Uncategorized
This organization hired asylum seekers to pack Passover goods for Jews in need
(New York Jewish Week) — At a warehouse in Borough Park, thousands of apples were waiting to be taken off two 18-wheelers, as dozens of volunteers were hard at work putting groceries into bags.
The scene was one part of a massive $1.5 million operation undertaken every year by Masbia, an Orthodox organization that helps provide kosher food for low-income people, to distribute food for Passover to 10,000 families.
But this week, the Passover initiative differed from those of previous years. That’s because most of the people in the warehouse were migrants, the majority of whom were bused to New York from Texas during the past year. Because they are undocumented, they lack work permits, and for many of them, working in Masbia’s warehouse is their first job in the city.
Masbia was one of many organizations to welcome migrants who came from Texas when they arrived at the Port Authority last year, providing them with new shoes to replace pairs that may have broken down during long treks through jungles and other dangerous areas. The group’s executive director, Alex Rappaport, sees employing a group of migrants as another way to help them find their footing in the city.
“Sometimes, you need to turn over every stone to find a way to help people,” Rappaport told the New York Jewish Week.
Passover is the busiest time for Masbia, with hundreds of pallets of food coming in daily to the organization’s three warehouses in Brooklyn and Queens. At Masbia’s Borough Park location, boxes of potatoes and onions lined the sidewalk and stretched down the block. Inside the garage were piles of other Passover goods, stacked two stories high. Volunteers were busy picking produce off the shelves and putting it into bags for delivery drivers who were waiting near the entrance. The operation starts in December, and food distribution begins two weeks before Passover, which starts next Wednesday night.
“These people should have been given work permits,” Rappaport said. “They’re here, ready, willing and able to do beautiful work.”
Masbia CEO Alex Rappaport in front of a truck full of apples in Borough Park, Brooklyn on March 29, 2023. (Jacob Henry)
Rappaport combined the work with a touch of advocacy: Some of the volunteers working alongside the migrants were Jewish high school students, and Rappaport overheard one of them say that “illegal immigrants” were working there. He gathered high schoolers together and began to hold court.
“These people who are working are asylum seekers,” Rappaport told the teens. “They are fully designated as an asylum seeker, meaning to say, they are fully legal, because they have a day in court.”
Rappaport went on to discuss how if a person jaywalks, they are technically breaking the law, but are not referred to as “an illegal.”
“There’s never a person that turns into ‘an illegal,’” Rappaport said. “The term is just a very bad term. A person might not have documents, but these are people coming from the border who are looking for a new future. It’s an opportunity. They asked for asylum.”
The opportunity Masbia is providing comes via a partnership with La Colmena, a nonprofit that helps find jobs for day laborers, domestic workers and low-wage immigrant workers in from Staten Island.
Kimberly Vega, the workforce manager of La Colmena, told the New York Jewish Week that the group saw “an influx of asylum seekers” that began in August and is still ongoing. Vega has a list of 190 workers looking for jobs. Masbia provided work for 15.
“We’re facing this crisis at the moment,” Vega said. “We have the amount of workers, but we don’t have the jobs. They face all these challenges because they don’t have a permit or any documentation, so we’re very thankful for this opportunity that came up through Masbia.”
Vega added that many of the workers are staying in homeless shelters provided by the city in Staten Island. Many of the workers drop their kids off at school in the morning, then come to Brooklyn to work throughout the day. “They got shipped on a bus, arrived here and were transported to a shelter,” Vega said.
According to NPR, it’s estimated that up to 50,000 migrants were moved to New York over the past year by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, called Abbott’s actions “inhumane.”
In a New York Post op-ed published last August, Abbott wrote that Adams was hypocritical for calling New York a sanctuary city, then complained about the new arrivals.
On Twitter, Adams’ press secretary Fabian Levy wrote that the mayor is “welcoming asylum seekers with open arms.”
Vega said the migrants working at the Masbia warehouse were being paid based on a law that has been used to help undocumented workers earn income. According to the State Department of Labor, nonprofits may give volunteers stipends or reimbursements. Therefore, Vega said, even though a migrant worker is only a volunteer, they can still be paid by a nonprofit organization. Masbia and La Colmena would not disclose how much the workers were being paid.
Asylum seekers working at a Masbia warehouse in Brooklyn on March 29, 2023. (Jacob Henry)
Gledys, 30, a migrant working at the warehouse, told the New York Jewish Week that she came to New York from Venezuela after being bussed here from Texas last October.
Gledys, who did not give her full name for fear of her family being harmed, said through a translator that when she was living in Venezuela, “There’s a certain political view that everyone has to have.”
“If you even think differently, you can’t even speak amongst your community, because then they will turn on you,” Gledys said. “My husband was a police officer there, and because of that reason, we had to leave.”
