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.

Even a journey of a thousand miles in the Midwest begins with a single step towards the immigration officer at Newark Airport in New Jersey, on the US eastern seaboard. The officer does not take too kindly to that single additional step that I took over the yellow line and gestures to me to move back behind it. America might well be changing but not the starchy, uptight officials who 'welcome' the foreign visitors at its airports.

After my entry onto US soil has been authorized, I travel to the small hotel in Manhattan where I am due to stay over the weekend before I continue westward, on a journey to the Jewish communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. It is Thursday, the day after Shavuot – a completely regular weekday for a Jew from Israel visiting Manhattan, but it is a Jewish festival with all that entails on the calendar of the Jews living here. The second day of Yom Tov (Yom Tov sheni shel galuyot) observed by Diaspora Jews but not in Israel is an anomaly in the Jewish calendar, a glitch on the matrix that enables an observant Jew from Israel to talk on his cellphone, to use public transportation and go shopping – while he looks at his fellow Jews living in America coming out of the synagogue dressed in their finery, walking home at a relaxed pace, as befits the festival atmosphere, to another heavy festive meal.

On the following day, an hour before sunset, a familiar New York rainstorm hoses down the city in preparation for Shabbat. I am walking down 42nd Street, the beating heart of Manhattan, from 9th Avenue in the west to 5th Avenue in the east. On the way, I pass through Times Square, trying to look for signs of a pro-Palestinian demonstration, or at least a sticker on a traffic sign to indicate that such an event is due to take place, but my efforts are in vain. Even in Bryant Park, one of the most popular and pastoral spots in Midtown Manhattan, there is not a single hint of the war raging in the Middle East. Only at the entrance to the Beit Chabad – on the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, by the Skechers shoe store and just a few meters away from the public library – I finally come across the first sign of the tension that has reached this point. A guard standing by the entrance looks at me for a moment nodding his head in approval. Guards at the gates of Jewish institutions is hardly anything new in New York, but this is the first time I have ever encountered this at the entrance to a Beit Chabad in the US.

As usual, most of those praying here are Israelis, as are the majority of those who remain behind for the Shabbat meal. And no inexpensive meal, by any standards, I should add. The meal costs 65 dollars per person, a price that is totally unjustified from a culinary point of view, but well worth it for the experience. The main topic of conversation of my fellow diners – a ragtag bunch of Israelis that you would only ever stumble across as a group at a Beit Chabad overseas – was the ridiculously exorbitant price of the flights. Nobody had managed to obtain a ticket for less than 1,500 dollars, an amount that no veteran traveler on the Ben-Gurion to New York line can recall ever having paid before. The financial griping intensifies as the diners gain a first glimpse of the dessert, a rather modest portion of some or other sorbet, possibly mango. For 65 dollars they could have made a bit more of an effort, groans the Israeli to my right, and doesn't even bother to taste it.

Oren Levy, the Principal of the Hillel Academy Jewish elementary school in Pittsburgh: "On Shabbat, I wear a kippa and go out on the street wrapped in my tallit, so I probably feel the tension more than others. It's not that I have a target marked on my back, but since 2018 I have constantly been looking over my shoulder and to the sides much more than in the past. But I don't feel that we are turning into France."

On Shabbat morning I make my way northwards to Lincoln Square Synagogue, better known as LSS. It is located on Amsterdam Avenue, the continuation of the 10th Avenue in the Upper West Side. Here too I notice that the security arrangements are much more stringent than usual. When I was here last August, nobody asked me where I came from; the security guards made do with a cursory glance before allowing me in. This time, I was forced to use the codename "Petach Tikva" in order to satisfy them.

The Etz Chaim Synagogue no longer exists on its original site. The majority of the building where it operated together with additional community centers was demolished several months ago. The renowned architect, Daniel Libeskind, has been tasked with the design of the new building, which is also due to serve as a memorial site for those murdered there. The fence surrounding the plot is decorated with photos of children's drawings, in memory of those murdered there.

Prior to commencing the Musaf prayer, Rabbi Shaul Robinson, who has been the spiritual head of this Zionist community for some 18 years now, reads out the names of those IDF soldiers killed in battle during the week that has just ended. All the worshipers stand in reverent silence. This is followed by the prayer for the welfare of the United States of America and then the prayer for the State of Israel and for the IDF soldiers. Following the Musaf service, a lavish kiddush is held in honor of one of the girls in the community who is now completing her medical studies at Ben-Gurion University and is also about to get married. This new young family will most probably go and live in Israel; aliyah is a familiar concept within the LSS community.

I spend the rest of the Shabbat enjoying a pleasant stroll across Central Park and Midtown. The temperatures along the eastern seaboard are currently extremely high, approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), but with must less humidity than on the muggy, sweltering Israeli coastal plain. When Shabbat finally ends, around 9:20 pm, it is time to begin to say farewell to the 'Big Apple' and to prepare for the flight. We shall return to New York later to learn about the intricate Jewish network that spins its web over the entire US and beyond, but first of all – Pennsylvania.

Between Sderot and Pennsylvania

In American terms, we are talking about a city that is almost a suburb of New York. After hardly an hour's flight, the hallmark yellow plane of Spirit Airlines lands at Pittsburgh International Airport. In other periods in history, I might not have been able to enter this city so easily: the first three Jews who sought to do business in this area were sent packing. But that was in the 17th century, a short time after Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor of the New Netherlands, conquered the Swedish colony just over the River Delaware. The United States has been established since then, and over the years the Jewish community of Pennsylvania has grown and grown. Today, there are some 300 thousand Jews resident there – the majority living in the state's largest city, Philadelphia, and some 50 thousand in Greater Pittsburgh, the second largest city in the "Keystone State". Between these two cities lies Aaronsburg, the only town in the United States to be named after a Jew – the merchant Aaron Levi, who decided to set up home there more than two hundred years ago.

The first place to visit in Pittsburgh is the Etz Chaim (Tree of Life) Conservative Synagogue, in the suburb of Squirrel Hill, the beating heart of the city's Jewish community. It was here some six years ago that the unforgettable incident occurred that shocked the US and the entire Jewish world. It happened on Shabbat, October 27, 2018. At precisely 09:54 am, 46-year-old Robert Bowers, a fervent antisemite who espoused "white supremacy" entered the synagogue, armed with an assault rifle. He shouted, "All Jews must die," and proceeded to shoot in all directions. His killing spree claimed the lives of eleven people, all of them Jews. A further two worshipers were wounded along with four police officers. The murderer himself was injured and then captured by the police. In the summer of 2023, he was convicted on dozens of counts of murder, attempted murder and hate crimes, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection. His sentence has not yet been carried out.

