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
Angela Buchdahl, prominent NYC rabbi, ratchets up criticism of Zohran Mamdani — and cautions against Jewish infighting
(JTA) — Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, one of New York City’s most prominent rabbis, addressed the growing turmoil within New York’s Jewish community over the upcoming mayoral election — delivering a sermon at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue Friday night that included her most pointed comments yet about frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, while reaffirming her refusal to endorse or oppose any political candidate.
“I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-Zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,” Buchdahl said during services at her synagogue, one of the country’s largest Reform congregations. “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.”
She cited Mamdani’s 2023 remark, surfaced this week, saying the New York Police Department had learned aggressive policing tactics from the Israeli army and his past reluctance to label Hamas a terrorist group.
Yet even as she condemned the rhetoric, Buchdahl rejected calls from some in the Jewish community to endorse in the mayoral race — a demand that has placed her, and other prominent New York rabbis, under intense pressure in recent weeks.
The city’s Jewish institutions, already reeling from a war in Gaza that led to intense anti-Israel protests, have been alarmed by the rise of Mamdani, a progressive state assemblyman from Queens and anti-Zionist critic of Israel. Jewish leaders across the denominational spectrum have debated whether rabbis should publicly oppose his candidacy, citing fears about normalization of anti-Zionism in politics and worries that if elected Mamdani will not protect Jewish interests.
Last month, over 1,100 Jewish clergy signed a letter denouncing Mamdani and the “normalization of anti-Zionism,” quoting another prominent Manhattan rabbi, Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, who in a recent sermon endorsed Mamdani’s independent opponent, former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In a sign that Jews are not of one mind on Mamdani’s candidacy, more that 200 rabbis, at least 40 located in or near New York City, signed a second letter charging the first letter was divisive.
Buchdahl, who has a national profile as the country’s first Asian-American woman rabbi and as a sought-out spokesperson on Jewish affairs, had previously written to her members to explain why she would not endorse any candidate or sign public political letters, despite her “steadfast support of Israel and Zionism.”
After Buchdahl declined to sign the rabbinic letter, she drew withering attacks on social media from those who said she was failing to advance Jewish interests — some from her own congregants.
In her latest remarks, Buchdahl said she felt so compelled to address the tension directly that she returned during a sabbatical taken to promote her new book.
“I knew I needed to be here with my Jewish family,” she said. “Some of you agreed with my position. Some of you, very emphatically, did not.”
She continued, “I was flooded with emails of support, and I want to thank all of you who shared those words with me. But I want to offer even more thanks to those of you who privately and respectfully shared your disagreement with me. I have been listening, and I want to respond in person tonight because that is what you do when you care about your family.”
Buchdahl framed her sermon around Lech Lecha, the Torah portion in which Abraham and Sarah leave the familiarity of home for “a place they do not know.” The story, she suggested, mirrors the community’s uncertainty about its place in a shifting political and moral landscape.
She spoke both to those who see the election as “an existential moment for our Jewish community” and to younger Jews who fear that “our community has become too focused on fear and what can be done to us.”
She acknowledged that Mamdani has met recently with Jewish civic and business leaders and softened some of his language. “I would not quickly trust a campaigning politician changing his lifelong positions,” she said. “But I hear those who believe we must engage even with those we deeply disagree with, or risk isolating ourselves from the broader good of this city.”
Drawing on an idea from Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi, Buchdahl described the community’s divide as one between “Purim Jews” — who prioritize vigilance and self-protection — and “Passover Jews,” who emphasize empathy and justice for the vulnerable. “Both memories are sacred, and both are necessary,” she said. “Compassion without caution is reckless naïveté; vigilance without empathy is paranoia or despair.”
While acknowledging that she is “terrified by how anti-Zionist rhetoric and antisemitic tropes have led to some deadly violence against Jews,” Buchdahl also turned her concern inward to talk about the internal Jewish tensions. “It endangers all of us: the way we are trying to impose a litmus test on other Jews, essentially saying you’re either with us or you’re against us,” she said. “Pitting Jew against Jew. Rabbi against rabbi.”
She warned that such divisions could do more damage than any outside threat. “Both Temples were destroyed because of sinat chinam — senseless hate,” she said. “We can argue robustly and should. But disputation does not require defamation.”
Buchdahl also defended her decision not to make political endorsements, invoking both the federal Johnson Amendment — the decades-old ban on political campaigning by religious institutions that the IRS recently announced it would stop enforcing — and Central Synagogue’s own policy of non-endorsement. “Once a rabbi can tell you how to vote, imagine donations being given, or withheld, in exchange for a rabbi’s thumb on the scale,” she said.
