Uncategorized
The immigrant NYers Zohran Mamdani cherishes all feel warmth for their homelands. Why can’t Jews?
My family was never American; we were New Yorkers. My great-grandparents came from the old country to the Lower East Side as children; they moved to Harlem and to the Bronx and there they raised my grandparents. My grandparents married and moved to Great Neck, which was not yet a Jewish suburb, where my father was born and raised. And then in their 20s my parents moved back into the city, to the Upper West Side, in the late 1960s, where a few years later I was born and raised. Until the age of 46, I’d lived in New York City almost all my life.
I adore the city and everything about it. What I love most about it, I think, was what the great Jewish New Yorker Horace Kallen called its “cultural pluralism.” New York is a vast collection of different nationalities — the greatest such collection ever assembled in one place — all living together, neighborhood by neighborhood. The City (there is only this one City) and not the soulless slab of glass and concrete jutting out of Turtle Bay, is the true United Nations.
New Yorkers hail from over 150 different nations; there are enormous populations of Dominicans, Chinese, Mexicans and Guyanese, Jamaicans, Ecuadorians, Haitians, Indians, Russians, and Trinidadians, Bangladeshis and more, blanketing the city from Arthur Avenue in the Bronx out to Flushing and down to the Rockaways. Subway signs are written in four, five, six languages; each train car some space shuttle out of Star Trek, teeming with New Yorkers of every possible complexion and dress from every corner of the globe.
So I was very moved when Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani spoke in his acceptance speech last week of “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas; Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses; Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties” all of whom, he said, had turned out to vote for him. And I was deeply moved by his vision of returning the city to its everyday, working class people, so that New York might “remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.” (Whether this speech accurately reflected his actual median voter, who was more likely to be a recent college graduate living in Bushwick than a working mother of four in Flushing, is another matter.)
But as he spoke, I turned to thinking about Ibrahim, a young handsome Yemeni who ran his family bodega around the corner from my former home in Brooklyn. We used to speak about Yemen — he had strong views about which Yemeni singers I should listen to — and how much he loved and missed it; he and his cousins would travel back there to stay for years at a time, returning to Brooklyn to earn and send remittances home. And I thought of all the Pakistani and Bangladeshi cab drivers I’ve had over the years, and how every last one of them told me about the house they’d always dreamt of building in the countryside of Pakistan or Bangladesh, for their parents if not for them or their now-local children. I thought of the apartment of the girl who lived downstairs from me in the building I grew up in on West 90th street, with whom I was half in love, her family Trinidadian Indians, and the apartment heavy with plants and oversized rattan furniture and the moist exhaust of the humidifier that was always blowing; her apartment felt, I imagined, like Trinidad itself, and the curry tasted as it did back home. And I think always of Delsie, the Jamaican woman who cared for me when my mother went back to work, who scolded and spoiled me and regaled me with stories about Montego Bay.
All of my fellow New Yorkers loved their home across the ocean; all of them sent money and love to their families and countrymen, sustaining that tie as much as they could.
And the Jews? Well, we were the same, but also different. For one thing, we had been in the city longer. We’d left our mark on the Lower East Side where my Chinese-Brazilian best friend lived generations ago, on its landscape and on its idiom, but we’d long moved on to other neighborhoods, as the progress of my own family demonstrates. But also, according to Horace Kallen, the Jews of his day (the 1910s) were different from the other immigrant communities of New York in the way they related to the Old Country:
[Jews] do not come to the United States from truly native lands, lands of their proper natio and culture. They come from lands of sojourn, where they have been for ages treated as foreigners, at most as semi-citizens, subject to disabilities and persecutions. They come with no political aspirations against the peace of other states such as move the Irish, the Poles, the Bohemians. They come with the intention to be completely incorporated into the body-politic of the state. . . .
Yet, once the wolf is driven from the door and the Jewish immigrant takes his place in our society a free man and an American, he tends to become all the more a Jew. The cultural unity of his race, history and background is only continued by the new life under the new conditions. The Jewish quarter. . . has its sectaries, its radicals, its artists, its literati; its press, its literature, its theater, its Yiddish and its Hebrew, its Talmudical colleges and its Hebrew schools, its charities and its vanities, and its coordinating organization, the Kehilla, all more or less duplicated wherever Jews congregate in mass. Here not religion alone, but the whole world of radical thinking, carries the mother-tongue and the father-tongue, with all that they imply.
