Burhan was arrested on Tuesday night when he attempted to enter Germany from Czechia. Investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Federal Police apprehended the Hamas terrorist at the border.

According to authorities, in August 2025, the Lebanon-born operative allegedly acquired an AK-47 automatic assault rifle, eight Glock pistols, and over 600 rounds in Germany. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, he then transferred these items to his accomplice, who was staying in Berlin. The weapons transfer failed. As the Federal Prosecutor's Office announced in early October, the suspect came under surveillance by counterterrorism investigators. Three other suspects were arrested, one of whom was detained in Denmark, and Burhan al-Q. was arrested Tuesday night.

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The reports record the losses of Jewish refugees from Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and Aden. They were compiled over five years by JJAC, drawing on personal testimonies, statistical data, and archival material from 22 archives in Israel, Canada, France, Switzerland, Britain and the US.

Each of the 11 reports traces the story of ancient Jewish communities that lived in the Middle East and North Africa for millennia, some 1,000 years before the rise of Islam. They endured centuries under Muslim rule as dhimmis, a subordinate legal status for non-Muslims, lived through Ottoman and colonial rule, and later suffered persecution under Arab nationalism and Islamism, before fleeing, immigrating, or being expelled.

The research, to be presented at the UN for the first time, will be unveiled during a dedicated panel on the opening day of the Human Rights Council session, under the title: "Seeking Truth, Justice & Reconciliation – Jewish Refugees from the Middle East." The panel will be held on September 8 in Geneva.

The presentation is a joint initiative of JJAC and B'nai B'rith International and will feature a panel of experts. The findings show a dramatic demographic collapse: in Tunisia, 105,000 Jews lived in 1948, compared to about 1,500 today. In Algeria, 140,000 Jews lived in 1948; by 2025, none remain. In Iraq, once home to 135,000 Jews in 1948, only five remain today.

According to the research, more than 99% of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East have either left or been expelled. The region is now effectively "Judenrein", cleansed of Jews, after thousands of years of continuous Jewish presence. Alongside this demographic devastation, the reports document property losses estimated at $263 billion. The largest losses were in Iran ($61 billion), Egypt ($59 billion), and Iraq ($34 billion), with figures adjusted to 2024 values. Per capita losses in 1948 ranged from $4,864 to $15,295, depending on the country.

"As the Middle East faces an increasingly complex and fragile reality, and as the global call for justice and peace grows louder," the report states, "it is time to recognize the history of all the peoples of the region, including the Jewish communities that lived in the Middle East and North Africa for thousands of years. Only then can a genuine bridge to reconciliation and peace be built.

"The story of the Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa is one of a persecuted minority uprooted from its homelands, which suffered immense losses in personal property - homes, businesses, possessions - as well as in communal Jewish assets such as synagogues, schools, cemeteries, and cultural, social and spiritual treasures."

"The scale of losses endured by Jewish communities across the region is enormous and has received almost no recognition in the international discourse on refugees in the Middle East," said Rabbi Elie Abadie, co-president of JJAC.

"In this era of historical reconciliation, inspired by the Abraham Accords, it is time to face history with honesty and courage. Only through truth, justice, and mutual recognition can the peoples of the region move toward a future of dignity and sustainable peace," added JJAC co-president Sylvain Abitbol.

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Prime Minister Albanese revealed that Australia's top spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), had determined that the regime was responsible for plotting arson attacks against Lewis' Continental Kitchen in Sydney last October and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December. Despite efforts to conceal their involvement, Albanese said it is likely that Iran directed further attacks as well.

According to some reports, these were the most dangerous examples of attacks by a foreign regime in modern Australian history. They prompted Australia to legislate the designation of the regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. The Albanese government also expelled Tehran's ambassador and suspended operations at Australia's embassy in Tehran.

These are the correct steps for a country like Australia to take, but they are long overdue, and every nation in the West must investigate and follow suit. This is far from the first time the regime has attacked Jewish communities across the globe.

In 1992, the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was struck by a Hezbollah suicide bomber who killed 29 civilians, including two Israelis, and injured 242 people. The blast caused the embassy building to collapse along with a nearby church, school, and apartment building. In April 2024, Argentina's second highest court found that the Iranian regime had masterminded the bombing. Two years later, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, was targeted in another suicide bombing, this time by a terrorist who drove a bomb-laden van into the building and detonated it, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300. To this day, it remains the deadliest terror attack in Argentina's history, and the same court ruled that Iran directed the attack and that Hezbollah carried it out. The ruling also characterized Iran as a terrorist state.

The regime was also responsible for the 2012 Burgas bus bombing in Bulgaria, where a suicide bomber detonated inside a transport bus at Burgas airport as it was carrying 42 Israeli tourists, mostly young people arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The explosion killed the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis and wounded 32 others. Months later, Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov confirmed there was well-founded evidence that Hezbollah was behind the attack. Hezbollah, the arm of the Iranian regime based primarily in Lebanon, has since expanded its activities far beyond the Middle East, engaging in fundraising, smuggling, and logistical operations across Latin America, West Africa, and parts of Europe and North America. This should be setting off alarms across the globe, as it shows the regime in Iran has no intention of limiting its influence to its own region.

The list continues. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, Greece, and Brazil have foiled Hezbollah and Iranian plots by gathering intelligence and exposing IRGC–Hezbollah networks planning suicide attacks and kidnappings of Jews and Israelis. In June 2022, the Iranian regime finalized a significant 20-year cooperation agreement with Venezuela, expanding Hezbollah's activities in Latin America and securing easier access to challenge US interests in the Western Hemisphere.

For those who might think this is simply a Jewish or Israeli problem, the evidence proves otherwise. Iran's regime and its proxy Hezbollah have shed blood across continents, killing Americans in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq; murdering Europeans in Paris, Bulgaria, and elsewhere; and slaughtering Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, and throughout the region. From the 1983 Marine barracks bombing to the Khobar Towers, from the streets of Buenos Aires to the battlefields of Syria, their victims have included diplomats, soldiers, aid workers, tourists, and countless civilians of every background. This is not a Jewish issue; it is a global one.

Iran's involvement in antisemitic attacks in the West vindicates what Jews have been warning for months: the rallies and encampments we are seeing are not entirely organic, but in part orchestrated by foreign regimes. If Tehran can plot terror abroad, it can bankroll encampment protests as well.

Australia's actions should serve as a wake-up call to every democracy. The Iranian regime has demonstrated time and again that it will burn synagogues in Melbourne, bomb embassies in Buenos Aires, kill Marines in Beirut, and butcher civilians in Syria with the same ruthless intent. The longer the West hesitates, the more freedom Tehran will have to export its terror. Australia has taken the right steps, but one country is not enough. Every Western democracy must thoroughly investigate Iranian networks operating on its soil, dismantle Hezbollah's fundraising and logistical infrastructure, and formally designate the IRGC as the terrorist organisation that it is. Only a coordinated and resolute front will demonstrate that Tehran's campaign of global terror will no longer be tolerated.

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These five prohibitions correspond to the five restrictions observed on Yom Kippur, creating a remarkable similarity between these two days, yet a fundamental difference distinguishes them. On Yom Kippur, these prohibitions serve to enhance the individual engaged in prayer and the spiritual work of the day. Rather than expressing mourning, they facilitate an atonement process that elevates practitioners to profound spiritual levels. Conversely, on Tisha B'Av, these same five afflictions symbolize deep mourning and grief over destruction.

