Aish

One of my fondest memories growing up was taking my little orange UNICEF box and collecting pennies - as well as yummy treats - on Halloween. It was also a great day for acting rowdy and causing a little trouble around the neighborhood. Now that I have my own kids, I'm wondering - what is the Jewish position on Halloween?

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A 2022 study conducted by the AMCHA initiative found that Harvard University leads American campuses in beliefs and acts of antisemitism. In its three quantifiable criteria of redefinition, denigration, and suppression, Harvard ranked first in each category. Furthermore, Jewish students at Harvard responded more affirmingly than any other college campus in response to the prompt questioning students' discomfort in expressing their Jewish identity. The report said, “The threats to Jewish student identity come from their peers, professors, and even school administrators, and reach every corner of campus life — the quad, classrooms, dorm rooms, student newspapers, social media platforms, student government, and more.” While I believe there are severe methodological and statistical issues with this survey, it nonetheless begs an important question: if antisemitism is given a pass by an increasingly larger share of the Harvard body, what does that say about the state of contemporary higher education in the United States? Ironically, it was Ken Roth, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Watch who was recently engaged in a spat with Harvard University concerning a rescinded fellowship over a perceived anti-Israel bias, who opined recently, wondering “if Harvard can rescind my fellowship, imagine what they can do with scholars with less notoriety?” In a similar vein, if significant percentages of the student body are allowed to promulgate their antisemitism at America’s most elite institution, imagine the discrimination festering elsewhere in the country. In February 2022, Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Jonah Steinberg sent a letter to Jewish students across campus, noting “the anti-Israel stickers appearing on Sabra hummus in the dining halls, the tearing down of Harvard Hillel posters all over campus, about which the Dean of Students Office had to issue a statement just this past week, and the black-colored posters everywhere against the Harvard College Israel Trek.” Indeed, the daunting reality Jewish students at Harvard are faced with is one in which antisemitism is given a platform under the guise of academic free speech and supposed anticolonialism. Read the full article: https://aish.com/antisemitism-at-harvard/

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The October 31 Pogroms: For most people October 31 is a day of parties and dressing up in costumes. But just over a century ago, October 31, 1905 was a tragic day, ushering in hundreds of pogroms that killed thousands of Jews across Russia. Crowds surged through the streets, yelling threats, destroying property, and murdering Jewish men, women and children with impunity. The immediate cause of this seismic wave of violence was the October Manifesto, a declaration from Czar Nicholas II guaranteeing basic freedoms and political rights. Promulgated on October 30, 1905 (sometimes referred to as October 17 on Russia’s “Old Calendar”), the declaration came amid rising political turmoil and the threat of revolution. Instead of calming tensions, the manifesto led to huge demonstrations and riots in many Russian cities. Tragically, it was Russia’s Jews who suffered the most. Read the full article here: https://aish.com/the-october-31-pogroms/

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Although Halloween is often thought of as a secular holiday, its origins are religious, reflecting both ancient Pagan practices, and also the Christian holiday All Hallows Eve. It presents a challenge. For those of us who wouldn’t think of celebrating non-Jewish holidays, how should we deal with the intense peer pressure our kids face to observe this high-profile non-Jewish holiday? While many Jewish parents might want to ideally steer their kids away from Halloween, it can be difficult to do. Here are 13 ideas to start making October 31 special for our kids, in a Jewish context. Because it’s more fun to have company, try calling up some friends to see if they’re interested in joining you for one or more of these activities. Once you start spending October 31 your own way, you might be surprised at how many people will be glad to escape the trick-or-treat treadmill, too. See 13 ideas of alternatives here: https://aish.com/13-things-your-family-can-do-this-halloween/

