This article is also available as a weekly newsletter, “Life Stories,” where we remember those who made an outsize impact in the Jewish world — or just left their community a better or more interesting place. Subscribe here to get “Life Stories” in your inbox every Tuesday.

Trina Robbins, 85, the first woman to draw a full issue of “Wonder Woman”

Trina Robbins grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Belarus. Her mother, a New York city school teacher, would bring home “an endless supply of 8½” by 11” Board of Education paper and No. 2 pencils, from which I would chew off the erasers.”

Those freebies inspired a lifelong obsession with drawing, design and comic books: In the 1960s Robbins befriended and designed clothes for a bevy of rock stars, selling her fashions at her Broccoli boutique in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

Turning to comics, Robbins drew “It Aint Me Babe,” the first comic book made exclusively by women; became, in 1985, the first woman to draw a full issue of “Wonder Woman”; and founded, in 1994, Friends of Lulu, a women’s comic book collective.

A historian of comics, her books included “Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013” (2013).

In 2023, at the first-ever Jewish Comics Experience convention, Robbins was awarded the Macherke Award for lifetime achievement for works that included “Escape Artist,” a graphic biography of Holocaust survivor and cartoonist Lily Renee, and “A Minyen Yidn,” her adaptation of Yiddish short stories by her father, Muttel (Mutye) Perechudnik.

Robbins died on Wednesday in San Francisco. She was 85.

Hella Pick, 96, refugee and journalist who broke a glass ceiling in the British media

Hella Pick arrived in Britain from Austria as a child in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport; she was later reunited with her mother. After studying at the London School of Economics, she approached the Guardian newspaper and offered her services as a freelancer.

As one of the first female diplomatic correspondents in the British media, she covered some of the most dramatic developments of the postwar era, including the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union, the Watergate scandal, the U.S. civil rights movement and the Beatles’ arrival in America.

She also wrote two books about her native Austria: “Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice” (1996) and “Guilty Victim: Austria from the Holocaust to Haider” (2000). “As a refugee one never loses a certain sense of insecurity,” she told the BBC program “Desert Island Discs” in 2018. “It stays with one one’s whole life.”

She died April 4 at age 96.

Lynne Reid Banks, 94, the former kibbutznik who wrote “The Indian in the Cupboard”

Lynne Reid Banks, the British author best known for her children’s book “The Indian in the Cupboard” and the early feminist novel “The L-Shaped Room,” wasn’t Jewish.

But in the early 1960s she traveled to Israel on assignment, met the Jewish sculptor Chaim Stephenson, and moved with him to a kibbutz, where they lived until 1971. She recalled it as a “relatively quiet era in the Middle East,” although Reid Banks was pregnant with their third son when Stephenson was called up for service in the Six-Day War.

She later wrote “One More River,” a coming-of-age novel about a Canadian Jewish girl who moves to a kibbutz. In her 1980 book “Letters to My Israeli Sons: The Story of Jewish Survival” — a history of Zionism — she wrote that “even more important to me than you three coming to love Israel as I do, is that you shall not love it blindly, but as wisely, as bravely and as perceptively as possible.”

She died on April 4 in Surrey, England. She was 94.

Ira M. Millstein, 97, corporate lawyer who boosted Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career on the bench

Ira M. Millstein, a corporate lawyer and New York City civic leader who played a key role in the judicial career of his good friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg, died March 13 at his home in Mamaroneck, New York. He was 97.

As a senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, he advised major corporations on board governance. In the mid-1970s, he helped devise a strategy that kept New York City out of bankruptcy.

A lifelong Democrat, he convinced Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, to support the stalled nomination of Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1980. Millstein also chaired the Central Park Conservancy from 1991 to 1999.

His first job after graduating Columbia Law was in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. “In those days,” he said in an oral history interview, “my chances of becoming an antitrust lawyer in private practice were nil because there were no Jewish law firms who were practicing antitrust.” He got the last laugh, eventually serving as chairman of the antitrust sections of both the American Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association.

Nancy Neveloff Dubler, 82, New Yorker who wrote the book on medical ethics

Nancy Neveloff Dubler, an expert in bioethics who literally wrote the book on some of the most wrenching health care decisions facing medical practitioners, patients and families, died on April 14. She was 82.

In “Bioethics Mediation” (2004), Dubler and her co-author, Carol Liebman, discussed how to manage conflict and respect the needs and values of those facing end-of-life decisions or a medical procedure. “It’s not about the technology,” Dubler said in 2015 at the 20th anniversary of the Montefiore-Einstein Certificate program in Bioethics and Medical Humanities, which she helped found. “It’s the interests, the rights, the problems, the perceptions, the disabilities and the desires of patients within medicine.”