An even more significant difference concerns the origins of these two special observances. Yom Kippur appears explicitly in the Torah itself, constituting one of the established landmarks in the Jewish calendar cycle. Tisha B'Av, however, was instituted following the destructions, and when the Jewish people's exile concludes, this fast will be abolished.

We therefore examined the sources from which rabbinical authorities derived the rationale for establishing Tisha B'Av's five distinctive prohibitions. Understanding these afflictions' origins reveals that scholars derived at least several from mourning laws, particularly from mourning individuals. This applies especially to bathing and anointing prohibitions, which mourners observe throughout mourning periods. Although Tisha B'Av's five afflictions were fundamentally paralleled to Yom Kippur's restrictions, at least some derive from mourning practices. Notably, while rabbinical authorities compared public fasts to Yom Kippur's fast, mourning laws also contributed to establishing these two particular afflictions.

Eating and drinking – prophetic allusions

While Yom Kippur's fast receives explicit Torah mention, Tisha B'Av's fast appears through allusion in Prophet Zechariah's words, referencing the "fast of the fifth month," which rabbinical authorities indicate will become a day of joy for Israel's house in the future. Scholars understood this "fast of the fifth month" refers to Tisha B'Av's fast, since Av represents the fifth month when counting from Nisan, considered the Jewish New Year according to Torah tradition.

Sandal wearing – expressing mourning and spiritual humility

In ancient periods, leather sandals symbolized wealth and honor, while barefoot walking represented sorrow, poverty, or mental humility. Yom Kippur's sandal prohibition stems from expressing humility and spiritual lowliness. On Tisha B'Av, this prohibition primarily expresses mourning and sorrow. Despite different motivations, the affliction remains parallel, since ideological connections exist between spiritual humility and mourning feelings.

Marital relations prohibition – withdrawing from ordinary life

Marital life represents routines of joy, intimacy, and tranquility. Just as mourning individuals abstain from marital life throughout shiva's seven days, public fasts like Tisha B'Av require similar abstention. This prohibition expresses sorrow and loss that disrupt normal feelings. During public mourning periods, the prohibition intensifies, since marital relations sharply contrast with the general atmosphere and appear to deny the majority sentiment.

Bathing and anointing – derived from mourning laws

As mentioned, Tisha B'Av prohibits bathing and anointing, similar to mourning practices. This involves more than avoiding physical pleasure – it expresses sorrow and physical discomfort as mourning components. Jewish law forbids not only pleasurable bathing but sometimes cleansing as well, according to established mourning regulations.

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"Nobody wants to talk about it," argued one female participant, receiving smiles and approving nods from her podcast colleagues. "They were up to something, so the Germans wanted to take them out... they started it," she proceeded. "The Holocaust was the only way Hitler can take out a huge population all in one setting, but I already know what's going on, I'm not dumb – the Jews were up to something, that's why they are sitting up here," she stated, suggesting that Jewish people hold key positions. "They're trying to take back and get repruccsions, especially from Americans, so they have taken over the government."

Responding to this explanation, one participant inquired, "How do we take them down?" Another participant replied, "We must kill these motherf**kers," while yet another participant suggested "genocide."

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"He [Hitler] had to do what he had to do," stated one participant during the continued conversation. "He was trying to save the world," he added. The participant who began the discussion on this subject continued, "Jews are the reason why the healthcare system and the government is collapsing, because they are stealing away from the American people."

Social networks erupted responding to the severe statements, several of which explicitly advocate violence against Jewish people. "The irony of all of this is hearing it come out of the mouth of a black woman," commented one user. "Every single person sitting on this panel should be investigated!" responded another. "Hamas has run the most successful PR campaign in world history," contributed another user, among thousands of stunned reactions to the discussion and the platform facilitating it.

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1. "The Fantastic Four" comprises Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic – Earth's smartest man capable of stretching his body like rubber; his wife, the telepathically gifted Invisible Woman Sue Storm; her younger brother, the charismatic yet impulsive "Human Torch" Johnny Storm; and their loyal friend Ben Grimm, dubbed "The Thing" for his rocky exterior and intimidating appearance that doesn't endear him to everyone, though beneath lies a compassionate and gentle heart.

Surprisingly, this represents Marvel's inaugural superhero team, predating the Avengers and X-Men in comics chronology. The debut issue of "The Fantastic Four," featuring four daring American astronauts who acquired extraordinary abilities through a cosmic accident during their mission, appeared in November 1961, while Captain America's superhero team and Professor X's young mutant collective entered the illustrated pages approximately two years later, in 1963.

2. Sources indicate Marvel's motivation for creating the Fantastic Four stemmed from providing worthy competition to the Justice League – DC Comics' rival super team – then known as "Justice League of America," which dominated the comics landscape in 1960. One account describes a friendly golf match between DC and Marvel executives, where the former boasted about their patriotic superhero team's remarkable success, inspiring Marvel's creators to develop their own group emphasizing family bonds.

3. A surprising plot revelation shows the Human Torch, albeit in different form, actually debuted in comics as early as 1939 – not as Johnny Storm but as Jim Hammond, an android capable of engulfing himself in flames. Additionally, Marvel operated under the name "Timely Comics" then, concentrating on three primary heroes including Captain America, Namor (featured in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), and our fiery character.

Nevertheless, during the 1950s the Human Torch's popularity declined, prompting legendary comics creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to revitalize him by incorporating the character into their newly created superhero family – this time as human Johnny Storm.

4. Throughout the years, "The Fantastic Four" spawned four reasonably successful animated series, with many viewers experiencing one during the 1980s through Middle Eastern television broadcasts. Regrettably, sporadic attempts at cinematic adaptation received less than favorable reception. This began in 1994 with Roger Corman's notably embarrassing production that never reached theaters, later revealed as filmed solely to maintain brand rights (unofficially, the movie remains accessible on YouTube).

Following this, Fox Studios released two films in 2005 and 2007, directed by Tim Story and featuring Jessica Alba as Sue Storm plus Chris Evans as the Human Torch. While achieving reasonable box office success and avoiding complete disaster, they suffered terrible critical reception. The absolute low point arrived in 2015 with Josh Trank's "Fantastic Four," despite the young director's previous success with the acclaimed low-budget hit "Chronicle." Unfortunately, Trank and the studio clashed during production, leading the director to disown the final product after Fox implemented extensive modifications. This film became a catastrophic failure, widely regarded as among the worst comic adaptations ever produced.

Now, precisely one decade later and following Disney's acquisition of Fox (Marvel's parent company), the Fantastic Four receive another opportunity in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."

5. In this new film, refreshingly, the world already recognizes the Fantastic Four as Earth's premier protectors. Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), the Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), the Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and the Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) represent the planet's most celebrated and admired individuals, managing every threat with remarkable success and distinctive style.

However, where were these four when the Avengers desperately needed assistance against Thanos? Excellent inquiry, with a clear answer – "First Steps" unfolds in a parallel universe (Earth 828) separate from Marvel's primary cinematic universe (Earth 616), meaning our heroes remain unacquainted. Will future meetings occur? Certainly, beginning with "Avengers: Doomsday," arriving next year. Evidence exists in the film's spectacular bonus scene and "Thunderbolts" as well.