The Etz Chaim Synagogue no longer exists on its original site. The majority of the building where it operated together with additional community centers was demolished several months ago. The renowned architect, Daniel Libeskind, has been tasked with the design of the new building, which is also due to serve as a memorial site for those murdered there. The fence surrounding the plot is decorated with photos of children's drawings, in memory of those murdered there.

I have another hour and a half left until the meeting with the members of the community, sufficient time to grab a bite to eat at one of the two kosher restaurants in Pittsburgh. It will soon be eight in the evening, and anybody who is familiar with the America that is not New York knows that it would be prudent to start getting a move on; here they like to finish the day early, and it is extremely difficult to find a culinary institution that is open after nine at night. So, I make my way along Murray Avenue to the Eighteen restaurant. On the way there, I notice that some of the storefront windows are decorated with blue and white flags and signs proudly boasting: "We stand with Israel."

The restaurant appears to be closed and locked, but I am hungry enough to insist by knocking on the door. In any event, according to Google, the restaurant should be open until eight-thirty. After a few minutes, a young, somewhat Hasidic looking man opens the door and I enter into an area that is home to Judaica, books, hamburgers and shakshuka. As the only diner there, I am afforded the full service, and the hamburgers they prepare here are very tasty. I highly recommend it, just make sure you knock on the door and don't give up too easily!

I ask the restaurant manager what the story is with the locked door, and she tells me that they have become accustomed to it since the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was only possible to purchase food as part of the takeaway service. It sounds to me as a lame excuse to conceal their fear of antisemitic attacks, but I don't want to push the issue, and from here I continue on foot to the meeting at the Jewish community center.

Three of the members of the Jewish community in Pittsburgh came to share their feelings with us and tell us about the reality of their daily life here as Jews. Maggie Feinstein, born and bred in Pittsburgh, is a professional counselor. Before the shooting in 2018, she worked in a non-Jewish neighborhood in the city, and following this extremely troubling event she set up the "10.27 Healing Partnership", an organization that deals with mental health and treating trauma in the Jewish community. Adam Reinherz, a resident of Pittsburgh for 17 years now, is a senior reporter at the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, the leading Jewish newspaper in the city. Oren Levy, the son of an American mother and a former Israeli, moved here from New Jersey 11 years ago, and since then he has worked as the principal of the Hillel Academy Jewish elementary school in Pittsburgh.

I ask the restaurant manager what the story is with the locked door, and she tells me that they have become accustomed to it since the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was only possible to purchase food as part of the takeaway service. It sounds to me as a lame excuse to conceal their fear of antisemitic attacks, but I don't want to push the issue, and from here I continue on foot to the meeting at the Jewish community center.

I ask the three of them to begin by recounting the trauma of October 2018 and its implications. "When I grew up, the doors of the synagogues were always open," says Feinstein. "As a child, I could enter whichever one I wanted and I felt at home. The situation began to change gradually even before we reached October 7. The neighborhood boasts a basic level of security even today, we can still allow our kids to go to a friend's house, as everybody knows everybody and they know that if something untoward should occur on the street, then it will be immediately reported. But there is a significant difference in the feeling of the community institutions. The free flow of people began to come to an end around 2010 and the doors began to remain closed.

Maggie Feinstein: "October 7 sent shock waves through our community. This was extremely difficult for us, as prior to 2018 we used to say, 'it won't happen here,' and then it did happen. And so, we thought that this cannot happen in the State of Israel, but then it happened there too. You cannot avoid wondering – what is wrong with me, if on two occasions I thought that 'this cannot happen,' and on two occasions I was wrong?"

"Following the mass murder in 2018, everybody understood that security must be afforded the highest priority, and that we simply cannot afford to continue without orderly security plans. Once, it was possible to pass through the building where we currently are located, the JCC (Jewish Community Center), via a sort of covered path between one part of the neighborhood and the other. We simply used to enter this building and walk from one end to the other. Now, for security reasons, it is impossible to do anything like that. It it's sad but completely understandable."

Reinherz: "The topics of my coverage have not changed since October 2018. As a journalist, I continue to focus on education, the relevant occurrences in the community, the daily rhythm of what is going on here and in the vicinity. People here are still working to maintain the community fabric and the way of life, people help you out to educate your children, they know from where you come and where you are going to. In this manner, the way of life continues. The only thing that has changed is the level of tension.

Levy: "On Shabbat, I wear a kippa and go out on the street wrapped in my tallit, so I probably feel that tension more than others. It's not that I have a target marked on my back, but I do stand out more. Since 2018, I have been looking over my shoulder and to the sides much more than in the past. But I don't feel that we are turning into somewhere like France for example."

He tells me of a family that migrated to Pittsburgh from France following the terrorist attack on the 'HyperCacher' kosher supermarket in Paris back in January 2015: a Muslim terrorist took workers and customers hostage and then murdered four of them before he was killed. "They told me that in certain areas they simply were not able to wear a kippa or their tzitzit out," says Levy. "I don't feel anything of that sort here in Pittsburgh. This is a very welcoming city, and I would even say that the majority of Americans here are pleasant and warm, they respect the Jewish culture and are actually quite pro-Israeli."

Feinstein: "After the attack, our Jewish community began to glow and projected the complete opposite of the hatred that had driven the murderer. We showcased our cultural wealth, the stories of the eleven murdered Jews who were all members of the community. Each and every one of them was a whole world unto himself or herself, and each one, in their own particular way, represented a certain aspect of the Jewish community of Pittsburgh. When we decided to dive into their stories we understood why they found a wealth of meaning in Shabbat, in the prayers & ceremonies, in their membership in the community. I really felt proud to be a Jewess, and particularly in the community of Pittsburgh, which has its own delicate and appealing ways of holding ceremonies and maintaining tradition, preserving Judaism, each one in his or her own manner.