Dubler founded the Bioethics Consultation Service at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center and directed it from 1978-2008. She was a consultant for bioethics at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and professor emerita at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Her survivors include her daughter Ariela Dubler, the head of school at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York, and her son Jesse Dubler, an associate professor of religion at the University of Rochester, where he directs the Rochester Education Justice Initiative.

This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

(JTA) — Growing up Orthodox Jewish in the suburbs of New York City, Dahlia Adler read books that showed a life vastly different from her own. “I started writing as a way to live both at once — to be someone who kept Shabbos and kosher but also ate whatever and wore bikinis to the beach,” said Adler, the author of the young adult novels “Cool for the Summer” and “Going Bicoastal.” 

When Adler encountered Jewish representation, it was either hardly there at all or in a historical context. “I barely remember reading any [stories of Jews] that weren’t in Holocaust books, but if I did, the mention of their Judaism was always a quick slip of a mention on the page,” said Adler. 

In “Cool for the Summer,” two Jewish teens, Lara and Jasmine, fall in love over the course of a summer in the outer banks of North Carolina. One of the most formative points in Lara and Jasmine’s relationship is their Shabbat dinner spent at Jasmine’s Mom’s house. 

“I loved the casual display of Judaism in this book — how it can come in all shapes and forms, from Jasmine’s mom’s Syrian roots and weekly Shabbat dinners to Larissa’s mom’s Russian roots,” wrote Goodreads user abbysbookadventure. 

These Jewish readers and authors want books that represent a Jewish identity that isn’t shaped by persecution, as in the case of Holocaust novels, or a deeply religious lifestyle, in the case of books about Orthodox teens. Instead, they are looking for characters who reflect the modern range of Jewish identity: secular but proud Jews, teens who experience their Judaism through social action, teens growing up in homes where Judaism is both central to the family’s identity but also expressed “casually,” a word that comes up a lot in their comments.

Adler isn’t the only Jewish author who grew up reading books that lacked Jewish representation. Other award-winning authors, such as Lev A.C. Rosen and Abby Sher, noticed similar patterns in their childhood books. In response to this need, these authors wrote books with the representation they wanted to see. Their characters not only gave voice to their teen selves but also to the teens of today. 

Young adult literature as a whole has seen major growth in recent years. According to WordsRated.com, “Young adult books have been the fastest growing category over the last 5 years, with print sales jumping by 48.2% since 2018.” This category of books targets adolescents aged 12-18 and often features teenagers as main characters. This increased interest shows the importance of self-identification in the books teens read. 

For YA author Abby Sher, any Jewish characters she came across in books in her youth were one-dimensional. “To be honest, they felt more like examples to me than full-fledged characters,” said the author of “Miss You Love You Hate You Bye” and “Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying.” 

“Miss You Love You Hate You Bye” chronicles two best friends, Hannah (aka Hank) and Zoe. Zoe always seemed perfect to Hank, and Hank grew comfortable living in Zoe’s shadow, but that all changed once Zoe’s parents got divorced. Zoe cracks under the pressure of her home life and develops an eating disorder, and it’s up to Hank to help her. Hank is Jewish and brings up several struggles she faces, including reframing take-home Christmas trees at school as “Hanukkah bushes” and adults struggling to pronounce her last name, Levinstein, correctly. Neither deeply religious nor a victim of persecution, Hank’s Jewish identity is different from previous Jewish representations in the media. 

Jewish authors writing about their identity means a teen Jewish audience now has representation.  

“I don’t see a lot of Jewish representation, so when I do find books with a Jewish character, it’s kind of exciting because it doesn’t happen a lot,” said teen reader Orlie Weitzman, 15, from Chicago, Illinois. 

Other teen readers read books with Jewish representation more frequently because they actively seek it out. “I come across it probably more than the average reader. Part of it is because I choose books with some kind of Jewish representation. But sometimes it surprises me,” said teen reader Rafi Josselson, 16, from New York City.

This excitement is exactly what authors missed in their upbringings, so their teen self often comes to mind during the writing process. 

“I think for most authors, their first audience is themselves whether they think it is or not, and it’s hard to get outside that,” said Lev A.C. Rosen. “I always keep teen me as a centering point.” Rosen grew up in New York City in an Orthodox Jewish household. He now identifies as culturally Jewish, so his characters often reflect that identity. 

Rosen is the author of critically acclaimed novels such as “Jack of Hearts and Other Parts,” “Camp,” and more recently, “Emmett,” a modern-day twist on Jane Austen’s “Emma,” that stars Emmett Woodhouse, a queer, interfaith Jewish teen. 

