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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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US Rep. Byron Donalds Opens Wide Lead Over Anti-Israel Candidate, Rest of Field in Florida GOP Primary for Governor
US Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) speaks on stage during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit on July 11, 2025, in Tampa, Florida. Photo: Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) has firmly established himself as the frontrunner in Florida’s Republican primary for governor, new polling shows, building a substantial lead over the field, which includes anti-Israel investment firm CEO James Fishback.
The survey, carried out by The American Promise, finds Donalds leading the field with 38 percent support among likely Republican voters. Lt. Gov. Jay Collins trails far behind at 9 percent, while Azoria CEO James Fishback registers 2 percent and former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner garners just 1 percent. Nearly half of respondents, 49 percent, say they remain undecided.
Donalds, a stalwart conservative and strident ally of US President Donald Trump, has established himself as a firm ally of Israel. Donalds expressed support for Israel’s right to self-defense in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. As skepticism about Israel has surged within the Republican Party in recent months, Donalds has maintained strong vocal support for the Jewish state.
During an interview with Fox Business this week, Donalds lamented rising antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment within the country and around the world.
“This level of antisemitism, this hatred against Jewish people and against Israel, it’s out of control. It’s insane,” Donalds said.
Donalds also reflected on the antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia on Sunday, connecting the rise of extremism in Western countries to relaxed migration policies.
“I mean, this rhetoric around hating Israel, hating the Jewish people, that has to stop because there are real-world consequences. There are crazy people who will carry this out,” he said.
“And to Joe Biden and what he did on the southern border for four years, this is the reason why Republicans and President Trump, we are taking border security so seriously in the face of Democrats who had no problem leaving our borders wide open. It’s actually put the nation at risk,” he added.
Fishback, a successful investor, entered the gubernatorial race on a slate of populist agenda items. He has raised eyebrows in recent weeks by flirting with members of the antisemitic Groyper movement and signaling acceptance of its leader, Nick Fuentes.
During a December appearance on Rift TV, a podcast hosted by antisemitic social media pundit Elijah Schaffer, Fishback said that he finds “the audience of young men who follow and watch Nick Fuentes to actually be incredibly informed and insightful.”
After receiving substantial blowback over his comment, Fishback released another campaign video in which he reiterated his defense of Fuentes’s supporters.
“I want to clarify some comments I made this week rather abruptly” about “the young men in our country who watch and follow Nick Fuentes,” Fishback said.
“I want to clarify and apologize for absolutely nothing,” he continued, adding that his interactions with Fuentes supporters at his campaign events were “respectful” and “civil.”
“We had a great conversation, and they have a real pulse for what is going on in the country,” Fishback said.
Fuentes, a 27-year-old antisemitic internet personality and provocateur, has experienced an increase of popularity in recent months, propelled by a surge of viewership from young men. Fuentes has repeatedly parroted Holocaust denial talking points and suggested that Jewish people are more “loyal” to Israel than to the United States.
Amid the uproar, Fishback released a subsequent video on Tuesday defending the free speech rights of those who believe that Israel is committing a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be considered a “war criminal.” He falsely suggested that those who criticize Israel are facing legal repercussions.
“Is Netanyahu a war criminal? Did Israel commit genocide? If you say either of those statements in public, you could be convicted of antisemitism. Criticizing a foreign government or any government is always protected under our constitution,” he said.
Observers have noted that Fishback’s attempts to entice younger, more online portions of right-wing audiences are a microcosm of the growing rupture between Gen Z and older conservatives on the topic of Israel. Recent polls have indicated a collapse of support for Israel among young Republicans, with this portion of the party expressing more skepticism of providing military aid to the Jewish state. Large swaths of GOP voters under 30 have voiced vocal criticism of US support for Israel and the supposed influence of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, in US politics.
Recent surveys have also shown a substantial rise of antisemitic views among younger cohorts of the Republican Party.
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Decades after her ancestor was blacklisted from Hollywood, this teenager is bringing her family’s history to light
During the pandemic, teenager Simone Elias found solace in movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The glamorous sets, the romantic storylines, the studio-styled movie stars all held a nostalgic appeal.
“There’s something so magical about going back in a time machine,” Elias, 16, said. “Like, wow, I can go back and see the 1930s on my computer randomly at 9 p.m.”
A friend suggested starting a podcast together about old Hollywood in hopes of bolstering their college applications. As Elias began to do research, she discovered that her attachment to the Golden Age of Hollywood was more than just a fun interest — her great-great-grand uncle was the blacklisted Jewish screenwriter H. S. Kraft.
Born Hyman Solomon Kraft, he was known professionally as Hy or H.S. Kraft to avoid antisemitism. Among his best-known credits are the comic musical Top Banana, starring Phil Silvers, and the Lena Horne film Stormy Weather. In the early 1950s, bandleader and author Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky) connected Kraft to the Communist Party in comments to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Like many other artists at the time, Kraft found himself blacklisted despite lack of evidence. In order to continue writing, Kraft began working under the pseudonym Harold Kent.
After learning about her family history, Elias threw herself deeper into Hollywood history.
“I reached out to all my family. I looked in all the archives,” Elias said. “It was really kind of another window into the real life working world of Hollywood at the time.”
At 15 years old, Elias’ marshaled her research into a book. The resulting tome, A Teenage Take on Hollywood’s Golden Age, explores the history of classic films and the lessons contemporary audiences can take from them. For Gen Z viewers especially, Elias presents movies that may seem outdated in a way that is more accessible and relatable. She dedicated an entire chapter exploring the prominent role Jews played in creating Hollywood.