6. Voracious and malevolent. "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" features Galactus (Ralph Ineson) as the primary antagonist, a fearsome cosmic being with planetary appetites. Specifically, this entity requires planetary consumption for survival, currently targeting Earth as its next meal. The Silver Surfer – portrayed by Jewish actress Julia Garner as Galactus's herald – plays a significant role. The new film also acknowledges other classic Fantastic Four adversaries, with one receiving an unexpectedly prominent part.

Nonetheless, John Malkovich, originally cast as villain Red Ghost, doesn't appear in "First Steps" despite featuring in early promotional materials. Marvel and director Matt Shakman ultimately decided Malkovich's subplot would burden the already character-heavy narrative.

7. Viewers likely won't recognize the four stars from Roger Corman's obscure "Fantastic Four" in their brief cameo appearances, representing Marvel's tribute to that peculiar cult creation.

Another homage involves the helpful robot H.E.R.B.I.E., who originally appeared in the 1978 "Fantastic Four" animated series rather than comics. The show's popularity convinced Marvel to incorporate H.E.R.B.I.E. into comic publications, where he evolved into a cherished and dependable companion. Excellent work, H.E.R.B.I.E.!

8. Some Jewish connection inevitably emerges, and regarding "The Fantastic Four" – this connection proves particularly significant. Ben Grimm represents a Jewish character whose background draws inspiration from Jack Kirby's life, Marvel's legendary artist who created the character. Grimm's Jewish identity appeared repeatedly throughout comics, sometimes subtly, but over time he recited the Shema Yisrael prayer and celebrated a delayed bar mitzvah attended by Spider-Man and Captain America.

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Climbing the paths leading to the summit of Gellert Hill is no simple task on January mornings. Though we're ascending on a day that isn't particularly cold by Central European standards, the ground is covered with a thin layer of ice that accumulated during the night, causing members of our group to occasionally slip. At some point, these falls become a semi-comical and semi-bonding activity. Eventually, we all arrive safely at the peak to discover that the panoramic view entirely justifies the effort.

Dr. Yoav Sorek gathers us and begins explaining what we're seeing. Unlike the vast majority of Israeli tours in Budapest that focus on the Holocaust period before moving on to the Communist years and ending with the present day, Sorek takes the group 150 years back in time. He speaks about Austria-Hungary – the powerful kingdom that existed until World War I – and about the unique development of Hungary's magnificent Jewish community, a chapter that has been almost entirely pushed aside and forgotten from Jewish history. The names of influential and important rabbis who somehow escaped the spotlight of consciousness float in the air. Chief among them is Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, the hero of Sorek's doctorate – a figure who, had he not encountered fierce and uncompromising hostility, might have changed the fate of the country's Jews. It's evident that our tour guide is determined to restore the lost honor of Hungarian Jewry, and the horizon-expanding explanation we're hearing on this beautiful hill overlooking the Danube is just one way to do so.

"While writing my doctorate, I fell in love with Hungary's story and its symbiosis with the Jews," Sorek explains to me later. "For me, it was a lost and fascinating continent. I found a story about a culture that arose and revived itself in national awakening, and within it embraced the Jews, who in turn saw it as paradise. Add to that the good relations that exist between the peoples to this day, and I find it fascinating."

Many Hungarian natives live in Israel, but Hungarian culture has been marginalized and barely exists, certainly in Religious Zionism. Why?

"I have a theory that I can't prove. Many in Religious Zionist circles have Hungarian roots, but when looking at this movement's history in Israel at the institutional and consciousness level, we see that in the first generation there were Yekes (German Jews), then Jews from Russia and Lithuania, like Rabbi Moshe Zvi Neria and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, while Hungarians only became Zionists en masse after the Holocaust. Many survivors immigrated to Israel, so Religious Zionism has a strong Hungarian foundation, but it lacks an ethos and figures. What people know about Hungarian Jewry is mainly connected to Satmar, meaning the zealots. There is a zealous element in Hungarian Judaism, but it certainly wasn't the majority."

A Coup is Just an Excuse

Israelis love Hungary for its cost of living - because it is the opposite of Israel's. Even in kosher restaurants, typically one of the most expensive aspects of traveling abroad, you won't pay more than 120 shekels per person for a full meal, including dessert. Western brands in malls and shops will cost you almost the same as in Israel, but local brands are much cheaper. To calculate the cost, take the price in Hungarian Forint, remove two zeros and subtract another 10%, and you'll have the amount in shekels. 10,000 Forint, for example, is about ninety shekels. This calculation seems complicated at first but will become second nature after your fifth bottle of water.

In the historic city center, near the Great Synagogue, there are two relatively high-quality kosher restaurants: 'Hanna' and 'Carmel'. Right next to them, two cafes and several fast food stands together provide kosher infrastructure for a few days' stay in the city. In the restaurants, you'll find goulash and nokedli, symbols of Hungarian cuisine, which is based on meat, potatoes, and eggs. Or as my Hungarian grandmother often said, "to be satisfied, you don't need to complicate things."

Over a steaming bowl of goulash at one of the kosher restaurants, I sit with Shorek to hear how he rediscovered the history of Hungary and its Jews. He is one of the well-known intellectual figures in the religious-Zionist sector in recent years. Among other things, he founded and edited the 'Shabbat' section in Makor Rishon, and the journals Segula and HaShiloach. Today he is the chairman of 'Lechatchila - A Home for Israeli Torah.' His connection to Hungary seemingly begins at home: both his parents were born in this country. His mother was orphaned during World War II, immigrated to Israel at age five, and grew up in Youth Aliyah institutions. His father was eight when he arrived in Israel on an illegal immigrant ship. "Hungarian culture wasn't celebrated in our home," he recalls. "My parents spoke Hungarian only when they wanted us not to understand something, or when communicating with the previous generation, and when I was 14, that entire generation was no longer alive."

What led you to delve deeper into the history of Hungarian Jewry?

"Both of my parents' families are rabbinic dynasties with long genealogical lines. A kind of elite, if you will, especially on my mother's side, where you find disciples of the Chatam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Sofer, one of the greatest Jewish legal authorities of the 19th century and a leader in the fight against secularization and reform). They also had an indirect family connection to Rabbi Glasner, but I never heard his name in my childhood.

"I had a certain interest in Hungarian rabbis out of simple sentiment, but I didn't expect to find among them someone who wrote in the style of Rabbi Kook or Rabbi Reines. At one point, I traveled to the US and was invited to the home of distant relatives named Glasner. We descended upon them with seven children for the first days of Sukkot, in the home of a relatively small family. They asked what I was doing, and I said I was about to write a book about the renewal of Torah in Israel. The host got up and pulled a small bound booklet from the shelf: a collection of Religious Zionist thought, an offprint from a forgotten book of the Rabbi Kook Institute published in the 1960s. This section, translated from German, was called 'Zionism in the Light of Faith,' and its author was Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, the host's great-grandfather."

Sorek began leafing through the booklet, reading and becoming excited. "I was even shocked. I realized that the author of this text was a distinguished Torah scholar who had confidence and broad shoulders, and what he wrote was in some ways exactly what I was supposed to write in my book. He states, for example, that the Torah of exile must make way for the Torah of the Land of Israel, and that there's no place for separation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox. You see things that Rabbi Kook wrote from depth and complexity, Kabbalah and literature, and with Rabbi Glasner everything comes from simple rabbinic intuition. These two figures came from completely different places. Hungarian Orthodoxy was a world unto itself, and Rabbi Kook came from Lithuania and had strong connections with the Hasidic courts around him. They lived more or less in the same period, and more or less the same number of years. They even met briefly in Jerusalem and had previously exchanged some correspondence.