Emmett is well-off, well-liked, and apparently well-suited for matchmaking after setting up his friend, Taylor, with her boyfriend. Emmett then challenges himself to find his friend-with-benefits, Harrison, a boyfriend. Emmett lost his mother to cancer four years prior, and the struggle to hang on to the Jewish traditions she brought to her family is evident throughout the book. Emmett’s father sets out to keep Emmett’s life as “normal” as possible. This includes making an effort to uphold the tradition of Hanukkah and making his mother’s latke recipe. 

This subtle yet purposeful mention had many readers on Goodreads taking notice. “The casual Jewish and queer rep was so amazing,” said Goodreads user Spiri Skye, a sentiment that popped up in other reviews as well. 

This idea of subtle Jewish representation is what Jewish book club Matzah Book Soup prefers. 

“One of our favorite types is ‘casual representation’ where characters are ‘Jewish’ and are allowed to be themselves without being questioned,” said club founders Lillianne Leight and Amanda Spivack via Instagram direct message.  

Matzah Book Soup is a book club for all ages focusing on Jewish representation. It started in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for readers to discuss Jewish representation in books virtually. “We wanted to find a way to elevate Jewish stories and quickly realized that most books with Jewish representation were about the Holocaust,” said the founders. “We wanted to show people that Jewish joy exists in the world.”

Many teens also seek out that sort of “casual” Jewish representation. “I like that for most of the books I’ve read with a Jewish main character, they just seem like normal kids,” said Eliza Cohen, 12 from New York City. “Sometimes the fact that they are Jewish doesn’t really add to the story in [any way]; it’s just a fact about them.”

One book that Eliza noted had subtle representation was “The Witch of Woodland” by Laurel Snyder, which tells the story of a magical witch preparing for her bat mitzvah. 

Another important component that these authors and readers mentioned was the importance of intersecting identities, in particular, queer and Jewish identities. 

“For me, it’s really important to, like, bring my queerness into my Judaism and my Judaism into my queerness,” said Rena Kantor, 16, from Detroit, Michigan. “I didn’t know that the two things could exist at once…” One of Rena’s favorite books is “Camp” by Lev A.C. Rosen (writing as L.C. Rosen), which features queer Jewish characters. 

Rosen attended an Orthodox synagogue growing up, which put his Jewish and queer identities at odds. Rosen says his writing is a form of escapism for the teen he once was. “Writing teens who don’t have the experience I did makes me embrace my cultural heritage that much more, which is nice. Healing, maybe,” said Rosen.

Jewish representation in YA literature also allows non-Jewish readers to gain perspective on the Jewish experience. “Over the past few months, antisemitism has increased dramatically, and we think a lot of this stems from people not knowing what Judaism is,” said Matzah Book Soup founders. “Including Jewish representation in YA literature is a crucial part of education and showing others that Jews are people too.” 

Additionally, Jewish representation can highlight the realities of antisemitism. “You know, there’s usually less Jewish kids in my class, so it’s cool to read those books,” said teen reader Eliza. “Everyone knows a Christmas story, but I had someone ask me, ‘Do you speak Jewish?’ and I [said] ‘I really wish you didn’t say that.’” 

(New York Jewish Week) — About a decade ago, author and illustrator Ellen Weinstein, a Lower East Side native, was flying back to New York City after teaching some workshops in Russia.

On the plane, she began to think about a similar journey her Jewish grandparents had made from Russia to New York about 100 years prior. That journey was by ship, of course, and under very different conditions — but both transatlantic crossings, it turns out, were transformational experiences.

“I began to wonder about what life was like for my grandmother, to come all this way to someplace new,” Weinstein recalled. “That’s so much the story of other people in my neighborhood … I started wondering what some of their stories were, too.”

A decade later, those in-flight musings have blossomed into a brand-new picture book written and illustrated by Weinstein. “Five Stories” chronicles the lives of five children, from five immigrant families, from five countries over the course of five different decades — all of whom grew up in the same Lower East Side tenement building.

“Buildings are like people: each one has a story,” the book begins. “This building is over a hundred years old and holds thousands of stories about the people who have lived here on New York’s Lower East Side.

“Lots of families have come to the Lower East Side from different parts of the world and made it their home,” it continues. “And though their reasons for being here are different, they still share many of the same questions, fears, hopes, and dreams. And each generation contributes tastes, stories, and sounds to the neighborhood.”