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Visitors to the ancient Colosseum in Rome are awed by its sheer size. Measuring 620 by 512 feet, it’s a massive structure; six and a half football fields could fit inside its space, with room to spare. Rising four stories into the sky, the Colosseum has 80 entrances and used to hold more than 50,000 spectators who flocked to this landmark to watch games during the height of the Roman Empire. But few guidebooks mention why the Colosseum was built or how its sponsors could afford to build what was the largest amphitheater in the ancient world. The Colosseum was built to commemorate the sacking and destruction of Jerusalem, and was funded by loot stolen from the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. A Jewish Temple stood in Jerusalem – barring a 73-year interruption – for nearly a millennium. King Solomon erected the First Temple in 827 BCE. It was a magnificently beautiful building, filled with gold and silver ornaments, including the Ark of the Covenant and the Menorah, a seven-branched candelabra formed out of one piece of solid gold. The First Temple stood for 404 years, forming the center of Jewish identity and worship. Babylonia’s fearsome King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 423 BCE. A generation later, in 350 BCE, the Second Temple was dedicated, nearly as beautiful as the First Temple. The Ark of the Covenant had been lost, looted by the Nebuchadnezzar’s troops, but many of the gold and silver vessels, as well as the golden Menorah, were restored. The Temple was enhanced further in 19 BCE, when the Roman-appointed, non-Jewish King Herod, seeking to shore up his popularity, rebuilt the Temple, enlarging it significantly and increasing its grandeur and beauty. In the year 63 BCE, the expanding Roman empire captured Jerusalem. Hopelessly riven by internal divisions, Judea (the ancient Jewish homeland in present-day Israel) fell under an often brutal Roman occupation. For the next 113 years, the Jews were oppressed and harassed. Rather than coming together to fight their Roman overlords, Jews formed endless factions, each advocating a different course of action. Finally, in the year 66 CE, matters came to a head. Rome’s Emperor Nero is remembered in popular imagination as “fiddling while Rome burned” during a massive conflagration that destroyed much of the city in the year 64. Two years later, he appointed a violent sadist, Gessius Florus, as procurator over Judah. Florus publicly humiliated the Jewish population. When Jewish children heckled him during a public appearance in Jerusalem, Florus ordered his troops to kill local Jews, slaughtering over 3,600 in one day. He then ordered the Jewish community leaders of the city to be publicly whipped and then crucified. That sparked a popular uprising that lasted for four years and is known as Rome’s “Jewish War.” For four long years, Jewish forces battled Roman troops, and were slowly crushed, first in the country’s north, then in other major population centers, and finally, in the year 70 CE, in Jerusalem. For much of the Jewish Wars, the general in charge of regaining control of Judea was a man from relatively humble beginnings named Vespasian. After re-conquering most of Judea for Rome, he led four divisions of Rome’s fearsome army against Jerusalem, laying siege to the city and blocking the city’s thousands of Jewish residents from escaping. The Talmud documents some of Vespasian’s deeds and interactions with the beleaguered Jews. One day, the great Jewish sage Rabbi Yochanan had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin, ostensibly to be buried outside the city walls. Rabbi Yochanan was discovered, and brought to Vespasian for questioning. When Rabbi Yochanan saw the fearsome general Vespasian, he greeted him as king. Vespasian protested that he was not king; Rabbi Yochanan replied, “In truth, you are a king; if not now, then in the future” (Gittin 56b). While Vespasian and Rabbi Yochanan conversed, a messenger arrived, informing Vespasian that the emperor had died and he was to be Rome’s next supreme leader. Vespasian explained to Rabbi Yochanan that he would send another general to take over the siege of Jerusalem, but asked if there was anything he could do for this great Jewish sage who had predicted his political rise. Rabbi Yochanan asked that one city in Judea, Yavneh, be spared total destruction, and that Vespasian spare the lives of some of the Jewish sages. Vespasian agreed. The general Vespasian sent to take over besieging Jerusalem was Titus. Titus tried attacking the defensive walls surrounding Jerusalem, and eventually concluded that his easiest route to victory was to starve out the Jews barricaded inside. Jews who tried to escape the starving city were tortured; the Jewish historian Josephus describes Roman troops disemboweling Jews who tried to leave. Just after Passover in the year 70 CE, Titus gave the order to attack Jerusalem’s city walls. Troops catapulted boulders into the city and attacked the walls with battering rams. Titus offered prizes to the first soldiers who could battle their way into the center of the city and scale the walls of the Jewish Temple within. After months of hand to hand combat, in high summer, Titus prevailed. His troops set fire to the Temple and Titus ordered the wholesale destruction of the entire city of Jerusalem. Nothing was to remain. Titus’ troops plundered the many priceless gold and silver vessels and decorations of the Temple, taking them as spoils of war. To celebrate his victory, Titus distributed spoils to his soldiers and ordered a three-day party for his troops. He forced many of the captured Jews to fight wild animals in gruesome gladiatorial battles to entertain his troops. Afterwards, Titus returned home to Rome with about 50,000 Jewish captives as slaves. Among them were two Jewish military leaders, Yochanan ben Levi (also known as John of Giscala) and Simeon ben Giora, who’d fought valiantly, and whose capture was a particular feather in Titus’ cap. The highlight of every Roman military victory was the vast triumphal procession back home in Rome afterwards. Cambridge University classics professor Dr. Mary Beard explains that successful generals led triumphal processions in the heart of Rome, in which they displayed the many slaves, prisoners of war, and booty they’d looted in foreign conflicts. These parades were a centerpiece of Roman imperial identity. “The triumphal processions of victorious generals offered one of the most impressive windows onto the outside (world). When the Roman crowds lined the streets to welcome home their conquering armies, which paraded through the city with their profits and plunder on display, it was not only the astounding wealth that impressed them…it was also the dazzling display of foreign lands and customs that captured the popular imagination” (quoted in SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard: 2015). Titus’ triumphal procession was an especially awe-inspiring event. Some processes took several days to display all the looted materials, wealth, and slaves taken from far-away lands. It seems that Titus’ procession celebrating his victory over Jerusalem was one of the more dazzling spectacles the city had ever seen. It was so memorable that Titus commissioned a massive triumphal arch erected in the Forum, the heart of ancient Rome, decorated with friezes (carvings) illustrating his victory parade, complete with Jewish slaves, captives, and looted goods including the Temple’s golden Menorah. The arch reminded Romans of their empire’s triumph in the Jewish War, and has stood for nearly 2,000 years, dazzling visitors to this day. Titus became emperor nine years later, in 79 CE, and launched a vast building project to transform Rome. The centerpiece of his program was building a huge arena near the Forum which could seat 50,000 viewers and host the most lavish games that Rome had ever seen. (It was named the Colosseum after a nearby massive statue of the emperor Nero, called the Colossus.) The Colosseum was funded by booty from the Jewish War, and likely was built at least in large part by Titus’ 50,000 Jewish slaves. Construction took ten years. It was grueling, backbreaking work, under the scorching sun of burning Roman summers. It’s unknown how many slaves died during its construction; their deaths, like their names and their lives, are lost to history. Read the full article: https://aish.com/the-colosseums-jewish-connection/

