the Israel Institute won’t change things, because no one will take a class in the Israel Institute unless they are pro-Israeli to begin with,” he said. “If it’s in the Middle East department, it’s like ‘okay, well, it sounds neutral,’ even though it’s definitely not.”
Lishi Baker, who graduated this spring with a major in history and a specialization in the Middle East, said he largely built his Middle East studies education outside the MESAAS department. He sees the university’s efforts to expand Middle East offerings in other departments as a welcome development.
“A lot of people do what I did, which is study the Middle East through other departments,” Baker said.
He pieced together courses from the History Department, political science, policy school and Jewish studies, ultimately earning a minor in Jewish studies because many of the courses he took related to Israel did not count toward his major.
“I think now, the best place to study the Middle East at Columbia is everywhere but the Middle East Studies Department,” said Baker.
The post Columbia University pledged to revamp Mideast offerings. Students of the subject say fragmented courses fall short. appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: Literature scholar Nathan Cohen speaks about ‘shund’ literature
נתן כּהן, דער אָנגעזעענער פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור בײַם בר־אילן אוניווערסיטעט, האָט לעצטנס געהאַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש אין מינכן, דײַטשלאַנד, וועגן דער ייִדישער מאַסן־ליטעראַטור (דער עיקר, שונד־ליטעראַטור) צווישן 1860 און 1914.
דער נאָמען פֿונעם רעפֿעראַט, „ביכער פֿאַר אַלע“, איז געווען אַ רמז אויפֿן פֿאַרלאַג פֿונעם זעלבן נאָמען, וואָס זײַן שליחות איז געווען צו מאַכן די וועלטלעכע ייִדישע ליטעראַטור מער צוטריטלעך און וואָלוועלער פֿאַר די אָרעמע ייִדישע מאַסן.
די לעקציע, וואָס כּהן האָט געהאַלטן דעם 17טן יוני אינעם לודוויג־מאַקסימיליאַנס־אוניווערסיטעט, איז געווען טייל פֿון אַ יערלעכער טראַדיציע אין מינכן, אײַנגעפֿירט אין 2011 — דעם שלום־עליכם־רעפֿעראַט אין אָנדענק פֿון עוויטאַ וויעצקי, ז״ל. אַרום זיבעציק מענטשן זענען געקומען הערן דעם רעפֿעראַט, און נאָך אַ פֿופֿציק האָבן זיך צוגעהערט דורך דער אינטערנעץ. די אונטערנעמונג איז געשטיצט געוואָרן דורכן קולטור־צענטער פֿון דער מינכנער קהילה און דורך דער קושנער־פֿונדאַציע.
מיט אַ טאָג פֿריִער האָט כּהן געגעבן אַן אַרײַנפֿיר צו דער טעמע פֿאַר אַ גרופּע אָרטיקע ייִדיש־סטודענטן. ווי מע האָט געהערט פֿון די אָפּרופֿן נאָכן קלאַס, האָט נישט נאָר דער תּוכן, נאָר אויך כּהנס אופֿן רעדן גופֿא פֿאַרכאַפּט די תּלמידים. בײַ עטלעכע סטודענטן איז דאָס געווען צום ערשטן מאָל וואָס זיי הערן אַ גאַנצענע לעקציע אויף ייִדיש, און דערצו נאָך – פֿון אַן אומבאַקאַנטן לערער.
אינעם רעפֿעראַט גופֿא דעם צווייטן טאָג האָט כּהן אָנגעהויבן מיט אַ היסטאָרישן אַרײַנפֿיר, דערקלערנדיק ווי אַזוי און ווען עס האָט זיך אָנגעהויבן פֿאַרשפּרייטן די ייִדיש־וועלטלעכע ליטעראַטור און וואָסער ראָלע האָט אין דעם געשפּילט די ייִדישע פּרעסע, אָנהייבנדיק מיטן אַמאָליקן ייִדישן וואָכנבלאַט „קול מבֿשׂר“.