This was the position of the Jews of New York until mid-century; a “nation and culture” without a homeland to pine for.
But, of course, then the Jews — like the Irish, and the Poles, and the Czechs — regained a homeland. And fitfully, not without controversy and dissension, we, too, came to love it, and maintain a deep, unbreakable attachment to it, and seek to support it. In this, we became like the Poles and Irish and Czechs — and also like the Armenians and the Macedonians and, yes, the Palestinians, supporting “political aspirations” for our people that can rub up “against the peace of other states”). Such is the complexity of national attachments. And some of us, in fact, were so deeply attached that we left our first love, the city of our birth, to upbuild it.
I won’t argue that what Israel is to New York Jews is identical to what Yemen is to Ibrahim. The Jews’ homeland is different from other homelands, because Jewish history is different from other peoples’ history. But it’s just as precious to us. And listening to Mamdani, I wondered why his Whitmanesque reveries have no room for that attachment. I wondered why, based on his past statements, he intended not to embrace our love and grief for Israel but instead — by seeking to localize his longest-standing political priority — to turn the grievances of his Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas and Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses and Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties against us and against the Jewish homeland.
I realize that I am homesick for a city that was also a Jewish city, my city, that I fear is gone. And the pain that I felt when the new mayor summoned a vision of that vanished city — an ersatz vision, with no room in its heart for Jews as we really are — was a deep pain.
—
The post The immigrant NYers Zohran Mamdani cherishes all feel warmth for their homelands. Why can’t Jews? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
These are the victims of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration shooting in Sydney
(JTA) — A local rabbi, a Holocaust survivor and a 12-year-old girl are among those killed during the shooting attack Sunday on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.
Here’s what we know about the 11 people murdered in the attack, which took place at a popular beachside playground where more than 1,000 people had congregated to celebrate the first night of the holiday, as well as about those injured.
This story will be updated.
Eli Schlanger, rabbi and father of five
Schlanger was the Chabad emissary in charge of Chabad of Bondi, which had organized the event. He had grown up in England but moved to Sydney 18 years ago, where he was raising his five children with his wife Chaya. Their youngest was born just two months ago.
In addition to leading community events through Chabad of Bondi, Schlanger worked with Jewish prisoners in Australian prisons. “He flew all around the state, to go visit different people in jail, literally at his own expense,” Mendy Litzman, a Sydney Jew who responded as a medic to the attack, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Last year, amid a surge in antisemitic incidents in Australia, Schlanger posted a video of himself dancing and celebrating Hanukkah, promoting lighting menorahs as “the best response to antisemitism.”
The best response to antisemitism. Happy Chanukah! pic.twitter.com/33RSGYzhUY
— Rabbi Eli Schlanger (@SchlangerEli) December 17, 2024
Two months before his murder, he published an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urging him to rescind his “act of betrayal” of the Jewish people. The letter was published on Facebook the same day, Sept. 21, that Albanese announced he would unilaterally recognize an independent Palestinian state.
Alex Kleytman, Holocaust survivor originally from Ukraine
Kleytman had come to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration annually for years, his wife Larisa told The Australian. She said he was protecting her when he was shot. The couple, married for six decades, has two children and 11 grandchildren.
The Australia reported that Kleytman was a Holocaust survivor who had passed World War II living with his family in Siberia.
12-year-old girl
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told CNN that a friend “lost his 12-year-old daughter, who succumbed to her wounds in hospital.” The girl’s name was not immediately released.
Dozens of people were injured
- Yossi Lazaroff, the Chabad rabbi at Texas A&M University, said his son had been shot while running the event for Chabad of Bondi. “Please say Psalms 20 & 21 for my son, Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, יהודה לייב בן מאניא who was shot in a terrorist attack at a Chanukah event he was running for Chabad of Bondi in Sydney, Australia,” he tweeted.
