Uncategorized
Sarajevo Jews celebrate a second Purim. For centuries, they weren’t alone.
(JTA) — Starting tonight, many Jews around the world will celebrate Purim in the same ways: by reading the story of the heroic Queen Esther, dressing in festive costumes and drinking alcohol.
For many of the 900 or so Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it will be the first of two annual Purim celebrations.
Since 1820, locals have also observed the Purim de Saray (Saray being a root of the word Sarajevo) early in the Hebrew calendar month of Cheshvan, which usually falls in October or November of the Gregorian calendar.
In that year, the story goes, a local dervish was murdered, prompting the corrupt Ottoman pasha of Sarajevo, a high-ranking official, to kidnap 11 prominent Jews, including the community’s chief rabbi, a kabbalist named Moshe Danon. The pasha accused them of the murder of the dervish — who had converted from Judaism to Islam — and held them for ransom, demanding 50,000 groschen of silver from the Jewish community.
But the pasha, who was a transplant from elsewhere in the Ottoman empire, deeply offended the multiethnic populace of Sarajevo, who considered the Jewish community — then around one-fifth of the city’s entire population — an essential part of their home. So local Jews, Muslims and Christians rebelled together, storming the pasha’s palace and freeing the imprisoned community leaders.
Ever since, Bosnian Jews have celebrated that story by visiting the grave of the Sarajevan Jewish historian Zeki Effendi, who was the first to document it. Dozens also take part in a pilgrimage every summer to the grave of Rabbi Danon, who is buried in the south of Bosnia, not far from the Croatian border, where he died on his way to what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine.
For centuries, several other Jewish communities around the world observed their own versions of Purim based on stories of local resistance to antisemitism, inspired by Esther and her uncle Mordecai, who in the original holiday story save all of Persia’s Jews from execution in the 5th century BCE.
Here are the stories behind some of those traditions.
Ancona, Italy
An aerial view of Ancona in 2006. (Wikimedia Commons)
Jews settled in and around Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast in the 10th century, and by the 13th century they had established a flourishing community, which included figures such as the Jewish traveler Jacob of Ancona — who may have beaten Marco Polo to China — and famed poet Immanuel the Roman, who despite his title was born in a town just south of Ancona.
Though the city’s Jewish community was largely spared by the Holocaust, it has slowly declined over the years and is believed to have fewer than 100 members today. What it is not short on, however, are local Purim stories — the city is known for multiple celebrations that were established over the centuries.
The first, marked on the 21st of the Hebrew month of Tevet (usually in January) was established at the end of the 17th century and marks an earthquake that nearly destroyed the city.
“On the 21st of Teveth, Friday evening, of the year 5451 (1690), at 8 and a quarter, there was a powerful earthquake. The doors of the temple were immediately opened and in a few moments it was filled with men, women and children, still half-naked and barefoot, who came to pray to the Eternal in front of the Holy Ark. A true miracle then took place in the Temple: there was only one light, which remained lit until it was possible to provide for it,” wrote Venetian Rabbi Yosef Fiammetta in 1741, in his text “Or Boqer,” meaning “the light of the morning.”
Other Ancona Purims were established a half and three-quarters of a century later, respectively. The story for the first commemorates fires that nearly destroyed the local synagogue but miraculously did not, and the next tells of a pogrom that nearly destroyed the community as Napoleon marched through Italy during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Today, these stories have largely faded into memory. But a few centuries ago, Italy had a high concentration of communities that celebrated local Purims — including in Casale Monferrato, Ferrara, Florence, Livorno, Padua, Senigallia, Trieste, Urbino, Verona and Turin — some into the 20th century.
“It would be hoped that the local Purims are not forgotten or that they are restored in the communities that have not completely died out,” the late Italian Rabbi Yehuda Nello Pavoncello once wrote, according to the Turin Jewish Community, “so that the memory of the events reconnects us to the infinite links of the chain of the generations that have preceded us, who have suffered.”
North Africa
An illustration shows King Sebastian of Portugal being fatally wounded at a battle in Morocco in 1578. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
The extra Purim phenomenon was not confined to Europe.
In Tripoli, Libya, local Jews established the so-called Purim Barghul after the deposition of a local tyrant in the late 18th century. Ali Burghul, an Ottoman officer who was installed after the downfall of the Qaramanli dynasty, ruled the region brutally for two years, treating minorities particularly harshly. After factions of the Qaramanlis were reconciled, Burghul was driven out. Jews would go on to celebrate that day, the 29th of Tevet (usually in January).