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There are so many reasons to be proud to be Jewish! 💙 For thousands of years, Jewish people have preserved ancient traditions, maintained a strong Jewish identity, and survived generations of persecution. Jewish history is filled with incredible stories of courage, resilience, faith, and contributions that have shaped the world. There is so much to celebrate about being Jewish! What makes YOU proud to be Jewish? Share in the comments! ✡️

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Staff Sergeant Liel Gidoni was only 20 years old when he was killed Friday August 1, 2014, while serving as a communications sergeant in the Givati Brigade's Reconnaissance Company. He was killed in a firefight with terrorists who emerged from the shaft of a tunnel in Rafiah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Liel is survived by his parents and his three siblings. https://aish.com/remembering-staff-sergeant-liel-gidoni/

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Nineteen-year-old Ori Ansbacher was a young Orthodox Jewish girl who was completing a year of compulsory national service in Israel, working with children in a youth center in Jerusalem. On Thursday, February 7, 2019, she had a break in her schedule and decided to take a walk in Ein Yael, a popular, pretty park in western Jerusalem next to the Jerusalem Zoo. The wooded park is often teeming with visitors, but this weekday it was relatively quiet. Tragically, she was not alone: an Arab terrorist was waiting in the park, intent on murder. Arafat Irfaiya is a 29 year old from the Hebron area who’s been arrested for possession of weapons twice before. Israeli police have identified him as an adherent of the Hamas terror movement. Earlier that day, he left his home armed with a knife, seemingly intent on killing Jews. He took a bus to an area near Jerusalem, then walked the park where Ori was strolling. When he encountered the teenager, he stabbed her repeatedly and performed a despicably violent crime, then fled, leaving her disfigured body in the park for passersby to find. Israelis were aghast. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the “shocking brutality” of Ori’s murder. The whole country came together to mourn this young woman. Yet her death was barely reported outside of Israel. Read the full article: https://aish.com/horrific-murder-in-jerusalem/

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Jewish wisdom teaches that important messages don’t always arrive in obvious ways. Sometimes, the right person or conversation can change the way you see something. Pay attention. You never know who might have something to teach you. [This is based on the teachings of senior Aish educator Daniel Rowe]

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On the morning of Saturday, November 18th, 2023, Binyamin Airley, 21, and his fellow soldiers woke up early to pray. They were staying in Gaza in a house near the beach. They were eating breakfast when at 7:30am, they were called to join a battle. A group of terrorists had wounded seven soldiers, one seriously. Two terrorists ran into a house and were shooting incessantly. They would stop for a brief period only to start the vicious cycle all over again. Jamal Abas, a Druze Commander from a different batallion, had enough and decided to go in with his right-hand man, Shachar Friedman. “Binyamin did not know them,” Jen Airley, Binyamin’s mother, said in an Aish.com interview. “He just pushed his way forward and said, ‘You can’t go in without me. I have a Negev gun [heavy duty machine gun].’ The three went in, scouting different rooms of the house. They saw a terrorist on the floor and assumed he was alone, but another terrorist was hiding behind the couch and killed all three of them.” Jen was grateful Binyamin died instantly and did not suffer from his wounds. “He valued the land of Israel and the Jewish People and always said, ‘If I have to die for Eretz Yisrael, that’s what I have to do.’ He considered it a privilege to fight for his country.” Jen had a premonition that morning and found herself crying uncontrollably. She was in synagogue Saturday morning when she started to choke up and had to go home. Sitting at her table, she began to bawl again with no explanation. Her ten-year old daughter tried to comfort her and hugged her tightly. Jen pulled herself together and explained, “I just wish we could all have Shabbos together.” She and her daughter prayed and cried together. Jen even hosted guests for lunch. At 4:00 pm, they heard a knock on the door. Soldiers arrived to inform her of Binyamin’s death. Jen knew deep down, but asked them what time it happened. They answered, “The battle took place between 9:30 and 10:30 am.” It was exactly the time she was crying and praying. Jen feels confident that her prayers did not go unanswered. Perhaps they prevented her son from suffering or saved a different soldier. She believes that they accomplished something. To read the full article 👉 https://aish.com/the-life-and-death-of-binyamin-airley/

