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The Dominican Republic was a haven for Jews fleeing the Nazis. A museum project could tell that story.
SOSUA, Dominican Republic (JTA) — Sitting inside a small wood-frame shul just around the corner from Playa Alicia, where tourists sip rum punch while watching catamarans glide by, Joe Benjamin recounted one of the most uplifting but often forgotten stories of Jewish survival during the Holocaust.
“I was bar mitzvahed right here,” he said, pointing to a podium at the front of the sanctuary in La Sinagoga de Sosua. It was built in the early 1940s to meet the spiritual needs of about 750 German and Austrian Jews.
At the time, the Dominican Republic was the only country in the world that offered asylum to large numbers of Jewish refugees, earning the moniker “tropical Zion.”
Benjamin, 82, is president of the Jewish community of Sosua and one of only four surviving second-generation Jews remaining in this touristy beach town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. His parents were part of the unconventional colony of Jewish immigrants who established an agricultural settlement between 1940-47 on an abandoned banana plantation overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
“When I talk about that, I get goosebumps,” Benjamin said. “This is a distinction that the Dominican Republic has. It was the only country that opened its doors to Jews.”
Joe Benjamin, president of the Jewish Community of Sosua, inside the sanctuary of La Sinagoga. (Dan Fellner)
At the 1938 Evian Conference in France, attended by representatives of 32 countries to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wanting to flee Nazi persecution, the Dominican Republic announced it would accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees. About 5,000 visas were issued but fewer than 1,000 Jews ultimately were able to reach the country, which is located on the same island as Haiti, about 800 miles southeast of Miami.
Benjamin was born in 1941 in Shanghai, the only other place besides the Dominican Republic that accepted large numbers of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Shanghai, then a divided city not under the control of a single government, did not require a visa to enter. About 20,000 Jewish refugees immigrated there, including Benjamin’s parents, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939.
In 1947, with a civil war raging in China, Benjamin’s father realized the country “was getting a little difficult” and looked for another place to raise his two children.
“I think my father read it in a newspaper – there was a Jewish refugee colony in the Dominican Republic,” he says. “My father had no idea where that was, but he said, ‘I’m going there.’”
Benjamin’s family took a ship from China to San Francisco, a train to Miami, and then flew into Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital city. At that time, the city was officially called Ciudad Trujillo after the country’s dictator, Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.
Photos of some of the 750 Jewish refugees who settled in Sosua in the 1940s on display at the Gregorio Luperon International Airport in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. (Dan Fellner)
Historians suggest the Dominican dictator’s motives in accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees at a time when so many other countries — including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom — turned their backs were fueled more by opportunism than altruism. It’s believed that Trujillo wanted to improve his reputation on the world stage following the 1937 massacre of an estimated 20,000 Black Haitians by Dominican troops. Furthermore, Trujillo liked the idea of allowing a crop of mostly educated immigrants who would “whiten” the country’s population.
“He was a cruel dictator,” Benjamin said of Trujillo. “But it’s not for me to judge. Because for us, he saved our lives. If you’re drowning and someone throws you a rope, you hold on to it. You don’t start asking his motive. You just hold on.”
In 1947, Benjamin was among the last group of Jewish refugees to arrive in Sosua, one of about 10 families known by the other colonists as the “Shanghai group.” The Sosua settlement was run by an organization called the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) that was funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York.
“DORSA would give you 10 cows, a mule, a horse and a cart,” said Benjamin. “My father by profession was a cabinet-maker. He thought he was going to do that here. But there was no market for that. So he dedicated himself to farming.”
Benjamin said conditions in Sosua were “primitive” and a difficult transition for many settlers who had been city-dwellers in Europe. Still, he spoke fondly of a childhood in which he was relatively insulated from the horrors that befell so many other Jewish children his age.
“We had enough to eat,” he says. “We enjoyed the beach. And I went to a Jewish school.”