"Rabbi Glasner says things simply. You read something written a hundred years ago, but anyone with a bit of Torah education will understand it as if it were written yesterday. The impressive rhetorical ability, the clarity of thought – all this made me fall in love with Rabbi Glasner's character. I told myself that if one day I pursue a doctorate, and want to study a subject seriously and dig into it completely – I'll choose him. And indeed, a few years later that's what I did." The doctorate Sorek wrote in the History Department at Ben-Gurion University became the book "From Pressburg to Jerusalem" (published by the Zalman Shazar Center). "It took some time to convince the advisors that this unknown figure warranted a doctorate. Initially, it was agreed that the topic would be 'Rabbi Glasner and His Era,' but I'm sure that in the end they too understood that he could carry the work on his own."

Before we get to know Rabbi Glasner, what actually distinguishes Hungarian Jewry from other diasporas?

"First of all, it was a very large community. A significant portion of European Jewry in the 19th and 20th centuries was Hungarian Jewry. It included about a million Jews around 1900. In Budapest alone, about a quarter million Jews lived then – making it the largest 'Jewish city' in Europe after Warsaw. This is a very important community, but it hasn't received the honor it deserves in history and public consciousness. Not much has been written about it, not much research has been done, and therefore not much is known about it. The reason is that Hungarian Jewry was somewhat insular, outside the general European-Jewish discourse. This is the only country that had both Western European Jews, what's called 'Oberland,' German-speaking and educated people, and on the other hand Jews from Galicia and Moravia, the 'Unterland.' In other words, within the same space there are very different Jewish cultures – people who dress differently, eat different food, barely intermarry with each other."

"Secondly, Jews in Eastern Europe were then engaged in struggles between enlightenment and orthodoxy, Zionism and anti-Zionism, socialism and nationalism. Jews in Hungary had an exceptional symbiosis with Hungarians, and most importantly, they had it very good. Therefore, other Jews in the world simply didn't interest them. They conducted their own internal conversation, in Hungarian."

Speaking of Hungarian, you write that it's the only European language that can still be heard today in Hasidic concentrations around the world, besides Yiddish of course.

"That's right. In Brooklyn and Williamsburg, you can still find elderly Jews speaking Hungarian. Among the ultra-Orthodox, you won't find people speaking Russian, Polish, or Czech, because these are languages of those who want to assimilate. Hungarian, on the other hand, wasn't perceived as threatening or leading to too deep integration with the Hungarian people – partly because it's a relatively small nation, but mainly because Jews didn't see Hungarians as enemies. Hungary gave the Orthodox the security that no Reform Jew would bother them or undermine them. This was an emancipation deal that recognized Orthodox Judaism as another 'official church' in the country. And unlike other European countries, which along with recognition demanded that we reform Judaism a bit – to be less xenophobic, more liberal, to allow mixed marriages – here exactly the opposite happened. The state stood behind Orthodoxy and said: speak Hungarian, study Hungarian core subjects, but other than that, do what you want."

Why did this happen specifically in Hungary and not in other countries?

"The nationalism that developed in Hungary before World War I was multi-ethnic and liberal by definition. This stemmed partly from the fact that Hungarians themselves aren't homogeneous. Not all are Catholic, there's a strong Protestant element, so religious tolerance existed from the start and this influenced attitudes toward Jews. A reporter from the Jewish-American Forward who arrived in Budapest in 1910 reported that this was the true paradise for Jews. And we're talking about a journalist coming from the US, the 'golden country.' Another important factor: the Hungarians needed Jews numerically to stand against the Romanians, Slovaks, and Serbs. The kingdom ruled over many other peoples, and Hungarians were only 45 percent of the population in its territory. The Jews gave them the percentage points they needed to be a majority."

This golden age ended after World War I. "Two-thirds of the territory no longer belonged to Hungary, and in the remaining third, there was a Hungarian majority or Jews. Jews suddenly became a minority that could be hated, and 'paradise' became the first place in Europe to establish quotas for Jewish students in universities. They connected it to the Communist revolution that Bela Kun, who was Jewish, tried to lead, but that was just an excuse. However, it's important to say that between the World Wars, Hungary didn't turn into an antisemitic monster. Jews still had a central place in the country, but they were already hated, and antisemitism began to develop where it had barely existed before."

A congress that's a trap

To talk about Rabbi Glasner, we need to go back to the years before World War I, and away from Budapest to Transylvania – today in Romania, but then part of Hungary. The central city in the region was called Klausenburg, today Cluj. "The state authorities cultivated Klausenburg as a center of Hungarian culture. In 1906, for example, they built the Hungarian National Theater there. You can see this building in today's Cluj, but now it's called the Romanian National Theater. It's amazing to see that even a hundred years after Klausenburg became Romanian, the tension between the two sides still bubbles there. You barely need to scratch the surface for it to show. You say a word in Hungarian on the street, and suddenly a resident hugs you like you're their lost brother because they feel like a persecuted minority."

And there, in Klausenburg that wasn't yet Cluj, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner served as the city's chief rabbi for a very long time – 44 years. "He was an opinionated, rational personality with a modern spirit. His father, Rabbi Abraham Glasner, was one of the important students of the Ktav Sofer (son of the Chatam Sofer) and was married to the Chatam Sofer's eldest granddaughter. The father delivered his sermons in fluent German, meaning clearly 'Oberland,' like most of the Chatam Sofer's family. They weren't zealots at all, contrary to their reputation."

"After serving in a small Hungarian town, Rabbi Abraham Glasner was appointed rabbi of Klausenburg, then a growing Jewish community. He served in the position for 17 years, and after his passing, the community appointed his only son, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, in his place. This happened in 1878. There were also opponents to the appointment – the more modern elements in the community, Jews who would later establish the Neolog movement. They said, 'Who is this young man who goes around with the Hasidic rabbis?' Rabbi Glasner was connected to several rabbis from the area, and therefore was a thorn in their side. The ultra-Orthodox, who became angry with him later on, always mentioned that in his youth he was connected to Hasidic courts, meaning to the good ones. Oberland from home, Unterland from the surroundings."

Rabbi Glasner began serving as the rabbi of Klausenburg at a very young age – a position he would resign from after four and a half decades, following disputes that erupted over his Zionist leanings. "At first, he established a yeshiva and was appointed to the Budapest Rabbinical Council, making him part of the Orthodox establishment. He was also a great expert in the laws of ritual slaughter, as befitting a rabbi of a large city in those days, and maintained good relations with rabbis in the area, even though he was somewhat of a modernist. He often traveled to Budapest for communal affairs and published his opinions on various contemporary issues. His responses reveal the character of a bold and unpredictable person, who often thought differently from the rabbis around him."

In what areas was this expressed?

"Around 1900, when he already had twenty years of experience, Rabbi Glasner spoke out on matters of civil marriage, conversion, and other issues that were then at the center of debates, and his statements are quoted to this day. In a new book by Yeshivat Har Bracha on the topic of conversion, there is an extensive section about Rabbi Glasner, who broke new ground and presented a very important position. Basically, he said that once a woman chooses to abandon her Christian identity, we are less concerned with which commandments she observes: her choice is sufficient for us to accept her conversion as authentic, because she is willing to pay a heavy price for it."

