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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.”
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The post This organization hired asylum seekers to pack Passover goods for Jews in need appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Adidas apologizes for campaign with Israeli veteran amputee after calls to boycott
(JTA) — Adidas has apologized for featuring an Israeli former soldier and amputee in a campaign advertising its service for people with missing legs, which sparked calls for a boycott.
Shalev Biton, who lost his left leg during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, appeared in a promotional video for the sportswear company’s Single Shoe service. The program was introduced in Europe earlier this year to allow amputees to buy just one shoe.
The campaign, filmed in Hebrew, showed Biton trying on a single sneaker at a store in Israel and running outside. It did not mention his army service or how he lost his leg. Biton was in a military vehicle that was hit by a missile while on a protective patrol of villages on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, according to Israel’s Channel 12.
After the video circulated widely online, pro-Palestinian activists called for a boycott of Adidas, referencing Gaza’s high number of amputees created by Israeli attacks since October 2023.
Adidas apologized for the campaign on Monday in a statement on the Adidas Arabia Instagram account.
“We recognize that an image used in a recent local activation has raised concerns and strong reactions,” the company said. “It was never our intent to cause offence, and we apologize for anyone affected. We acknowledge the concerns that have been raised and are taking the feedback seriously.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, said the apology from Adidas was insufficient and demanded that the company “immediately remove the Israeli soldier from all Adidas promotional material and channels.”
“Those ‘affected’ are millions of Palestinians living under Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, and its decades long settler-colonial apartheid regime,” PACBI said in a statement.
Biton said on his Instagram account that he received “an insane wave of hate” over recent days. In an appeal for support, he told viewers, “I want to feel that you are here with me.”
Gaza has recorded over 5,000 limb amputations due to traumatic injuries, according to a May report from the World Health Organization. The United Nations reports that it has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Adidas weathered another controversy in 2024 for advertising sneakers based on a model first released during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when 11 Israeli athletes were killed by a Palestinian terrorist group. The company faced backlash from Israel and various Jewish groups for choosing Bella Hadid, a Palestinian-American model and vocal pro-Palestinian advocate, to front the campaign. Adidas subsequently dropped Hadid, prompting criticism from pro-Palestinian voices.
Adidas and Biton could not immediately be reached for further details.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Adidas apologizes for campaign with Israeli veteran amputee after calls to boycott appeared first on The Forward.
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Did Netanyahu ignore Oct. 7 warning? An independent inquiry could cost him re-election.
Israel’s election campaign effectively begins today, as political parties submit their list of candidates who will contest the Oct. 27 election. It is difficult to imagine a more politically explosive moment for the publication of a new investigation into the failures surrounding Oct. 7.
Today’s report in the Haaretz newspaper alleges that Benjamin Netanyahu received an extraordinary personal warning from UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed roughly a week and a half before the Hamas attack. According to the report, bin Zayed told Netanyahu during a 45-minute telephone conversation that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major operation against Israel that could cause bloodshed and destabilize the region.
Netanyahu reportedly replied that he believed Hamas was focused on the West Bank and assured the Emirati leader that Israel was prepared. The Haaretz report cites multiple senior foreign sources reportedly briefed on the conversation and an adviser to bin Zayed who was present for the call.
Even more consequentially, the investigation says Netanyahu did not pass this specific warning to the heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad or Israel Defense Forces. Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and former IDF chief Herzi Halevi, for their part, told Haaretz that they had not been informed of such a warning, while the UAE president did not respond to the news organization.
Haaretz traces the warning to an earlier chain of intelligence in which Sinwar himself had spoken ominously of an approaching “earthquake” – an enormous operation. That warning reached the Shin Bet on September 15 and produced high-level discussions in which Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned that Israel was moving toward confrontation.
Veteran journalist Shlomi Eldar, the co-author of the report, said bin Zayed concluded Israel had not heeded such signals – but Netanyahu “tried to convince bin Zayed that we are fine with Gaza.”
