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What happens when you’re the only Jewish family in Oklahoma?
When her mother Clara dies suddenly of a stroke, Emily is left with her ashes and a note to scatter them on Sylvia’s farm in Chandler, Oklahoma. There’s a problem: Emily has no idea who Sylvia is and has never been to Oklahoma before in her life — and as far as she knows, neither had her mom.
Oklahoma Samovar, a new play opening at La MaMa’s Downstairs Theater, starts at the end of Emily’s trip to find Sylvia, who turns out to be an old woman with a bit of a memory issue and the sister of Emily’s grandmother Rose. When Emily asks why her mother would want her ashes left on the farm, Sylvia launches into their family history. She goes all the way back to 1887, when Emily’s great-grandparents Jake and Hattie fled persecution in Latvia with nothing but a feather bed and a samovar, and unfolds the stories of each generation over the play’s acts.
While most immigration stories usually focus on big cities, Oklahoma Samovar explores the little-known history of Jews in the Midwest in a deeply-human way. It is a tender portrayal of an immigrant family struggling to survive and figuring out their identity over multiple generations. Instead of villanizing or lionizing its characters, Oklahoma Samovar presents people with all their complexities, allowing them moments of moral failing while portraying them with empathy.
A fictional drama based on her own family history, playwright Alice Eve Cohen considers the play her “foundational work.”
“I’ve truly been working on Oklahoma Samovar since the day I met my Aunt Sylvia,” she said. “I met her in 1987. And I was so enthralled and inspired by her stories that I started writing about it probably the next day.”
After putting on a workshop production of the play in 2007, Cohen shelved Oklahoma Samovar to focus on other projects, including authoring two memoirs, writing several other plays, and teaching playwriting and creative writing at The New School. Over a decade later, she returned to working on Oklahoma Samovar and submitted it to the National Jewish Playwriting Contest, where it won in 2021.
“My very first draft of this play was almost verbatim documentation of the stories that Sylvia told me,” Cohen said. “It was very romantic. It was very fanciful. It was almost all positive, and there was no conflict.”
While some elements of the original play remain — such as the use of puppetry, which depicts long boat voyages and dream sequences — the new iteration is not an idealized version of the American Dream. Its characters are complex and flawed to the point that Jake kills someone trying to secure a home for his family during the Oklahoma Land Runs.
“I knew that I had incomplete stories,” Cohen said about the original conversation that inspired the play’s events.
“I’ve done research into the Oklahoma Land Run, which Sylvia described in the most romantic way,” Cohen went on. “In fact, the land run was a violent land grab, it was a theft of land from the Native Americans who had been forced to relocate to what was then called Indian territory.” Cohen explained. “I took this kernel of the story that Sylvia remembered from her childhood, her dad saying, ‘I lost my thumb, but I kept the farm,’ and I realized there was a shootout.”
Although Cohen’s exact version of events is imagined, the harsh depiction of the Land Runs encapsulates the brutality of the immigrant experience and the family’s desperate actions in pursuit of starting their lives in America.
Immigrants also had to choose between assimilating and preserving tradition, a conflict that is exacerbated for Hattie and Jake when they settle in Chandler, an Oklahoma town with virtually no Jewish community. Hattie struggles to connect with her new environment, concerned about the lack of a rabbi and a minyan, but Jake wholeheartedly embraces a new, goyish American cowboy persona. He even adopts a signature catchphrase: “Hot Diggety Damn!”
This struggle with identity follows their oldest daughter Rose into adulthood. Having grown up learning the Bible at Chandler’s Presbyterian Sunday School, Rose is unprepared for the level of Orthodoxy her new mother-in-law expects of her. A Russian immigrant who believes Rose’s lifestyle amounts to heresy, Mrs. Giventer spends her days dismissing Rose as a convert and poor excuse for a wife.
Cohen says these characters serve as a reflection of the diverse experiences in the Jewish diaspora. “They all practice Judaism in different ways. They’ve assimilated in different ways,” Cohen said. “They’ve either held on to their original accents and their original Yiddish language, or they have intentionally spurned them and Americanized as quickly and as completely as they can.”
“When family members from these different traditions and different positions in the spectrum of American Judaism meet, it isn’t always easy,” Cohen said. “There are often huge clashes.”
Even though virtually all the characters of Oklahoma Samovar are Jewish, Cohen does not imagine Jews to be her only audience.