אין צוואַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט האָבן זיך די ייִדישע צײַטונגען גענומען פֿאַרשפּרייטן אַלץ מער און מער. אין וואַרשע אין 1906 האָט מען אַרויסגעגעבן אַ סך מער ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע צײַטשריפֿטן ווי העברעיִשע אָדער פּויליש־ייִדישע. האָבן די ייִדישע צײַטונגען געמוזט אויסהאַלטן אַ שטאַרקע קאָנקורענץ, און איין מיטל אין קאַמף איז געווען צו דרוקן די ראָמאַנען אין המשכים (אָדער, ווי מע פֿלעגט עס רופֿן אויפֿן דײַטשמערישן שטייגער – „אין פֿאָרזעצונגען“). אַ בולטער בײַשפּיל פֿון אַזאַ „ראָמאַנען“־קאָנקורענץ געפֿינט מען אין די צוויי וואַרשעווער טאָגצײַטונגען, „הײַנט“ און „מאָמענט“.
די לעקציע האָט כּהן אילוסטרירט מיט אָן אַ שיעור בילדער, ניט נאָר פֿון די צײַטונגען, נאָר דער עיקר אויך פֿון די שיינע שער־בלעטלעך פֿון די אַרומגערעדטע ראָמאַנען; צווישן זיי — ניט ווייניק ווערק פֿון די ייִדישע „שונד“־מחברים אײַזיק־מאיר דיק און שמר. אָט נעמט למשל אַזאַ טיטל: „די בלינדע יתומה, אָדער צווישן טיגערן“ פֿון שמרן, געדרוקט אין 1892.
גרויס הנאה האָט דער עולם געהאַט קוקנדיק אויף ייִדישע באַאַרבעטונגען פֿון אַזעלכע באַקאַנטע ווערק ווי „שערלאָק האָלמס“, „ראָבינזאָן קרוזאָ“ און „מאַקס און מאָריץ“ — אַן אילוסטרירטע דײַטש־שפּראַכיקע דערציילונג פֿון 1865. כּהן האָט זיך באַזונדער אָפּגעשטעלט אויף די דעמאָלטיקע נאָרמעס פֿון איבערזעצן, אויף דער נטיה צו פֿאַרייִדישן פֿרעמדשפּראַכיקע ווערק: אָט הייסט למשל ראָבינזאַן קרוזאָס געפֿונענער חבֿר ניט „פֿרײַטיק“ ווי אין אַנדערע לשונות, נאָר דווקא „שבת“.
מיט פֿילצאָליקע קאָמישע בײַשפּילן האָט כּהן געפֿירט דעם עולם דורך דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, און בולט אָנגעוויזן ווי אַזוי זי האָט אַלע מאָל געזוכט אַ מיטל־ליניע צווישן די אַמביציעס און פֿאָדערונגען פֿון דער הויכער ליטעראַטור מיטן געוואַלדיקן נאָכפֿרעג בײַ די מאַסן נאָך אַ מער „צוטריטלעכער“ ליטעראַטור.
כּהן האָט אַזוי שיין און דראַמאַטיש באַשריבן די שונדראָמאַנען מיט זייערע סענסאַציאָנעלע קעפּלעך, אַז דער עולם איז שוין, דאַכט זיך, גרייט געווען צו קויפֿן און צו לייענען די ביכער. אַ שאָד וואָס קיין מוכר־ספֿרים איז דאָרטן ניט געווען!
דערצו האָבן אַ סך צוהערערס זיך געפֿרייט אַז זיי קענען הערן אַ לאַנגע לעקציע אויף ייִדיש. עטלעכע האָבן זיך אַפֿילו נאָכגעפֿרעגט וועגן ייִדיש־קורסן – וואָס דאָס איז אפֿשר די שענסטע פּעולה פֿון כּהנס רעפֿעראַט.
כאָטש מע האָט אין אָנהייב 20סטן יאָרהונדערט אָפֿט געהאַלטן ייִדיש פֿאַר אַ „זשאַרגאָן“ קען מען זאָגן אַז טיילווײַז „זשאַרגאָניזירט“ מען ייִדיש ביז הײַנט צו טאָג, ווײַל ס’רובֿ פֿונעם עולם אַסאָציִיִרט ייִדיש ראשית־כּל מיט מוזיק (און געוויינטלעך בלויז מיט איין געוויסן טיפּ מוזיק – קלעזמער) אָדער וויצן. מיט זײַן רעפֿעראַט האָט כּהן דערוויזן דעם היפּוך — אַז ייִדיש טויג יאָ פֿאַר אַן אַקאַדעמישער בינע, און אַז אַפֿילו וועגן אַזאַ „נידעריקער“ טעמע ווי שונד, קען אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר האַלטן אַן ערשטקלאַסיקע לעקציע.
כּדי צו הערן דעם גאַנצן רעפֿעראַט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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