“Five Stories” opens in 1914 with the arrival of Jenny Epstein and her Yiddish-speaking family — the character is named for and inspired by Weinstein’s grandmother — who learned English together and found work in the garment industry and at a pickle shop. The book concludes in the present day with the Ye family, who came to New York from Fuzhou, China. Along the way we also meet children whose families hail from Italy, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and who represent patterns of migration to the neighborhood through the 1980s.

“I had the idea early on of a tenement building [and] I knew I wanted to start with my grandmother’s story,” Weinstein said of “Five Stories.” “And then it was just, like what am I showing in between? What am I showing about these families?”

Weinstein spent years researching the stories of her diverse neighbors. She drew upon archival photographs, oral history archives from the likes of the Tenement Museum and the Seward Park Library, as well as one-on-one interviews

A particular highlight during her research, Weinstein said, was when she visited a class at the High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies on Grand Street. There, she distributed a questionnaire to the students — most of whom were from Fuzhou, from which immigrants have been coming in large numbers since the 1980s — asking what they missed from home, what their parents do for a living and what they like about living in New York. “Just being able to meet with people who I didn’t know and hear their stories; it was a wonderful experience,” she said.

“There were so many commonalities,” Weinstein recalled about hearing her neighbors’ migration stories. “So many of the challenges that people who have come recently from Fuzhou face are not that different from what my grandmother faced. You’re a stranger in a strange land, right? You have to learn a new language, you have to get used to a new place.”

Just as important as the characters in “Five Stories,” however, is the tenement where they all reside, as well as the semi-fictitious Lower East Side block on which the building stands. Eagle-eyed readers will spot several iconic Jewish local spots in Weinstein’s colorful and highly detailed illustrations, including Moscot Eyewear, Russ & Daughters and Katz’s Delicatessen. “They’re really anchors in the community,” she said. “There was a lot of compressing of time and space. But I wanted to just have this one street scene, and I wanted to have those stores, because they’re so important.

“When I was actually designing the building — and I will say, designing the building — I got to play architect,” she said. “You follow one, and I’m like, ‘Nah, I don’t like those fire escapes, I like these windows better, I want to put a stoop here.’ It [the building] was representative and fairly typical of these buildings, but they all had their unique qualities.”

Working on the book, said Weinstein, has given her a new lens to view her longtime home. “It’s so easy to take what you see every day for granted; I would kind of just walk by,” said Weinstein. “And now I do look at it differently, having studied it so closely, and having talked to so many different people.”

Weinstein grew up in the East River Housing Co-op and, after a few years living in other New York neighborhoods, moved back to the LES in the late 1990s with her husband.

“There’s been a lot of changes but there’s also been things that have stayed the same,” she said about the neighborhood, making a distinction between the trendy blocks close to Orchard and Houston Streets and the quieter, farther-flung eastern reaches of the neighborhood, where she lives. “There’s a lot of long-term residents … There’s a real community here. That, I think, has been stable. The mix of people has remained — it hasn’t become this whole gentrified thing, and i hope it doesn’t.”

Nonetheless, some things have changed: Weinstein acknowledged that while her building has a “decent population” of Jews — who range from secular, like herself, to Orthodox — these days, “I hear far less Yiddish spoken in the streets.”

A notable exception is a visit to Moishe’s Bake Shop, a kosher bakery on Grand Street that’s been in business since the 1980s. “It’s like going back in time,” said Weinstein, who recommends their black and white cookies in particular. “They have the old-fashioned bread slicer.”

In real life, across the street from Moishe’s is a trendy cafe with exposed brick walls — and this Lower East Side mix of old and new is expertly depicted throughout the book; as the decades progress on the block in “Five Stories,” many businesses change while some remain the same. “I think that’s one of the great things and beautiful things about the Lower East Side: It’s not a stage set,” she said. “You still have some of these Jewish-owned stores, they’re mixed in between these historic synagogues — and then there a bodega and a community garden and a Chinese restaurant.

“That’s what makes it really interesting — the layering of people who are here,” she said. “It’s a very diverse neighborhood.”

(JTA) – A pro-Palestinian protest at Yale University allegedly turned violent with dozens of arrests.

The University of Southern California canceled all its planned commencement speakers.

Encampments have sprung up at campuses from Boston to Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill.

It’s not just Columbia: The unrest that has overtaken the Ivy League university in New York City, and upended life for Jewish students and everyone else, is spilling over into the rest of the country. The spread of the demonstrations is being promoted and celebrated by pro-Palestinian activists, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace. And it’s prompting alarm from Jewish campus groups that are calling on administrators to take more aggressive action.

Students across the country said the Columbia arrests only further emboldened them to call for their universities to divest from Israel. Buoyed by the growing number of demonstrations, the national umbrella of Students for Justice in Palestine announced the launch of a cross-campus initiative called “Popular University for Gaza.”