La Sinagoga de Sosua in the Dominican Republic served the spiritual needs of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in Sosua during the Holocaust. It’s now open only for the high holidays. (Dan Fellner)
The school, originally called Escuela Cristobal Colon, opened in 1940 in a barracks and was attended by Jewish children as well as the children of Dominican farm workers. The school still exists and is now called the Colegio Luis Hess, named after Luis Hess, one of the Jewish settlers. Hess taught at the school for 33 years and lived in Sosua until his death in 2010 at the age of 101.
While the children attended school, men worked on farms and women cooked dinner for their families, who ate communal style. Beds were lined with mosquito netting to prevent malaria. As men greatly outnumbered women — Trujillo did not allow single Jewish women to enter the country — intermarriage was common.
Over time, the agriculture venture failed and DORSA instead decided to promote a beef and dairy cooperative, Productos Sosua, which ultimately proved successful.
After finishing high school, Benjamin moved to Pittsburgh to attend college (he’s an engineer who once built and flew his own airplane), got married and started a family. After 17 years in the United States, he decided in 1976 to return to the Dominican Republic, where he became an executive with Productos Sosua. He worked there until he retired in 2004, when the firm was sold to a Mexican company.
“All my life I talked about Sosua as my home,” he said. “I like it here. Everybody knows me.”
A street mural recognizes Sosua’s Jewish history on the main road connecting Sosua with Puerto Plata on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. (Dan Fellner)
Today, Sosua is vastly changed from the sleepy town in which Benjamin was raised. In 1979, an international airport opened in Puerto Plata, just a 15-minute drive to the west. Sosua morphed into a congested tourist destination known for its golden-sand beaches and water sports. It also became a hub of the Dominican sex tourism industry.
Most of Sosua’s Jewish population immigrated to the United States by the early 1980s. Benjamin estimates that only 30-40 Jews remain in Sosua, most of whom are not religiously observant. As a result, the synagogue hasn’t been able to financially sustain a permanent rabbi for more than 20 years. Services are held only on the high holidays, when a rabbi is flown in from Miami.
Benjamin says a group of seven Jews chips in about $2,500 a month to pay for security and other operating expenses.
“It’s very hard to get the Jews here to pay,” he said. “When we bring in the rabbi, we try to charge something. But we don’t get any people if we charge.”
Next to the synagogue is a small museum called the Museo Judio de Sosua, which offers a window into the town’s Jewish roots. Five years ago, the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo donated $80,000 to the museum to preserve and digitize its archives. However, the museum, which is badly in need of repairs, has been closed for the past year.
The Museo Judio de Sosua, which tells the story of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in the Dominican Republic during the Holocaust. The museum is closed while the community waits for funding to reopen it. (Dan Fellner)
Benjamin has been in discussions with the Dominican government in hopes it will soon finance a major renovation of the museum that would include an exhibition hall big enough to accommodate 100 people for events. Benjamin says he is optimistic the project, which has a price-tag approaching $1 million, will be green-lighted by the government.
“They are very positive about it because it could become a tourist attraction,” he says, noting that Puerto Plata and nearby Amber Cove have become popular port-stops on Caribbean cruises originating in Florida. “If it comes to fruition, it will be in the next year. Because if they don’t do it by then, the government changes. And the next government never continues what the previous government started.”
Otherwise, there are only a few remnants of Jewish life in Sosua for visitors to see. In Parque Mirador overlooking the Atlantic, there is a white cement-block star of David, built to honor the Jewish refugees. About 70 Jews, including Benjamin’s parents, are buried in a Jewish cemetery about a five-minute drive south of the synagogue.
The main street connecting Sosua with Puerto Plata has a street mural depicting the town’s history that features a large star of David right above a scuba-diver. And two of the most prominent streets in Sosua — Dr. Rosen and David Stern — still bear the names of two of the colony’s Jewish founders.
Dr. Rosen Street in downtown Sosua is named after Joseph Rosen, one of the founders of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association. (Dan Fellner)
There had been an exhibition about Sosua’s Jewish colony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York but it closed several years ago. All the more reason, Benjamin says, that the Sosua museum reopens as soon as possible so that the story of the Jews who found a Caribbean cocoon to ride out the Holocaust isn’t forgotten.