"Last summer I sat in the courtroom where the murderer's trial took place. While I was engaged in small talk with somebody sitting next to me, I discovered that my grandfather had sold his burial plot to the grandfather of the person I was speaking to, as they had changed synagogues and my grandfather thought that that individual would want to be buried in a plot that was connected to the synagogue he had left. As far as I am concerned, this was a form of greeting from the past, and also a lesson to teach us just to what extent our grandparents were committed to creating a safe Jewish-American experience. They arrived here under different circumstances and from different backgrounds, but they looked for ways of integrating and coexisting. As a girl, I knew that if you go to Sunday school (a program of Jewish studies held on Sundays – AS), you could go wherever you wanted each week, it didn't matter if it was in your synagogue or another one."

Reinherz: "On Shavuot, I saw the most amazing expression of what it means to be a Jew in Pittsburgh. More than 400 people came to this building for a Tikkun Leil Shavuot all-night Torah study session and listened to lectures addressing all spheres of Jewish life. People from the entire spectrum showed up. We felt what is stated regarding the verse 'And there Israel encamped opposite the mountain' – the reason that it is worded in the singular, that they were 'as one man with one heart'. Just as the People of Israel in the desert, so too we face disputes and arguments from time to time, but all of us come together to engage in a session of communal study. It does not occur in many communities across America."

Levy: "I chose to move to Pittsburgh as what amazed me and attracted me to come here was the cohesiveness of the community. Prior to moving, we checked out other communities along the east coast, in the Midwest and the west coast too; in most places, if you wear a certain type of shirt or hat, you will immediately feel that you belong to one synagogue but are rejected in another synagogue, and of course you will have to send your children to a certain school. In Pittsburgh there is genuine respect for who you are as a person.

"Here is one story that clearly illustrates this. I met a haredi in New York, and when he heard that I am from Pittsburgh, he told me that he had visited here for a conference. During his stay in the city, he looked for kosher food and found somewhere that was defined as a 'traditional Jewish food' restaurant. Just before entering the establishment, he saw across the street a couple of religious Jews, he waved to them and they waved back. Inside, when he looked at the menu he suddenly realized that the restaurant is not kosher. 'I was rather surprised that the couple saw a religious Jew about to enter the restaurant and didn't say a word,' he recounted. I told him that this is precisely Pittsburgh in a nutshell. Here you can wear what you want, do what you want, and people will respect you and your choices, they won't make any assumptions and will not be judgmental."

Q: How did the October 7 massacre in the Gaza border communities affect the life of the Jewish community here?

Reinherz: "I believe in the approach that says that there is a limit to what we are all capable of doing. There are many things that scare me and that is not something to be ashamed of, but it is also important to understand what we can and cannot control. After October 7, just as was the case after October 27, I felt a sense of deep pain and extreme emotions, that were also accompanied by numerous tough questions. But I really am aware, or at least try to be aware, of what is under my control.

"So, what is under my control? To try and be fair and decent to other people. People who perhaps do not look like me nor behave like me, people with a different world view than mine. Because the world in which I want to live is not monolithic. It is not a world driven by fear but by love and kind kindheartedness, respect, esteem and appreciation. So, as far as possible, I must remain in control of that."

Levy: "The perpetrator of the mass murder here in October 2018 came from the extreme right-wing, and as a Jewish American I was utterly floored and left speechless with disbelief, as I had never experienced something on that level before here in America. What we have been witnessing since October 7 is aggression from the radical Left. Here too in the neighborhood I do not feel entirely safe and secure. If I argue over the price in a store then on occasions I will hear an antisemitic comment. I see people wearing pins with the Palestinian flag on their shirt collar and I would be lying if I were to say that it doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. I am also uneasy on the global level too. I am profoundly concerned about the situation of the Jewish people around the world and in Israel."

Feinstein: "October 7 sent shock waves through our community in many ways. Firstly, many people here have family in Israel. Secondly, we were appalled at the very fact that something like that could actually happen here. This was extremely difficult for us, as prior to 2018 we used to say, 'it won't happen here,' and then it did happen. And so, we thought that this cannot happen in the State of Israel, but then it happened there too. You cannot avoid wondering – what is wrong with me, if on two occasions I thought that 'this cannot happen,' and on two occasions I was wrong?" Do I have to think that from here on it can always occur?

"After the attack it was easy to mention antisemitism as the cause of the attack against us, and the knowledge that we are not alone was a helpful factor in the healing process. Following October 7, we experienced a much more mixed bag of feelings and confusion, as our community memory has been programmed for another type of antisemitism. So, our response on this occasion was different too. The response to the shooting here was patently clear – you need to be a good citizen and a good neighbor. That is completely different from adhering to a specific stance on geopolitical issues related to the Middle East, as was required following October 7. It is much easier to choose to be a good neighbor than to formulate your opinion on issues over which you have no control or influence. That doesn't mean that we didn't know what to do but it was simply more complicated."

Q: Let's talk about the upcoming elections. Pennsylvania is considered to be a swing state, one of six or seven that will be decisive in the ultimate election of the next US president. How does this affect the Jewish community and the importance of their vote?

Feinstein: "I understand the desire to try and place the voting patterns of the Jews here in a specific mold, but that is an issue that is particularly difficult to forecast. Since the mass killing here in 2018, we know that the world is watching us, and I don't want them to look at how we vote but rather at what we do as citizens, as neighbors. In any event, our numbers are too low for them to form a significant bloc."

Reinherz: The Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania were held at Pesach. We tried to reschedule them but were unsuccessful. As soon as we understood that this was the case, there was a tremendous effort in the community for people to use postal votes in order to exercise their democratic right in parallel with adhering to their Judaism."

Levy: "We were granted a gift – the power to vote and to voice our opinions. We don't take it for granted. I think that every person and every Jew feels an obligation to go and vote for whomever he believes in."

On the following day, Oren Levy invites me for breakfast at his extremely comfortable home in the affluent Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Obviously, I cannot overcome my innate Israeli curiosity and ask him how much such a house costs. "About 700 thousand dollars," Levy replies. After a very quick calculation, I realize that a four-room apartment in my neighborhood of Petach Tiqwa actually costs more. The real estate prices in Pittsburgh are clearly one of the reasons why the Levy family decided to move here. "When they offered me to come and live in Pittsburgh, I was sure that it was a city full of coalminers and steelworkers," he says with a smile. "I asked if I would be called upon to make up a minyan at the mine."

Levy and his wife have four children that they are raising here. He admits that the peaceful, quiet and relatively inexpensive life in this not very large city – with a total of about 300 thousand residents – there is a price to pay in terms of Judaism. According to him, of the 50 thousand Jews in Pittsburgh, only ten percent are active to any degree in the community, the majority of whom are orthodox.