(Centuries later, in 1970, dictator Muammar Gaddafi established his own holiday, the Day of Revenge, which celebrated the expulsion of Italian officials from Libya; some say it also celebrated the exodus of Jews since the formation of the state of Israel. Within a few years after Gaddafi’s decree, Libya’s Jewish community had dwindled to less than two dozen, effectively ending the nearly 3,000-year history of Jews there.)
In northern Morocco, Jews commemorated the defeat of a Portuguese king, Don Sebastian, who attempted to take over parts of the country but was defeated in a battle in August 1578. Jews had believed that Sebastian would have tried to convert them to Christianity if he had prevailed.
Today only around 2,000 Jews remain in Morocco, but some Moroccan communities marked the day into the 21st century.
Saragossa
A view of an 11th-century palace in Zaragoza, Spain. The Purim of Saragossa story is set in either Zaragoza or Syracuse, Italy. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Scholars still debate which city was the origin of the Purim of Saragossa story — it could have been Zaragoza in Spain or Syracuse in southern Sicily, which was often referred to in the medieval era as Siragusa. Both cities were part of the Spanish empire in 1492 and were depopulated of Jews following the Inquisition.
Either way, Sephardic descendants in places around the world, including Israel and the Turkish city of Izmir, observed their own Purim story by fasting on the 16th of the Hebrew month of Shevat — generally in February — and feasting on the 17th.
The story tells of an apostate named Marcus who slandered the Jewish community to a non-Jewish king, putting their status in jeopardy. But at the last minute, Marcus’ deception is revealed, and he is executed while the community is saved.
The story could have been entirely fabricated. According to Jewish historian Elliot Horowitz, the establishment of this second Purim story may have been a way for the descendants of Saragossan Jews, whether they are originally Spanish or Sicilian, to maintain a unique identity in the larger Sephardic diaspora.
“The Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean in the early modern period were often composed of émigré subcommunities, each of which was distinguished by the customs and liturgy of its place of origin,” he wrote in his 2006 book “Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence.” “The ‘Purim of Saragossa,’ the earliest manuscript evidence for which dates only from the mid-eighteenth century, may well have been ‘invented’ by former ‘Saragossans’ eager to maintain their distinct identity in the multicultural Sephardi Diaspora of the eastern Mediterranean.”
Regardless of its origins, the Megillah of Saragossa text continued to be published through at least the end of the 19th century. It was well known enough that an American Reform rabbi from New York would publish a stage play based off of it in the 1940s.
—
The post Sarajevo Jews celebrate a second Purim. For centuries, they weren’t alone. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Democrats to weigh resolution condemning AIPAC, fueling concerns about ‘undercurrent of antisemitism’
(JTA) — The Democratic National Committee is set to consider a resolution at a meeting next week that “condemns the growing influence” of AIPAC.
The resolution also condemns large-scale outside spending in elections generally but calls out only the pro-Israel lobby specifically, even as other lobbies are pouring similar sums into trying to influence election outcomes.
The meeting is being held during an election cycle in which rejecting AIPAC support has become a defining issue in Democratic races. It also comes amid concerns from some Jewish Democrats — including ones critical of AIPAC — that the group’s emergence as a bogeyman in American politics is inappropriate or even antisemitic.
“I do think there is an undercurrent of antisemitism in the degree to which AIPAC seems to be vilified,” Rep. Dan Goldman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month. Goldman has accepted an endorsement from AIPAC as he seeks a third term, but says he won’t take money from corporate PACs in this election.
The resolution, which is subject to amendments before it is voted on, specifically names AIPAC and its super PAC, United Democracy Project, as having been “one of the largest outside spenders in Democratic contests” in 2024. It also refers broadly to other “corporate money PACs” and sources of “dark money,” though it does not name any specific groups.
Committee member Allison Minnerly, who introduced the resolution, told the Intercept, a left-wing outlet, that formally distancing the Democratic party from AIPAC “could be one step toward” winning back voters who “might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict.” Minnerly also introduced a resolution last August calling for an arms embargo on Israel, which was defeated.
A recent NBC poll found that 57% of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel, compared to 13% who have a positive view of the country.