Instead, she pledged to continue speaking on “moral issues that unfold in the political realm,” regardless of partisanship. “I thanked President Biden for standing with Israel after Oct. 7, and I thanked President Trump for helping bring home the hostages after others failed,” she said.
Buchdahl concluded with a message of hope, describing meetings with Jewish students at Yale, Brandeis and Harvard who, she said, “don’t want to be defined by fear.”
“They want a Jewish community where disagreement doesn’t mean disconnection,” she said. “We will find our way forward if we walk it together.”
Buchdahl’s sermon was applauded and received a standing ovation from the congregation.
The post Angela Buchdahl, prominent NYC rabbi, ratchets up criticism of Zohran Mamdani — and cautions against Jewish infighting appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Maryland kosher pizzeria to furloughed federal workers: You can pay us back later
(JTA) — Earlier this month, Josh Katz noticed a dip in sales at his kosher restaurant, Ben Yehuda Pizza in Silver Spring, Maryland.
He knew the culprit, and it wasn’t antisemitism or an anti-Israel boycott. The federal government’s shutdown had left hundreds of thousands of federal employees across the country furloughed, and his regular customers were tightening their belts.
“People are being a little bit more vocal about their financial insecurities at the moment,” said Katz. “They’re just not sure when they’re going to be getting a paycheck.”
In Silver Spring alone, the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration draws over 10,000 federal employees. In the greater Washington, D.C. area, roughly 280,000 workers are employed by the federal government. With all of those workers going multiple weeks without paychecks, Katz said he’d heard from members of his community who were feeling the financial strain.
So last week, he posted an offer on Facebook: “Order now, and pay us down the road when the paychecks come in.” Soon, the first requests started rolling in.
“We’re not giving anything away for free here, but I realized by just allowing people to defer payments, that could really help with their sense of normalcy,” Katz said.
The post did not take a stance on the shutdown, which has hinged on a stalemate between Democratic and Republican senators over competing spending bills and does not appear to be near resolution. “We try to avoid politics at Ben Yehuda,” it said. “We support the Pizza Party, but that’s about as far as we go.”
Ben Yehuda Pizza is located in Kemp Mill, a neighborhood of Silver Spring with a sizable Orthodox Jewish population and multiple synagogues and Jewish community centers. Katz said that while the deal was open to all federal workers, most of his regular customers are Jewish.
He said the timing of the shutdown, which began on Oct. 1 and coincided with the beginning of Yom Kippur, had further compounded the strain on local Jewish families he serves.
“When it started during the holidays, all of a sudden we have massive food bills, because we have to pay for all these festive meals,” said Katz. “When you’re not sure when the next check is going to come, you tighten the belt, or maybe you’re not as festive as you’d ideally like.”
Jewish leaders and groups across the country have mobilized to support unpaid federal government workers affected by the shutdown, some of whom are working essential roles without being paid.
In San Diego, the local branch of the Jewish Family Service began distributing bags of groceries to affected federal workers just days into the shutdown. It has has since provided over 5,700 meals to about 1,000 families.
And multiple free loan societies have created special programs for federal workers, echoing an initiative offered by the Hebrew Free Loan Association of Greater Washington during the 2018 shutdown that lasted 35 days, setting a record that could soon be eclipsed. The Hebrew Free Loan Society of New York, for example, is providing interest-free loans of up to $7,500 for federal employees affected by the current shutdown.
On Friday, Katz said two families had already signed up for Ben Yehuda’s payment deferment deal. But far more community members, he said, had reached out asking how they could contribute a meal to a federal employee.
“That’s really what inspires me, is seeing people who are willing to do that,” he said. “That’s really been the most beautiful thing that comes out of this.”
The post Maryland kosher pizzeria to furloughed federal workers: You can pay us back later appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Angela Buchdahl, prominent NYC rabbi, ratchets up criticism of Zohran Mamdani — and cautions against Jewish infighting
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, one of New York City’s most prominent rabbis, addressed the growing turmoil within New York’s Jewish community over the upcoming mayoral election — delivering a sermon at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue Friday night that included her most pointed comments yet about frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, while reaffirming her refusal to endorse or oppose any political candidate.
“I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-Zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,” Buchdahl said during services at her synagogue, one of the country’s largest Reform congregations. “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.”
She cited Mamdani’s 2023 remark, surfaced this week, saying the New York Police Department had learned aggressive policing tactics from the Israeli army and his past reluctance to label Hamas a terrorist group.