When did Rabbi Glasner's not-taken-for-granted romance with Zionism begin?

"The moment Herzl's 'The Jewish State' was published, around 1896. I discovered this in a way that might suggest there were those who sought to diminish his character. These things appear in the manuscript of his book of responsa. The entire book was printed word for word, except for one response that wasn't printed. I discovered this when I was looking for something else related to a printing error, and for that purpose, I compared the printed book to the manuscript, and had already gone through all of it."

"In the omitted question, a rabbi of one of the communities wrote to him: 'They established a Zionist association in the city and want me to be an honorary member, what do you think?' Rabbi Glasner answered: 'You're probably hesitant because they think about nationalism and not about religion, but ultimately Zionism strengthens people's religious identity, brings them closer to Judaism and the Land of Israel, and distances them from assimilation, and this is a wonderful thing. They say they're not interested in the religious aspect? So they say. The very fact of their choosing religious identity in an era when it's so easy to escape from it, this is the 'beginning of redemption.'' He actually used this term, before the year 1900. I don't know if anyone else in Europe said these words then."

And then came the clash with Hungarian Orthodoxy.

"The first world congress of the Mizrachi movement took place in 1904 in Pressburg – today Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. Rabbis in Hungary organized to boycott the event, and that's where Hungarian Jewry's anti-Zionism was born. It didn't have deep roots; it was a political move against Mizrachi. Rabbi Glasner wasn't part of the boycott: on one hand, he apparently respected it and didn't personally attend the congress, and on the other hand, he published a letter against the boycott, which he said was done without serious discussion and based on false assumptions about Mizrachi. He himself became Mizrachi's representative in Hungary, though at that stage it had no practical significance. Later, around 1920, he gave many lectures and swept all of Transylvania into Zionism, but in 1904 there was no one in Hungary to talk to about the subject. Rabbi Glasner understood there was no point, didn't preach about Zionism, didn't write articles, and didn't advocate. Because Hungarian Jews simply weren't there. As mentioned, they had it good in Hungary, and they didn't want to be considered unpatriotic."

Did Hungarian Jews' anti-Zionism stem from extreme religiosity or rather from Hungarian nationalism?

"The public didn't flock to Zionism because they identified with Hungarian nationalism, and Zionism in their view contradicted all that. By the way, Rabbi Glasner was a Hungarian patriot and didn't see Zionism as contradicting this. During World War I, he wrote that it is forbidden to use tricks or 'get sick' to dodge military service, and his son even served as an officer in the Hungarian army. The Hungarian rabbis who led the sharp opposition to Zionism were heavily influenced by propaganda from the 'Black Bureau' in Kovno, which came from the Chabad Rebbe's study hall, the Rabbi of Brisk, and other Russian rabbis who feared the danger of secularization. Hungarian Jews weren't very interested in this because there was no secularization there: you were either religious or assimilated. But in Eastern Europe, secularization was strong, and in the eyes of the rabbis there, Zionism was a way to be Jewish without religion, and it had to be fought against relentlessly. That's why they were shocked when they learned that a Mizrachi conference was going to be held in Hungary, and that the rabbis there didn't understand it was a trap aimed at secularizing everyone. This propaganda was very successful with important rabbis who already had an ultra-Orthodox sentiment, in the sense of fearing anything new. There were quite a few rabbis in Hungary then who thought differently and saw Zionism as wonderful, but they were silenced."

Looking back, it seems Rabbi Glasner's view was quite naive, and the ultra-Orthodox concerns were justified. Most Zionists today are secular, and the Jewish state is secular.

"I disagree with that statement. Mass secularization occurred in Eastern Europe without any connection to Zionism. For those who became secular, Zionism was actually the more Jewish option, instead of becoming Communist-Socialist or just going to America and being secular Jews. Thank God, a large enough part of the Jewish people chose the Zionist path."

I'm not sure the ultra-Orthodox would say "Thank God" about this, since many of these Jews are, as mentioned, secular.

"Perhaps. But Rabbi Glasner was far from this kind of thinking. It was clear to him that in the new life of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, we wouldn't be religious in the same way we were in exile. Judaism needed to take on a new face, and secular domains were equally important. If you're creating Jewish culture, it means that both the architect and the farmer are performing a Jewish act."

That's classic Religious Zionism at its purest.

"Correct, exactly like Rabbi Reines and all the others. The concept of the 'New Jew' was very strong among Religious Zionist rabbis, it wasn't just a secular idea. Rabbi Reines wrote extensively, he was a great philosophical genius; Rabbi Glasner didn't write much, but was a brilliant orator. There are many descriptions of the ecstasy among his audiences during his Zionist journeys through Transylvanian and German communities. He believed wholeheartedly that redemption was coming, and had deep admiration for those who made aliyah to Israel."

"Rabbi Glasner himself made aliyah in spring 1923 and settled in Jerusalem. Here too, he remained active in the Mizrachi movement, supported religious settlement, and taught at the movement's teachers' seminary. In October 1924, he passed away and was buried on the Mount of Olives. "When he arrived in the country, all his anti-Zionist opponents were certain he would see what was happening around him and change his mind," Shorek relates. "They circulated a forged letter in which Rabbi Glasner supposedly said 'I came to the Land of Israel, you were right, it's terrible.' So he had to write a letter contradicting this. In the period's newspapers, one can find descriptions of how pleased he was with what was happening in the country."

Herzl didn't say

Shorek takes his tour participants outside the big city to the picturesque town of Vác, which he calls "the Zikhron Ya'akov of Hungary." Not that there's much Jewish heritage to see in Vác, but this is part of Shorek's approach's charm – he genuinely loves Hungary and doesn't focus solely on its Jewish story. We found ourselves in a beautiful botanical garden in the small town, wandering without needing to connect everything to orthodoxy or halakhic issues. Shorek also ensures the tours aren't too packed or overly didactic, and his guidance usually ends around one in the afternoon. Afterwards, participants are free to wander the city as they wish or simply rest.

A tourist from another country trying to understand the world through the flight board at Ferenc Liszt International Airport would be sure that Israel is a superpower: every few hours, a flight from Ben Gurion Airport lands here. It's no coincidence that you hear so much Hebrew in central Budapest. When you add to this the cooperation between the Israeli government and the Hungarian government, you can definitely declare a new golden age in Jewish-Hungarian relations – no small matter after the Holocaust.

The Jewish community here is relatively small, but echoes of its magnificent past are evident in almost every corner. The impressive Neolog synagogue on Dohány Street in Budapest is considered a must-see attraction for tourists from around the world, regardless of their religion. I ask Sorek to talk about these echoes of the past. "The sharp division between Orthodox and Neolog Jews continued to exist in Hungary, both formally and practically, until the Holocaust and even after," he explains. "In the late 1940s, Orthodox synagogues and educational institutions operated in Budapest. Following waves of emigration – after the war, and again in 1956 – and due to the Communist regime's hostile attitude, almost no Orthodox Jews remained in Hungary. But the community officially continued to exist and maintained many properties, even if deteriorating."