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Step off the train at Świdnica Miasto, a station in a small town in Poland's Lower Silesia, turn right, and you can't miss her. A larger-than-life portrait of a Irena Sendler, painted in shades of gray, covers the side of the building at 3 Dworcowa Street, a name that simply means Station Street. She is holding a boy with light, almost white hair. She looks straight at the passersby; he looks up at her. A teddy bear dangles from his hand, the only thing in color on the entire wall. At the bottom are her name, the dates “1910–2008,” and the logo of the Year of Irena Sendler. Nothing about the ghetto, nothing about who the child might be. I stood there longer than I had planned. Something didn't fit. The boy looked as if he had stepped out of a First Communion photograph. I might have seen him playing outside anywhere in Poland. I started to wonder what the artist actually knew about the children Sendler saved. Irena Sendler was a Catholic social worker in Warsaw. During the German occupation, she and her colleagues, later working with Żegota, the Polish underground’s Council to Aid Jews, smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and hid them with Polish families, in convents and in orphanages. The mural was painted in May 2018 by Robert Kukla, a local painter behind most of the murals in town. His trademark is chubby baroque cherubs modeled on the putti in Świdnica's Church of Peace. He even painted a few of them on Heroes of the Ghetto Street. Poland had declared 2018 the Year of Irena Sendler, marking ten years since her death. On June 11, 2018, her daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, unveiled the mural. Kukla works from photographs, and this time his own family posed for him. The woman on the wall is his wife. The child is his son. The teddy bear was his son's too. Speaking to Radio Wrocław, the artist put it plainly: as a painter, he turned his wife's face into Irena Sendler's. So the model for the blond angel on Station Street was not a child from the ghetto. He is a boy from Świdnica who posed for his dad in the 21st century. And that, it seems to me, is an act of deep empathy. There is hardly a stronger way to feel someone else's tragedy than to imagine losing your own child. Kukla didn't paint a textbook heroine. He put his own wife and son on that wall, as if asking himself what it would mean to give up his own child. For parents in the ghetto, this was not an exercise of the imagination. Sendler recalled that the hardest part of her work was persuading them to hand their children to a stranger. A mural that at first glance shows a rescue can also be read as a portrait of a parting. Not much in Świdnica reminds you that Jews once lived here. Jewish life here dates back to the Middle Ages. Until 1945 the town was part of Germany and was known as Schweidnitz, and its Jews were German Jews. In 1877 they opened a Romanesque Revival synagogue with two towers, on what is now Independence Avenue. On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Kristallnacht, German Nazis from the SA and SS set it on fire. The ruins were cleared before the war even began. Today a block of apartments and shops stands on the site. During the war, the Germans deported those Jews who had been unable to emigrate, sending them to camps and ghettos, some of them through Lower Silesian transit camps to Theresienstadt. The Nazi authorities used gravestones from the Jewish cemetery to pave the streets. The cemetery itself survives. It has a monument from 1963, but it commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, Świdnica became part of Poland, and Holocaust survivors were resettled here, many of them Polish Jews returning from the Soviet Union, where they had survived the war. By 1946 about 2,400 Jews lived here. Most of them eventually moved on, and another wave left after 1968. For anyone stepping off the train, the most visible reminder of the Holocaust today is the mural by the station. Like the monument in the cemetery and Heroes of the Ghetto Street, it tells a story from Warsaw, not from Świdnica. And the model for the child in it was a Polish boy. The children whom Sendler and her couriers smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto could not afford to leave their appearance to chance. On the so-called “Aryan side” of occupied Warsaw, how you looked decided whether you lived. People spoke of dobry wygląd, literally “a good appearance”: features that others were unlikely to identify as Jewish. A child who was to live openly as a Polish Catholic also had to speak fluent Polish and know Catholic prayers. Some of the children from the ghetto spoke only Yiddish. Those who “looked wrong” often had to remain out of sight: in convent orphanages, in the countryside, behind closed doors. Małgorzata Mirska-Acher, who was led out of the ghetto, later wrote to Mother Matylda Getter that she had been terrified because she had a “bad face.” Her younger sister Irena was thought able to pass as non-Jewish. Same parents, same home. And yet it was Irena whom a neighbor recognized, and the little girl had to flee her hiding place. Both sisters survived with the Franciscan nuns in Płudy. Michał Głowiński, one of “Sendler's children,” who grew up to become a renowned literary scholar, survived in a convent orphanage in Turkowice. Only decades later did he learn that the nuns there had hidden more than 30 Jewish children. Fair hair did not make a child any less Jewish, and a “good appearance” guaranteed nothing; it only improved the odds. So the fair-haired boy on the mural is, paradoxically, a child who might have been able to “pass.” A child with a “bad face,” who spoke only Yiddish, could not be hidden in plain sight. And that child is missing from the wall. The crowd is missing too. The mural shows one woman and one child. During the celebrations in Świdnica that day, Sendler's daughter reminded the audience that saving a single child could require the help of ten adults. Behind every embrace like this one stood a network of people, mostly women, whose names almost nobody knows. These children received new names, new birth certificates, new mothers. For many, the disguise became their life. Of the roughly 2,500 children rescued, between 400 and 500 were never found, despite Sendler's years of searching. Some may not have survived. But some grew up, raised families and grew old without ever knowing they were born Jewish. Some Polish Jews survived the war on forged baptismal certificates and kept the borrowed names afterward. Their grandchildren are only now noticing that something in the family story doesn't add up: a photograph in which no one can be named, a grandmother who would not say where she came from, a surname that stops somewhere. Many of them will never know for sure. Their grandparents covered their tracks as well as they had to, in order to survive. The stories of Sendler's children belong here too. I sometimes wonder whether their grandchildren walk past the mural on Station Street today, not knowing they are looking at their own family's history. That is why Sendler and her co-workers recorded the children's real names and where they were hidden. According to postwar accounts, some of the lists survived the war buried in jars under an apple tree in the garden of a courier, Jadwiga Piotrowska. When the Gestapo came for Sendler in October 1943, her colleague Janina Grabowska hid the lists under her clothes. Sendler was tortured and betrayed no one. Saving a child's life is one thing. Giving the child back their name is another. Continue reading 👀 https://aish.com/irena-sendler-and-the-blond-angel/