“Look at what’s happening in the world — there is a rise in antisemitism,” he said. “It’s very important that our history is documented. It will also be a place where Dominican schoolchildren can come and learn about Judaism.”
With the museum closed, the only place in the area to see photos of the Jewish settlers on public display is the departure lounge in Puerto Plata’s airport. Next to a Dominican band serenading travelers with meringue music, there is a display of pictures showing the colonists riding horses, tilling the fields, attending school and praying in La Sinagoga.
“When they came here, the Jews found no antisemitism at all in this country,” said Benjamin. “They were as free as anybody. They had a wonderful life.”
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אַמסטערדאַם און די ייִדישע שפּראַך האָבן אַ לאַנגע בשותּפֿותדיקע געשיכטע. ווייניק מענטשן ווייסן אַז ייִדיש־רעדערס לעבן אין האָלאַנד זײַט דעם 17טן יאָרהונדערט, און אַז זײַט דעם מיטן צװאַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט װערט די שפּראַך געפֿאָרשט און, מיט איבעררײַסן, געלערנט, אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט.
לעצטנס האָט זיך געענדיקט די דרױסנדיקע סובװענץ, וואָס האָט געשטיצט די ייִדיש־פּראָגראַם אינעם אוניווערסיטעט און דעם קומענדיקן זמן װעט מען קײן ייִדיש־קורסן נישט לערנען. אַ נײַע דערװײַליקע לײזונג איז, דאַכט זיך נאָענט, נאָר די דאָצענטן און סטודענטן האָפֿן אַז די פֿאַקולטעט־פֿאַרװאַלטונג װעט װאָס פֿריִער גיבן די ייִדישע שפּראַך אַ פֿעסטן אָרט אין דער לערן־פּראָגראַם.
ס׳איז דאָ אַ סך צו דערציילן וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש אין אַמסטערדאַם. אינעם 17טן און 18טן יאָרהונדערט איז די שטאָט געװען דער װעלטצענטער פֿון דער ייִדישער דרוקאַרבעט. די סאַמע ערשטע ייִדישע צײַטונג, די „דינסטאַגישע און פֿרײַטאַגישע קוראַנטן“, האָט מען טאַקע געדרוקט אין אַמסטערדאַם אין 1686 און 1687.
אין משך פֿונעם 19טן יאָרהונדערט, אונטער דער השפּעה פֿון דער דעמאָלט אײַנגעפֿירטער האָלענדישער שפּראַך־געזעץ־געבונג, איז דער דיאַלעקט מערבֿ־ייִדיש בהדרגהדיק פֿאַרשװוּנדן געװאָרן. לויטן געזעץ האָט מען קינדער געדאַרפֿט לערנען בלױז אױף האָלענדיש און די דרשות אין שיל האָט מען געמוזט האַלטן אױף האָלענדיש.
סוף 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָט זיך דער מצבֿ געביטן ווען ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּע האָבן מיטגעבראַכט זייער מיזרח־ייִדישן דיאַלעקט. ביזן הײַנטיקן טאָג קען מען הערן די השפּעה פֿון האָלענדיש ייִדיש אױף דער אַמסטערדאַמער גאַס ווי, צום בײַשפּיל, אינעם באַקאַנטן צונאָמען פֿון דער שטאָט אַמסטערדאַם: „מקום“ (אָרט).
דער אַרבעטער־קולטור־פֿאַראײן „אַנסקי“, וואָס איז געגרינדעט געוואָרן אין 1920, איז אַזש ביז אין די 1970ער יאָרן געװען אַ װיכטיקער קולטור־צענטער פֿאַר די ייִדיש־רעדערס אין האָלאַנד. דרײַ פֿערטל פֿון די ייִדן אין לאַנד האָבן נישט איבערגעלעבט דעם חורבן. פֿון דעסטוועגן איז אין האָלאַנד נאָך דער צװײטער װעלט־מלחמה אַלע מאָל געװען אַ קלײנער סכום ייִדיש־רעדערס. עד־היום לערנט מען אַ טייל פֿון די לעקציעס אין דער פֿרומער ייִדישער שול „חדר“ אױף ייִדיש.