Meanwhile, a growing number of the party’s congressional candidates — and politicians thought to be seeking its 2028 presidential nomination — are swearing off AIPAC, and crossing its red line of supporting conditions on military aid to Israel.
The group has also spawned opposition online. Track AIPAC, the social media watchdog that posts politicians’ pro-Israel lobbying campaign donation numbers, has amassed 442,000 followers on X since 2024.
At town halls and candidate forums, politicians on the campaign trail are often being asked whether they would accept an endorsement or donations from the group.
Alana Zeitchik, an Israeli-American advocate and writer, said she understands that candidates might be asked about AIPAC in those types of settings, and said that she personally “would love to hear candidates” reject all special interest and corporate dollars. But when they hone in on AIPAC “on their own accord,” she said, she views it as “a political strategy to feed the beast, this hyper-obsession with AIPAC.”
The proposed DNC resolution voices concern over “massive outside spending” on candidates based on their foreign policy positions, pointing specifically to AIPAC’s $14 million spend in a single Illinois primary. The threat of those expenditures “raises concerns about undue influence over democratic debate and policymaking,” the resolution reads, and in “shaping Democratic party positions.”
The resolution condemns “the growing influence of dark money and corporate-backed independent expenditures in Democratic elections.”
AIPAC has remained a major spender in this year’s midterm elections. The group, which is operating with the aim of electing a majority pro-Israel Congress, recently shelled out around $22 million in support of four Illinois candidates, three of whom it backed through shell PACs under different names. Two of its four preferred candidates won.
While it narrows in on AIPAC, the DNC resolution does not address other types of high-spending special interest groups, such as real estate lobbying groups or the burgeoning landscape of pro-AI PACs.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who has previously received AIPAC donations but is rejecting all PAC money this year, told Politico last week that the particular attention paid to AIPAC has been “problematic.”
“There are Iranian Americans that bundle money. There are Turkish Americans that bundle money. There are a lot of ethnic groups that bundle money, and often for things that I don’t agree with. But somehow AIPAC seems to be drawing a lot of attention, and that’s problematic to me,” Booker said. “[AIPAC] is not the problem in America. The problem in America is money in politics.”
Adam Carlson, head of the progressive polling form Zenith Research, poked fun at Booker’s comments with a facetious tweet that dismissed Booker’s concerns, and pointed out the lack of an AIPAC-sized group for Iranian and Turkish Americans.
“Cory’s right. I am sick and tired of the mainstream media refusing to report on PERSIAPAC and TURKPAC spending hundreds of millions of dollars meddling in primaries to boost their preferred candidates,” wrote Carlson, who is Jewish. “It’s an antisemitic double standard, and he’s a hero for pointing it out.”
Goldman, like Booker, says he isn’t taking corporate PAC money in this election, but he did accept AIPAC’s endorsement. Goldman is currently facing a primary challenge from Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive whose attacks against Goldman have centered the congressman’s AIPAC endorsement.
While the DNC’s proposed resolution suggests that AIPAC is shaping Democratic party positions, Goldman asserted that his views are independent from his endorsements.
“I have personally pushed AIPAC very much to recognize that it is an organization that supports first and foremost the State of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship, but that does not mean that they should be unwavering in their support for the Israeli government,” he said.
He added, “I am going to continue to operate independently, based on my own understanding and nuanced view of the situation, and work towards a peace in the region and two-state solution and security for Israel.”
Other Democrats have said they turned down AIPAC because of foreign policy disagreements. In Illinois, Rep. La Shawn Ford said he met with UDP but did not receive its endorsement because he was unwilling to meet its requirement of supporting unconditional military aid to Israel.
Zeitchik said she is not a fan of AIPAC’s “really dirty” tactics, which have included spending on attack ads against pro-Israel politicians because they are open to conditioning military aid — but she, too, has concerns about the particular attention paid to it.
“I think that the hyper-obsession with AIPAC amongst progressives, and making AIPAC the bogeyman, the problem, has an undercurrent of what I’d call an antisemitic worldview, or an antisemitic reaction,” Zeitchik said.
Joel Petlin, the school district superintendent in the heavily Jewish village of Kiryas Joel, outside New York City, wrote that the DNC’s proposed resolution “singles out AIPAC for doing precisely what many other lobby groups are doing every day.”