Despite the fact that Jews were integral to the Hollywood studio system, their stories were often not shown on television. Elias writes in her book that antisemitism dissuaded writers and directors from having Jewish elements in their movies. Joseph Breen, a censor in charge of making sure films followed the Motion Picture Production Code — a set of rules also known as the Hays Code that forced movies to follow certain moral guidelines — accused Jews of putting “sex, violence, and moral depravity” into films. Some government officials also believed Jewish media moguls were secret Communist agents. Elias said that having her ancestor’s story as an example of the persecution in Hollywood gave her a new perspective on the risks writers had to consider in their work.
Soon after being blacklisted, Kent moved to London, but found much fewer opportunities for film work. “I don’t think his career ever really recovered,” Elias said.
In her research, Elias found that It’s Jews weren’t the only ones pushed off screen by McCarthyism and the Hays Code era of Hollywood. All sorts of stories were written out of Hollywood at the time, as studios attempted to push wholesome, Christian narratives. that Elias is interested in uncovering, but also feminist perspectives that have been erased from discussions of classic Hollywood.
“Culture has always gone in waves and so non-monogamy was actually really popular in the early 1930s in film and so were working women,” Elias explained. “When the Hays Code actually outlawed all that in movies, we sort of forgot that even happened.”
Elias continues to do film analysis on her Instagram page in a series called “Girls on Film” and hopes to write more books about Hollywood. She’s presenting this month on the Turner Classic Moves channel as part of their Kid Fans series. But it hasn’t been easy for Elias to be taken seriously in an industry primarily dominated by men — and people much older than her.
“There’s a certain amount of time that I’ve been alive so I can’t have seen every movie like Leonard Maltin has,” Elias said. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t have something to say about the movies I have seen.”
The post Decades after her ancestor was blacklisted from Hollywood, this teenager is bringing her family’s history to light appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani’s Father Blasts Columbia University Over Antisemitism Policies, Says Anti-Israel Students ‘Terrorized’
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s father — Mahmood Mamdani — denounced Columbia University’s efforts to combat antisemitism on Friday, exacerbating concerns that the incoming Mamdani administration will be an anti-Zionist coterie bent on fostering a hostile climate for Jews and supporters of Israel.
“Well, students are terrified; they are terrorized,” Mamdani said on the Substack of Peter Beinart, a prominent anti-Israel writer who earlier this year refused to classify Hamas as a terrorist organization, arguing that the designation carries racial undertones.
“In the smallest move they make, they are targeted,” Mamdani continued. “They are expelled. They are suspended. They are warned. Which means we have less and less of an idea of what they think and how they might respond to their situation.”
He added, “The university is in a vindictive mood.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Columbia University was, until the enactment of recent reforms, the face of anti-Jewish hatred in higher education in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Dozens of reported antisemitic incidents transpired on its grounds, including a student’s proclaiming that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and the participation of administrative officials, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes which described Jews as privileged and grafting.
The shocking acts of hatred alone did not militate the university’s adopting a new posture to confront antisemitism on its campus. A slew of civil rights complaints, lawsuits, and the federal government’s impounding $400 million in taxpayer funds did. In July, it agreed to pay over $200 million to settle the cases, which alleged that school officials allowed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to suffer antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
Additionally, Columbia pledged to hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech. Columbia also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and vowed never to “recognize or meet with” the self-titled “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD), a notorious pro-Hamas campus group which has serially disrupted academic life with unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
Last week, Columbia University’s Antisemitism Task Force implored the school to foster “intellectual diversity” with respect to the subjects of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, concluding its fourth and final report on the origins of antisemitism on the campus. The task force found several instances of Jewish and Israeli students being harassed on campus as well as an overwhelming anti-Israel bias among faculty.
Mamdani took issue with the establishment of the task force in the first place.
“As you know, they created a task force on antisemitism. And then they followed suggestions that … why don’t we have a task force on Islamophobia? Why don’t we have a task force on XYZ? Student experiences cover lots of, you know, grievances,” he said.
Mamdani’s reversing the roles of victim and perpetrator is a staple of anti-Israel activism in the West, which thrives on misrepresenting the power dynamic between Israelis and Palestinians while insisting that antisemitic expression, conduct, and even terrorism are legitimate means of advocating Palestinian statehood.
Earlier this year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sued Northwestern University to cancel a course on antisemitism prevention. The group argued that the course, which aims to discourage discrimination, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an anti-discrimination law. CAIR added that the antisemitism Northwestern University strives to prevent manifest as legitimate “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
Weeks earlier, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) sued California to stop the enactment of a law to combat K-12 antisemitism. ADC said that Arabs are victims of discrimination and that fighting antisemitic harassment in accordance with the new law undermines First Amendment protections of speech unfettered by governmental interference. Furthermore, the ADC argued that the law amounts to a hijacking of American policy by Israel, an argument advanced by neo-Nazis, including Nicholas Fuentes, and commentators who promote their views such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
Such notions appear to have convinced many anti-Israel activists that escalating their conduct is acceptable.
In November, for example, hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent New York City synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.
Mamdani’s son, Zohran, received widespread backlash from Jewish leaders and pro-Israel advocates after issuing a statement that appeared to legitimize the gathering. The younger Mamdani, who was elected the city’s next mayor last month, issued a statement that “discouraged” the extreme rhetoric used by the protesters but did not unequivocally condemn the harassment of Jews outside their own house of worship. Mamdani’s office notably also criticized the synagogue, with his team describing the event inside as a “violation of international law.” The protesters were harassing those attending an event being held by Nefesh B’nefesh, a Zionist organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel, at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.