דער אינטערעס צו דער שפּראַך האַלט אין איין װאַקסן. אַ צאָל װעלטלעכע ייִדיש־רעדערס, װאָס אַ גרױסער טײל פֿון זײ האָבן זיך געלערנט די שפּראַך ווי דערוואַקסענע, באַטײליקן זיך הײַנט אין ייִדיש־לײענקרײַזן אין פֿאַרשיידענע שטעט. במשך פֿון די לעצטע 20 יאָר זענען אַ רײ קלאַסישע ייִדישע ליטעראַרישע װערק איבערגעזעצט געװאָרן אױף האָלענדיש. עס װערט אַרױסגעגעבן די ליטעראַרישע צײַטשריפֿט „די גאָלדענע פּאַװע“ (דער המשך פֿונעם אַמאָליקן זשורנאַל „גרינע מדינה“) און די שפּראַכקורסן אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט האָבן זיך די פֿאַרגאַנגענע פֿיר יאָר אַרױסגעװיזן פּאָפּולער ביז גאָר.
זײַט די 1960ער יאָרן האָט זיך אַמסטערדאַם אויך אַנטװיקלט ווי אַ לעבעדיקער און פּראָדוקטיװער פֿאָרשצענטער פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך. טאָגטעגלעך אַרבעט מען איבערן סאַמע גרעסטן צוויישפּראַכיקן ייִדישן װערטערבוך — דעם אָנלײַן „ייִדיש־האָלענדישן װערטערבוך“, צונויפֿגעשטעלט פֿון יוסטוס וואַן דער קאַמפּ. אָנהייב מײַ זענען אַרײַנהאַקערס אָנגעפֿאַלן אויפֿן ווערק אָבער הײַנט איז עס שוין ווידער צוטריטלעך. װאַן דער קאַמפּ האָט געזאָגט, אַז קײן דאַטן זענען, צום גליק, נישט פֿאַרלױרן געגאַנגען.
במשך פֿון דער געשיכטע האָבן אַ רײ ייִדיש־רעדערס אין אַמסטערדאַם געזאַמלט אָרטיקע ייִדישע אױסדרוקן און וועלטסווערטלעך. אין מיטן 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָט יונה ל. פֿאָרזאַנגער צונויפֿגעקליבן חנעװדיקע װערטלעך פֿון די האלענדישע ייִדן און זײ געניצט אין אַ מעשׂה װעגן די איבערלעבונגען פֿון אַן אָרעמען גאַסן־מוזיקאַנט. אַ סך פֿון די שפּריכװערטער זענען שפּעטער אַריבער אױף האָלענדיש, לדוגמא „זײַן תּחת ברענט, מוז ער אױף די בלאָסטערס זיצן“ (װער עס טוט שלעכטס, מוז „טראָגן“ די קאָנסעקװענצן).
אין אַנדערע אױסדרוקן זענען ייִדיש און האָלענדיש צונױפֿגעמישט געװאָרן, ווי למשל אין דעם װערטל װאָס כאַראַקטעריזירט די באַציִונגען אין דער אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדישער קהילה: „װען קהל שפּילט דע באַס (בעל־הבית), שנעלט מער דער פּרנס פֿאָר דען נאַז.“ (װען קהל שאַפֿט זיך, שנעלט מען דעם פּרנס אין דער נאָז.)
אין אַ סך ייִדישע שטיבער קען מען געפֿינען האַרטאָג בײמס ביכער װעגן דעם האָלענדיש־ייִדישן װאָקאַבולאַר. ביים, אַ האָלענדישער לערער היסטאָריקער, האָט צונױפֿגעשטעלט אַ װערטערביכל פֿונעם האָלענדישן ייִדיש (Resten van een taal) און אַ זאַמלונג אױסדרוקן און שפּריכװערטער (Jerosche). די צװײ ביכער זענען געװען באַליבט בײַם ברײטן ייִדישן עולם.