One of the interesting proofs of Orthodox Judaism's decline in Hungary can be found in Chabad's central role in everything related to Judaism in the country today. "We classify Chabad members as ultra-Orthodox, and this Hasidic movement was even anti-Zionist, but dividing Jews into Orthodox and non-Orthodox is completely foreign to Chabad thinking. It's a movement that seeks to reach every Jew, and in the diaspora, it's even an Israeli anchor."

Chabad's activity in Hungary in recent decades operated alongside the dwindling Orthodox community, and sometimes there was hostility between the sides. All this changed recently when a person associated with Chabad became the official manager of the community and began a long and fascinating journey to renew its assets and shake off the accumulated dust. He raised enormous sums to restore the Orthodox synagogue on Kazinczy Street and began implementing the project. Simultaneously, he's establishing a museum in the community building's basement that will tell Hungarian Jewry's story from the Orthodox perspective, competing with the famous museum of the Neolog synagogue.

Participants in Sorek's tour get to enter the Kazinczy synagogue, still closed to the public, and also visit the real treasure, at least in history lovers' eyes: an archive in the making that seeks to organize tens of thousands of books, certificates, sacred objects, and documents that accumulated in Orthodox community warehouses and were neglected for decades. These materials come not only from Budapest but also from provincial cities, most of whose synagogues closed in the Communist regime's early years.

I ask Sorek why he presents Hungarian Jewry through Budapest, even though Rabbi Glasner, a central figure in the story he weaves, operated mainly in Klausenburg. "When my book was published – almost three years after completing the doctorate – I thought a launch event is nice, but we could do something cooler: a launch journey. I built a tour composed of Budapest and Cluj, and half the participants were Rabbi Glasner's family members, who were very involved in the book's writing process. Seemingly, why not just visit Cluj, his city? The answer is that you can't understand his story without understanding the Hungarian-Jewish story. Budapest doesn't need Rabbi Glasner, but Rabbi Glasner needs Budapest. The Orthodox community was created in this city. Hungarian liberalism enabled the idea of a separate Orthodox community, and the strong symbiosis between Hungarians and Jews caused Zionism to be delayed years before it took root in this environment. That's why Budapest is very central to the story, while Klausenburg hasn't had Hungarians for more than a hundred years."

"If you want to grasp the reality of Jewish life, the paradise they had; if you want to understand why Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew, had to find another place to talk about Zionism, knowing that no one in Hungary would listen to him – in Budapest you can see it before your eyes. Beyond that, there's something exceptional about this city. It was built to be an empire's capital in the late 19th century, then went through two world wars and decades of communism, yet if you have the right ears and eyes, you hear and see things. It's like walking through a living museum."

"In Budapest, the Jewish communities also separated. Today we don't see the rift with our eyes, because there are no active Neolog and Orthodox communities here anymore, but you can walk down the main Jewish street and tell how all the Jewish shops were open on Shabbat, and the city's rabbi didn't care because they weren't from his community."

And what about the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews? Almost defiantly, it's not present in your tour.

"Obviously we can't ignore the Holocaust, but there was so much in the period before it. Indeed, precisely because of Hungarian Jews' 'paradise' feeling, what happened here in the Holocaust appears as betrayal. Unlike Poles or Ukrainians, who always appeared to Jews as enemies lying in wait, in Hungary, it wasn't like that at all. The feeling of betrayal is strong and justified, but Israelis – including Hungarian natives – love Budapest very much."

"People are amazed to see that this city symbolized the height of progress in the early 20th century. The subway that ran here was the first in Europe and third in the world, after London and New York. The largest Gothic building in the world is the Hungarian Parliament. There's an interesting duality here – on one hand, it's amusing to see thousands of monuments to national heroes who never won any war. After all, this is a culture that was crushed under German and Russian boots, and never rose to be an economic power, at most it had some sports achievements.

"On the other hand, they survived. Budapest continued to be a large and prosperous city despite everything it went through, and the Hungarian language, which is different from everything around it and seemingly should have disappeared – here quite a few people are chattering in it. Maybe demographically it will end in another hundred years, because it's a small nation that can't reproduce enough, but the Hungarians managed to create culture, science, and poetry in their language. During the golden age of relations with the Jews, you could see a kind of similarity between the peoples, a population of Asian origin scattered among Europeans, an unconscious correlation of shared destiny."

I can't help but ask you about your son Dvir z"l, who was murdered in a terrorist attack in August 2019. Is Budapest for you also a place to escape to?

"I don't feel like I'm escaping from anything. Sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable immersing myself in other things and not in memorials, although I said from day one that I don't want to fall into a place that perhaps keeps other bereaved parents alive, meaning constantly dealing with memorializing the child who died. Certainly not when I have other living children."

"Dvir was killed when I was completing my doctorate," he adds. "A year passed from then until I finished and submitted the work. After submission, I entered a mental crisis. The shiva days are also a farewell party where you discover what kind of child you raised at home, there are things that sweeten the pain and you don't really understand that he won't be here anymore. Working on the doctorate gave me more time. After I finished came the crisis, and it took me two years to get out of it."

It's not clear if this is one of the tour's goals, but a few days in Budapest with Sorek instills Hungarian pride in anyone with roots in this region – I, the humble one, am among them. A few days after returning home, the dedicated WhatsApp group is still buzzing. Pictures, documents, impressions, and summaries continue to appear one after another. I admit I'm not the type for organized tours and tours where they take me like an obedient sheep from here to there, but this time it was something different. Full of passion and love for Budapest, its Jews, its past, and its present, which is also full of Jews and Hebrew – just ask Franz Liszt International Airport.

The post Hungary's forgotten Jewish heritage appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

There's nothing more frustrating than an unsuccessful first date. After investing in your appearance, dealing with traffic, and spending money, you meet someone who isn't right for you and waste precious time that you'll never get back. "Shlish Gan Eden" (One-Third Paradise), a dating site for traditional and observant Jews, recently launched video dating – online speed dates where users can meet potential partners without leaving their homes.

"Speed dating events are based on the idea that you can tell whether someone is right for you within a short time. Studies have found that within just three seconds, you can feel the energy and get that first impression from the other person to understand if they might be 'the one,'" says Assaf Navon, CEO of Shlish Gan Eden.

"Using an AI-based system and user activity on the site, we can identify profiles that users have liked and suggest speed date matches with them."

The service offers conversations with six people in one evening, all with good compatibility potential. If there's a connection, users can proceed to meet in person, saving heartache, time, and money on matches that weren't meant to be.

Each week, the site hosts a video speed dating event with a limited number of singles. Participation is open to registered site members and requires no special software.

After entering the event, users see a list of their dates on the side. Each private video conversation lasts six minutes, with two-minute breaks between dates.

If there's mutual interest and agreement between both parties, the system will exchange phone numbers. "After a video conversation, there's a better chance the date will start with confidence. From there, the path to a happy relationship is much faster," Navon concludes.

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In an exclusive interview with The New York Post, Israel's newly appointed consul general to New York, Ofir Akunis, has sounded the alarm on what he perceives as a growing threat of radical extremism in the city. Akunis, who assumed his role in May, draws parallels between the current situation in New York and the challenges faced by major European cities.

"You know what's happening in London these days, you know what's happening in Paris these days and in Malmo, a major city in Sweden?" Akunis told The New York Post. "They are under radical Muslim occupation. There are no-go zones and I don't want to happen here in New York or in other places here in the United States."