He added, “If this resolution passes, the DNC can finally stop calling themselves ‘the big tent party,’ because it clearly isn’t large enough for American Jews.”
Similar accounts to Track AIPAC have popped up online, though none have taken off in the same way. Oil PACs Tracker was founded in 2021 and has 43,000 followers. An account called Melt ICE, which tracks candidates’ stance on ICE, has garnered 3,000 followers since being created in January.
Zeitchik said she appreciates how congressional candidates such as Jack Schlossberg, who is running in New York’s 12th Congressional District, have approached the issue by rejecting all special interest money without harping specifically on AIPAC.
“When I see Israel become a wedge issue, and politicians continue to push and make it a wedge issue — that, to me, is alarming,” she said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Democrats to weigh resolution condemning AIPAC, fueling concerns about ‘undercurrent of antisemitism’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Stitched in faith, woven in memory, these precious artifacts bind Jews to their history
The red stitching has long since faded, and the hand-woven linen has softened from white to ivory. Embroidered with a menorah, a double-headed eagle, a lion, and a Magen David, the 18th-century Torah binder is simple in design yet rich in history.
The binder is among 25 artifacts from London’s Memorial Scrolls Trust making their American debut in Fordham University’s “Binders of the Covenant” exhibition. Aside from showing how these functional objects, beautified, in keeping with hiddur mitzvah (beautifying a ritual object) the exhibition reveals the binders’ dual purpose: securing parchment Torah scrolls while symbolically binding families to their community.
“The binders allow us to see the artistic expression of the devotion; of how they reflect traditional values of Jewish identity, like going toward the Torah, toward the chuppah, and doing good deeds. But there is also an acknowledgement of local identity like in the Hapsburg double eagle or a German flag,” Magda Teter, a chaired professor of History and Judaic Studies at Fordham, told me.
Though women were historically excluded from reading or carrying the Torah, they were the primary creators of these binders. Through intricate needlework, they forged a physical connection to the sacred text. The collection includes a binder created by a grieving husband for his late wife, Esther, and another inscribed by a mother celebrating her daughter’s birth.
“It shows that women managed to get close to the Torah, they are bound to the Torah even if their physical bodies were not allowed to do that,” Teter said.
The history of these binders is rooted in survival.
Between the 14th and 20th centuries, Ashkenazi parents in Central Europe swaddled newborn boys in linen strips called wimples. Women embroidered them with religious and secular symbols. When a boy began formal Torah studies around age three, the family donated the wimple to the synagogue to be reused during milestones, such as a recovery from illness or the Shabbat before a wedding.
“It’s a collective story of community. Seeing these artifacts brings history to life,” guest curator Warren Klein said.
Over time, the creation of these binders evolved as women moved beyond traditional linen and cotton to incorporate silk, leather and velvet, reflective of Bohemian artistic traditions.
An intricately decorated 18th century binder featuring intricate leatherwork flowers, embroidery and beads on plum-colored velvet is a prime example.
“It shows an exchange of artistic ideas,” Klein said.
Over time, production shifted from hand-embroidery to sewing machines and paint. The inscriptions shifted as well, as German, Czech, and Yiddish frequently replaced traditional Hebrew.
Visitors to the exhibit will note the lingering shadow of the Shoah. A 1922 binder depicts a Magen David alongside a German flag; a display of pride in both Jewish and national Jewish identity created just two decades before the Holocaust.
Embroidered in canary-yellow silk thread on linen, a 1918 Bar Mitzvah binder for Ludwig Rosenzweig serves as a reminder of this era. On Oct. 26, 1942, Rosenzweig, his wife, and child were murdered at Auschwitz. Today, these binders remain the only physical witnesses to such interrupted lives.
“You can’t escape the loss but in order to appreciate the loss you need to understand the life. Those binders bring the people to life; they capture the moments of joy and celebration, and of course death. The binders create communal memory,” Teter said.
The tradition of hand-sewn binders has faded over the last half-century. Families are more apt to commemorate a child’s birth with the donation of engraved silver Judaica or prayer books with commemorative bookplates.
Yet, rather than lament this change, the exhibit brings the practice of creating binders to the present with the display of contemporary works by fabric artist Rachel Kanter.