זײַט 1964 זענען אַ צאָל געניטע ייִדיש־לערערס געווען אויפֿן פֿאַקולטעט פֿונעם אוניווערסיטעט: צו ערשט, לעאָ פֿוקס, און דערנאָך — רענאַ פֿוקס מאַנספֿעלד. אין 2005 האָט שלמה בערגער פֿאַרנומען די פּראָפֿעסור „ייִדישע שפּראַך און קולטור“ ביז ער איז ניפֿטר געװאָרן אין 2015.
אַ רײ דיסערטאַציעס װעגן ייִדיש זענען די פֿאַרגאַנגענע יאָרצענדליקער פֿאַרטײדיקט געװאָרן. הילדע פּאַך האָט געפֿאָרשט די ערשטע ייִדישע צײַטונג אין האָלאַנד, „די דינסטאַגישע און פֿרײַטאַגישע קוראַנטן“. באַרט װאַלעט האָט אַנאַליזירט די ייִדישע היסטאָריאָגראַפֿיע אין האָלאַנד; זײַדמאַן מאַוער האָט אָנגעשריבן אַ דאָקטאָר־אַרבעט װעגן פֿרי־מאָדערנער מעדיצינישער ליטעראַטור און אָקערשט האָט מאַריאַנע אָסטינג באַקומען אַ דאָקטאָראַט פֿאַר איר שטודיע װעגן דעם ניסתּרס ראָמאַן „די משפּחה מאַשבער“.
אין אַן אַרטיקל אינעם „פֿאָרװערטס“ דעם פֿאַרגאַנגענעם מײַ האָט פֿיליפּ שוואַרץ געשריבן אַז די אַמסטערדאַמער פֿאָרשערס פֿון ייִדיש און ייִדישע לימודים האָבן זיך ביז אַהער אײַנגעשפּאַרט „אין העלפֿאַנדבײן־טורעמס“. איך בין נישט מסכּים. אַדרבא, עס זענען כּסדר געװען און אַנטשטאַנען נײַע פֿאַרבינדונגען צװישן ייִדיש־רעדערס און דער ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג און צװישן דער ייִדישער קולטור־ירושה און דער לעבעדיקער שפּראַך.
פֿון 2023 ביז 2025 האָבן די אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדיש־סטודענטן אין אײנעם מיט זײַדמאַן מאַוער צוגעגרייט און אויפֿגעפֿירט פּורים־שפּילן אױף ייִדיש: קודם־כּל אין אַ קלאַסצימער אין אוניװערסיטעט, און אין 2025 — אין טעאַטער. זײ האָבן באַװיזן צוצוציִען צוקוקערס פֿון האָלאַנד, דײַטשלאַנד און ישׂראל. אינעם פּראָיעקט „די ייִדישע שטאָט“ האָבן פֿאָרשערס און אײַנװױנערס פֿון אַמסטערדאַם צוזאַמענגעאַרבעט, פּובליקירט פּאָדקאַסטן און מיט עפֿנלטעכן סוכּה־פּראָיעקט אין 2023 און 2024 ממש צוריק אַרײַנגעשטעלט די ייִדישע געשיכטע אין שטאָט.
אַ סך סטודענטן און לערער זענען שטאַרק אַנטוישט וואָס מע האָט אָפּגעשאַפֿן די ייִדיש־קורסן און זײַדמאַן מאַוער וועט אָנהייבנדיק אין סעפּטעמבער לערנען אינעם בר־אילן אוניװערסיטעט אין ישׂראל.