- Yaakov “Yanky” Super, 24, was on duty for Hatzalah at the event when he was shot in the back, Litzman said. “He started screaming on his radio that he needs back up, he was shot. I heard it and I responded to the scene. I was the closest backup. I was one of the first medical people on the scene,” Litzman said. He added, “We just went into action and saved a lot of lives, including one of our own.”
The post These are the victims of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration shooting in Sydney appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
The three responses to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack that could make Jews safer
After two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens more, the world is asking urgent questions: Could this be the first of many such attacks? Who might be behind it? And how can we prevent the next tragedy?
Was Iran involved?
Iran, with its long history of using proxies and terrorism, naturally comes to mind. Israeli intelligence has publicly warned that Tehran remains highly motivated to target Israeli and Jewish interests abroad.
Reports suggest that Israeli agencies have assessed not only that Iran has the intent, but that it also possesses the capability to use its networks — through Hezbollah, Hamas, and other proxy groups — to strike outside the Middle East. Western governments, including Australia, the U.S., and members of the EU, have acknowledged Iranian intelligence activity on their soil.
The motivation is clear: Israel’s military strike damaged Iranian infrastructure and positions in June, followed shortly by U.S. attacks that compounded the damage and were widely celebrated in Israel and by Jewish communities. To Iran’s benighted regime, they were provocations that demanded a response. Certainly some of the investigation into the Bondi Beach attack will look in that direction.
But focusing solely on Iran risks missing a more immediate and pervasive danger: Violence against Jews does not require orchestration by a foreign state. The conditions that make it possible — and increasingly thinkable — are already everywhere.
Terrorism against Jews has gone global
Terrorism is tragically easy to carry out. Only two months ago, two Jews were killed by a Muslim attacker on Yom Kippur who rammed a car into a crowd outside a synagogue in England and attacked people with knives.
And while the UK and Australia severely restrict access to weapons, nowhere in the developed world is mad violence easier to orchestrate than in the United States. Firearms are cheap, accessible, and legal for virtually anyone, and the sheer size of the country makes monitoring and security far more difficult than in smaller, more centralized nations. Lone actors can wreak destruction on a scale that would be unthinkable elsewhere. If one wanted to locate the most vulnerable place for ideologically motivated attacks, the United States sits uncomfortably near the top.
Motivation for such violence has been growing steadily. Antisemitic attacks have increased across the Western world, and the way the Gaza war unfolded has only accelerated the trend. The narrative of “genocide” has become increasingly entrenched, making it harder for Jews to occupy the once-unquestioned moral space: I still defend Israel and should not be attacked for it. That space is collapsing.
“The idea that Jews collectively bear responsibility for Israel’s actions is seeping into public consciousness in ways that make massacres like Bondi Beach more thinkable, if not inevitable.”
Dan Perry
Polls now show that roughly half of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Substantial minorities go further, rationalizing recent attacks against Jews as “understandable” or even “justified.” These numbers do not indicate majority support for violence, but they are significant enough to suggest that moral restraints are weakening.
This shift is particularly pronounced among younger generations, where hostility toward Israel has become a moral baseline. It does not automatically translate into action, but it lowers the social cost of excusing violence. The idea that Jews collectively bear responsibility for Israel’s actions is seeping into public consciousness in ways that make massacres like Bondi Beach more thinkable, if not inevitable.
The situation is compounded by Israel’s current government. Its policies and rhetoric have alienated large swathes of the global community, including non-orthodox Jews in the United States. The government’s posture — contemptuous, dismissive, and occasionally openly sneering — makes the work of diplomats, community leaders, and advocates far more difficult. Israel’s failure to convey a nuanced understanding abroad of the delicacy of its own situation, nor give any inkling of introspection about its conduct in Gaza, feeds perceptions of illegitimacy and exacerbates antisemitism.
So, what can be done?
The 3 ways to make Jewish communities safer
First, Jewish communities must assume that maximal security at every event, and certainly on holidays and around landmarks, is essential not optional. Every public event, school, and institution should be protected at the highest feasible level. Prudence demands it. Governments that claim to protect minorities must fund and sustain this protection, not treat it as an emergency add-on after tragedy strikes.