“Over the last 72 hours, SJP chapters across the country have erupted in a fierce display of power targeted at their universities for their endless complicity and profiteering off the genocide in Gaza and colonization of Palestine,” the group posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday afternoon.

The post was headlined, “CAMPUSES IN REVOLT FOR GAZA AND DIVEST.”

One of the first and most notable campuses to see a Columbia-style encampment was Yale, whose protest began last week. Like Columbia’s, it ended in the arrests of dozens of students when police entered campus overnight between Sunday and Monday.

A pro-Israel student said she was stabbed in the eye by a pro-Palestinian protester’s flag at the protests, which have been condemned by Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who represents the district and has called for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

“Inciting hatred and violence toward Jewish students and community members, as we have seen at other universities, is completely unacceptable and those responsible for violence must be held accountable,” DeLauro wrote.

In a letter to students and its campus community, Yale Hillel leaders Uri Cohen and Rabbi Jason Rubenstein described the recent events as “perhaps the most divisive, most fearful moment I have seen.”

“In last night’s chaos on the Beinecke Plaza, which could erupt again tonight, protests became the site of physical altercations that left a member of our community injured, which we cannot tolerate,” Cohen and Rubenstein wrote. “I have similarly heard troubling and credible first-hand accounts that respected Muslim members of the Yale community, and their sacred symbols, were treated with disrespect last night — for which there is no excuse.”

Similar protests are springing up at a range of other schools. One student activist collective at the University of Michigan, the TAHRIR Coalition, said Monday that it, too, had set up an encampment on the Diag, the center of campus. One banner at the encampment reads, “Long Live the Intifada.”

“Inspired by the 100+ students facing academic and carceral retaliation for protesting Columbia University’s investment in genocide, we along with Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across the country have made the bold and unwavering decision to occupy our campuses until our demands are met in full,” the Michigan coalition said in a statement.

The collective said it would not leave the space “until we achieve full divestment” from Israel, adding, “Power to our freedom fighters, glory to our martyrs.”

The campus chapter of JVP said it would hold a Passover seder there Monday night in solidarity with the protesters.

In addition to Michigan, pro-Palestinian protesters at several other schools have set up new encampments in solidarity with Columbia students, including at New York University and the New School in New York; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and Emerson College in the Boston area. At some schools, including UNC, those encampments have already been dismantled after administrators intervened.

In response to the encampments, Hillel International, the umbrella organization of Jewish campus groups, said it respected free speech but called on university administrators to take action in the face of the protests, including demands to “aggressively enforce” their rules, bar entry to “outside agitators” and protect Jewish spaces.

“The extreme tactics of those creating these encampments and related protests are unacceptable at every level,” the Hillel statement said. “They are denying students access to safe learning opportunities and campus life. They are flagrantly violating clear campus policies and rules with impunity. They are fostering hate and discrimination, often targeted specifically at Jewish and Israeli students who are part of their campus communities.”

The statement follows divergent statements from Jewish leaders at Columbia: One rabbi urged students to leave campus, while others condemned the protests but rebuffed calls for Jews to flee.

At MIT, the pro-Israel student group MIT Israel Alliance said that a campus encampment was “anti-Jewish” because it had been set up near the Hillel building just before Passover, which begins Monday evening, and said it was “alarming” that many of the protesters were not students.

“We do not trust that random protesters who have nothing better to do than sleep on Kresge lawn banging drums all night will have good judgment in terms of safety and violence escalation,” the group said, echoing observers of the Columbia protests who said some of the most strident participants were also not students. The MIT group urged the school to clear the encampment while also providing remote learning options for Jewish students.

Other schools have been the sites of walkouts, rallies and pro-Palestinian protests, including Ohio State University and Miami University in Ohio; Rutgers University in New Jersey; and Northwestern University in Illinois.

At Harvard University, officials closed Harvard Yard for the week in anticipation of similar planned protests. Officials at Washington University in St. Louis suspended three students who disrupted a campus event for admitted students with a pro-Palestinian protest the previous week, then disbanded a rally held to protest the suspensions over the weekend.

And the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend banned a pro-Palestinian student group, Penn Students Against the Occupation, after the school said members had targeted and harassed Jewish students and faculty who participated in a trip to Israel.

Meanwhile, across the country, the University of Southern California has canceled all commencement speeches — including its invited speaker, film director Jon M. Chu — as part of the continued blowback stemming from the school’s decision to bar its pro-Palestinian valedictorian from speaking at next month’s ceremony. In addition, the university canceled appearances from planned honorary degree recipients including pioneering tennis legend Billie Jean King, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson and National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt.