„די ייִדישע שפּראַך איז אַן אינטעגראַלער טײל פֿון די ייִדישע לימודים אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט,“ האָט געזאָגט באַרט װאַלעט, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר דאָרט פֿון ייִדישע לימודים. „כּדי אױפֿצוזיגלען די רײַכע אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדישע קאָלעקציעס קען מען זיך נישט באַגײן אָן אַ קענשאַפֿט פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך.“
אירענע זװיפּ, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָרין פֿון העברעיִש און אַראַמיש, האָט צוגעגעבן אַז זי און אַנדערע האָבן גוטע האָפֿענונגען אױף פֿינאַנציעלן שטיץ דורך ברײטהאַרציקע יחידים.
„די געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש אין אַמסטערדאַם האָט זיך נאָך לאַנג נישט געענדיקט,“ האָט וואַלעט געזאָגט.
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A smaller, scarred Maccabiah Games opens in Israel, carrying the weight of Oct. 7 and war
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Just days before the start of the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish sports competition held every four years in Israel, Australia was officially out of the competition.
Australia had canceled its official delegation — typically one of the largest — during Israel’s war with Iran. In early June, its organizing group said it could not flout the Australian government’s designation of Israel as a danger zone.
But on Sunday, with the war on hold amid peace deals announced by the United States, Maccabi Australia reversed course. On Wednesday, 14 Australian athletes marched behind the Australian flag into Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, where they are competing in six sports across two weeks of play.
Australia’s about-face reflects the uncertainty that has plagued the quadrennial “Jewish Olympics” for more than a year, diminishing the number of athletes and countries participating and making it unusually challenging for their supporters to attend from abroad. Organizers say about 5,000 athletes are competing from 55 countries, compared to 10,000 in 2022, when U.S. President Joe Biden joined the opening festivities.
The 2022 Games marked a triumphal return after a year’s delay due to the pandemic. This year’s competition, too, followed a delay: Three weeks before play was set to start in 2025, organizers understood there was no way to bring thousands of Jewish athletes to Israel. Israel was at war with Iran, the government had declared an emergency, and airlines had stopped flying. They postponed — never expecting that conditions would be similar in the months ahead of the Games.
“We were sure that things would be much better by now,” said Roy Hessing, Maccabiah’s chief executive. “The only really good thing that has happened since then is that all the hostages are back.”
Signs of the postponement, and the wrenching years since the last Maccabiah, were omnipresent at Wednesday night’s opening event, starting with the logo for the Games, which features a “25.”
Former hostages took part in the ceremony, including IDF spotter Daniella Gilboa and the American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, who both performed with Israeli singer-songwriter Idan Raichel.
The ceremony also included wounded soldiers and representatives of Irgun Nechei Zahal, Israel’s official organization for disabled veterans, as well as recognition of several athletes, including swimmer Eden Zimri, who were killed on Oct. 7.
Members of the French delegation carried shirts featuring Dan Elkayam, their football teammate who was killed in December’s shooting attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney.
“Welcome to your home away from home,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told attendees. “Your gathering together in Jerusalem, in this beautiful event, fills us with pride and charges this stadium with magnificent energy. … Each of you here is a winner, and I know you will have a great Maccabiah together, in unity and in love of Israel.”
In a sign of Israel’s internal tensions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew both applause and audible boos as he took the podium. The ceremony took place on the eve of the 1000th day since Oct. 7, with an election looming and the vast majority of Israelis critical of Netanyahu’s refusal to open a state commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the historic attack.
Netanyahu said he had “only one message” for attendees: “In the face of antisemitism, stand tall, stand proud, do not bend, do not bow, stand strong, stand together, and together we shall win. You are all winners here, we shall be winners in the world.”
Hessing said the decision to postpone rather than cancel the Games was essential as the event has only grown more important for Jewish communities abroad, where he said “antisemitism is raging,” and for Israelis still living with the fallout of Oct. 7 and the wars that followed.
“We must have some events that will give us some joy and hope,” he said.
About 3,000 athletes arrived from the Diaspora, joined by about 2,000 Israelis. Taiwan and the Philippines sent athletes for the first time, while the largest overseas delegation came from the United States, with more than 900 athletes, ranging in age from 14 to 87.