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This Halloween, millions of kids will put on pointy black hats, paint warts on their noses and stir pretend cauldrons. That costume has a dark history. “The common image of a witch in the Western tradition is a woman who is usually older, ugly, who wears a pointy hat, flies on a broomstick, cooks over a cauldron, and lures children into her house in order to eat them,” says Prof. Magda Teter, a history professor and Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University in New York. Teter has studied how Europe and North America imagined witches and found that many of those images grew out of antisemitic depictions of Jews. For centuries, the same slurs were used against Jews, and some still are. Here’s how hatred of Jews shaped the witch we all know. Take the tall, pointy hat. It began in 13th-century Europe as a Jewish head covering. In 1215, Pope Innocent III convened the Fourth Lateran Council, which ordered Jews to wear clothing that set them apart from Christians. Each town chose its own marker. Some forced Jews to wear a yellow patch. Many others forced them to wear tall, pointed hats called Judenhuts, German for “Jews’ hats.” Medieval artists soon began painting demons in Judenhuts, and the hat came to stand for everything sinister, frightening and evil. By the 15th century, it was a short leap to witchcraft. In 1431, a Hungarian decree forced Christian men and women accused of witchcraft to wear the Judenhut, even though they weren’t Jewish. Illustrations of accused and convicted witches began showing them in the tall, conical hats we still picture today. The witch’s grotesque looks came from Jews too. Early European art portrayed Jews as ordinary people. That changed in the Middle Ages, when “Jews began to be depicted (in art) with hooked noses,” Dr. Teter notes, to stress how foreign they were. Jews were also said to have warts and to smell bad, traits later pinned on witches. (In some witchcraft trials, a wart was eventually treated as “proof” that a woman was a witch.) Around the year 1000 CE, European artists began portraying Jews as monstrous: huge noses (sometimes snouts), dark skin, tall Judenhuts, warts and occasionally cloven feet. “Four centuries of seeing pointy-hatted, big-nosed, bearded Jews in art had conditioned Christians to regard Jews as different and socially distant,” notes Dr. Sara Lipton, a history professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Jews came to be seen as disgusting and impure, both ritually and physically. Over time, these ugly “Jewish” stereotypes were transferred to witches, who were also seen as strange, frightening outsiders threatening the old European order. Dr. Penny Roberts, a history professor at the University of Warwick in England, notes that both Jews and single women embodied “certain types of behaviour, appearance or lifestyle which differ(ed) from the prevailing norms” and were “marginalised, ostracised or actively persecuted” as a result. Exaggerating their features in art and literature drove home that they didn’t belong. (See “Marginals and Deviants” by Penny Roberts, in The European World 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History, ed. Beat Kumin, 2014.) Cauldrons became associated with witches in the early 1600s thanks to a spate of plays - the most famous of which is Shakespeare's Macbeth - which feature creepy scenes of witches making spells over smoking cooking cauldrons. Historian Clare Merrick notes that the first play to set off this craze was Christopher Marlowe's 1590 work The Jew of Malta. Though it doesn't feature witches, this odiously antisemitic play does depict a murderous, bloodthirsty Jew named Barabas who plans to trick and kill a local governor and his army by dropping them into a large boiling cauldron. (Barabas is foiled and dies in agony in his own cauldron instead.) Merrick observes that this anti-Jewish play established cauldrons as potent symbols of evil in the Renaissance imagination - and that they were soon adopted as markers of evil associated with witches as well. The fear these images stirred up ended in tragedy. Over the centuries countless of Jews across Europe were massacred, many of them tortured and burned at the stake. Tens of thousands of accused witches (75% to 85% of them women) met the same fate in Europe and North America. Think of the Wicked Witch of the West imprisoning Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or evil Mother Gothel targeting Rapunzel in Tangled. Pop culture is full of grotesque women, often with big noses and dark hair, luring children into their homes for sinister purposes. “This trope in folklore is based on real stories brought against thousands of accused witches,” Prof. Teter notes. Historian Yvonne Owens traces the charge that witches harmed or kidnapped children back to the blood libel: the lie that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, especially in baking matzah, the unleavened bread eaten on Passover. Europe’s first blood libel struck the Jews of Norwich, England, in 1144, after the body of a young boy named William was found stabbed to death in the woods outside town. Locals blamed the Jews. A chronicler of the time claimed they “tortured him with all the tortures wherewith our Lord was tortured” and then hanged him out of “hatred of our Lord.” Jews were accused of killing the boy in a frenzy of cruelty and hatred of Christianity. Blood libels soon spread across England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and beyond, accusing Jews of murdering Christian children out of pure spite, or to consume their blood or body parts. The 1475 case of Simon of Trent was especially influential. After a Christian toddler was found dead in the Italian town of Trento, his father accused local Jews of killing him to use his blood in their Passover matzah. Authorities arrested the town’s prominent Jews and tortured them into confessing. Fifteen were burned at the stake; five more took their own lives in prison. Church authorities then credited two-year-old Simon with hundreds of miracles and honored him as a saint. (The Church officially ended his veneration in 1965.) St. Simon of Trent became one of the best-known figures in Catholicism, cementing the lie that Jews need children’s blood to make matzah. It sounds far-fetched, but the blood libel is still alive. On the last day of Passover in 2019, a gunman stormed the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, and murdered 60-year-old congregant Lori Gilbert Kaye. His manifesto declared: “You are not forgotten, Simon of Trent. The horror that you and countless children have endured at the hands of the Jews will never be forgiven.” In 2014, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan said on Arabic TV, “We will remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians in order to mix their blood with their holy matzos,” and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer challenged him on the remark on air. In November 2025, pro-Palestinian activists staged an “Israel’s Friendsgiving Dinner” outside Washington DC’s Union Station. Actors wearing masks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American politicians drank blood-like liquid from wine glasses, ate fake baby limbs and wiped their bloody-looking mouths with Israeli flags. The myth of Jewish bloodlust, especially the supposed urge to kill children, was applied to witches as well. “To the late Medieval perspective, the Jews’ cannibalistic tendencies arose from a craving for the salvific (saving) benefits to be gained from consuming Christian blood,” notes Dr. Yvonne Owens. “Indeed, only Jews and witches were considered capable of the atrocities of cannibalistic infanticide…” Like Jews, witches were accused above all of wanting to murder children, explains Dr. Teter. She points to Hansel and Gretel, lured into the home of a witch who plans to kill and eat them. Generations of believing that Jews were hunting for children to kill and eat primed Europeans to fear the same from witches. Continue reading: https://aish.com/witches-and-antisemitism/