Following the attack in 2018, and even more so during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Levy family considered making aliyah. They even met on a number of occasions with members of Nefesh B'Nefesh, the non-profit organization that encourages and supports those making aliyah from North America. To date, this has not worked out, mainly as Levy believes that the income of a teacher in Israel will not enable him to maintain the standard of living to which he has become accustomed in Pittsburgh. His wife works in the field of medicine and earns a doctor's wage, and it is clear to them that were they to come and live in Israel then she too would earn much less. Having said all that, my host declares that they are closer than ever to making aliyah, to a large extent due to the resurgence of antisemitism. He says over and over again that this is due to a minority, but he painfully recounts how his daughter and her friend, 12-year old girls, went last week to the local shopping mall dressed in long skirts and thus easily identifiable as Jews. A woman there who was sporting a pin with the Palestinian flag, stopped beside them and called out to them "Hi" while flashing them an evil smile. "Sure, they did not incur any physical damage," he says, "but this an act of antisemitism that my daughter should not have to experience."

The post Between Oct. 2018 and Oct. 2023: Pittsburgh's Jews face shadow of murderous antisemitic terrorism appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

For Barak Herscowitz, working at TikTok was a personal and professional dream come true, but after being exposed to the blatant anti-Israel bias of the Chinese social network, he left with a resounding door slam. Against the backdrop of legislation seeking to ban the app in the US, he now reveals how the company's senior executives tried to silence his complaints, and what really happens in the employees' internal groups.

At the end of January, Herscowitz posted a short and pointed message on X, the former Twitter: "I quit TikTok. We live in a time when our very existence as Jews and Israelis is under attack and in danger. In such an unstable era, people's priorities become sharper. Am Yisrael Chai (the nation of Israel lives)."

This text caused quite a drama in the world of social media. The ripple effects quickly reached major American media outlets and even Congress. Herscowitz portrayed TikTok as a company blatantly biased against Israel, sparking a broad public campaign against it. Its current peak is an American law stipulating that the Chinese company ByteDance, linked to the Communist Party in China, must divest from controlling TikTok's operations; otherwise, the app will be banned across the United States.

Herscowitz, 38, resides in Tel Aviv. We met in Sarona, near TikTok Israel's offices, where he recently spent among the best two years of his life, according to his testimony. He was born in Haifa to a family he describes as "right-light," and after the army, he spent a few years in the United States studying at New York University (NYU). "I received a generous scholarship from a wealthy Jewish donor who wanted to connect Israelis and Palestinians," he recounts. "We lived at a level that's hard to describe – we ate at Michelin-starred restaurants, went on ski vacations, all in exchange for two meetings a week with Palestinians, once for discussions about the conflict and once just to have fun."

Upon returning to Israel, Herscowitz began political activity in Likud. "In 2010, I established a body in the party called the 'Manof Forum.' The idea was to build new, young, liberal leadership on the right." He later accompanied the campaigns of Gideon Sa'ar, Yuli Edelstein, Nir Barkat, and others, and opened a strategic and media consulting business. Ahead of the 2021 elections, he was involved in the Yamina party's campaign, and when Naftali Bennett became prime minister, Herscowitz was appointed to a senior position in COVID-19 public relations.

During that period, Herscowitz already knew he wanted to work at TikTok. "I marked this company as my next workplace, even though I had no connections and had never worked in high-tech. It was far-fetched and unlikely, but I wanted to work for the fastest-growing social network in the world. Also, I myself was addicted to the app."

Ultimately, he approached TikTok Israel's management and sold them an idea: "I told them that on Facebook and YouTube, there are people working with the government, but TikTok didn't have that. I explained that it had a double value. First of all, it's good for business because you can bring in government campaigns, but more than that – TikTok was then considered a stupid platform for kids dancing and cat videos. It wasn't on the radar of major advertisers. I told them that if we brought in the government, then banks and insurance companies with deep pockets would follow."

This is how Herscowitz began working as the government affairs manager at TikTok. Part of his job there was to get government ministries and public bodies to open their own channels on the app. "I had two amazing years there, and the experience after October 7 shouldn't and can't overshadow that. We brought in public bodies, did social projects, and raised the prestige and credibility of the platform. Suddenly, TikTok became something much more serious. True, we also rode a wave because TikTok was growing around the world at that time, but not every country saw the same growth as here."

Q: Surely you knew in advance that this is a Chinese-owned company and that its algorithm is highly intrusive and problematic in terms of discourse engineering.

"I was aware of the talk surrounding TikTok, mainly on privacy issues. It was always in the air, but no more than that. Day-to-day, it wasn't interesting enough, and let's remember that there's a lot of criticism and congressional hearings about the other social networks, too. As for the Chinese ownership, I thought there was a hint of racism at the time, and that there was no room for such concern."

Blocking Israeli Creators

During Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, accusations began surfacing that TikTok was contributing to inflaming tensions among Arab Israelis. A new term entered the discourse – "The TikTok Intifada." According to Herscowitz, "Following what happened during those days, TikTok and I worked with the state and made a great deal of effort to remove the security threats that were on the app. The steps taken alleviated my concerns as an employee and the state's concerns."

Q: And then we get to October 7th.

"Everyone talks about waking up to the sound of sirens, I woke up to the sound of my dog barking, hearing the sirens. We quickly understood what was happening. As TikTok employees, we started receiving reports, including from the government, that there was a lot of violent content on the platform, like Hamas live videos showing the horrors from the Gaza periphery area. Despite the Sabbath and the holiday, the relevant employees quickly gathered the information, rang all the bells in Europe and the US, and handled the situation swiftly and aggressively. The problematic videos were removed, and I was very proud of the company I worked for."

This pride dissipated fairly quickly. "Already in the first days of the war, all of the Israeli government's campaigns on TikTok were blocked They claimed that the slogan 'Together we will win' accompanying them was a political statement, as were the Israeli flags appearing in them. These were the explanations I received from TikTok management in Europe. They explained to us that the company was not willing to get involved in conflicts, even in advertisements, regardless of which region in the world or which side. I conveyed this to the government, and overall, the explanation sounded logical to me."

