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No longer a ‘Real Housewife,’ Orthodox influencer Lizzy Savetsky turns to fighting antisemitism
(New York Jewish Week) — Lizzy Savetsky’s life has been turned upside down and inside out over the past eight months.
The 37-year-old social media influencer, who identifies as “a proud Orthodox Jewish woman,” became practically a household name this summer when she was announced as a cast member for the 14th season of “The Real Housewives of New York.” Having recently relocated from Texas to the Upper East Side, the mom of three kids (Stella, 10, Juliet, 8 and Ollie, 2) was thrust into the spotlight alongside six other New York City-based socialites, including fashion designer (and “Girls” guest star) Jenna Lyons and Israeli real estate agent Erin Lichy.
But then, in mid-November, after just weeks of filming, Savetsky left the show. At the time, she said it was due to antisemitism she experienced in online forums. In the aftermath of her departure, there were unsubstantiated reports that she clashed with other cast members, and that her husband had been heard using a racial slur.
In a recent interview with the New York Jewish Week, Savetsky declined to comment on those reports. Instead, she spoke about something she considers exceedingly more important: using the joy and light of Hanukkah — and, well, her social media reach of 225,000 Instagram followers — to fight antisemitism.
Though she’s no longer associated with the reality juggernaut, Savetsky has emerged as a famous Jewish New Yorker nonetheless. These days, she’s making public appearances to talk about community safety and antisemitism, and she even hosted a Hanukkah party at her home where she lit the menorah alongside Mayor Eric Adams.
This Festival of Lights, Savetsky is the face of the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces’ “Live the Miracle” media campaign. Each night of Hanukkah, a different high-profile Jew lights a candle alongside an Israeli soldier, part of a video campaign intended to stand up against antisemitism while supporting the IDF. Also featured in the videos are stand-up comedian Modi Rosenfeld, Israeli actor and anti-antisemitism ambassador Noa Tishby and rapper Kosha Dillz.
Savetsky and her family lit the candle on the first night of Hanukkah alongside Shahar, a female naval combat sergeant currently serving in the IDF. Savetsky called Shahar “an amazing role model for her daughters” who showed them “you’re never too young or too small to contribute amazing things to the Jewish people.”
“It was really one of the most special experiences that we’ve had as a family,” Savetksy said of meeting Shahar and lighting the candles with her. “From a biblical sense, Hanukkah comes after a very dark time and it’s about bringing light to the darkness. To be able to celebrate this, in this moment, is a profound experience, and to be able to do that with a soldier from the IDF is something that means so much to me and my family and to be able to share that with the world is a really big deal.”
The FIDF campaign is only the latest move by Savetsky to showcase her Jewish pride. Though she calls herself an “accidental activist” — the NYU grad who grew up in Fort Worth first began her fashion blog, “Excessories Expert,” in the 2010s, and her media accounts then were mostly dedicated to fashion and lifestyle content — she has become well known for talking about Jewish traditions and customs, promoting Zionism and her love for the State of Israel and, perhaps most urgently of late, calling on others to help fight the scourge of antisemitism.
“I just saw how necessary it was,” Savetsky said of her shift to calling on others to help fight antisemitism. “I want to do everything I can for my people because I want to ensure a future for my children and their children. So I really made a conscious decision to shift my platform to not only fighting antisemitism, but to also share and educate about Judaism because I think a lot of hate is born out of fear.”
“It’s a privilege to stand in solidarity with these influential Jewish figures who will not let darkness prevail,” said Steve Weil, the chief executive officer of Friends of the IDF. “These are people, who, in the face of social media and all sorts of attacks, are standing up for morality, for dignity, and for these young men and young women who are literally at the front line of humanity.”
“I have always been unapologetic about my support for Israel and calling myself a Zionist,” Savetsky told the New York Jewish Week. “I want to put a face to what that means — it is like a wife and a mother and somebody who’s loving and hard-working.”
And yet, her beliefs and outspokenness have drawn the ire of many, especially when the “Real Housewives” cast was announced. Her Instagram handle proclaiming her a “proud Zionist” drew broadsides from pro-Palestinian activists, while some Jews on social media also criticized her for not dressing modestly despite being part of a Modern Orthodox Jewish community.
Savetsky said she and her family received hateful messages and even death threats. Even her husband, plastic surgeon Ira Savetsky, received a letter mailed to his office calling him a “kike” and an “arrogant piece of sh–.”