When she arrived in New York, Gledys said she was “hit with the reality that it’s hard to find a job because you need certain permits.”
“I’m working really hard [at Masbia] and hoping this will open my doors,” Gledys said. “They’ll be able to see that I’m a hard worker and [I will] gain experience for more opportunities to open up.”
She added that she was thankful that her children were able to begin attending public school only a few days after she arrived. The city also helped provide daycare for her.
“No other country has done that,” Gledys said. “It’s more than enough. I’m not suffering, and I’m grateful. I’m definitely very hopeful because now I can see a different future for my children, a different future for myself.”
Another worker named Moises, 39, who likewise did not provide his full name due to fear for his family’s safety, said he came to New York from Venezuela via Texas in January after entering immigration custody.
“During those days, we were still cuffed and I was separated from my family,” Moises said. His wife and children eventually made it to New York, and they were reunited.
He said that in Venezuela, inflation was so rampant that he was only making $7 to $10 a week.
“People are really struggling,” Moises said. “There are also a lot of political issues as well. If the community tries to step up and do a protest, you have the military stepping in and shooting directly at civilians. We’re really running away, because we were so scared.”
He said he was worried about how he was going to feed his family, but was also thankful for the help they received when they first arrived, including finding a place to stay in a shelter, and now the job at Masbia.
“I want to feel independent,” Moises said. “With a job like this, I can be more independent. I understand it’s a temporary job, but hopefully in the next couple of months, I can find something that is no longer temporary.”
Rappaport feels that there’s a connection between the migrants’ stories and the holiday they’re helping prepare for because the Jewish people were also strangers in Egypt. “The Bible says, ‘You should love the stranger, the newcomer,’” Rappaport said. “There is that idea of people making a long journey to a promised land. These people went through the jungle.”
He added, “It’s beautiful to connect the Jewish story of Exodus to this story of the challenge of the asylum seekers.
“People take their whole family and go for thousands of miles through very dangerous terrain,” Rapport said. “They must be running from something. It’s not utopia yet, but we’re celebrating some freedom. And they’re still in the middle of their story.”
—
The post This organization hired asylum seekers to pack Passover goods for Jews in need appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Cameron Kasky, Jewish Parkland shooting survivor, is running for Congress on platform to ‘stop funding genocide’
(JTA) — Cameron Kasky, the 25-year-old Jewish activist and school shooting survivor, has entered the race to represent one of the United States’ most Jewish congressional districts — on a platform that includes stopping Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
“We need leaders who aren’t going to coddle their billionaire donors, who won’t support a genocide and who aren’t going to settle for flaccid incrementalism,” Kasky said in the launch video posted on Tuesday for his campaign to represent New York City’s 12th Congressional District.
The video’s caption includes the three main points of his campaign: “Medicare for all. Stop funding genocide. Abolish ICE.”
While Kasky’s anti-Trump positions are likely to go over well with the district’s largely liberal populace, his stance that Israel is committing a genocide — and the apparent centrality of that stance to his campaign — could be an issue for constituents. The district includes the Upper West and East Sides of Manhattan, where many voters sided with the pro-Israel Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani in the city’s recent mayoral election, as well as Midtown Manhattan.
Kasky’s messaging may, however, speak more to young voters in the district. A New York Times/Siena poll from September found that 66% of New York City voters ages 18 to 29 found that Mamdani, an anti-Zionist, “best addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” among the mayoral candidates.
A democratic socialist, Kasky was a vocal supporter of Mamdani throughout the mayoral election — and an aggressive critic of fellow Democrats who objected to the mayoral candidate’s anti-Israel stances.
“‘Vote blue no matter who unless it’s a Muslim who criticizes Israel’s extremist far right nationalist government’ is not ‘vote blue no matter who,’” he wrote in one tweet.
In another, he wrote that Democrats who refused to endorse him after the primary should “go get a consulting gig and stop disrespecting your own voter base.”
Kasky had teased entering the crowded race for months, ever since Rep. Jerry Nadler, Congress’ most senior Jewish member, announced he would not be running for reelection.
In that time, Kasky has also weighed in on the viability of Micah Lasher, the Jewish state Assembly member and former Nadler aide who launched his own campaign for the seat earlier in the fall.
Lasher is unable to “fight fascism” because of his “genocide denial and free speech attacks on students,” Kasky wrote, with a screenshot of a Lasher tweet from Oct. 28, 2023, that criticized what Lasher called the “awful use of the word ‘genocide’ by some westerners to describe Israel’s actions.” (As the war in Gaza neared its two-year mark this summer, a poll found that half of Americans believed Israel had committed genocide, a claim that Israel and the United States both reject.)
Kasky also reposted a poll according to which Brad Lander, Mamdani’s most prominent Jewish ally, would beat the moderate congressman Dan Goldman, who is Jewish and withheld an endorsement due to “some of the rhetoric coming from Mamdani.”