"Afterwards, campaigns by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum were disqualified. These were very soft campaigns, without horrific images, just a call to return them. Again, we were told that nothing political could be published. My unwritten agreement with the company was that I would convey its policy, and it would act fairly and apply that policy to everyone. But suddenly I saw counter-campaigns on TikTok by Palestinians, funded with a lot of money, that definitely related to the conflict. They went up on the network with no problem. This already seemed strange to me. How could it be that what is permitted for Palestinians is forbidden for Israelis?"

"I raised the question to management in Europe, and the responses we received were evasive. For example, they said the Palestinian campaigns were humanitarian. Meanwhile, a campaign by Taglit calling people to volunteer in agriculture in Israel was also disqualified. The reason for the disqualification: On one of the t-shirts, it said 'Am Yisrael Chai' (the nation of Israel lives), and on the site the advertisement was linked to, it said 'We stand with the people of Israel at this time.' From management's perspective, this was a political statement that justified removing the entire campaign. Palestinian campaigns, as mentioned, kept running all the time. I submitted inquiries again and again and did not receive an answer."

Even in the organic content sphere of TikTok users, Herscowitz encountered a similar phenomenon. "We received hundreds and thousands of messages from Israeli content creators who were blocked, or whose videos were restricted to be viewed only in Israel. The Israeli stance was silenced. By the way, to this day, most Israeli content creators are blocked from going live on TikTok. The American user on the app hardly sees any Israeli content, but they definitely see anti-Israeli content."

"The Wall Street Journal conducted an experiment: It opened fictitious accounts of 13-year-old children, and within a few hours, they began to be inundated with anti-Israeli content. A New York Times investigation revealed that certain topics are silenced on TikTok, including pro-Israeli messages. At the same time, reports began arriving from colleagues about a hostile atmosphere toward Jews at TikTok offices around the world and about antisemitic remarks that were not being addressed. I did my best; I warned the company and challenged decisions, but saw that I was not succeeding."

Q: Did you consult with Anna Pelkin, CEO of TikTok Israel?

"The employees at TikTok Israel are trying to do everything they can. They are fighting and paying the price. Sometimes, they are seen as a nuisance and people make faces at them, and yet they do their best – not necessarily from the pro-Israel position, but to clean the platform of antisemitic content. Sometimes, they succeed. There are employees who have made this a personal mission that they work on after regular work hours."

"I don't want to judge other employees, everyone has their own considerations, but something was burning inside me which is why I did what I did," he says about his resignation. "By the way, this also unfolded differently than I had planned. I was much more fearful, I didn't think about how things would eventually play out."

Q: Who else saw this?

In the early stages, Herscowitz believed it was still possible to resolve the issue through dialogue with TikTok's management. "Someone told me that there are groups on the company's internal network whose purpose is to support the Palestinians. Unlike other workplaces, it's not common at TikTok to set up non-professional groups. There are some, but not many. For example, there is a Jewish group, where they mostly share kneidelach recipes. Since October 7, some members have talked about how difficult it is for them at the workplace."

"I entered one of the Palestinian groups and discovered that they were using it to promote BDS messages and very extreme views against Israel. During the prisoner exchange deal, I saw this group celebrating the release of the Palestinian female terrorists. I decided to raise the issue with the company's management, mainly because almost all the employees in this group belonged to departments that are supposed to enforce TikTok's policy, meaning decide what goes up and what doesn't on the app. These are the teams that need to be the most non-political, fair, and objective. I collected everything I found, prepared a long professional document, and sent it to TikTok's highest global management in America and Singapore. This happened in early December. About twenty very senior people were addressed in this email, and all the managers above me."

Q: And what happened?

"You would expect the company to handle this, but that's not what happened. The first responses I received were along the lines of 'Who else saw this,' 'Who else did you send it to.' There was a great concern about who the report would reach and much less interest in the content. From that moment on, I felt a sense of pressure and hostility towards me. It started with nuances, but the climax was when a very senior TikTok executive, a Jew from the United States, approached me and said he wanted to discuss what I had sent. He explained that he understands the situation, sees the antisemitic wave in the world, feels it, and wants to think together about how we solve the issue within the company. I was very happy, as this is what I wanted to happen."

"The Zoom conversation was nice, but as it went on, I felt like I was under investigation. He started asking me who I had consulted with and who I had shown the document to before sending it. I also felt he was trying to implicate other people in the company who may have leaked the document. I was very disappointed, but I still believed in the system. Every few days I would send an email to the company asking what was happening. I didn't receive serious answers, and at one point, an executive at the company told me: 'It's possible we won't be able to tell you what steps we're taking to address what you wrote.' What kind of response is that? I didn't ask to know who was fired, but to ensure that steps were being taken to solve the problem."

Q: When did your breaking point arrive?

"When parts of the document were published on Fox News. At this stage, I still planned to work at TikTok in the coming years, but then I saw the company's response: 'These are lies.' I understood that an organization that wants to take responsibility and fix things does not respond like that. You can't say 'It's all lies' and then fix it, those don't go together. That's when the decision to leave solidified for me, and I resigned in mid-January. Let's just say there was no attempt to persuade me to stay."

Q: You gave up on a professional dream that had been realized.

"The feeling after the resignation was intense. For the first time in my life, I contemplated what it means to be a free person and to take action related to that. It was very meaningful to me. The world is drowning in a swamp of lies, and I felt pride in knowing that the lie may be winning now, but not through me."

"I wrote a short tweet, and it exploded in Israel and around the world. Afterward, there was a hearing in the US Senate for all social networks, which wasn't even related to Israel, but the part dealing with TikTok extensively covered my resignation and the antisemitic content on the network. Some of it came from the report I sent and some from other publications. The law against TikTok was already brewing in Congress, and senior Congressman Lindsey Graham grilled TikTok's CEO in that hearing, who tried to evade and did not really answer the questions."

Exposing the Data

Herscowitz does not think it matters whether the anti-Israel bias on TikTok comes from above or from the "zeitgeist" among the employees responsible for censorship. "I did not see interference from the Chinese government in the app, and I'm also not familiar with the algorithm because it wasn't part of my job," he says. "There are studies that have shown that topics that are inconvenient for the Chinese government receive different treatment on the platform compared to other topics. The most amazing thing to me in this story is that the moment after the exposure, TikTok blocked access to the data that enabled these studies. Suppose it wasn't an intentional policy, but rather many antisemites happened to reach positions that enabled it. Even then, once the problem surfaced and the whole world is talking about it and TikTok still isn't addressing it – it already becomes a policy. These decisions are not made at a junior level but in consultation with TikTok's CEO and the highest senior management."