Yet even as she condemned the rhetoric, Buchdahl rejected calls from some in the Jewish community to endorse in the mayoral race — a demand that has placed her, and other prominent New York rabbis, under intense pressure in recent weeks.
The city’s Jewish institutions, already reeling from a war in Gaza that led to intense anti-Israel protests, have been alarmed by the rise of Mamdani, a progressive state assemblyman from Queens and anti-Zionist critic of Israel. Jewish leaders across the denominational spectrum have debated whether rabbis should publicly oppose his candidacy, citing fears about normalization of anti-Zionism in politics and worries that if elected Mamdani will not protect Jewish interests.
Last month, over 1,100 Jewish clergy signed a letter denouncing Mamdani and the “normalization of anti-Zionism,” quoting another prominent Manhattan rabbi, Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, who in a recent sermon endorsed Mamdani’s independent opponent, former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In a sign that Jews are not of one mind on Mamdani’s candidacy, more that 200 rabbis, at least 40 located in or near New York City, signed a second letter charging the first letter was divisive.
Buchdahl, who has a national profile as the country’s first Asian-American woman rabbi and as a sought-out spokesperson on Jewish affairs, had previously written to her members to explain why she would not endorse any candidate or sign public political letters, despite her “steadfast support of Israel and Zionism.”
After Buchdahl declined to sign the rabbinic letter, she drew withering attacks on social media from those who said she was failing to advance Jewish interests — some from her own congregants.
In her latest remarks, Buchdahl said she felt so compelled to address the tension directly that she returned during a sabbatical taken to promote her new book.
“I knew I needed to be here with my Jewish family,” she said. “Some of you agreed with my position. Some of you, very emphatically, did not.”
She continued, “I was flooded with emails of support, and I want to thank all of you who shared those words with me. But I want to offer even more thanks to those of you who privately and respectfully shared your disagreement with me. I have been listening, and I want to respond in person tonight because that is what you do when you care about your family.”
Buchdahl framed her sermon around Lech Lecha, the Torah portion in which Abraham and Sarah leave the familiarity of home for “a place they do not know.” The story, she suggested, mirrors the community’s uncertainty about its place in a shifting political and moral landscape.
She spoke both to those who see the election as “an existential moment for our Jewish community” and to younger Jews who fear that “our community has become too focused on fear and what can be done to us.”
She acknowledged that Mamdani has met recently with Jewish civic and business leaders and softened some of his language. “I would not quickly trust a campaigning politician changing his lifelong positions,” she said. “But I hear those who believe we must engage even with those we deeply disagree with, or risk isolating ourselves from the broader good of this city.”
Drawing on an idea from Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi, Buchdahl described the community’s divide as one between “Purim Jews” — who prioritize vigilance and self-protection — and “Passover Jews,” who emphasize empathy and justice for the vulnerable. “Both memories are sacred, and both are necessary,” she said. “Compassion without caution is reckless naïveté; vigilance without empathy is paranoia or despair.”
While acknowledging that she is “terrified by how anti-Zionist rhetoric and antisemitic tropes have led to some deadly violence against Jews,” Buchdahl also turned her concern inward to talk about the internal Jewish tensions. “It endangers all of us: the way we are trying to impose a litmus test on other Jews, essentially saying you’re either with us or you’re against us,” she said. “Pitting Jew against Jew. Rabbi against rabbi.”
She warned that such divisions could do more damage than any outside threat. “Both Temples were destroyed because of sinat chinam — senseless hate,” she said. “We can argue robustly and should. But disputation does not require defamation.”
Buchdahl also defended her decision not to make political endorsements, invoking both the federal Johnson Amendment — the decades-old ban on political campaigning by religious institutions that the IRS recently announced it would stop enforcing — and Central Synagogue’s own policy of non-endorsement. “Once a rabbi can tell you how to vote, imagine donations being given, or withheld, in exchange for a rabbi’s thumb on the scale,” she said.
Instead, she pledged to continue speaking on “moral issues that unfold in the political realm,” regardless of partisanship. “I thanked President Biden for standing with Israel after Oct. 7, and I thanked President Trump for helping bring home the hostages after others failed,” she said.
Buchdahl concluded with a message of hope, describing meetings with Jewish students at Yale, Brandeis and Harvard who, she said, “don’t want to be defined by fear.”
“They want a Jewish community where disagreement doesn’t mean disconnection,” she said. “We will find our way forward if we walk it together.”
—
The post Angela Buchdahl, prominent NYC rabbi, ratchets up criticism of Zohran Mamdani — and cautions against Jewish infighting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.