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In 1952, following the death of Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's government approached Albert Einstein, the world-famous Jewish physicist about becoming the country's second president. Einstein was deeply connected to Jewish causes and supported the establishment of Israel, but he declined the offer, explaining that he lacked experience.

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Two elections, in Israel and America, one week apart, and everyone wants to tell you how to vote. A rabbi makes his endorsement, and it’s not who you’d expect.

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Erika Nissanoff wasn’t yet born when World War II broke out. Her father’s parents, Ferenc and Aranka, were well-to-do Hungarians. They owned a mill where the entire community brought their grains to be processed. They also owned the local tavern at the corner. The townspeople would come to process their grain by day and enjoy drinks at night. When World War II broke out, Erika's father, Imre, was deported to Ukraine. At the time of his departure, her mother, Gizella, was pregnant but didn’t know it. Things became bleak as she already had a five-year old child to look after, and now one on the way with no hope of her husband ever returning. She leaned heavily on her in-laws for support. Together, they lived in a large town called Debrecen in Hungary. Shortly after Imre was deported, the Nazis transported all Jews out of Debrecen and put them on trains to Auschwitz. Erika’s mother and sister were placed on one such train. In a twist of fate, the train Erika’s mother and sister were on was confused with a train that had been bribed to be redirected to Austria, where the two of them were sent to a hospital. “My mother, who was pregnant with me, was taken into this hospital to work. It was then taken over by Germans, but it was originally a Jewish hospital in a Jewish neighborhood. Interestingly enough, today the building is a yeshiva. The hospital was turned into a working camp.” Although pregnant, Erika’s mother worked diligently in the hospital. Her husband was still detained in Ukraine, and her older daughter was placed in a kindergarten. Once in a while she would sneak out in the middle of the night to check that her daughter was still alive, risking her own life in the process. Gizella gave birth to Erika on October 17, 1944. The doctor who delivered Erika was a Nazi. “That’s why I am called a miracle baby. I don’t know why he let me live. The only thing I do know is that I was saved. My cousin lost both her father and mother. Her mother had been with us on the same train.” Erika’s mother took care of her in the hospital. “She carried me around while she worked in the hospital. She breastfed me and did everything she could to keep me alive for as long as possible.” As the Nazis were being defeated, Erika’s mother saw a truck with American soldiers inside. She asked if they were heading to Hungary. They answered, “We will be passing by.” With her two daughters in her arms, she begged them to give her a ride in that direction. These American soldiers went out of their way to bring her all the way back home to Debrecen. It was there that she was reunited with her husband and his parents. They had made a pact before separating that they would meet back at her in-laws’ home in Hungary if they survived. Erika’s mother, father, sister, and grandparents all survived the war. By war’s end, Erika’s parents and grandparents had lost their wealth and their status. Communist Hungary took everything that was left and they had to rebuild from scratch. For the next 12 years of her life, Erika grew up under harsh Communist rule. Her mother and father eventually had a third child, a baby boy. He became ill and was taken to the local hospital. At the time, there wasn’t enough supervision of infants in the hospital. The crib panels where he was kept were very wide, and the baby suffered a tragic accident. His head got caught between the crib bars and he suffocated. After this, Erika recalls that her mother suddenly became very religious. She began covering her hair, keeping kosher, and dressing modestly. She had previously lost all her ties to religion because of Communism and persecution, but decided to make changes after her baby’s death. Continue reading Erika's incredible story: https://aish.com/the-youngest-holocaust-survivor/

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Dance has been part of Jewish life for thousands of years. The Bible often describes it as an expression of joy and gratitude. After escaping slavery in Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea, the Jewish women celebrated with "timbrels and dances." King David "danced with all his might before the Lord" on his victorious march to Jerusalem. Jewish tradition also values dancing for others. The Talmud, a collection of Jewish laws and teachings, praises those who danced to bring joy to brides and grooms at weddings.