“Needless to say, I am looking forward to working with Brad Lander,” Kasky wrote.
Kasky is the co-host of the “For You Podcast” with Tim Miller, which attempts to “break down the politics of the TikTok generation,” for The Bulwark, a center-right, anti-Trump media company.
One of Kasky’s podcast guests over the summer is now his opponent: Jack Schlossberg.
Schlossberg, who is the grandson of President John F. Kennedy and has said he is “at least 100% half Jewish,” announced his own candidacy for the 12th Congressional District last week.
Kasky remarked on their podcast that many women in his life have crushes on Schlossberg — and Schlossberg replied that the two men have a similar appeal.
“I always say, when you go unhinged politics Jew, it’s hard to go back,” Kasky said.
Kasky was thrust into the national spotlight as a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Together with other survivors, he led a march in Washington and spurred a national movement that is seen as crucial to the 2022 passage of the most significant federal gun control legislation in decades.
Kasky, a junior at the time of the shooting, is credited with having selecting the name and hashtag #NeverAgain — which has long been linked to Holocaust commemoration — for the student-led gun control campaign. (Another co-founder of Never Again MSD is David Hogg, who recently stepped down as the youngest-ever vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.)
Before the shooting, Kasky said he played Motel in a school production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The quality of his performance was proof, he joked, that he was not a paid actor in the protests, as some conspiracy theorists accused.
Kasky attended Hebrew school growing up, which he referenced when speaking on MSNBC about the “No Kings” protests against Trump.
“This kind of reminded me of my education growing up — when you go to Hebrew school, you learn about fascism a little bit younger than the other kids,” he said. “And you find yourself asking, in the face of authoritarianism, in the face of seeing a genocide happen before the entire world, what would I do? How would I react?”
He moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, where he later dropped out, and lives in the 12th Congressional District that’s been described as a “crown jewel” of New York politics.
Now, Kasky is running on a progressive agenda that emphasizes fighting Trump and stopping U.S. military aid for Israel, referring to the country’s actions in Gaza in no uncertain terms as a “genocide” — a response which he says has been informed in part by his Jewish identity.
“I am always surprised when people ask me why I focus so much on Palestine,” he wrote. “Beyond my Jewish identity making me strongly opposed to genocide, I’m a school shooting survivor-turned-activist. I started my adult life demanding an end to American-made weapons slaughtering children.”
The post Cameron Kasky, Jewish Parkland shooting survivor, is running for Congress on platform to ‘stop funding genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Democrats urge Senate to oppose Trump’s pick for antisemitism envoy ahead of confirmation hearing
(JTA) — On the eve of a long-delayed Senate confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump’s pick for antisemitism envoy, a group of House Democrats is urging senators to reject the nomination of Yehuda Kaploun, arguing that he lacks the judgment and moral authority the post requires.
In a letter obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and sent Tuesday to Sen. Jim Risch, the Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, its top Democrat, the lawmakers call Kaploun’s nomination “partisan and controversial” and say his “comments and actions demonstrate a clear unfitness for this post.”
A total of 18 House Democrats signed the letter, including several Jewish lawmakers such as Jerrold Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Jan Schakowsky, Becca Balint and Steve Cohen.
The intervention is atypical: House members almost never publicly oppose sub-cabinet nominees, a category generally considered routine Senate business.
The committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Kaploun’s nomination on Wednesday morning.
Trump tapped Kaploun in April to serve as the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, an ambassador-level role focused on antisemitism abroad. The Senate did not move for months to schedule a hearing, leaving the position vacant even as administration officials warned about a spike in antisemitism.
Kaploun, a Hasidic rabbi, Miami-based businessman and longtime political operative close to Trump, would be the first Hasidic Jew to serve in the role if confirmed. In a May profile, JTA detailed how he rose from a Brooklyn yeshiva student and community activist affiliated with the Chabad movement to a prominent figure in Republican politics and a visible surrogate in Trump’s 2024 campaign.
The Democratic letter focuses first on Kaploun’s rhetoric about Trump’s political opponents. It cites a comment in which Kaploun said that after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, “Democrats refuse to even recognize the butchers of women and kidnappers of children as terrorists,” calling the statement “absurd, insulting, and malicious.” The lawmakers argue that the remark maligns Democratic members of the Foreign Relations Committee who condemned the attacks and raises questions about his ability to work across party lines.
In addition, the Democrats point to an event Kaploun organized during the 2024 campaign at which Trump said that if he were to lose the election, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” and spoke of a “Democrat curse” on Jews who vote for the party. The letter describes those remarks as antisemitic scapegoating and says Kaploun’s failure to publicly condemn them — or what the letter calls the administration’s hiring of “antisemites and Christian Nationalists” — should be a central topic of Wednesday’s hearing.