The U.S. cheering section is smaller than it might have been, as scarce and historically costly flights have made it hard for supporters to make the trip. Einav Rabinovitch Fox told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from her home in Ohio that she and her family had hoped to accompany her son Adam, who is on the U15 football team, to the competition. But she was not eager to bring her family into a war zone, and then she could not secure plane tickets once hostilities ended.
“It was a) really expensive and b) a transportation nightmare,” she said. “It just became impossible.”
At the opening ceremony, a mother who came from Los Angeles to support her son, also on a soccer team, told JTA that she had lucked out by purchasing El Al tickets in 2025, well before prices shot up. But when her husband went to book his own tickets last month, the only options available cost more than $10,000. He stayed home.
In total, organizers expect the Games to bring roughly 9,000 visitors from overseas, many fewer than in 2022.
But Hessing said he was looking on the bright side: “We’re still talking about thousands of tourists that will come to Israel, will support the state of Israel, will be part of amazing ceremonies, amazing trips, volunteering, and the competitions, of course,” he said.
Over the past year, there were many moments when Hessing questioned whether the Games could or should go ahead.
“We had very tough times,” he said, pointing to March’s second round of fighting with Iran and ongoing hostilities on the northern border. “I said to myself, oh my gosh, are we doing the right thing?”
The postponement made the budget harder to close. Propelled in part by war, the dollar fell from about 3.7 shekels last summer to about 2.9 today, reducing the value of money raised abroad, while flight prices climbed sharply amid widespread cancellations and rising oil prices.
The combination raised costs for both the organization and the delegations, forcing the Maccabiah to secure additional funding from the Israeli government, philanthropists and the private sector companies to close the gap.
Meanwhile, it took months of reassurance to persuade some delegation leaders to come to Israel amid security concerns. Then, hundreds of athletes from around the world backed out in March, and some countries were unable to send official delegations because of travel warnings and insurance restrictions tied to Israel’s status as a war zone.
Some athletes from those countries decided to come anyway, Hessing said, competing as individuals rather than as part of a national delegation. But Great Britain canceled its youth delegation, sending only adult athat least a dozen countries that competed last time are not represented this year, including Canada, whose 700 athletes were the fourth-largest delegation in 2022.
“While we are saddened that our more than 300 delegates were unable to take part this year, our Maccabi spirit remains as strong as ever,” Maccabi Canada posted in an Instagram story on Wednesday promoting a livestream of the opening event. “Join us in watching the opening ceremony and cheering on all those competing.”
The only recent precedent for a much smaller Maccabiah, Hessing said, was in 2001, during the Second Intifada, when about 2,000 athletes came as suicide bombings were hitting Israeli buses and cities.
The Maccabiah began in 1932 with 390 Jewish athletes from 18 countries competing. More than nine decades later, Hessing said, the Games are still judged not only by the competitions but by what participants take back with them.
This year, he said, success will mean turning those who chose to come in wartime into “great ambassadors to the state of Israel,” sending them back to their communities “as leaders, as members, with pride, and most important, with a much stronger connection to Israel.”
For many participants, it will be their first time in the country, he said, with first-time visitors typically making up 65% to 70% of the Maccabiah and about 5% later immigrating to Israel.
For Hessing, the first test has already been met. The message he hears most often from athletes and their families is that they are grateful the Maccabiah was happening.
“The first thing people are saying when they land is thank you for not canceling the Games,” he said. “It’s going to be two weeks they will never forget.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Looking for a precedent for the Supreme Court’s decisions? Try Germany in the 1930s.
In October 1936, German law professors held their annual meeting in Berlin. In his welcoming address, the meeting’s chairperson turned to the pressing issue of Jewish influence. “The Jew’s relationship to our intellectual work is parasitical, tactical and commercial,” he warned. Thanks to the Nazi state’s “healthy exorcism” of this malign presence from their profession, though, German “ethnic honor” would triumph over Jewish “cruelty and impudence.”
