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What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party
The newsletters arrived in my mailbox unbidden, their envelope labeled with an unfamiliar acronym: NAHOS.
Upon opening them, I immediately knew who had signed me up and why. The typeface matched the one on clippings my mother had handed me on a few occasions over the years within her stacks of news she wanted me to read, announcing opportunities for Holocaust survivors to file compensation claims.
The source of these unlabeled news items had been a mystery to me. My mom did not volunteer information or reflections about her past, making an exception when she was summoned to record a video testimonial at Yale in 1992. And she was not a joiner, bridge clubs aside.
Yet here it was: Without discussion, I was a member of the National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors. No conversation, no consent. She didn’t have a choice, and evidently I didn’t, either.
Sometimes I skimmed the headlines and member obits. Usually the newsletters descended to the bottom of the mail pile. Who had time?
Indeed, none of us did. The Claims Conference counts 196,000 living survivors as of January, and virtually all by definition were children. Time is the one adversary the survivors cannot overcome.
Gradually the detailed newsletters gave way to a different kind of communique: holiday party invitations. People whose early lives had been defined by forced separation from their families and communities come together in their late lives, twice a year, at Manhattan’s Safra Center, which generously provides an event space to the volunteer group.
My mother lived across the street from the gatherings, and here was a room where my mom, the non-joiner, did very much show up, with her husband. I did not. Scheduling conflicts inevitably got the better of my RSVPs and intentions.
Her turn to leave the party forever came in July 2023. The shock of losing my mother, a commitment to helping my stepfather maintain continuity and a desire to meet her survivor community finally got me in the door.
The most recent NAHOS gathering took place last Sunday: a Purim party. Even knowing that the survivors were elderly, in their 80s, 90s and even 100s, I anticipated some gesture toward dressing up — a funny headband here, a mask there.
Not a soul. Why no costumes? Hadassah Carlebach could scarcely believe I was asking. “It was Tuesday,” she patiently explained regarding the holiday already observed on March 3, as if to a child — which I am, when speaking to someone born in 1927.
The pounding Israeli party music in the room made it difficult for either of us to hear. But she wanted me to know her story — or rather, her father’s.
Before she took on her famous married name as the wife of Rabbi Eli Carlebach, twin brother to Rav Shlomo of Manhattan’s legendary Carlebach shul, she was Hadassah Schneerson (yes, from that Schneerson dynasty), born in Leningrad.
They emigrated to France, after a brief stop in British Mandate Palestine — only to find themselves again under a regime where Jews could not live openly. Both under Stalin and then Philippe Pétain, her family organized risky and ultimately life-saving efforts to enable Jewish learning and worship to continue underground. “He had a feeling for who he could trust,” she said of her father, Schneor Zalman Schneerson, who placed dozens of Jewish children in foster homes in France and then stayed behind after liberation to try to find them.
Back at my table, where a plate of lox and blintzes awaited, NAHOS director Yossie Finkelstein offered another explanation for why no one among dozens of survivors, family and friends in the room was dressed for Purim at a Purim party: “They are old. Not a lot are mobile.”
He had nonetheless come prepared with a pair of sparkly hats, and he and his wife, Lea, proceeded to don them for the rest of the party.
As for the not mobile: My mom’s bridge club friend Irving Gewirtzman, 93, a retired pharmacist who lives in Queens, rose from his seat and crossed the event space with some difficulty but intense enthusiasm when a hora circle formed. We joined hands. My other clasped the hand of a tiny woman with rouged cheeks who appeared even older than Irving. (Her daughter protectively intervened when I pulled my notebook out a little later, so I do not know more than her first name: Lucy.) Both smiled brightly as we danced.
Here in this room, in motion together, we were fully ourselves.
My mom, I came to realize later in life, was always in disguise. She dyed her hair blonde until it went white — keeping up the appearance of the Polish girl whose identity she had taken at the age of 4. In New York after the war, she evolved that style to resemble Kim Novak, or Tippi Hedren.
One of her daughters became an actress. The other was me, a journalist, living vicariously through other people’s expertise and biographies, and utterly unable to even pick a college major, never mind a single professional discipline.
I am also undisciplined and lazy about dressing up in costume, for Halloween, Purim or anything else. I use items at hand, if I must. I’m terrible with makeup. (Though the 1970s mask Woolworth’s sold of the Bionic Woman — blonde, physically powerful — was something I demanded to wear for Halloween.) Hiding is uncomfortable, and not something I freely choose.
Inevitably, now, engaging with the stories of hidden children brings up grief for those living underground in the United States, unable to get medical care or education for fear of being intercepted by authorities — much as Schneerson recalls under Stalin.
Purim is a holiday of inversion, a standing up to power. Asking: What if we had that power, what if we didn’t have to hide — who and what would we be?
The joy in that room was answer enough.
The post What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party appeared first on The Forward.