Netanyahu denies the central allegation completely. “There was no such warning,” his spokesman Topaz Luk said on Israel Radio. “I think this is another effort to distort the truth ahead of elections.”
The question of who is telling the truth leads directly to a democratic mechanism that has repeatedly been called upon at moments of national trauma throughout Israel’s history: a commission of inquiry.
That very mechanism was employed in response to the catastrophic failures surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Agranat Commission investigated the conduct of the military and government. State commissions of inquiry have likewise examined the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre and the killing of Arab citizens by police in October 2000.
Oct. 7 was the greatest security failure in Israel’s history, leaving more than 1,000 people dead, hundreds taken hostage, communities overrun and the country plunged into years of war.
Netanyahu has resisted all calls to establish an independent state commission – trying instead to set up an inquiry in which the opposition and coalition politicians would have equal say, guaranteeing any findings would be politicized. He has also attempted to deflect all blame onto the security establishment – making the issue a central one in the election campaign.
“You knew, you ignored it, you failed and you are guilty,” said opposition politician Yair Golan Tuesday, addressing his comments to Netanyahu. “We will set up a state inquiry that will expose the truth and those guilty will have to face justice .. for negligence that caused a massacre.”
Under the Commissions of Inquiry Law adopted in 1968, once the government establishes a state commission, its members are appointed by the president of the Supreme Court, and its chairman must be a serving or retired judge. The arrangement is intended to give the investigation independence from the political figures and institutions whose decisions it may ultimately have to judge.
And therein lies a rather extraordinary convergence. Netanyahu and his government have spent years attacking the legitimacy of precisely the institution entrusted by law with ensuring the independence of such an investigation: the Supreme Court. The campaign to weaken the judiciary that tore Israel apart before Oct. 7 has since provided a convenient argument against using the established mechanism for investigating Oct. 7 itself.
Netanyahu argues that a commission whose members are selected by the Supreme Court president cannot command broad public confidence. His opponents argue that a bespoke “political commission” may sound superficially balanced, but conclusions associated with coalition appointees would inevitably be dismissed by Netanyahu’s opponents as an attempt to protect him. Meanwhile findings associated with opposition appointees would be portrayed by his supporters as an attempt to destroy him. Israel would begin with two political camps choosing investigators and almost certainly end with two political camps accepting different versions of the truth.
The opposition has therefore refused to participate, arguing that the proposal would allow Netanyahu to influence the investigation of his own government. The stalemate has produced an outcome that is increasingly difficult to view as accidental: there is no agreed commission, no authoritative account of what happened and an ever-expanding vacuum in which every faction is free to construct its own version of Oct. 7.
Into that vacuum has flowed something far more disturbing than an ordinary argument over political responsibility. Netanyahu has worked relentlessly to shift responsibility toward the intelligence chiefs, the generals and especially the Shin Bet. Around him has grown an increasingly elaborate conspiracy theory that Oct. 7 may have involved something more sinister than incompetence and catastrophic misjudgment: an internal betrayal designed to damage Netanyahu politically.
What the Haaretz report provides is another powerful indication of how much remains unresolved, along with a potentially devastating explanation for Netanyahu’s determination to keep the established investigative mechanism from examining it. If the report is substantially correct — if Netanyahu personally received another serious warning before Oct. 7, misunderstood its significance, failed to circulate it to the security chiefs and then spent years attempting to redirect responsibility toward those same institutions — his resistance to a genuinely independent inquiry is clearly a political calculation..
“It’s like a knife in the stomach,” said Merav Svirsky, whose parents were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hardest hit on Oct. 7, and whose brother was kidnapped and killed in Gaza. “My father and mother could have been alive. My brother would not have been kidnapped and would be alive. And while others resigned, Netanyahu clings to his seat.”
The post Did Netanyahu ignore Oct. 7 warning? An independent inquiry could cost him re-election. appeared first on The Forward.