The chairperson was Carl Schmitt, the political philosopher whose prominence during the Nazi era earned him the moniker of the “crown jurist.” Neither his name nor his jurisprudence was cited by the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion in this week’s ruling in the case of Trump v. Slaughter. Nevertheless, this decision that, by neutering the independence of federal agencies like the FTC and FCC and stretching the already expansive powers of the president, makes for a distinct Schmittian chill.
As a young professor of constitutional law in Weimar Germany, Schmitt was as ambitious as he was accomplished, as prolific in his writings as he was pessimistic about parliamentary democracy. Nevertheless, though critical of the Weimar constitution, Schmitt was even more critical not just of the rise of political violence, but the concomitant rise of the Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler.
Come 1933, however, when Germany found itself under new management, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party and became one of Hitler’s most ardent advocates — a position that neatly dovetailed with his equally ardent hatred of Jews. As the political theorist Richard Wolin has noted in Theory and Society, Schmitt did not think the Nuremberg Laws went far enough; he demanded that existing marriages between Jews and non-Jews also be annulled and urged his fellow jurists, when quoting from works written by Jews, to label the authors as “Jewish.” (Published during the 2000s, Schmitt’s private diaries are a trove of antisemitic bilge.)
Though Schmitt distanced himself from politics in 1936 — scholars still debate the reasons — he never distanced himself from his support of the Nazi regime or its policies. With the defeat of the Third Reich in 1944, Schmitt was arrested not once, not twice, but three times as a possible candidate for the Nuremberg trials. Though his case was ultimately dismissed, he incurred a lifetime ban from teaching — a sentence that did not prevent the unrepentant Schmitt from continuing to write, transforming himself into the éminence grise of German conservative thought.
Since his death in 1985, Schmitt has enjoyed a growing reputation among arch conservative political and legal theorists — including dozens of applicants to the Heritage Foundation — to the dismay of liberal theorists like the late Jurgen Habermas. Schmitt’s early works in particular — Political Theology, The Concept of the Political, and The Guardian of the Constitution — have much bearing upon the jury-rigged jurisprudence of the six Republican sages who now sit on our Supreme Court.
Political Theology opens with a famous and oracular line: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” By this statement, Schmitt locates the source of sovereignty not with the people — after all, he did not write “Sovereign are they” — but with the individual who, by charisma and conviction, lays claim to power. If this sounds familiar, it should: Schmitt was a fan of the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose book The Leviathan, makes the case for an authoritarian ruler.
In a word, Schmitt dismisses the legitimacy of natural law, which posits that our rights are found in human nature. But he also swats away positive law, which affirms that rights, not necessarily found in nature, are established and enforced by the state. For Schmitt, sovereign authority is instead embodied by that charismatic individual who cancels what had been law and employs violence, if necessary, to enforce his power and normalize the situation. Any binding order, Schmitt insists, is based not on natural rights or legal norms, but solely on that individual’s authority.
Such a claim echoes Hobbes’ line from the Leviathan that it “is not Wisdom but Authority that makes a law.” Not that the three justices named to the court by Trump would ever have the chutzpah to describe him as a fount of wisdom. But along with their Republican colleagues, they did have the chutzpah to dismiss nearly a century of legal precedent concerning the powers of independent federal agencies, and instead double down on their earlier decisions that had already, thanks to their dubious unitary executive theory, expanded the executive branch’s powers.
Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political reveals the danger of the fast and furious pace of these court decisions. Schmitt argues that the most fundamental political distinction is that between friends and enemies. This distinction has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with seeking and maintaining power. As the legal scholar Lars Vinx notes, Schmitt insisted that the essence of great leadership is to decide “which approach to legality or its opposite and which set of public enemies is in the interest of the nation.”
Few lines better capture the essence of politics according to Trump, just as it captures the foolishness and fearfulness of the majority on the Supreme Court. For the past 18 months, it has done its best to avoid being labeled a public enemy by our president. That it has so far been successful is a measure of just how far it has failed to defend our same nation and its constitution.
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