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
He went to a different Manhattan synagogue every week. Here’s what it taught him.
(JTA) — Reporting on the Jewish community is a lot like ornithology, except instead of birds the goal is to describe the dress, the habits and the particular behavior that distinguish, say, the Black-Hatted Monsey Orthodox from the Greater Philadelphia Jewish Renewalist. The careful shul-watcher notes their habitats, listens carefully to their songs and pays close attention to the things they eat.
Andrew Waxman is a banking and risk management consultant, not a journalist or an ornithologist. Yet he’s written what amounts to a field guide to the varieties of being and praying Jewish in New York City. For “My Year in New York Synagogues,” he spent his Friday evenings and Shabbat mornings in 2025 visiting nearly every synagogue within walking distance of his home on the Upper West Side.
That’s close to 50 synagogues, including most of Manhattan’s significant congregations. He also includes a few unclassifiable communities, such as a Jewish runners’ club and meetings of the Hostages Forum in Central Park.
The result is part sociological field trip to New York City’s Jewish landscape and part love letter to the city’s Jewish variety: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Moroccan, LGBTQ, Modern Orthodox, haredi Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and independent, to name a few.
Written at a time when the city’s Jews are on edge, buffeted by waves of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Waxman wants to remind them that the community’s diversity and creativity are its strength.
“The impetus for the book really was just the awe in which I find myself around the number of amazing communities, and the diversity that we have in New York that I really think is unparalleled in Jewish history,” he said in an interview.
His stops include familiar places like Central Synagogue, where Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s Asian-American background, a talented musical ensemble and distinct Moorish Revival architecture helped Waxman, who describes himself as liberal Orthodox, see a “community very comfortable in its approach to spirituality and Judaism, forging its own path, authentic in its own way, distinctive even amongst all the differences that characterize so many New York communities.”
At Or Zarua, the egalitarian Conservative synagogue on the Upper East Side, the intimate scale allowed a lively back-and-forth between rabbi and congregants during the Torah reading.
Meanwhile, the cavernous Young Israel of the Upper West Side offered a surprise: A synagogue he remembered as nearly empty and elderly had, decades later, become packed with young Orthodox Jews.
Less well known is the Koznitz. Behind an unmarked green door on the Upper West Side, Waxman found what a friend called the “speakeasy minyan.” There 70 or so men gather for “no frills, fast and lay-led” Shabbat prayers in a congregation named after the 18th-century Koznitzer Rebbe and his descendants.
“I realized that everybody feels that their community is special,” Waxman said. “And their community, whether it’s Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, they feel proud and they feel very connected.”
Waxman’s synagogue year included the bittersweet resolution of the Israeli hostage crisis, as well as the simmering aftermath of the campus protests and growing political tensions over Israel and antisemitism after Oct. 7. Many congregations added prayers or other rituals remembering the hostages, efforts that crossed political lines.
Other times, the ideological divides were stark. In Orthodox synagogues, Waxman heard rhetoric about Israel and the war that he described as “aggressive, jingoistic almost.” At the Orthodox Fifth Avenue Synagogue, one member of the “Kiddish Club” joked about Upper West Side liberals and another proudly mentioned his apartment in Trump Tower. At the liberal independent B’nai Jeshurun, the rabbis’ remarks included concern for Palestinians as well as Israeli Jews.
Few of those political discussions make it into his guidebook, however. If some congregations were seeing a growing contingent of anti-Zionists in the pews, for example, he doesn’t mention it. Waxman acknowledges that he sought to avoid labelling congregations by their politics. “It has been distressing to see political discord come between families and communities and I have no wish to put a pin on that,” he writes.
Waxman tends to focus on the positive, ending each entry with a short description of the synagogues’ “strengths” and “distinctiveness.” In the admittedly very tiny genre of synagogue reviewing, others have been a little more pointed in their assessments. London’s Jewish Chronicle used to run reviews by Secret Shulgoer that awarded (and took away) stars based on “warmth,” “welcome,” “decorum” and “service.” In the 1990s, Kol Ha’Ir, an alternative Jerusalem weekly, dispatched the sharp-tongued Jacky Levy to review synagogues as he would a play or restaurant; he once compared a Reform synagogue to a church.
More recently, David A.M. Wilensky of J., the Northern California Jewish weekly, took a journalistic approach in his “Jew in the Pew” column, offering his own observations and quoting congregants on their impressions, positive and sometimes negative, about their Bay Area synagogues.
Waxman’s goal appears more boosterish than critical or journalistic. He sees his ideal reader as someone who has just moved to the city and is looking for a spiritual home. Anticipating their criteria, he describes not only the prayers and sermons but the people, clothes, melodies, architecture and conversation.
And, yes, the kiddush.
He had initially joked with a friend that the book might simply be about kiddushes, the receptions that follow most Saturday morning Shabbat services. Do they serve meat? Will it be enough food to count as lunch? Who showed up “JFK” — just for kiddush?