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Stop Platforming Bigotry and Hate: We Can’t Build Bridges with Destructionists
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Photo: Mike Jourdan/Flickr.
A society that cannot distinguish between a critic and a destructionist is a society in the process of dismantling itself.
For decades, the leaders of Western institutions — universities, legacy media, and political think tanks — have operated on the Liberal Consensus Model. This model assumes that every stakeholder, no matter how radical, ultimately wants a seat at the table to negotiate a better version of the status quo.
But we are currently witnessing the total collapse of this assumption. Institutions are mistaking a siege for a negotiation.
The “Destructionist” does not want a seat at the table; they want to use the wood for kindling. When an institution offers a “bridge” to someone whose starting premise is the dismantling of liberal democracy or the erasure of a people, they aren’t practicing “inclusion.” They are providing a tactical ramp for an assault.
This is not a “Left” or “Right” problem; it is a vulnerability of the center. Across the political spectrum, we see the same mechanics of “laundering” at work — where moderate leaders trade their institutional credibility for access to a radical’s megaphone.
On the left, we see the normalization of figures like Hasan Piker. When the “Pod Save America” crew or politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) treat Piker as a “bold youth voice,” they are signaling that his destructionist starting points — such as supporting the eradication of Zionism — are within the bounds of a reasonable democratic coalition.
They frame it as “outreach,” failing to realize that they are importing eliminationist rhetoric into the heart of the mainstream.
On the right, the rot is equally visible in the laundering of Tucker Carlson. When Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, or politicians like Vice President JD Vance defend Carlson even as he platforms Holocaust revisionists and Nazi apologists, they are breaking a decades-old covenant. By framing Carlson’s descent into conspiratorial bigotry as “challenging the establishment,” they are laundering a brand of hatred that was rightly ostracized from the movement generations ago.
In both cases, these “bridge-builders” suffer from a form of institutional narcissism: the belief that their own empathy or political utility is powerful enough to transcend a destructionist ideology. They believe they can negotiate a floor plan with an arsonist who has already lit the match.
It is common to lump these figures in with Joe Rogan, but the distinction is critical for understanding where our accountability must lie.
Rogan is a private citizen having a public conversation. While he causes undeniable material harm by uncritically platforming bigoted views –and we should absolutely pressure him to do better — he is fundamentally only representing himself.
Conversely, we must hold the Ezra Kleins, the Jon Favreaus, and the Heritage Foundations to a far higher standard because they represent institutions. When a gatekeeper stops guarding the gate on behalf of an institution, the gate ceases to exist. Rogan is a symptom of a culture that finds fire interesting; these institutional leaders are the architects who were supposed to be building the firewalls. Their failure is not just an error in judgment; it is professional malpractice.
The solution is not state-censorship, but a renewal of communal self-respect. We must re-learn the lesson of how we defeated the KKK: we didn’t “win the debate” at a shared seminar; we made the white hood socially disqualifying.
The path forward requires a two-fold strategy:
1. Enforce “Social Jail”
We must return to a model of principled ostracization. If your starting point is the destruction of a people or the subversion of the democratic covenant, you belong in “social jail.” This is not “cancel culture” — which often offers no path back — but a boundary. Social jail allows for repair. When an individual renounces the destructionist framework and demonstrably accounts for the harm they’ve advocated through public renunciation and restorative action, the door can be reopened. But until then, the line must be held.
2. Critical Friction vs. Laundering
Journalists and pundits must stop acting as facilitators. If they choose to engage with these figures, the “friendly engagement” model must be replaced with hostile exposure. You can interview an arsonist about why he likes fire, but you don’t hire him as a fire safety consultant.
The standard defense for this laundering is the phrase: “I don’t agree with everything he says.”
In the context of eliminationist bigotry, this is not a defense; it is a confession of moral cowardice — or at best, professional dereliction. To be a journalist or a civic leader is to have the courage to name the “tripwire.” If you platform a bigot, you have a professional obligation to state, explicitly, which of their hateful taboos you oppose. If you refuse to name the bigotry — if you treat it as a mere “difference of opinion” — you are not conducting an interview; you are providing a sanitation service.
We have spent years building bridges with people who are committed to destroying them. We have watched as they used those bridges to infiltrate our schools, our media, and our political parties.
It is time to stop being the architects of our own demise. If we cannot say “No” to those who wish to see our foundations destroyed, our “Yes” to progress and our democratic system will eventually mean nothing at all. We must stop exhausting our moral vocabulary on minor transgressions so that we have the collective clarity required to name the destructionists for what they are.
It is time to stop building the bridge and start holding the line.
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78 Years Later, the Palestinian Authority Still Dreams of Israel’s Demise
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
As Israel celebrates the 78th anniversary of its Independence, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its government-run media continue to promote the ideology that Israel has no right to exist and is a temporary “occupation” that will soon vanish.