Second, political leadership matters. World leaders must speak clearly and forcefully against antisemitic violence. Silence or hedging is read as permission. Muslim leaders, in particular, should speak plainly: Condemning attacks on Jews is not an endorsement of Israel, nor a betrayal of Palestinian suffering — it is an assertion of basic moral boundaries. President Donald Trump, despite his many failings, has a unique capacity to apply pressure. If he insisted publicly that major figures in the Muslim world denounce antisemitic violence, he could secure statements and commitments that might otherwise be unattainable. That could save lives.
Finally, Israel itself must confront its role. The current government has become a strategic liability — not just for Israel’s security, but for Jews worldwide. Its policies, tone, and posture have helped create the conditions in which antisemitism flourishes abroad. This in no way justifies attacks on Jews, but we must live in the real world that can be cruel, indifferent, superficial and unfair.
A government that understands the global stakes, communicates openness to the world, respects the diversity of the Jewish diaspora, and approaches foreign and domestic policy with nuance and restraint would do enormous good. It would not eliminate the threat overnight, but it would drastically reduce the conditions that allow such hatred to grow. Replacing the current government with one capable of such diplomacy and moral awareness could, in a sense, be the most effective preventive measure of all.
The Bondi Beach massacre is a devastating warning. It is a tragedy that could have happened anywhere and serves as a grim reminder that antisemitic violence is an urgent threat to Jews everywhere.
The post The three responses to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack that could make Jews safer appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
U.S. leaders condemn ‘vile act of antisemitic terror’ after deadly Hanukkah attack in Australia
American politicians responded early Sunday to devastating reports from Sydney, Australia, where at least 11 people were killed during a Hanukkah celebration at the popular Bondi Beach on the first night of Hanukkah. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the terror attack an “act of evil antisemitism” that targeted Australia’s Jewish community.
Some elected officials struck a somber tone, while others drew political conclusions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a brief statement condemning the attack and said that “antisemitism has no place in this world.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the Australian government’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state earlier this year encouraged “the Jew-hatred now stalking your streets.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, tied the attack to the Israel-Hamas war, sending a warning to governments that support the unilateral recognition of an independent Palestinian state before Hamas is disarmed. “When you appease those who kill Jews, you get more killing of Jews,” Graham said in an interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.
Sen. John Fetterman, a pro-Israel Democrat from Pennsylvania, echoed that sentiment on the same program, saying that anti-Israel protests in recent years have “penetrated” into violent attacks on Jews. “Just call it what it is,” Fetterman said. “Antisemitism is a worldwide scourge, and it’s constantly demonstrated to be deadly.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, posted on X that the attack is a “shocking reminder that antisemitism and hate is not only toxic and far too present and widespread around the world, it is deadly. It must be vigorously condemned, confronted and overcome.”
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani issued a statement, posted on his social media accounts, calling the attack a “vile act of antisemitic terror” and “the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world.”
Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel whose statements on the conflict and refusal to disavow the “globalize the Intifada” slogan have roiled and divided the Jewish community, said the deadly attack should be met with urgent action to counter antisemitism. He also reiterated his pledge to “work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe — on our streets, our subways, at shul, in every moment of every day.” New York City is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
Outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the police department will provide additional security at public menorah lightings across the city. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state police will assist with protection. “New York will always stand against the scourge of antisemitism and confront violence head-on,” Hochul added.
Brad Lander, the outgoing New York City Comptroller who is Jewish, and also running for Congress, also highlighted the heroism of a local man, Ahmed al-Ahmed, who put his own life at risk by running behind one of the gunmen and tackling and disarming him. Lander mourned the killing of a Chabad of Bondi’s Rabbi Eli Schlanger.
“Our menorahs tonight will also be yahrzeit candles — with grief for this grievous loss and rededication to shine brighter than slaughter and hate,” Lander wrote on X.
The post U.S. leaders condemn ‘vile act of antisemitic terror’ after deadly Hanukkah attack in Australia appeared first on The Forward.