The lawmakers also cite JTA’s earlier reporting on dueling lawsuits in Miami-Dade County involving Kaploun and another member of his synagogue, which alleged threats and an extramarital affair. Court records show that judges issued restraining orders on both sides and that the case was settled in April, days before Trump announced the nomination. Kaploun has denied having an affair and has said, through an attorney, that he was drawn into a marital dispute that has now been resolved.
The letter closes by turning Kaploun’s own past standard for nominees back on him, quoting a 1993 submission he made to the Senate, in which he argued that nominees must be judged on “honor,” “fidelity to principle” and respect for civil rights. “By his own standards, Mr. Kaploun fails,” the lawmakers write, urging senators to vote no.
Their intervention comes as a broad coalition of Jewish organizations has pressed the Senate to move quickly to confirm an antisemitism envoy and a parallel ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. In an August letter led by the Jewish Federations of North America, groups from across the Jewish communal spectrum urged Senate leaders to “swiftly” fill both roles, warning that “we dare not delay in filling these critical positions.”
Kaploun has previously said he is refraining from interviews until after his confirmation process, but he has publicly argued for the importance of rising above partisanship. In a May op-ed published by JTA and co-authored with the previous two antisemitism envoys, Elan Carr and Deborah Lipstadt, Kaploun wrote that “the fight against this terrible scourge… must be bipartisan and non-political.”
The post Democrats urge Senate to oppose Trump’s pick for antisemitism envoy ahead of confirmation hearing appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Maduro Accuses Zionists of Trying to Deliver Venezuela to ‘Devils’ as US Threatens Terror Designation
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Maxwell Briceno
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Zionists of trying to hand his country over to “devils,” as the United States ramped up military pressure and opposition leaders continued to voice support for action against his regime.
“There are those who want to hand this country over to the devils – you know who, right? The far-right Zionists want to hand this country over to the devils,” Maduro said on Saturday during a speech to local pro-government grassroots organizations.
“Who will prevail? The people of [King] David, the people of God, the people of [Simón] Bolívar, or the imperialist demons?” he continued. “We are the people of David against the Goliaths that we have already defeated in history. If God wills it, we will face them.”
| Nicolás Maduro: “Algunos quieren entregar este país a los demonios; ya saben quiénes son: la facción sionista de ultraderecha”.
pic.twitter.com/i7IJ5W0kOs— Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) November 16, 2025
The Venezuelan leader has a long history of blaming the Jewish state and Jewish communities for the country’s problems, even as opposition leaders continue to publicly voice support for Israel and denounce his regime.
Last year, Maduro blamed “international Zionism” for the large-scale anti-government protests that erupted across the country following the presidential elections, in which he claimed victory amid widespread claims of fraud.
He also called the Argentinian government “Nazi and Zionist” earlier this year, amid an ongoing dispute over the arrest of an Argentine military officer in Venezuela.
Maduro broke diplomatic relations with Argentina after President Javier Milei refused to recognize his reelection in July.
During his Saturday speech, the Venezuelan leader insisted that the country is a Christian nation and questioned why Americans would want to kill Christians, as he urged Washington to refrain from military escalation amid a US buildup in the Caribbean and strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels.
“I place at the forefront of this battle our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom our homeland has been entrusted, the only king between heaven and Earth, Jesus of Nazareth, the young child and Palestinian martyr, Jesus of Nazareth,” Maduro said.
“I place Jesus of Nazareth as commander-in-chief of the battle for peace and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people,” he continued.
He also tried to appeal to the American people, urging them to say “no” to war and “yes” to peace.
Maduro’s latest remarks came just before the Trump administration on Sunday announced the decision to designate the Cartel de los Soles, which the Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading, as a foreign terrorist organization. The designation could open the door to strikes on Maduro’s assets and infrastructure inside Venezuela.
“Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary,” the US State Department said in a statement, noting the designation will take effect next week, on Nov. 24.
“Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government. Cartel de los Soles by and with other designated [foreign terrorist organizations] including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” the statement continued. “The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security interests and deny funding and resources to narco-terrorists.”
Congress has seven days to review the decision after being notified, and “in the absence of congressional action to block the designation,” it will take effect, according to the State Department.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that, while he doesn’t believe the administration needs congressional authorization for potential military strikes inside Venezuela, he would like to keep lawmakers informed.
“We like to keep Congress involved. I mean, we’re stopping drug dealers and drugs from coming into our country,” he said. “We don’t have to get their approval. But I think letting them know is good.”
In recent weeks, Trump has ordered at least 21 strikes on boats believed to be carrying narcotics and has built up thousands of troops in the region.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force, saying it was established “to crush the cartels, stop the poison, and keep America safe.”