But the food turned out to be more than comic relief. Kiddush, Waxman said, is where community happens. People who may not see one another during the week reconnect. They talk about their children, their problems, who’s getting married, who might be ill.
And he suspects that kiddush has become competitive.
At Altneu, a new Orthodox synagogue that broke away from Park East Synagogue in 2022, Waxman found a bartender, tequila and an impressive selection of whisky. He notes that other Orthodox synagogues in the area now regularly offer meat kiddushes, suggesting that congregations are using food to lure and hold on to members.
As for clothes, Waxman grew up in an Orthodox synagogue in Manchester, England, where the congregation president and other leaders wore top hats. The custom persists at The Jewish Center on the Upper West Side, where the rabbis and officers wear top hats and morning suits between Sukkot and Shavuot. Elsewhere, especially but not exclusively at non-Orthodox synagogues, the codes have loosened: Reflecting a similar change in corporate life, men have doffed their jackets and ties; women often swap skirts and dresses for slacks.
Waxman hadn’t attended a Reform service before setting out on his grand tour, and he said that the experience changed him. Himself a member of Darchei Noam, a “partnership minyan” that combines Orthodox ritual with expanded roles for women, he appreciated how the Reform congregations included Hebrew selectively but intentionally in their prayers. He admired congregations like Romemu, which resists easy denominational categorization, for their willingness to bend the traditional service structure — to go “off piste,” as he put it — rather than treat the prayer book as a script that must be followed exactly.
Waxman may have set out to write a Yelp for synagogues, but the project came to mean more. In addition to a sense of abundance, he found a spirit of hospitality. Currently working on a project in Mexico City, he noted how synagogues there won’t admit strangers — even the author of a book on New York synagogues — unless they sign up in advance. He insisted that, despite heightened security, New York’s synagogues are still welcoming places for newcomers.
“I’m hopeful that New York can remain as open as it is to the stranger,” he said. “Judaism, at the end of the day, for me, is really about giving people a community, a sense of belonging.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post He went to a different Manhattan synagogue every week. Here’s what it taught him. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Miami-Dade county in Florida raises the limit on investments in Israel bonds
(JTA) — The Miami-Dade region in Florida can spend millions more tax dollars on Israel, after officials increased the share of county investments that can include Israeli bonds.
The Board of County Commissioners approved a resolution last week toward the start of a seven-hour meeting, in a unanimous, single vote that grouped together numerous ordinances. This action enables the county to invest up to 5%, rather than 3%, of its $9 billion in investments in these bonds — debt issued by the Israeli government sold by a U.S. underwriter.
Despite the previous cap of 3%, Israeli bonds only make up about 1.48% of Miami-Dade’s portfolio, or roughly $130 million, according to the county’s third-quarter investment report.
Known as “Israel Bonds,” these loans are deeply rooted in the Diaspora’s relationship with the country. Israel, like many countries, raises money by selling bonds to investors, who then receive repayments with interest after a specified time period. But for American Jews, these bonds are issued via the U.S.-based Development Corporation for Israel, which has served as the underwriter since 1951.
As for Miami-Dade, the county began purchasing Israeli bonds in 2016. But these investments increased substantially just after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. At the time, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced that the county would be boosting these investments from $51 million to $76 million.
Palm Beach County made a similar decision at the time, as did cities, counties and states around the country.
Nonetheless, activists nationwide have increasingly been pushing governments to stop investing in Israel bonds, citing the Jewish state’s military operations in Gaza.
An initiative called “Break the Bonds,” launched by the progressive Jewish Voice for Peace group, claims that “the Israeli military is committing a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” and that community investments in such bonds are enabling the situation.
“At a time when so many people in our community are struggling, we believe our public dollars should be invested in our communities and in meeting the needs of the people who live here,” JVP South Florida said in a statement, prior to last Tuesday’s vote.
Israel Bonds representatives did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
Given the resolution’s swift passage, which occurred without a public hearing at the board meeting, detractors signed up to testify about an unrelated item in order to voice their concerns.
“My tax dollars should be kept safe and should be working to benefit my community,” Coconut Grove resident Jared Simon, who identified himself as Jewish, told the commissioners.
“You didn’t even allow public comment on it before voting,” he said. “Your constituents do not want their tax dollars funding the functions of the Israeli government.”
Addressing the lack of public hearing, the commissioners responded that residents already had the opportunity to speak about the resolution during a session earlier this summer.
That session occurred on July 15, when the Intergovernmental and Economic Impact Committee advanced the rule to the Board of County Commissioners with a favorable recommendation.
Among the most prominent speakers to take the podium — even though he had apparently not registered to do so — was James Fishback, a far-right former gubernatorial candidate and sharp critic of Israel. Alleging that the commissioners “unanimously voted to give up to $450 million of money to Israel,” Fishback said he’d rather not be “escorted out by these great men in uniform.”