The diplomat's concerns stem from recent incidents, including the burning of an American flag in front of the Manhattan consulate. "I'm calling on New Yorkers: wake up before it will be too late!" Akunis urged.

His warnings come in the wake of a poll conducted shortly after Oct. 7, which revealed that 57% of American Muslims believed Hamas' attack on Israel was "justified."

Akunis, who replaced Asaf Zamir, arrived during a tumultuous period marked by pro-Hamas demonstrations at major American universities. The former consul, Zamir, who's married to billionaire Maya Wertheimer, was fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2023, leaving the consulate without full-time leadership until Akunis' appointment.

The new consul general's office is adorned with a massive image of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, drawing a stark comparison between that event and Hamas' deadly attack on Oct. 7. "Your September 11th is our October 7th. It's radical Islam," he stated to The New York Post.

Expressing deep concern about the rise of antisemitism, Akunis shared, "My late grandmother — she was born in Poland 100 years ago — [told me] what happened in . . . Europe in the '30s. I never imagined that we would see that with the young people here." 

While praising local leaders such as Mayor Eric Adams, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Representatives Tom Suozzi and Ritchie Torres for their support, Akunis criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for his recent comments on Israeli leadership. "The biggest problem in his speech was that he said that Israeli prime minister is an obstacle for peace. I think that was huge mistake," Akunis remarked to The New York Post.

The consul general also voiced support for reinstating the ban on masked protests in New York, which was lifted during the COVID-19 pandemic. "You need to update the law about the masks. If someone uses the masks just to hide and they use it to scream 'Death to Israel' and 'Death to United States,' this is wrong," he asserted.

While refraining from commenting directly on the US presidential race, Akunis acknowledged that he was "watching it closely." He also addressed the sometimes strained relations between Israel and the US, particularly in light of President Joe Biden's efforts to maintain a diverse coalition.

"It's not a secret that there is difference from time to time," Akunis told The New York Post. "I appreciate the American support for Israel."

As New York City grapples with these complex issues, Akunis' stark warnings serve as a call to action for both city officials and residents to remain vigilant against the spread of extremist ideologies and antisemitism.

The post 'I'm calling on New Yorkers: Wake up before it will be too late!' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Last Shabbat in the Washington periphery was an extremely pleasant one. The crowds thronged the National Mall lined with its many museums, extending from the Capitol grounds to the Washington Monument, while downtown Washington DC was the scene of a vibrant, multi-colored Gay Pride march that snaked its way across the hub of the capital city, in an exuberant atmosphere of joyous celebration and fun. But at the same time, opposite the obelisk in memory of the first president, George Washington, a completely different march was slowly crawling along – a march of hatred, ignorance and evil. Thousands of protesters in red costumes, kaffiyehs and PLO flags proceeded along the heavily protected sidewalk, making it patently clear why they had come here from all over the US: "No to a two-state solution – we want 1948," "From the River Jordan to the Sea," "Free – Free Palestine," "Intifada – Revolution."

The majority of those demonstrating were extremely young, most of them non-Arab Americans. The meticulous organization of the event was clearly apparent – in each group, the chanting of slogans was led by a different young girl, screaming out uniform messages from her iPhone. I walked amongst them for some time, and although the passersby did not tend to stop and express their identification with the protesters, the overall scene was an extremely depressing and worrying sight.

At the same time, not far away from there, at the enormous Marriott Hotel, preparations were well underway to begin the annual conference of the AJC, the American Jewish Committee, the large and senior representative organization of US Jewry, which has assumed an even broader function as the "global advocacy organization for the Jewish people". More than 2,000 representatives gathered here, fueled by a profound sense of crisis and emergency, if not a genuine 'seismic disruption'. The war in Israel has become intertwined with the genuine sense of battle for their own home, which could not have been more poignantly, or aptly manifested in the hate demonstration that marched a mere stone's throw away from there.

The stage, the discussions and the audience as a whole were replete with experiences similar to those we have become accustomed to seeing on the news on a daily basis. Most of those attending the AJC Forum were Jewish Americans, staunch supporters of Israel of the classic variety – not orthodox Jews, but those Jews, who for more than 100 years, until last October, firmly believed that there strong connection with the liberals in the US would guarantee both their rights as Jews and their lives. It is for this reason that they worked to promote the rights of Afro-Americans, the Hispanic population the LGBT community and even whales, and now – something deep down inside them was undermined following October 7. Although the opinion polls in the US show that support for Israel remains widespread and unflagging, many of them have experienced traumas that have undercut their sense of personal security, alongside their confidence in all that they had believed in regarding their existence in their land. Paradoxically, it is precisely the ties of many of the participants with the liberals that was the cause of them being struck such a heavy blow – they have been thoroughly shaken up by the extent of the betrayal by the American left and the resulting horrifying outburst of antisemitism.

No longer remains in the family

The situation in the universities – the demonstrations, the hatred, the treachery of many lecturers and all the rest of the associated issues that you have heard in recent months took center stage at the conference. Two inspirational female Jewish student leaders, one from the 'front line' at Columbia University in New York and one from Germany, were given an award for their determined stand against the violent protesters. But nobody made any attempt to sugarcoat the situation, on the contrary – it was quite evident that we have gone back 100 years in time, to a time of frightening antisemitism, and the question posed was how we can take an effective position to stand up to this monster.

In a survey conducted by the organization among Jews in the US that was published earlier this week, 64% of those questioned testified that the events since October have had an impact on their relationship with their fellow Americans. At the same time, worrying statistics were revealed regarding the impact of these events on their daily conduct. Many Jews avoid engaging strangers in a conversation broaching issues that are connected to events on the news, there are those who actively conceal their Jewish identity, while many testified to an underlying sense of a lack of security.

In addition, the random personal, one-on-one meetings provided plenty of disturbing stories. Two elderly Jewish women from Los Angeles told me over dinner that they had severed relationships with a number of friends and acquaintances, due to their accusations against Israel. One of them told me of her son – a liberal attorney with a routine left-leaning agenda – and how his friends had stopped speaking to him because of the accusations against Israel. The other lady no longer speaks with her 22-year-old grandson, after he provoked her by saying that the very existence of the State of Israel is what led to the establishment and existence of Hamas. And alongside these stories, I also heard the opposite – one female representative attending the conference told me of one of her daughters who was a pro-Palestinian activist and following the October 7 massacre decided to do an about-face in favor of Israel, and another daughter who has become an active advocate for Jews and for Israel.

A former Israeli woman who now lives in Jersey City, shared with me the profound sense of shock that has taken hold of her in recent months. Among others, after she discovered that a teacher at her 10-year-old daughter's school, handed out to the students a Palestinian book that completely erases the existence of the State of Israel, while another boy in her class was parroting pro-Palestinian messages.

Double shock

A key figure who is well connected to the heart of the issue is Dr. Alexandra Herzog, the niece of both Israel's President Herzog and Israel's Ambassador to the US, Michael (Mike) Herzog. She lives in Boston and serves as the AJC's National Deputy Director for Contemporary Jewish Life. Herzog monitors the educational materials at schools and universities in the US and has been seeing the anti-Israel-Zionist connection develop for years.