Q: How is TikTok different, for example, from Twitter? That network also has a lot of antisemitic content that receives wide exposure.

"First of all, these things really need to be fought on other networks as well. This is not a battle of Jews or Israel; the primary victims are the American and European audiences, the users. They are sure that these networks provide them with an accurate picture of opinions in the world, but if you receive a stream engineered to be false and misleading, you are the victim. And yet, Twitter is different because it declares that there will be as little regulation as possible there and everyone can do almost anything they want, and this policy applies equally to everyone. On TikTok, there is content censorship. In principle, this could be fine, but when the censorship is so biased and one-sided, that's the problem."

Q: So what do we do?

"I'm about to embark on a series of lectures to Jewish and Christian communities in America to wake them up. The Western, democratic world is engaged in a war it doesn't know it's a part of, a war over consciousness. I hope we win in Gaza with the help of planes and tanks, but Hamas is also waging another war against us, aimed at eroding us, eroding support for us, weakening us legally, publicly, and consciously, and turning us into a leper state. These things are happening primarily on social networks because that's where young people in the West consume information and news today."

"The free and democratic West must understand that it is dealing with something very big. We need to rethink the question of who can post on these networks. Perhaps it is not right for every anonymous person to be able to post any content they want, perhaps an authentication model is needed. It won't solve all the problems, but it would be a start."

"I think the West needs to force social networks to open their data for review and criticism. Not the algorithm, but for example how many videos there are with certain keywords from certain countries. If we see unnatural, engineered things, we need to know about them. And we also need to wage war ourselves and think about how we can leverage these networks for our values and messages. Write a new story for the world. These are the three legs that need to progress in parallel – regulation, data, and warfare."

TikTok responded: "Since October 7, we have mobilized resources and personnel to strengthen our platform safety and content moderation teams and increase the number of Hebrew and Arabic speakers on them. The claims of the former employee, who did not work on our platform safety or content moderation teams, misrepresent the efforts and resources we rapidly deployed to maintain the safety of our community and the integrity of our platform."

"In the first six months since the outbreak of the war, we removed more than 3.1 million videos and suspended more than 140,000 live streams in the area of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank for violating our Community Guidelines, including content promoting Hamas, hate speech, violent extremism, and misinformation."

"Regarding the claims about the disqualified families' campaign: We respond as needed to any unforeseen case by exercising judgment and carefully reviewing our policy, with the aim of ensuring the platform remains safe. We worked closely with the Hostage and Missing Families Forum to ensure their 'Bring Them Home' campaign could appear on our platform and reach the desired audience."

"The allegations of bias and connection to China deliberately create a false narrative regarding the actions we take to remove violative content within minutes of receiving a report. We strongly oppose antisemitism in all forms and apply our policy equally across all content and advertisements on TikTok."

"Regarding claims about employee communications: All employees have a responsibility to abide by our internal code of conduct, which promotes mutual respect and creates a workplace free of discrimination and harassment. We provide employees with tools to report their concerns anonymously, and investigate all received reports."

The post How Hamas gets its content promoted on TikTok appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

German-Jewish author Mirna Funk will be among the participants at the Jerusalem Writers Festival beginning May 27 – one of a shorter-than-usual list of international writers that the festival managed to recruit this year. Funk will then return to Berlin, the town where she was born and still lives, but a few weeks later there will be a twist in the plot when she moves to Israel with her nine-year-old daughter, Etta. This is not the first time Funk has tried to live in Israel, but this time she hopes it will be for good. Her previous attempt was about a decade ago.

Q: I assume you decided to make aliyah before Oct. 7. When you saw what happened here and the events that followed the massacre – the ongoing war, the missiles from Iran, and the situation in the north – did you reconsider?

"Israelis need to understand that they don't really have any experience of antisemitism and they do not know what it means to be a minority. There's something very stressful about the constant fear of losing your job, not being able to get a new job, losing your friends – just because you're Jewish. It is very disturbing when, in the middle of a business meeting with ten other people, all of whom are there solely for business, the question raised in small talk is whether Israel should disappear from the map. In the Diaspora, you live in your own ghetto. Back in 2014, I lost almost half of my friends here, and many people younger than me are now experiencing a similar loss of friendships. This kind of thing happens every day and it is a difficult experience.

"Obviously, it's hard to live in a country like Israel with constant missile and terror threats, but in the end, you live here with people who, while they may have different opinions from you, aren't your enemies and don't think your nation-state doesn't have the right to exist. Living as a minority in such an antisemitic atmosphere is exhausting. It makes you feel isolated and alone; you don't feel free.

"I've been to Israel several times in recent months. The first time was in early November, about a month after the massacre. The atmosphere on the streets was sad, but at least you could sit with people, be heartbroken, and feel that the people around you care about what you feel and think. In other places, not only can you not feel that way, but people also look at you as if you are a genocidal killer the moment you show that you are in pain and that you are sad because of what happened on Oct. 7."

Q: Do you think that most Diaspora Jews feel the way you do? Can we expect to see a big wave of aliyah soon?

"I am connected to the Jewish community and Jewish institutions in Germany. I have many Jewish friends here, I am involved socially and publicly, I write for Jewish newspapers, and so on. Ninety percent of the Jewish community in Germany today is made up of immigrants from Russia, who arrived in Germany twenty or twenty-five years ago. They have already left home once and are now facing a situation where they may have to leave again. I don't want to speak for them, I'm not a part of that community, but I do not doubt that they feel isolated and confused and on the other hand it's difficult for them to think about moving again.

"Among the younger generation, those who came to Germany as children and want to build a life here, many are asking themselves what kind of life they will have here. Why do you have to work so hard to explain what a Jew is and what Israel is? Why do you need to justify your very existence? In Germany, a Jew is not an independent person but a Zionist subject. It is an uncomfortable position to live through. Therefore, I believe that we will see a large wave of aliyah. I'm one hundred percent sure of that. We started seeing this in France a decade or so ago, and I think we'll soon see a wave of aliyah from Britain, and I also believe from the United States, although there it will take a little more time. And yes, we will also see more German Jews make aliyah."