“I expected to receive negativity. I know that, unfortunately, Israel is a very polarizing topic and I have always been unapologetic about my support for Israel,” she said. “But the amount of hate and the fact that it was coming from all directions — from the far right, from the far left, from so many different groups of people — and the viciousness of it just it really broke my heart.”
The vitriol became overwhelming, Savetsky said. “For the first time I found myself really fearing for my safety and questioning my decision to put myself in this public position,” she said.
Ultimately, after only weeks of filming, Savetsky insists she decided to leave the show because of the antisemitism she faced. “It was definitely not the path for me and for my family,” Savetsky told the New York Jewish Week. “I have no regrets about going through the process because if anything, it shined a light on just how much hate there is out there.”
“I would rather know and understand the reality of it so that I can use my efforts to fight it,” she added. “The fear that I felt from experiencing all the hate I’ve gotten in the past few months really just motivated me to double down and fight even harder.”
Days after her announcement, Page Six, citing “production insiders,” reported that there was more to the story surrounding Savetsky’s departure — including that Savetsky declined to match a non-Jewish cast member up with a Jewish man, and that her husband repeated anti-Black slurs to a producer.
Savetsky declined to comment on these allegations, nor have the rumors been confirmed by Bravo or a named member of the cast. The show is set to air sometime in 2023.
And while she may not be a “Real Housewife,” Savetsky plans to stay in the city. “New York is the center of the universe,” she joked, citing the large and diverse Jewish community as a huge reason why she wanted to raise her kids here. Living on the Upper East Side, Savetsky’s daughters attend a Modern Orthodox day school, and the family is a member of the newly created Altneu congregation, helmed by Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt and his wife Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt.
Despite leaving the show, Savetsky has no plans to be silent about antisemitism. Savetsky has gained more than 20,000 followers since the “Real Housewives” cast announcement, and the subsequent antisemitism she faced — as well as the rise in antisemitic incidents, in general — have only inspired her to be more outspoken about her Judaism and Zionism, she said.
“Everything has changed in the past few months — for me, personally, and I believe for the Jewish people and the world,” Savetsky said. “The world is waking up to the reality that antisemitism isn’t just this looming threat, but it’s real and it’s here and I think people are opening their eyes to that.”
She added: “I’ve never felt like my purpose was so clear as I do in this moment to be loud and proud and to stand up for my people.”
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The post No longer a ‘Real Housewife,’ Orthodox influencer Lizzy Savetsky turns to fighting antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel names a street after renowned Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever
The Israeli city of Netanya has renamed one of its streets Rechov Avrom Sutzkever (Abraham Sutzkever Street), after the renowned Yiddish poet and Vilna partisan.
The event on June 10 marked an important cultural moment, recognizing the legacy of a poet who devoted his life to Yiddish language and Jewish culture. During his lifetime, Sutzkever was celebrated not only for his poetry, but also for editing the storied Yiddish literary magazine Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain) for 46 years. His work remains a fixture in the field of Yiddish literature today.
Sutzkever was born in 1913 in the shtetl of Smorgon, in what is now Belarus. During World War I, his family moved to Siberia, where his father, Hertz Sutzkever, died. In 1921, his mother Rayne moved the family to Vilnius, where Sutzkever attended cheder.
Sutzkever survived the Vilna Ghetto. He was a leader of the “Paper Brigade” that rescued Jewish cultural treasures from the Nazis and later became the only Jewish witness called by the Soviets to testify at the Nuremberg Trials.
His poetry chronicled his childhood in Siberia, his life in the Vilna ghetto and his escape to join the Jewish partisans. In 1947 he settled in Palestine, later Israel.
In Israel, he continued to create, publish and preserve Yiddish culture for decades. Yet, despite his immense influence around the world, he remained less known in Israel because he chose to write and fight for the Yiddish language rather than switch to Hebrew.
This is the first time a street in Israel has been named after him. Even Tel Aviv never did so, despite the fact that Sutzkever lived there for many years and the city was once a hotbed of Yiddish cultural activity, due to the influx of Yiddish-speaking immigrants who settled there after the Holocaust.
The street-naming ceremony was attended by the Mayor of Netanya, Avi Slama; representatives of the Lithuanian Embassy; public figures, artists, and members of the family, including Sutzkever’s granddaughter, Hadas Kalderon.
In the past decade, Kalderon has been instrumental in keeping Abraham Sutzkever’s memory alive, most notably through two documentary films: Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?) in 2021, and Black Honey: The Life and Poetry of Avraham Sutzkever in 2018.