The cancellation of USC’s commencement speaker lineup is one of several parallels students are drawing between this moment and 1968, when anti-Vietnam war protests at Columbia prompted the school to cancel that year’s graduation ceremonies.

“In 1968 commencement did not happen. That was a long time ago, but that is what in a lot of ways is trying to be recreated here,” said Yakira Galler, a Jewish student at Barnard, Columbia’s women’s college, who has been disturbed by the protests. “I don’t know where they’re going to put all the seats for commencement.”

Regarding the administration, she added, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think they’re hoping that it will calm down, but I think they’re terribly wrong.”

Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that today’s pro-Palestinian protest movement is actually less radical in its actions than student movements of the Vietnam era — though he acknowledged that the antisemitism present in today’s protests is a concern.

He said that during Columbia’s mass student protests against the Vietnam War in 1968, students occupied a half-dozen campus buildings for a week; took an administrator hostage; and stole and destroyed university files. Antiwar protesters at other schools frequently set fire to buildings housing the Reserve Officer Training Corps, which trains students enlisted in the military.

“The administration response is pretty similar: mass arrests, closing down the campus and calling the cops and all of that,” said Johnston, an adjunct instructor at Hostos Community College of the City of New York. “But the protests themselves, both at Columbia and across the country, have really been much more measured, much more restrained, than the kinds of protests we saw even in the mid ’60s.”

Johnston said administrators have turned themselves into a target by taking aggressive action against the students right before the end of the semester.

That’s because another lesson from the Vietnam protests, Johnston said, is “the more the administration escalates, the more the administration itself becomes a target of the protests. Because the administration is now doing the oppressing of the students.”

Some pro-Palestinian student activists see hypocrisy in their universities’ efforts to crack down on their behavior. Prior to the incidents at Columbia, Rifka Handelman, a Jewish Voice for Peace student activist at the University of Maryland, told JTA that the university library has framed photos of student-led protest movements from throughout the 20th century, including against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

“It really rubs me the wrong way that UMD embraces these protests as part of its history — you know, these big photos on the wall of the library for everyone to see,” Handelman said. “I find it pretty hypocritical that universities embrace the history of those movements, but do not embrace movements with similar goals and similar tactics.”

Whether and how commencement happens at the schools now contending with encampments, at least one Jewish leader is looking to the story of Passover to guide his students through a trying time and reassure them that they will emerge on the other side.

In a note to his community, Yale’s Cohen wrote, “I hope that the straits through which we pass this year will not only help us experience what the first Exodus felt like, but also what it might feel like in our day.”

(New York Jewish Week) – An outspoken Israeli professor was blocked from entering a portion of the Columbia University campus and Jewish members of Congress demanded action from the administration on Monday as pro-Palestinian protests continued to roil the Manhattan university.

Shai Davidai, an Israeli assistant professor at Columbia University’s business school, had announced on social media that he planned to enter the university’s main campus on Monday morning to hold a “peaceful sit in” in the area of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who have occupied the campus lawn since last week.

But the university deactivated Davidai’s Columbia ID card, preventing him from accessing the main campus, which is currently restricted only to those who hold valid Columbia IDs. Davidai teaches at the business school, a separate area from the main campus, and still has access to that location.

The university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, met Davidai at the entrance to tell him he would not be allowed in.

About an hour earlier, Davidai had posted a message he had received from Holloway, saying he would be allowed to hold a counter-protest at an area that is separate from the encampment, with the protection of public safety officers. Decrying the offer as a “continuation of six months of gaslighting and degrading the Jewish community,” Davidai rejected the offer, tweeting, “F— YOU CAS.”

At the university gates, Davidai, who has emerged as a vocal and controversial supporter of Jewish students on campus since shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, addressed a crowd of people who had assembled there.

“I have not just a civil right as a Jewish person to be on campus, I have a right as a professor employed by the university to be on campus,” Davidai said at the entrance, as supporters shouted “shame” and students watched from inside the university fence. “Being Jewish in public has become a political statement,” Davidai said. “It’s not a privilege, it’s a right, and they’re not allowing me that right.”

The pro-Israel supporters appeared to be mostly older adults, not students. Many Jewish students had left campus due to safety concerns, Davidai said. Many had also headed home for the Passover holiday.

Davidai’s exclusion from the main campus comes as all outsiders, guests of Columbia students and faculty and even some students have been barred entry over the pro-Palestinian protests that have swept the campus in the last week.

Joseph Howley, a Jewish classics professor who has been supporting students participating in the pro-Palestinian protests, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he understood why the university might prevent Davidai from entering the main campus right now.