Funk was born in East Germany in 1981 to a communist Jewish family with extensive cultural roots and political connections. Among other things, she is the great-granddaughter of the famous East German writer Stefan Hermelin. Only about 5,000 Jews lived in East Germany at the time. Funk was only eight years old when the wall fell, and Berlin was united into one city. "My great-grandfather emigrated to the Land of Israel in 1936 and, after a year and a half, returned to Europe," she says. "After World War II, the family chose to move to East Germany. As communists, they wanted to be part of the Soviet enterprise. Judaism was not of religious significance to us, but it was always clear that this was our cultural identity. Jews in the Diaspora always had a different understanding of their Jewish identity than Jews in Israel, and this was even more complicated in communist countries. Sometimes, they were not allowed to preserve Jewish tradition, but Jewish identity was always there, of course, in the shadow of the Holocaust.

"The 1980s saw the beginning of a conceptual change. After several incidents and because of the general atmosphere that had emerged in the country, my family understood that the communist system had failed and let them down. I had family in Israel, and I visited them immediately after the fall of the [Berlin] Wall. That's when I began to reconnect with my Judaism. It was a process that took years because I had to relearn a lot of things."
Contrary to Jews in the Soviet Union, who had no choice but to be part of the system, after the war, German Jews could choose whether to live in the East or the West. Did this choice make their Judaism look any different?

"I can't answer that question because everyone from back then is already dead, and I don't want to talk about their decisions. I don't know why they did what they did other than the fact that they truly believed in communism. It was a traumatic time; they lost many family members and the lives they had before were destroyed. There are obviously many psychological motivations as to why certain decisions are taken, and there are things that, in hindsight, seem strange, but I don't feel I can judge them. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt: it was a very traumatic time. Most of the Jews in East Germany were Germans, who had come to build the communist state, and many of them held senior positions in politics and culture. They wanted to build an Altneuland (Old New Land) in East Germany; they really believed it. It is also important to understand that of the Jews who lived in West Germany after the war, some 30,000, were not originally from Germany – most of them came as refugees from Hungary and Poland. The original community, about half a million people, was almost completely destroyed. The only survivors went to East Germany; only a few Jewish families remained in the West."

Q: In your first book, 'Winternähe', the heroine Lola is like you. Her father, like your father, fled East Germany a year and a half before the fall of the Wall, abandoning Lola and her mother. How has this personal trauma shaped your life?

"No one knew he was going to leave, none of us were ready for it. I was just told one morning that he had left and that there was no way I would see him again. No one believed then that the Wall would ever fall. He made a decision that was incomprehensible to me, and I felt the same way when we were reunited for a short time after the fall of the Wall. He soon fled again, this time to Australia, where he now lives with his new family. My daughter Etta is about the age I was when he left. At this age, you're already aware of the things happening around you, and all the time I think how unbelievable and incomprehensible it would be for my daughter to get a message one morning: Your mother is gone, you will never be able to see her again. This is an unforgivable betrayal. We had a lot of arguments about this, and I was never satisfied with his answers. He clearly felt ashamed and that there were circumstances that justified what he had done – my parents gave birth to me when they were 18, and he was 25 when he left. He didn't know what he was doing to me when he left, and his yearning for freedom outweighed his responsibility to me."

Q: How do you remember migrating from East Germany to the West?

"The split ostensibly ended in a day, but, in fact, there was a relatively long transition period. For about a year, I had to cross the border with a passport, and my father had to come and take me from there to the western part of the city. It took a while for the country to unite, and then it took more time for things to really change. I still went to the same school with the same teachers. In the east of the city, there are still houses where you can see history, bullet holes, etc. By the way, I still live in East Berlin, in what used to be the Jewish Quarter."

Q: You grew up in Berlin, went to university, and became a journalist and writer. How did your Jewish identity develop up until you decided to move to Israel for the first time in 2014?

"In the 1990s and early 2000s, Europe in general and Germany in particular experienced a quiet and apolitical period. Everyone was busy hanging out, partying, and building the new Berlin, and people were less interested in identity. At the end of the first decade of the new century, I began to see a change. I traveled back and forth between Berlin and Tel Aviv, and when I returned to Berlin, I realized that the era in which people remembered the Holocaust and were very cautious when talking about Jews was over. My peers began to break the taboo that had existed until then in Germany when it came to the Jews. This was something that was very strong in German society – you don't take on the Jews – but then suddenly a new generation arrived for whom maintaining this taboo was less important. For example, people started saying bad things about their Jewish landlords, and similar things I hadn't heard before.

"It is important to say that I am talking about a profound change in German culture itself and that this has nothing to do with the wave of immigrants to the country. In 2012. Israel conducted a military operation, Pillar of Defense, and as always events in Israel affected the Jews of the Diaspora, and we noticed a change in German society and its attitude toward Israel. I felt uncomfortable in Berlin and decided to move to Israel."

Q: You spent a year here and then moved back to Berlin.

"I came to Israel by myself to make aliyah, I fell in love with an Israeli, and I had an apartment in Tel Aviv and an apartment in Berlin. My first book had just been published, I was six months pregnant, and I had to be in Berlin for the PR campaign for the book and the birth. I didn't know Hebrew, and I wanted to have the baby in a hospital in Germany. I intended to return to Israel, but then I left Etta's Israeli father. He returned to Tel Aviv, and I decided to stay in Berlin as a single mother. It was a practical decision related to making a living. I was afraid to go to Israel and find myself without work."

Q: Now, of all times, you have decided to come back, and this time for good?

"I get that this might raise a few eyebrows, but for me it's simple. I am in the field of culture. I'm a writer, editor, and author. Over the past few years, as a Zionist who does not hide her views, I have faced a very anti-Zionist climate. The changes that Germany has undergone, including changes in the feminist movement, have created a situation in which my entire milieu is anti-Zionist. They won't say anything against Jews, but the moment you define yourself as a Zionist, you become a problem. My job opportunities have become limited, I can only write for very specific newspapers, and that restricts my ability to work and earn a living."

Q: That sounds awful. An author and journalist who has to leave her homeland because her views don't fit in with the cultural bonton. Dark days indeed.

"I always felt that I was part of the zeitgeist: I believe in equal rights, I believe that everyone can love whomever they want, I am progressive in my opinions. But because I am Jewish and believe that the State of Israel has the right to exist, I am no longer accepted in these circles. It's sad and it's strange. I don't want my daughter to grow up in a climate like that. She goes to a very nice Jewish school, and I'm glad she's been studying there, all the more so over the last few months – no one shouts at her during break, and no one says she loves a country that commits genocide. But the bubble she grew up in isn't the real world. When she goes to university, she'll be called a Nazi scum."