Here are some examples that Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented recently:
PA Jerusalem District Spokesman Ma’arouf Al-Rifai: “Ever since Allah created this land, we have continued to live here and defend it, we are the spearhead on defending these holy sites.
The occupation [i.e., Israel] is ultimately destined to disappear.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Individuals, Jan. 31, 2026]
Palestinian National Council member Dr. Shafiq Al-Talouli: “This state [i.e., Israel] is revealing the true face of the occupation that has stolen Palestine since 1948, and which relies on the same ideology of carrying out forced expulsion, and which strives through the use of force, committing massacres, starvation, and the like to remove the Palestinian people from its land.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Nov. 6, 2025]
Official PA TV programs, interviews, and documentaries repeat the ideology that Israel’s existence is temporary:
Official PA TV Israeli affairs “expert” Nizar Nazzal: “Palestine is the compass, and here the empires crashed down. Whether it was the Mongols, the Crusaders, or others. Therefore, these empires [i.e., Israe] too, here on the land of Palestine, will crash down.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Jan. 20, 2026]
The PA tells its people that Israelis, deep down, agree that Israel is doomed:
Official PA TV narrator: “Even in the depths of the Israeli public, there is an understanding that their presence here is temporary. The dual citizenship of the soldiers and settlers is not just a coincidence but rather an escape plan ready to be executed if the balance of powers changes.”
Jurist Sufian Siyam: “The Israeli knows in his subconscious mind that his existence on this land is temporary. …In 2006, there was an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. We were surprised to discover later that Gilad Shalit has French citizenship … Israeli soldier Edan Alexander [a hostage captured and released during Hamas’ Oct. 7 war] has American citizenship. Why do the Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians insist on having another citizenship besides Israeli citizenship? Because deep in his heart, his grandfather before him and his son after him knew that his existence on this land is temporary.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Time Without Ceasefire, Jan. 28, 2026]
Whether from PA officials or its state media, the message to Palestinians remains constant: Israel has no right to exist, Israel is temporary, Palestinians are permanent, and time will erase the Jewish State.
At the same time, the PA continues to demand Western governments fund this culture of hate and rejectionism while choosing to look the other way.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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PA Libel: Jewish Scripture Says Non-Jews Are ‘Pigs in the Form of Humans to Serve the Jews’
Palestinians shout slogans at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, following clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem’s Old City April 15, 2022. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
In addition to its eliminationist rhetoric, the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s brainwashing of its people is ongoing and effective.
Palestinian Media Watch regularly documents that ordinary Palestinians echo the antisemitic and Nazi-like statements by PA leaders and officials. The PA portrays Jews as being “arrogant by nature,” and planning to “subjugate the entire world.” Palestinian citizens adopt and repeat these teachings.
Accordingly, anti-Israeli activists spread the libel that the Jewish Talmud teaches that non-Jews are “pigs in the form of humans [created] to serve the Jews”:
Anti-Israeli activist in the Jordan Valley Ayman Ghraib: “The colonialism began in the [Jewish] religious schools where the colonialists [i.e., Jews] were educated to hate the Arabs and Palestinians and everything that is not Jewish.
We have obtained booklets that contain an exact quote from the Talmudic text — that non-Jews are pigs that God created in the form of humans to serve the Jews … In their religious books it is written that Allah created this [olive] tree for the Jews … and if they cannot enjoy its fruits, they should burn it.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Crops, April 6, 2026]
The Talmud contains no such statement about non-Jews being pigs.
Even as Palestinians falsely accuse Jews of dehumanizing non-Jews, the PA itself portrays Jews as sub-human.
In the words of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor, Jews are “grazing herds of humanoids … apes and pigs.” Recently, a Palestinian in Lebanon expressed a similar view, saying Jews are “pigs and donkeys”:
Lebanese singer and actor Abd Asqoul: “The enemy [Israel] is very stupid. He does not understand that it is impossible, regardless of what will be, there is something that lives inside us [Palestinians] … But this pig is not just a pig, he is a donkey who does not understand.
He thought my identity is a few papers and flour, and it escaped him that I am from the seed of heroes. .. My identity is land and rock and the sand of the beaches with shells and the blue color in their waters, from Rosh Hanikra [i.e., on Israel’s northern border] to proud Umm Al-Rashrash [i.e., Eilat, Israel’s southern border].” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, The Creativity of the Refugee Camp, Jan. 20, 2026]
The Palestinian Authority’s antisemitism also portrays Jews as the “enemy of humanity.” A Palestinian academic and former PA deputy minister stressed this recently, specifying that Jews are not only the “enemy” of Palestinians, but of all “humanity”:
Bethlehem University political science lecturer and former PA Deputy Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Sa’id Yaqin: “Jerusalem … is also the strongest symbol in this conflict, which is being waged with this enemy [i.e., Israel]. This is the enemy of humanity and not of the Palestinian people.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, March 14, 2026]
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.