“Do you serve the people of Hialeah or of Haifa? Do you serve the people of Aventura or of Tel Aviv?” he asked the commissioners. “Do you serve the people of South Miami or of Jerusalem? This money should be invested here in this community.”
As the sergeants escorted Fishback out of the auditorium, another individual screamed “America First!” from the audience.
Oliver Gilbert, one of the commissioners, responded that the “board today didn’t vote to give any money to anyone,” stressing that they just “set investment criteria.”
Before Tuesday’s meeting reached its most heated point, Keon Hardemon, another commissioner, told the audience that he and his colleagues “don’t care what you’re talking about, what subject it is that you don’t like, what you care for, what you don’t care for, what your politics are.”
“What we are not going to stand for are people who want to make anyone in this room feel uncomfortable,” Hardemon added.
Yet immediately after this intervention, public outcry over the resolution, known as 11A2, continued.
Miami resident Mina Trachtenberg argued that county investment policies require the prioritization “of public funds and liquidity of public funds above all else.”
“The resolution passed today achieves the opposite of that, opening the door to the purchase of high-risk, even junk-quality bonds of a foreign entity,” Trachtenberg said. “Please divest from apartheid.”
Anthony Rodriguez, the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, eventually instructed the sergeants in the room to eject anyone who refused to comply with the rules.
Just after those instructions, Miami resident Mohammed Mohammed came to the podium, voicing his alarm that he was “going to be escorted out just for being Palestinian.”
“That’s not the case. Let’s not put words in anybody’s mouth,” a visibly frustrated Rodriguez responded. “You just have to follow the order and speak on the item.”
Mohammed then declared “that 11A2 is an absolute disgrace,” leading Rodriguez to summon the sergeants and declare that the speakers just “want their minute of fame.”
The rule’s sponsor, commissioner René García, explained that the county invests about $9 billion, with the intention of generating “a greater return of money” to fund public needs. García, a former Republican state senator, explained that the rule simply ensures “more flexibility and more liquidity” for certain investments.
In addition to raising the investment cap from 3% to 5%, the resolution would also reduce the maturity of “bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the state of Israel” from five to three years.
Within that text, the authors also deleted a clause that previously had required Israel to have an “A” credit rating from at least two agencies. That revision stemmed from a recent Florida statute allowing investments in Israel bonds regardless of the country’s rating. This change was particularly noteworthy because credit ratings of Israel have fluctuated in the past few years.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Miami-Dade county in Florida raises the limit on investments in Israel bonds appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israeli expats voting case dismissed by Israel’s High Court
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – Israel’s High Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition by Israeli expatriates seeking to vote in the Oct. 27 election after discovering that they had been excluded from the voter rolls under a little-known Interior Ministry classification that records certain citizens as nonresidents.
The petition was filed by some 100 expatriate Israelis challenging their exclusion from the voter rolls under an Interior Ministry classification known as “Code 51,” which records them as having ceased to be Israeli residents.
The petitioners said they had never asked to give up their status as Israeli residents and questioned the legal authority, criteria and process by which the classification was imposed. Some only discovered the designation when they checked their eligibility ahead of the election.
The court did not resolve that factual dispute, instead dismissing the petition on procedural grounds. Justice Yechiel Kasher said the case was filed too late, a week before the voter registry was due to be finalized, and that the petitioners had not first used the statutory appeals process available to challenge their registration status. The court also said the petition lacked a detailed factual record showing how each of the petitioners came to receive Code 51.
The case arose as tens of thousands of Israeli citizens living abroad are making plans to return to Israel to cast ballots in the country’s first national election since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. More than 30,000 expatriates had registered with Fly&Vote, an initiative helping Israelis arrange election travel, which has already secured seven dedicated flights to Israel.
The Interior Ministry told the court that Code 51 is given to citizens who informed a population registry official that they were leaving Israel and asked not to remain registered as residents. The petitioners disputed that account, saying they had never asked for their registration as Israeli residents to be canceled.
Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist living in Baltimore and a petitioner in the case, discovered this summer that her residency status had been changed under Code 51 on March 7, 1986, the same date she visited the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco to register her newborn son.
Mittman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that consular staff took away her Israeli ID card during the 1986 appointment without explanation. “I remember how bad of a feeling it was to give that document away,” she said. “I felt I gave a part of myself away when that happened. But I didn’t know that my biggest right as a citizen – the right to vote – was just robbed from me.”
The petition also challenged the law tying voting eligibility to residency, arguing that it conflicts with Israel’s Basic Law governing the Knesset, which guarantees every Israeli citizen aged 18 or older the right to vote unless a court has deprived them of that right. The court did not decide that question, and Kasher said the petitioners could raise it again after the election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli expats voting case dismissed by Israel’s High Court appeared first on The Forward.