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Amit Man, a 22-year-old paramedic, saved lives up until her last breath. She was murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7th, 2023. Amit loved healing people with her medical expertise, as well as with her own voice. The singer/actress decided to put her talents to the side in order to focus on learning the art of life-saving. Her family was the last to hear her voice as she screamed into her cell phone. Amit’s sister Haliva was with her by phone until the last moment, when Amit said Hamas terrorists had broken into the clinic where she was operating. One voice message was recovered and shared with Aish.com. In the 14 second clip, Amit screams, pleads for her life and you can hear rapid gunfire sounding off around her. Assigned to the Be'eri Magen David Adom (MDA) team, Amit found comfort in a small house provided by the kibbutz she worked on. She fell in love with the place and forged a deep connection to the community. On Saturday, October 7th, she and her boyfriend awoke to sirens blaring. He was also an emergency responder, working just a few kilometers away in Netzibot. He offered Amit to join him where he was stationed, but she had been on call that day and decided to man her post. Despite the danger, her dedication took her to the dental clinic where Be’eri’s MDA team operates. When the attack began, Amit, according to her colleagues, acted with unwavering competence. For six and a half hours, she worked tirelessly alongside a doctor, doing her utmost to save lives as countless victims poured into the clinic in need of emergency services. She stopped many from bleeding to death using a tourniquet, all while relaying the horrors to her superiors via phone. She described the chaos and violence unfolding around them, just beyond the clinic door, where two soldiers stood guard. As the hours wore on, Hamas terrorists continued their assault on the community and eventually breached the clinic. She staunchly aided a wounded soldier, who had been outside protecting her grounds. He was shot. She stopped his bleeding and rested him under an air conditioning unit, soothing him with her words and assuring him it would be okay. Amit’s cousin Iftach Ophir relayed the story to Aish.com: https://aish.com/the-paramedic-who-was-murdered-while-saving-others/

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When a terrorist opened fire on Black and Arab people frequenting a medical center, a gas station, and a playground in the town of Trappes, near Paris, on October 23, 2026, he killed one and wounded five people, including a 12-year-old girl. French President Emmanuel Macron acted quickly to calm the nation but got some key facts very wrong. He called the mass shooting “a turning point, because it is the first time we have had a terrorist act that was planned to kill our compatriots, our children, based on the color of their skin or their religion.” French Jews were left scratching their heads in puzzlement. (Macron later acknowledged that he was mistaken.) This tragic murder is hardly the first time that people have been targeted and murdered because of their religion in France. Violent attacks on French Jews are almost too numerous to list. -In 1979, a pro-Palestinian group planted a bomb outside a Jewish student restaurant in Paris, injuring several students. -In 1980, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine planted a bomb in front of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris on Shabbat: 46 people were wounded and four people were killed. -In 1982, a pro-Palestinian terrorist threw a grenade into the kosher Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant in Paris, killing six people and wounding 22. -In 1994, a car filled with explosives was found outside a synagogue in Lyon. Luckily, police were able to diffuse the car’s bomb before it went off. -In 1995, a car bomb exploded outside a Jewish school, Beth Menahem, in a suburb of Lyon. The car was timed to kill students as they left school for the day; luckily, the school clocks were slow and most students escaped the carnage; fourteen people were injured. A Muslim extremist group claimed responsibility. -In 2003, a 23-year-old French Jew, Sebastien Selam, was lured to a parking garage by one of his childhood friends; there his friend stabbed him multiple times, gouged out his eyes, and cut his throat - then returned to his apartment and told his mother he’d just killed a Jew and so would go to heaven. -In 2006, another 23-year-old French Jew, Ilan Halimi, was kidnapped by a group of African and Arab youths who believed that as a Jew, Halimi’s family would have access to vast fortunes to ransom him. They kept him captive for 24 days, during which they starved and tortured him before fatally wounding him. -In 2012, an Al-Qaida inspired terrorist opened fire on a Jewish school, Ozar Hatorah, in Toulouse, just as parents were dropping off their children. He murdered 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, who taught in the school, as he shielded his two sons. The gunman then murdered both boys: three-year-old Gabriel and five-year-old Arie. He grabbed Myriam Monsonego, an eight-year-old student, by the hair and shot her point blank in the temple. Another victim, 17-year-old Bryan Bijaoui, was seriously injured but survived. -In 2012, radical Islamists threw a grenade into the Naouri kosher supermarket in Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris; one shopper was injured. -In 2014, a pro-Palestine demonstration in Sarcelles devolved into an anti-Jewish pogrom as hundreds of people burned, attacked, and looted Jewish-owned shops and a synagogue. -In 2014, men broke into the apartment of a Jewish family in the Paris suburb of Creteil. The only people home was the family’s 21-year-old son and his girlfriend. The assailants tied up the son, raped his girlfriend, and demanded to know where “the money” was hidden, declaring “you Jews always have money.” -In 2015, a terrorist who identified with the Islamic State stormed the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in the Paris neighborhood of Porte de Vincennes. In a standoff that lasted hours - and coincided with the deadly attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper which killed 12 people. Four people were murdered in the kosher supermarket: Philippe Braham (45), Yohan Cohen (22), Yoav Hattab (21), and Francois-Michel Saada (64). -In 2016, a Turkish teenager who’d pledged support to Islamic State attacked a 35-year-old Jewish teacher, Benjamin Amsellem, with a machete near a Jewish school in the town of Marseille. -In 2017, a 27 Muslim immigrant from Mali broke into the apartment of one of his neighbors, Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old retired doctor. He beat her for nearly an hour while shouting Allahu Akbar and calling Dr. Halimi a dirty Jew. She died when he threw her off her balcony. -In 2018, 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was murdered when invaders entered her home seeking “riches” that they believed all Jews hid. Mrs. Knoll was stabbed and burned to death. -In 2022 in Lyon, an 89-year-old Jewish man, Rene Hadjadj, was murdered when a home intruder threw him from his 17th floor balcony in what prosecutors described as an antisemitic attack. -In 2023, a Jewish woman in Lyon answered a knock on her door; an assailant immediately stabbed her in the stomach, then fled; it was later found that a swastika was carved on her door. -In 2024, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Courbevoie, a suburb of Paris, was gang raped by a group of boys who shouted antisemitic and anti-Israel threats against her during the attack. -Also in 2024, pro-Palestinian arsonists set fire to synagogues in the towns of Rouen and La Grande-Motte. -In 2025, Rabbi Arie Engelberg was walking with his nine-year-old son in front of a synagogue in Orleans, when a Muslim teenager asked if he was Jewish. Rabbi Engelberg answered yes, then was attacked by the teen, who filmed himself shouting antisemitic slurs. These violent attacks pale in comparison to the Holocaust, during which about 75,000 French Jews were rounded up and arrested by French police and sent to their deaths in Nazi camps. Continue the article: https://aish.com/minimizing-attacks-on-french-jews/