“I think there are universal themes that relate to immigration and assimilation that anybody of any culture can relate to,” Cohen said. “While the play is set in Oklahoma and in New York and in Latvia, I think its stories transcend geographic boundaries.”
And perhaps it will inspire others to find the complicated truths that lie in the sweet family stories they’ve always heard.
Oklahoma Samovar is playing at LaMaMa’s Downstairs Theater through December 21st.
The post What happens when you’re the only Jewish family in Oklahoma? appeared first on The Forward.
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French Jewish Community Marks 20 Years Since Ilan Halimi’s Brutal Murder
A crowd gathers at the Jardin Ilan Halimi in Paris on Feb. 14, 2021, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Halimi’s kidnapping and murder. Photo: Reuters/Xose Bouzas/Hans Lucas
France’s Jewish community on Tuesday commemorated the 20th anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was brutally tortured to death, as his memory continues to be defaced amid a rising tide of antisemitism threatening Jews and Israelis across the country.
“Twenty years on, Ilan Halimi’s memory still needs to be protected and honored, yet it continues to come under attack, as recent vandalism at his memorial site shows,” the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — wrote in a post on X.
“Antisemitism remains a persistent threat in France today,” the statement read.
Le 20 janvier 2006 marque l’enlèvement et le début de la séquestration d’Ilan Halimi, 23 ans, parce qu’il était Juif.
20 ans plus tard, alors que la mémoire d’Ilan Halimi doit être protégée et honorée, elle continue d’être atteinte, comme l’ont montré les récents actes de… pic.twitter.com/Htu9ntMHhq
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) January 20, 2026
Last week, another olive tree planted to honor Halimi’s memory was vandalized and cut down, as French authorities continue efforts to replant trees in remembrance of the young Jewish man who was murdered in 2006.
“We will bring those responsible to justice,” French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez wrote in a post on X. “Our collective outrage is matched only by our unwavering determination to combat antisemitic and anti-religious acts that continue to tarnish the memory of an innocent man.”
This latest antisemitic act came after a plaque honoring Halimi was vandalized in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town in southeastern France, prompting local authorities to open an investigation for “destruction and antisemitic damage.”
According to local reports, a 29-year-old man with no prior criminal record has been arrested. While he admitted to the acts, he denied any antisemitic motive and is now awaiting trial.
Last year, a tree planted in memory of Halimi was also vandalized and cut down in Épinay-sur-Seine, a suburb north of Paris.
Two Tunisian twin brothers were arrested and convicted for cutting down the tree, but were acquitted of the antisemitism charges brought against them.
Both of them were sentenced to eight months in prison, but one of them received a suspended sentence, meaning he will not serve time unless he commits another offense or violates certain conditions.
According to local media, one of the brothers has reportedly been deported from France.
Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Three weeks later, Halimi was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.
In 2011, French authorities planted the first olive tree in Halimi’s memory. However, the young Jewish boy’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne, where he was found dying near a railway track.
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Mourner’s Kaddish for Bondi Beach victims recited in Australian parliament as tougher hate crime laws pass
(JTA) — A Jewish member of Australian Parliament recited the Mourner’s Kaddish in an address Monday to honor the victims of the Hanukkah massacre on Bondi Beach.
The address, delivered by Jewish parliamentarian and former attorney general Mark Dreyfus, came over a month after two gunmen motivated by what authorities said was “Islamic State ideology” opened fire on a celebration in Sydney, killing 15 and injuring dozens more. Most of the victims were Jewish, and Dreyfus read all of their names aloud.
Dreyfus, who wore a kippah for the presentation, then commended the “acts of extraordinary courage” by bystanders and emergency workers during the attack, naming Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Muslim man who received widespread support from the Jewish community after he was shot while disarming one of the attackers. He also told the Australian House of Representatives that the country’s “response cannot be confined to grief,” exhorting his fellow lawmakers to take action around “upholding our laws against hate.”
Then he invited everyone present to rise for the Mourner’s Kaddish, recited in Jewish communities in memory of the dead.
“You don’t have to be Jewish to feel this in your chest, an attack like this hurts all of us,” Dreyfus said, describing the prayer as “a prayer about life, dignity and the hope for peace at times of profound loss.”
The public recitation was redolent of the decision of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to publish the Hebrew text of the prayer on its front page following the murder of 11 Jews in their synagogue there in 2018.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTtw-r7Dehs/?hl=en
Late Tuesday, Australia’s parliament passed anti-hate speech and gun reform bills initiated in the wake of the attack. The gun reform bill included new checks on firearm license applications and a national gun buy-back program, while the anti-hate speech bill banned hate groups and imposed penalties for preachers who promote hate.