“If they have information that specific individuals pose a security threat, it seems reasonable to me that they would want to exclude them, even just temporarily, to defuse that threat. They’ve already applied this logic to students who are suspended, which I don’t approve of, but there is a consistent logic there,” Howley said. “If a faculty member with a track record of harassing students says, ‘I’m going to go start trouble on campus,’ I would expect the administration to have a conversation with them. And as a last resort, I’m not surprised that they would suspend ID access.”

Davidai has said he does not target or harass students, but focuses on student groups who have violated campus policies or expressed support for terrorism. He said he had planned to go onto the campus lawn to read the names of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Howley said the protests would include two Passover seders on Monday night, one inside the main campus in the pro-Palestinian encampment and another off campus for students who are currently barred from entering because of their participation in those protests.

Those protests have drawn national attention — including from the White House — after video from weekend demonstrations showed protesters making antisemitic comments and calling for more attacks like the one on Oct. 7 that Hamas mounted against Israel, killing some 1,200 people and launching the current war.

The protesters have demanded the university divest from Israeli companies, cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and issue a statement supporting a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and condemning the Israeli military campaign.

The students set up a protest encampment in the center of campus last week as Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, addressed a congressional investigative committee on antisemitism. The university called in the NYPD to clear the unauthorized demonstration, charging more than 100 students with trespassing and further inflaming campus tensions. Student protesters expanded their demands to include barring police from campus and amnesty for students arrested or suspended over the protests.

Since then, protests have continued, with some outside groups, including the pro-Palestinian organization Within Our Lifetime, whose leader has expressed support for Hamas, entering campus and addressing students.

The encampment protests have spread to other universities in recent days, including Manhattan’s New School and New York University, Yale and the University of Michigan.

Alarmed by the rhetoric on campus, Jewish Congress members Daniel Goldman, Kathy Manning, Jared Moskowitz and Josh Gottheimer held a press conference outside the university’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, which is located a block away from campus and announced on Sunday that it would be providing escorts for Jewish students visiting during Passover.

The representatives demanded that the university take action to rein in antisemitism and protect Jewish students.

“The rhetoric has escalated to a point where Jewish students feel unsafe,” said Goldman, a Democrat who represents New York’s 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.

“The university and all universities have an obligation to maintain the safety and security of their students of all backgrounds,” Goldman said after touring the campus protest area with Jewish students.

Manning, a Democrat from North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District and a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, characterized some of the protest activity as “targeted harassment and intimidation,” adding, “The college must do more to keep Jewish students safe.”

Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, vowed action of his own.

“On a bipartisan basis we in Congress are going to do something about it,” he said.

The White House expressed concern on Sunday as footage from the protests went viral.

“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous,” the White House said in a statement.

Chants of “intifada revolution” from protesters outside the campus gates were audible as the Congress members delivered their statements. The group of several dozen protesters carried signs with the images of Palestinian terrorists on them, including Zakaria Zubeidi, who is incarcerated in Israeli prison for attacks on Israeli civilians, and Mahmoud al-Arida, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member serving a life sentence.

A small group of pro-Israel counterprotesters gathered next to the rally carrying images of Israeli hostages in Gaza

Police officials said at a briefing outside the campus that the university was private property, and officers could not enter without an invitation from the university if there are no immediate threats of danger. Police said the university had requested officers remain stationed outside campus and that the NYPD was coordinating safe passage off campus for students with the university. Dozens of police officers in riot gear were lined up on the sidewalk across from the campus.

Lawmakers, the university and police say they are seeking to preserve the right to free speech and free assembly, while protecting the safety and ability to learn of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty, who have said some protest activities veer into antisemitism and outright threats.

Video shared online of recent protests included a demonstrator holding a sign saying “Al Qasam’s next targets,” referring to the armed wing of Hamas, next to Jewish students.

Demonstrators outside campus also chanted in support of Hamas, video showed. A video posted by Chabad showed pro-Palestinian protesters calling for the destruction of Tel Aviv from atop the iconic sundial at the center of campus.

Jewish students say they have at times been unable to access parts of campus because of protesters. Video showed protesters linking arms and walking forward in unison to block Jewish students’ entry to the lawn. Jessica Schwalb said she and a group of friends had walked onto the lawn on Sunday night and were encircled by protesters within minutes. One of the students was wearing a Star of David but the group was not protesting, Schwalb said.

“We couldn’t go anywhere without being stopped or followed,” said Schwalb, a junior studying human rights. “They feel the need to keep an eye on us and they constantly call us Zionists and it’s just really discriminatory what’s happening.”