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Saudi Arabia may seem like an unlikely place for Jewish history, but Jewish communities lived across the region for centuries.

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Thursday, August 9, 2001, (20th of Av) was a typically hot summer day in the city of Jerusalem. At 2 pm the popular Sbarro pizza restaurant, at the busy intersection of King George Street and Jaffa Road, was crowded with customers, mostly women, teens, and young children. Unnoticed, an Arab terrorist entered the restaurant, his guitar case filled with lethal explosives packed with nails, nuts and bolts. Suddenly Sbarro was ripped apart, shattering the lives of many families. A witness described the horrific scene: There was a blast so strong I was sure the world was collapsing, then tons of glass shattered all over. There was screaming and blood, people running and people frozen to the spot. Little kids were crying for their mothers and tons of blood all over the place, it was real chaos. I remember seeing a man covered in blood, a little girl with long hair matted in blood and glass, and the smell of smoke, explosives, and human flesh all mingled together. Fifteen innocent people were murdered. Among them were Mordechai and Tzira Schijveschuurder, originally from Holland, and three of their children, Ra’aya, 14, Avraham Yitzhak, 4 and Chemda, 2. Two other daughters, Leah, 11, and Chaya, 8, were critically injured. Little Chaya recalled her horrific experiences: https://aish.com/remembering-the-sbarro-bombing/

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We’re so grateful for Shari and Robert’s deep connection to Aish and the many ways they continue to strengthen Jewish learning across generations. Thank you, Jamie Geller, for sharing their story so beautifully.

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Aish is excited to welcome Reyna Susi Dominitz as our new Director of Development for the Southern Region! Reyna brings over 20 years of experience in Jewish philanthropy, having helped secure more than $25 million in philanthropic support for Jewish organizations such as AIPAC, Technion, and Birthright Israel. With her vast experience and passion for Jewish education, we know Reyna will do an excellent job strengthening donor relations and expanding Aish’s support and presence throughout the Southeastern United States.

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Thank you Jamie Geller , our Global Spokesperson, for so beautully capturing the heart, generosity and impact of Robin and Elliot Broidy. We are deeply grateful for their partnership and unwavering commitment to the Jewish people and proud to have them as part of the Aish family.

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Aish is proud to celebrate Aish Pillars Seth and Sharon Damski and their incredible commitment to Aish Ignite and the Jewish Future. Thank you, Jamie Geller for sharing their story in this Aish Pillar Spotlight.

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Another impactful week at Aish, from Torah learning and global media to powerful Jewish storytelling and experiences around the world. Catch up on this week’s highlights with Jamie Geller’s Aish Weekly Update. Wishing everyone an easy and meaningful fast. Gmar Chatima Tova.

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In this Aish Pillar Spotlight, Jamie Geller and Aish celebrate our partners and friends, Daniel and Diana Sragowicz, and their incredible partnership in bringing meaningful Jewish stories to the world.

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Here's your special Rosh Hashana Edition of your Aish Weekly Update from our Global Spokesperson Jamie Geller . Wishing you and your family a Shana Tova U'Metuka! Shabbat Shalom!

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