Kalderon told me that she was very moved by Netanya’s decision to name the street after her grandfather, in a garden overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. “It was not only a tribute to Sutzkever himself, but also a powerful moment of recognition for Yiddish language and culture within the State of Israel,” she said.
The post Israel names a street after renowned Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever appeared first on The Forward.
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At the dawn of the World Cup, the story of the Jews who helped bring soccer to America
When the North American FIFA World Cup starts in Mexico City on June 11, the story will largely be told through the familiar lenses of Lionel Messi, the geography of the 48 participants and three hosts, and — because 75% of the games will be played there — the continuing rise of soccer in the United States. But there is another, less familiar story woven through the tournament: the long, strange and often overlooked history of Jews in North American soccer.
Mostly that’s been in the United States where players and owners have included a larger proportion of Jews than in Canada and Mexico. By my count, no Jewish players have represented Mexico, and only two Jewish men have represented Canada at senior international level and one of them, Tomer Chencinski, only did so once, in a friendly game where Canada lost 2-0 to Belarus in Doha. (Daniel Haber played 5 international games in his career).
For whatever reason, whether more closely linked to Europe, denied entry to other sports, or just arbiters of excellent taste, Jewish Americans have been at the forefront of soccer in the United States for over a century. The first American to play for a major European team was Eddy Hamel for Ajax Amsterdam in 1922. Hamel was a New York-born winger who became a star for Ajax in Amsterdam during the 1920s. An injury forced his retirement in the 1930s and, after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he was deported and murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. His story remains one of the most tragic intersections of Jewish history and world football.
Jews also comprised the largest soccer crowd in America when 46,000 New Yorkers watched Hakoach Vienna play New York All Stars in 1926. That record stood for over 50 years but it also encouraged a number of members of the Hakoach team to emigrate to the US and start a New York team that was a crucial part of the American Soccer League of the era.
Later, in the 1970s, the National American Soccer League — the glitzy NASL — became a success thanks to the glamorous New York Cosmos. As head of Warner Communications, their CEO Steve Ross, born Rechnitz, was the person who brought Pele over and made the league the star-studded affair it became. After Herman Sarkowsky co-founded the Seattle Sounders, the continent was almost ready for football.
When the NASL faded and folded, soccer dwindled as a major sport in the United States. Alan Rothenberg saw an opportunity to revive the sport by hosting the 1994 World Cup and founding the MLS as a reset. As president of the U.S. Soccer Federation and the chief executive of the World Cup USA 1994 organizing committee, he made both of those happen and laid the foundations for the current shape of U.S. soccer.
The success of the MLS was not a foregone conclusion, though; indeed, it barely survived to the millennium. It was founded in 1993 but only started playing in 1996 — losing an estimated $350 million between its founding and 2004. The league initially turned to Don Garber, a former NFL executive, in August 1999 but even he couldn’t turn it around. By late 2001, it looked like the league would fold like its predecessors but it was able to secure new financing from owners Lamar Hunt, Philip Anschutz, and the Kraft family to take on more teams. Over the past 20 years, it has become robust, enjoying the general boom of all things soccer, riding the coattails of the English Premier League.
Without Robert Kraft and Anschutz, Major League Soccer might not exist today. During the league’s precarious early years, the two billionaire owners absorbed enormous losses to keep the fledgling competition alive. Kraft, the owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, was also a central figure in bringing the 2026 World Cup to North America. As chairman of the United Bid Committee, he played a crucial role in securing the tournament for the United States, Canada and Mexico.
If Kraft represents one side of the Jewish soccer story, Chuck Blazer represents another.
The larger-than-life American soccer executive helped expose corruption inside FIFA, serving as a key witness in the investigations that ultimately toppled some of the most powerful figures in world football. Yet Blazer was a product of the very system he later helped unravel. His spectacular rise and fall remains one of the strangest chapters in soccer history, a tale of luxury apartments, exotic pets and global corruption.
Unlike baseball, basketball or boxing, soccer never became known as a major arena of Jewish achievement in the United States. Perhaps that has been due to the historic lack of status for soccer in the country. Despite the excellence of Yael Averbuch West for the USWNT and a number of Jewish players for the USMNT including Jonathan Bornstein, Benny Feilhaber, Dan Calichman, DeAndre Yedlin, Kyle Beckerman and the maverick Yari Alnutt there have been no soccer equivalents of Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg.