"The largest problem in the universities," she says, "is that many of the heads of the universities do not assume responsibility and fail to enforce their own rules for protecting the students against antisemitism. But this has gone way beyond protests and demonstrations – there are numerous places where they have not allowed Jewish students to join the student organizations." This sounds all too reminiscent of Vienna and Berlin in the pre-Second World War era. "This modern incarnation of antisemitism is new to many American Jews," says Alexandra, "the US is a country of idealism, and the Jews thought that they would be completely safe here. Now, all of a sudden, they understand that they are not as safe as they were." This is a double shock – it encompasses the threat against Israel, which was always perceived as a potential safe haven, and of course the feeling that the US itself is no longer as safe as they thought it was.

Part of the collapse of this perspective is now being manifested in the profound disappointment from the classic view of the liberal American Jews, that if they encourage education towards pluralism and forge ties with the open democratic circles, and that if in addition they can have an impact on Israel and make it more liberal, and then portray it as such, this would help the Jews in the US and around the world too. As part of this trend, about a year ago the organization sent a delegation to Ramallah, to become acquainted and connect with the Palestinian Authority. It didn't exactly work out, as is known, and as is clear to my interlocutor.

The very same disappointment was also the result of the efforts to forge ties with the large Hispanic community in the US, which encompasses more than 60 million Americans. The person in charge of this effort on behalf of the AJC, is Dina Siegel Vann, a native of Mexico City herself, who now resides in Washington and serves as the Director of the AJC's Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs. Dina invested considerable efforts in linking up with the Hispanic organizations, and even brought a delegation of Hispanic American leaders to visit Israel a year ago, among others, visiting the Gaza border communities. However, all of them disappeared following October 7 – not a single one of them stood beside Israel and the Jews, and their silence is deafening.

"We have changed since October 7," says Dina, "Our expectations have changed. We here at the AJC have always believed in the struggle for all the ethnic minorities, as indirectly this is something that should work for us too, but in hindsight, it now appears that this effort has not really worked at all. We are now shifting gears and revisiting our approach."

Daniel Schwammenthal, the Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute (TAI), the AJC's EU office in Brussels, is no stranger to antisemitism. As regards antisemitism, Daniel has the following to say: "The problem is that a new threat has emerged that goes beyond social media and terrorist threats, against which your government protects you, despite the severity that it entails. Now, as a Jew, you are threatened on the streets, on campus and at work, and antisemitism is being thrust in your face. Then add to this the fact that a number of governments, like the government in Belgium, are engaged in efforts to demonize the Jewish state, thus fanning the flames of antisemitism – and now the whole situation is simply intolerable."

An opening for hope

Born in Germany and now resident in Belgium, Daniel closely monitors the social and political trends in Europe with a sober perspective. He talks of the positive change that has occurred in recent years in Israels relationship with Europe, a marked improvement that simply collapsed several months after the outbreak of war, with a growing negative trend sweeping across European governments and the decisions of the prosecutor and the ICJ (International Court of Justice) in The Hague. In that context, the assessment is that the decline in support for Israel in Europe is the result of the Biden administration's disaffection and positively hostile relations with Israel in recent months. Since the White House began to accuse us of the indiscriminate bombing and killing of the innocent, some of our friends and allies in Europe have fallen in line with it.

However, Daniel believes that overall, the public in Europe is not against us, a claim that has gained support from the results of the elections to the European Parliament held last week, and the ensuing impressive rise in power of the right-wing parties in Europe. That rise in power is a positive sign for the Jews and for Israel, not to mention the reversal of concepts it entails, in which the global left has morphed into our antisemitic enemy, while the right, for the most part, has become the absolute opposite.

This paradox has been clearly reflected, for example, in the staunchly pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli state of Florida, where I flew immediately after the conference in Washington. In that spirit, a female Jewish student from Miami whom I met at the conference in Washington, testified that she has come across nothing in Florida of what has been threatening the majority of Jews in most other locations across the US. This is hardly surprising – as in those states with a palpably dominant support for the Republican Party, especially where strong Republican governors exist, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, or Greg Abbott in Texas, the situation is completely different.

DeSantis – a sworn supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, crushed the initial appearance of the antisemitic demonstrations at USF (University of South Florida) in the city of Tampa with police officers firing rubber bullets and detaining 130 protesters. Abbott declared the demonstrators at UT-Austin (University of Texas) to be supporters of terrorism and in breach of the law, and he then sent the police to detain them and choke this nefarious protest the moment it began.

How unfortunate it is that precisely the classic approach that the majority of US Jews had opted for historically, with a view to establishing their rights as a minority, the approach of linking up with the democratic left wing, produced the opposite results. How uplifting it is to see that those people who have decided to stand by the Jews and Israel and have now become its champions, the defenders of the values of the enlightened world as a whole, are actually the conservative Republicans.

That dissonance and confusion are all too apparent among many of the people I spoke to; though, the contempt for and fear of Donald Trump in person, makes it difficult to arrive at any conclusions as to the impact on internal-US politics. A poll published by the AJC last week shows that still 61% of the Jews questioned intend to vote for President Joe Biden. This is a considerably lower percentage than those who voted for him in the previous US presidential elections – when 85% of the Jews in the US voted for him, and it is also important to point out that the poll was conducted in March-April, prior to the recent blunt manifestations of duplicity. But it is clear that the penny has yet to drop for many Jews.

There does actually appear to be a considerable degree of openness when it comes to Israel itself. I took part in a panel of Israeli journalists, in which I was the only one who issued a call to stop telling ourselves fairy tales about Palestinian partners and American magic solutions. I explained that the Palestinian national movement, including Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, seeks to replace us and not stand by our side. The responses from the audience, which for years has been incited by the fake visions of Oslo and the Disengagement Plan, were actually quite supportive. A leader of a flourishing conservative community in Florida who took part in the conference, stopped me and avidly declared: "I agreed with every word you said, we really do need to adopt a different approach and to rethink it."

The new hope

On the way to the flight to the US, I came across a Jewish attorney from New York, who had just returned from a week of volunteer work in the Gaza border communities, and he had just come from a hard day's work painting houses that had been damaged. I met him once again at the conference in Washington and he was completely fired up to play his part in the Jewish-Israeli struggle. At breakfast, I spoke with a young female volunteer from the Bronx, New York, who was actively engaged in pro-Jewish activity, while her brother had just joined up to serve in the IDF that week, aspiring to serve in as elite combat unit as possible. On the conference's main stage, the senior speakers stressed and reiterated: "Now of all times, we are especially proud to be Jews," expressing their unwavering support for the State of Israel and standing by it.

In this spirit, the poll conducted by the organization has established the trend: 57% of the Jews questioned in the poll said that they feel more connected to Israel and their own Jewish identity, 17% said that they had begun to attend synagogue services since the Hamas attack. Just as has been the case in many periods throughout our long history, and one that has constantly been fraught with hardship, it is actually the rise in antisemitism and persecution that has sparked great determination to stand up to it – to reconnect with Jewish roots and the State of Israel.

Avital Leibovich, the Director of the AJC Israel office in Jerusalem, aptly summed up the situation: "There can be no doubts as to the strong desire of the Diaspora Jews for unity, with October 7 marking a new era for them, an era of proximity to the State of Israel coupled with a greatly enhanced sense of their Jewish identity, each individual acting in his or her own way." While the American actor, Michael Rapaport, who also appeared on the central stage, managed to sum up the basic message to all our enemies in a nutshell, with only two words: "Fuck them," duly earning rapturous applause from the crowd.

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