Q: Your mother tongue is German, and you speak English as well. What do you plan to do workwise in Israel?

"I'll change my name, just like my great-grandfather did, and open a flower shop. I'm only kidding. I will continue my work as a writer and continue to be a Jewish voice in Germany, but I will do so from Israel. It's hard to do that from a café in Berlin, and then go outside and get booed. I also hope to work in creating media and political connections between Diaspora Jews and Israelis, because I know that field."

Q: Did you consider moving to the United States instead of making aliyah?

"I'm a European, I'm East German, and I feel a lot more like Israelis than Americans. It's not my culture. I can't be polite; I speak very forthrightly and I can't say I enjoyed a meeting I didn't enjoy. I imagine I would have suffered there."

Q: Do you think that the breaking of the German taboo on Jews and Israel is likely to be reversed in a few years, or is this an irreversible process?

"My first book was about the rise of antisemitism in mainstream German culture. In this mainstream today, anyone who is a Zionist is called a 'genocide lover.' This process happened in the second decade of the century, that is, from 2010 more or less. Then, around 2015, waves of immigration from Arab countries, mainly Syria, made the situation even worse. Before that, there were a lot of Turks here, but they tend not to be antisemitic. The impact of this wave of immigrants has been evident mostly over the past five years, in social justice movements and solidarity with the American Black Lives Matter movement. Left-wing Germans who believe in social justice have become involved in Islamic immigrant culture, and the two groups agree on only one thing: Jews are bad. I don't think that the attitude toward Jews will improve in the next decade. And I think it will deteriorate in the United States as well."

In February, the Israeli-Palestinian film "No Other Land" won the award for Best Documentary at the 74th Berlin Film Festival, one of the most prestigious festivals in world cinema. When its creators took the stage to accept the prize, in the best tradition, they maligned Israel: Yuval Avraham, one of the film's co-directors said, among other things, "This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end." Accusing Israel of apartheid is a priceless gift for the antisemites and when it comes from an Israeli, it is cause for celebration. Funk responded to Avraham in a scathing article published in Haaretz, writing: "Yuval Avraham received a prize, and the Jews of Berlin were left to deal with the mess." In response, Udi Aloni, an extreme left-wing activist, who lives in Berlin, published an article attacking Funk in which he stated: "You were wrong, it is you who help the antisemites."

It isn't hard to spot Funk's contempt for Berlin's left-wing Israeli community. "Israelis have nothing in common with the city's Jewish community," she says. "Most Israelis who think like Yuval Avraham and Udi Aloni really do think this way about the State of Israel, it's not just a trend, but it must be said that they also receive a lot of applause for stating this position. Diaspora Jews, have a big problem with radical leftist Israelis who speak out against Israel in the Diaspora. Antisemites use the things they say to make our lives here miserable. Many of them do not understand the effects of their words. One day they will have children in school and other children will call them Nazi Zionists, and then, maybe, they will change their minds.

"They don't understand how German society works. They don't notice the little details. Jews who were born here or grew up here were often the only Jews in their neighborhood. I, for example, was the only Jewish girl in my class for many years. You develop a sixth sense and know how to behave around being Jewish. You have to know the Germans and German culture, and most Israelis who live here just don't get it. They can say whatever they want, but they need to have self-awareness: they aren't familiar with this society the way German Jews are. There are some Israelis here whose anti-Zionist views serve as a shield for antisemites who say terrible things and then immediately add: 'That Israeli Jew said exactly that, so why shouldn't I?'

"Helping your enemy and being submissive to them, I see this as a mental illness; I'm sorry, they can't see what's happening right in front of them. It's fine for there to be different opinions among the Jewish people, and it's even okay that there are Israelis who want the entire State of Israel to be Palestine. The problem is those who want our downfall say about such people that they are the real Jews, that they are the mainstream, opinion, while we – who just want there to be a Jewish state – are portrayed as arcane nationalists."

Q: In recent years, Berlin has become a favored haven for radical Israeli leftists. But listening to what you are saying it seems that they won't have an easy life there.

"Israelis are quite ignorant about the Jewish experience in the Diaspora. For a decade now, the Israeli left has been gaslighting us, the Jews of Berlin; every time we said there was antisemitism in Germany, the radical Israeli left said that we were paranoid and there was no such thing. Israelis here are divided into two groups: One is involved in real estate and high-tech business, and they are a tight-knit group that works mostly for Israeli companies. The other is a cultural-artistic group. Some of that group are in Berlin to take drugs and hang out; they don't understand the Germans and aren't connected to any local community.

"They don't understand that Berlin has changed a lot in the last five years, both politically against Israel and economically. Everything is more expensive. A few years ago, you could find a great apartment in Berlin for 2,500 shekels a month, but today you can't even find one room for 2,000 shekels. Of course, Berlin is multicultural, there are Americans and French people here and people from all over the world, and I can understand why many Israelis dream of Berlin. I love the city very much. But at some point, Israelis will realize that prices here have gone up, that health insurance is expensive, and that this is no longer the rosy dream everyone dreamed of. Berlin is not waiting for anyone, not even Israelis."

Funk has published four books, and her next book will be devoted to Jewish themes and their relationship to the present. "I list eight Jewish ideas… along with eight contemporary problems that can be solved through them," she explains. On May 25, she will appear at the Mishkenot Sha'ananim Jerusalem Writers Festival as part of a panel titled "Israel's Global Standing – Literature, Politics, and Post-Oct. 7 Israeli-German Relations." The discussion, moderated by journalist Dor Glick, will also be attended by German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert and journalist Sophie von der Tann.

"We'll talk about the Diaspora experience," Funk says. " It's important to talk about these things here in Israel. There is usually a disconnect between the Diaspora and Israel, but over the last few months of the war in Gaza, Israelis have suddenly realized that things are happening in the Diaspora that have a connection to their lives. Israelis need to know that our lives abroad are also affected by what happens in Israel. I think, and I have written articles about this, that Israel's fate will be determined on foreign shores. Perhaps Israelis will realize this when young people on today's American campuses take up senior positions in business and government 15 or 20 years from now. We must understand that this will greatly affect the State of Israel, and the Jews living in the Diaspora. In the end, we are one people with one destiny."

The post A lonely Jew in Berlin appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.