“These community binders show vibrancy,” Teter said. “They show that Jewish life is ongoing,”
The post Stitched in faith, woven in memory, these precious artifacts bind Jews to their history appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
California College Employee Calling Jewish Professor ‘Colonizer’ Was Antisemitic, Investigation Finds
Sign reading “Welcome to City College of San Francisco” above glass entry doors with building number 88, San Francisco, California, Aug. 29, 2025. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A City College of San Francisco (CCSF) staff member who called a Jewish professor a “colonizer” among other verbal attacks engaged in unlawful harassment and discrimination based on the academic’s Jewish identity, according to an independent investigation into the incident.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Center, two Jewish advocacy groups, on Tuesday celebrated the upholding of a disciplinary investigation’s finding as a “significant victory” for Jewish faculty and students.
“The outcome establishes a critical precedent for how universities must evaluate conduct often mischaracterized as political speech but that, in context, targets Jewish identity,” the groups said in a statement.
The investigation stemmed from a series of incidents which escalated to an explosive May 2025 confrontation in which CCSF employee Maria Salazar-Colon, president of the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union, allegedly launched a volley of anti-Jewish invective at computer science professor Abigail Bornstein. Calling Bornstein a “colonizer” and telling her to “shut the f—k up,” Salazar-Colon converted the professor’s name into a sobriquet by denouncing her as “Dumb-stein” during the public comment portion in a meeting of the community college’s board of trustees, according to the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs.
That utterance, combined with other comments related to Israel, indicated Salazar-Colon’s awareness of Bornstein’s Jewishness and her willingness to degrade her over it, the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs said — noting that a trivial discussion on college “governance,” not politics or the Middle East conflict, set the staff member off.
Salazar-Colon allegedly continued targeting Bornstein through email, denouncing her again as a “colonizer” and making other crude statements. The conduct drove the professor off campus. She reported the alleged harassment to the CCSF administration and filed a criminal complaint with the local police.
However, Salazar-Colon hit back, filing her own grievance in response to allege that she was the victim. Meanwhile, the college hired a law firm as a third-party investigator to look into the matter. Its findings were conclusive, determining not only that Salazar-Colon was fully culpable but that her conduct, rising to “workplace violence,” was intentionally discriminatory against a Jewish colleague.
CCSF ultimately dismissed Salazar-Colon’s “retaliatory” complaint, but the finality of its decision hung on the opinion of the college trustees. Salazar-Colon filed an appeal with the body. It took no action, crystallizing, the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs said, a consensus on the “seriousness of the underlying conduct and the strength of support for the [third-party investigator’s] findings.”
On Monday, Brandeis Center staff litigation attorney Deena Margolies told The Algemeiner that, in this case, justice prevailed but that many other Jewish members of academia suffer similar indignities.
“The college did the right thing here. They brought in an independent investigator. They made clear that this was about discrimination based on Bornstein’s protected identity, that being Jewish — not union advocacy — and that’s important and a necessary distinction that we don’t often see being recognized,” Margolies said. “I’m seeing many more of these disciplinary matters in the employee context, and I notice that what often happens is that when a Jewish professor or staff member is targeted or files a complaint, there is often a cross complaint, a baseless complaint which is retaliatory. And yet, they always end up coming through.”
CCSF will be taking disciplinary action. against Salazar-Colon.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitism promoted by university employees often disguises itself as politics, complicating higher education institutions’ response to it.
In September, a survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) found that staff and faculty accelerated the “antisemitism” crisis on US college campuses by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues. It found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it.
Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent). Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Administrative officials responded inconsistently to antisemitic hatred, affording additional rationale to the downstream of hatred. More than half (53.1 percent) of respondents described their university’s response to incidents involving antisemitism or anti-Israel bias as “very” or “somewhat” unhelpful, and a striking 77.3 percent thought the same of their professional academic associations. In totality, alleged faculty misconduct and administrative dereliction combined to degrade the professional experiences of Jewish professors, as many reported “worsening mental and physical health, increased self-censorship, fear for personal safety,” and a sense that the destruction of their careers and reputations was imminent.
“Antisemitism cannot and should not be downplayed as political, academic, or workplace disagreement. Antisemitism is, clearly and concretely, insidious discrimination,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus, a former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement released with the news of the outcome of the CCSF incident. “Institutions have both the authority and the obligation to intervene, and we are hopeful that these outcomes encourage those who wish to report incidents of antisemitism to come forward without fear of retaliation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.