The hate speech component won support from liberal lawmakers who said they had free-speech concerns after it was weakened from its initial version.
“The terrorists at Bondi Beach had hatred in their hearts and guns in their hands,” wrote Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a post on X. “Today we passed new laws that deal with both. Combatting antisemitism and cracking down on guns.”
The new laws come as Australia grapples with another searing antisemitic incident. Late in the day on Monday, five Jewish teenagers in Melbourne were chased for several minutes by a car whose occupants chanted “Heil Hitler” and performed Nazi salutes at them.
The boys, aged 15 and 16 and easily identifiable as Orthodox Jews, were walking home from Adass High School when the incident occurred in the proximity of Adass Israel Synagogue, which was firebombed in December 2024. No arrests were immediately made.
“The antisemitic hate incident last night in St Kilda targeting young Jewish boys has no place in our country,” Albanese in a statement, according to The Australian. “At a time when Australians are joining with the Jewish community in sorrow and solidarity, it is beyond disgusting to see these cowards shouting Nazi slogans at young people.”
The post Mourner’s Kaddish for Bondi Beach victims recited in Australian parliament as tougher hate crime laws pass appeared first on The Forward.
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Number of UK Schools Marking Holocaust Has Dropped by Nearly 60% Since Oct. 7 Massacre
Tens of thousands joined the National March Against Antisemitism in London, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The number of British schools commemorating the Holocaust has plummeted by nearly 60 percent following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
Since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since World War II, the number of secondary schools across the UK signed up for events commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place annually on Jan. 27, dropped to fewer than 1,200 in 2024 and 854 in 2025, according to data from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
The figure had been rising each year since 2019, reaching more than 2,000 secondary schools in 2023.
There are about 4,200 secondary schools in the UK.
Sir Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the UK, commented on the figures in an essay published in The Sunday Times, expressing alarm about an increasingly hostile environment for the British Jewish community.
“I fear for what will happen this year,” Mirvis wrote. “For if we cannot teach our children to remember the past with integrity and resolve, then we must ask ourselves what kind of future they will inherit.”
Mirvis urged readers to put themselves in the shoes of a UK teacher preparing a Holocaust memorial event. “Now imagine that as you begin to organize such an event, you learn that some parents of pupils at your school are unhappy about it,” he added. “One of the claims that Holocaust education is a form of “propaganda”; another insists that the event must not go ahead unless it also highlights the awful suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, described to The Times how some students “arrive in the classroom with views shaped by social media trends rather than evidence.”
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) released a statement on Monday reflecting on the drop in UK schools recognizing the Holocaust.
“Holocaust Memorial Day is not about politics. It is about memory, responsibility, and education. It exists to honor the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and to remind future generations of the consequences of hatred, indifference, and extremism,” the EJC stated. “Avoiding commemoration out of fear of controversy undermines the very purpose of education. When remembrance becomes optional, memory itself becomes fragile.”
The EJC continued, “Now is precisely the moment when Holocaust education matters most: when misinformation spreads easily, when antisemitism is openly visible, and when fewer survivors remain to bear witness. Schools play a vital role in preserving this memory, not only for Jewish communities, but for society as a whole.”
Dwindling commemoration of the Holocaust comes amid a steep surge in antisemitism across the UK.
The Community Security Trust (CST) — a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters — recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents from January to June this year. This was the second-highest number of antisemitic crimes ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following 2,019 incidents in the first half of 2024.
In total last year, CST recorded 3,528 anti-Jewish hate crimes — the country’s second worst year for antisemitism, despite an 18 percent drop from 2023’s record of 4,296.
“When a trigger event such as the Oct. 7 attack occurs, antisemitic incidents initially spike to a record peak; then gradually recede until they plateau at a higher level than before the original trigger event occurred,” CST stated.
These figures juxtapose with 1,662 antisemitic incidents in 2022, 2,261 in 2021, and 1,684 in 2020.
The struggles of the UK’s educational establishment to counter the rising antisemitism problem mirror the ongoing challenges confronted by its medical institutions.
In November, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the NHS, amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
The comments came weeks after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the country’s National Health Service (NHS).
One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred. In November, she was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating Hamas’s terrorism.
Other incidents in the UK included a Jewish family fearing their London doctor’s antisemitism influenced their disabled son’s treatment. The North London hospital suspended the physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.