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Tidbits: New German textbooks about the Jewish religion
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
צום ערשטן מאָל זינט דעם חורבן האָבן די דײַטשישע עפֿנטלעכע שולן באַקומען לערנביכער געווידמעט דער ייִדישער רעליגיע, כּדי די לערערס זאָלן קענען זיי ניצן ווי אַ טייל פֿונעם קוריקולום.
די סעריע פֿון אַכט בענד, „דעת הדורות“ (דאָס וויסן פֿון די דורות), וועט לערנען תּלמידים צווישן 10 און 16 יאָר אַלט אויף דײַטש וועגן דער תּורה, דעם תּנך, די תּפֿילות, ייִדישער עטיק, הלכה, יום־טובֿים, דעם ייִדישן לעבנס־ציקל און דער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
דער ערשטער באַנד, וואָס קאָנצענטרירט זיך אויף דער תּורה, וועט מען אָנהייבן ניצן אינעם נײַעם שוליאָר.
די ביכער, וואָס זענען צונויפֿגעשטעלט געוואָרן דורכן „צענטראַל-ראַט פֿון די ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד“ בשותּפֿות מיטן „ערנסט קלעט פֿאַרלאַג“, ווערן געצילעוועט סײַ אויף פּריוואַטע ייִדישע שולן סײַ אויף מלוכישע שולן איבער גאַנץ דײַטשלאַנד.
דער ציל איז צו באַקענען די תּלמידים מיט דער ייִדישער רעליגיע און טראַדיציעס אין אַ צײַט וואָס עס וואַקסט דער אַנטיסעמיטיזם איבערן לאַנד.
ביז איצט האָבן די לערער פֿון רעליגיעזע ייִדישע לימודים נישט געהאַט קיין מאָדערנע לערנביכער וועגן יהדות אין הסכּם מיטן קוריקולום, אַזוי ווי ס׳האָבן געהאַט די לערער פֿון קריסטלעכע רעליגיעזע לימודים. צוליב דעם בלויז האָבן די לערער פֿון דער ייִדישער רעליגיע געמוזט אַליין צונויפֿשטעלן אַרבעט־בויגנס און אַנדערע מאַטעריאַלן, וואָס זיי האָבן איבערגעזעצט פֿון אַנדערע שפּראַכן.
אין אַ מעלדונג האָט שילה ערלבוים, די אָנפֿירערין פֿונעם אָפּטייל פֿון פּאָליטיק און רעליגיע בײַם ייִדישן צענטראַל־ראַט, געזאָגט: „מיר האָבן טאַקע געדאַרפֿט אַ סיסטעמאַטישן לערן־רעסורס, וואָס באַזאָרגט די קינדער נישט בלויז מיט לערן־מאַטעריאַל, אָבער מוטיקט זיי זיך אַקטיוו צו באַטייליקן,“ האָט זי געזאָגט.
„דורך ׳דעת הדורות׳ קענען זיי לייזן בילדער־רעטענישן; זיך דערוויסן וועגן די געשעענישן פֿון משה רבינוס לעבן דורך אַ ווערפֿל־שפּיל, אָדער אויספּרוּוון זייער וויסן פֿון ייִדישע טערמינען דורך דער מאָבילקע אָדער אַ „גיכענטפֿער קאָד“ (QR code),“ האָט ערלבוים געזאָגט.
יאָזעף שוסטער, דער פּרעזידענט פֿונעם ייִדישן צענטראַל־ראַט, האַלט אַז די לערנביכער זענען אַ וויכטיקער אויפֿטו. „אַ דאַנק דעם פּראָיעקט וועט די ייִדישע רעליגיעזע בילדונג איצט זײַן גלײַך מיט די קריסטלעכע רעליגיעזע לימודים,“ האָט ער געזאָגט.
צו לייענען וועגן דעם אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To read about this in English click here.
The post Tidbits: New German textbooks about the Jewish religion appeared first on The Forward.