The stalwart defender Jeff “Goose” Agoos came closest with 134 international appearances and six more for the U.S. soccer Olympic team. But playing with a mediocre USMNT, he enjoyed few legendary moments. In fact, arguably no professional moments outshone the bizarre story of his 1989 NCAA championship ring in his junior year, the season that he played in the Maccabiah. On Dec. 3 of that year, his Virginia Cavalier team (playing for future USMNT coach Bruce Arena) met the top ranked, undefeated Santa Clara team in a freezing cold stadium in Piscataway, N.J. The teams were still tied 1-1 after FOUR overtimes and, with no penalties on the books, they shared the spoils. It was the third time that two teams shared the championship and has never happened again.
This year’s USMNT squad does include the only Jewish player at this summer’s tournament — reserve goalkeeper Matt Turner. If, as coach Mauricio Pochettino plans, Turner exclusively warms the bench, he will take his place alongside many of America’s notable Jewish soccer figures who have furthered the game, even if not on the field.
The post At the dawn of the World Cup, the story of the Jews who helped bring soccer to America appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Remember the Liberty’ has become code for ‘Israel Is Evil’
The first tragedy of the U.S.S. Liberty attack is that it happened at all. The second is that Israel’s critics have weaponized it to spread hate.
When Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky stood on the House floor on June 8, the 59th anniversary of the attack, and called for a Congressional probe into the incident, he wasn’t seriously trying to bring the truth of some long-buried historical secret to light. Massie, who in 14 years never once brought up the U.S.S. Liberty on the House floor, was using the latest cudgel in the Israel-haters’ arsenal to level one last official blow at a country he loathes.
“I’ve got a call to action for everybody here,” said Massie, speaking of attack survivors who were in the audience, “Honor these individuals. Quit ignoring that they exist. Let’s have an investigation. It’s long overdue.”
Let’s put aside the fact that there have been numerous official investigations into what exactly happened on June 8, 1967, the second day of the Six Day War, when Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the Liberty off the Sinai Peninsula, killing 34 American service members.
These investigations concluded that the tragedy was a friendly-fire incident. The Israelis initially mistook the Liberty, an intelligence-gathering vessel, for an Egyptian warship. After the smoke cleared, they accepted responsibility, apologized and paid $12 million in compensation to the victims.
Of all the explanations, it’s perhaps the least satisfying but the most logical. During the Vietnam War, happening at the same time, an estimated 11% to 15% of casualties were from friendly fire.
Massie’s call for a new investigation would be more believable if he then didn’t go on to recite the alternative one-sided narrative of the incident long pushed by some survivors and now taken up with gusto by Israel haters Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and others.
To them the attack was deliberate: The Israelis ignored the large American flag the Liberty was flying and began shooting.
“It was intentional murder by the country of Israel,” said Massie on the House floor, “either as a false flag operation or because they simply didn’t want anybody observing what they were doing that day.”
What Massie and his fellow conspiracy theorists are alleging is a crime, but none of them has sufficiently proven a motive. Why would Israel attack the ship of its most important and powerful ally?
The false flag theory — the idea that Israel wanted to sink the Liberty, blame Egypt or the Soviet Union for it and draw America into the war — makes no sense.
The war was all but won by June 8. Moreover, as the historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren relates in Six Days of War, the Israelis actually stopped firing initially when they suspected the ship was American.
The Israelis sent helicopters to investigate, but heavy smoke obscured the ship. Meanwhile, as Israeli torpedo boats closed in, a U.S. Navy crewman, perhaps not hearing his commander’s orders, opened fire.
The Israelis, now convinced it was an enemy ship, unleashed torpedoes, killing 25 Americans.
Massie left all this out of his narrative. He quoted then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who said at the time, “the attack was, quite literally incomprehensible,” implying that a murky conspiracy underlay it all.
But he didn’t include the rest of what Rusk said: That what happened was “an act of military recklessness reflecting wanton disregard for human life.”
In other words, Rusk’s full quote doesn’t suggest intention, but gross carelessness, which is a far cry from premeditated murder. It was chaos, miscommunication, uncertainty, incompetence, fear — the fog of war.
But to Massie and others, there’s no need to establish a coherent motive for why Israel attacked its harmless friends, because in their minds that’s just who Israelis are.
If Massie wants another investigation, fine. But I find it hard to believe that any investigation that doesn’t find Israel guilty of murder in the first will ever satisfy him or the people for whom “Remember the Liberty” is shorthand for “Israel is evil.”
The post ‘Remember the Liberty’ has become code for ‘Israel Is Evil’ appeared first on The Forward.