She added, “It’s terrifying rhetoric and staying on the inside of Columbia’s gates, it no longer provides the safety that it once did.”

An Orthodox rabbi at Columbia urged students to leave for their safety on Sunday. The campus Hillel said it disagreed with the message but shared his concerns, while the campus Chabad expressed grave concerns about conditions on campus but said its Passover seders would go forward without interruption.

Shafik said in a Monday email to the university community that all classes on Monday would be held virtually “to deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.”

“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus. Our bonds as  a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm,” Shafik said.

Shafik called for discussions about the war in Gaza, adding, “But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view.”

(New York Jewish Week) — When Rabbi Albert Thaler was invited to run Ramah Day Camp in Nyack in 1970 it had neither staff nor campers. It did have a site — a campus in New York’s Rockland County that had hosted American Seminar, a program for youngsters who were unable to attend one of the Conservative movement’s signature programs in Israel. 

Over the next few years, Thaler would build “Ramah Nyack” into one of the most successful camps in the Ramah network, drawing devoted campers from New Jersey, Queens, Manhattan and New York’s Westchester County. 

Perhaps as importantly, it developed an elite staff of counselors and educators, offering budding rabbis and future lay and professional leaders a chance to work with children during the day and, unusual among day camps, to live and learn at the camp overnight — what Thaler called “the best of both worlds.”

“During my twenty-seven years as director I felt that our work with the staff was as important, if not more important than our work with the children, for they too were ‘our children,’” he recalled in a 2007 essay celebrating the Ramah movement’s 60th anniversary.

The result was one of the most successful camps in the Ramah network, seeding synagogues and other Jewish institutions with alumni who brought a high level of literacy and ruach — a Hebrew word meaning “spirit” — to suburban congregations. Former staff include a number of prominent educators and rabbis, including Rabbi Menachem Creditor, scholar in residence of UJA-Federation of New York; Rabbi Irwin Kula, the president of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership; Rabbi Shai Held, the president of the Hadar Institute; Rabbi Paul Mack Drill of the Orangetown (New York) Jewish Center and Valerie Weisler, the founder and chief executive officer of The Validation Project, a youth mentoring program.

Thaler also estimated that 40 married couples met during summers at Ramah Nyack.

Thaler, who ran the camp until 1997 and also served for 37 years as rabbi of Temple Gates of Prayer in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, died April 18. He was 91.

“He was a visionary leader and educator who inspired generations of children and young adults, and served as a mentor and role model for many Ramah directors,” Ramah administrators wrote in a notice announcing his death. 

For Judaism’s Conservative denomination, a centrist movement that has seen declining membership since its peak in the 1950s and ’60s, the Ramah camps have been seen as an enduring success story. Arnold Eisen, a former chancellor of the movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary and a historian of American Judaism, once described the camps not only as “one of the finest accomplishments” of the movement but “one of the finest accomplishments of American Judaism as a whole.”

Thaler wrote that part of the camp’s effectiveness lay in offering intense Jewish experiences that many of the campers and counselors weren’t getting at home. “Every summer we were creating an active Jewish community whose participants worked, played, studied, taught, inspired, and in turn were themselves inspired,” he wrote in 2007.  

Shuly Rubin Schwartz, a professor of American Jewish history who succeeded Eisen as JTS chancellor in 2020, credited Ramah camps with “rigorous requirements” that “demanded a great deal from everyone in terms of study, observance, Hebrew speaking, and community building.”

But in a number of tributes that followed news of Thaler’s death, former staff and campers spoke less about the rigor than the humane example set by Thaler.

Creditor shared one of those examples. “Every day he would walk the grounds and pick up trash, because this was holy ground where boys and girls learned and played,” Creditor recalled. “Thank you, Rabbi Thaler, for teaching me how to love holy ground.”

Steve North, a writer and radio journalist who grew up attending Sunday School at the Queensboro Hill Jewish Center, where Thaler was rabbi for 25 years, called Thaler “one of the most respected and beloved people I’ve ever known.” After North’s father died in 1986, the Thalers invited his family to the Passover seder at their home every year for decades.

Albert Thaler was born July 5, 1932, the second of three brothers, and grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in a Yiddish-speaking home. He attended Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef yeshiva starting in the sixth grade. He was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary where he received a master’s degree in Hebrew Literature and was awarded the degree of doctor of divinity, honoris causa.

He served as rabbi at the Queensboro Hill Jewish Center in Queens until 1980, and then as senior rabbi from 1980 to 2017 at Temple Gates of Prayer in Flushing.  

His survivors include his daughters Dena Thaler and Judy Kane and eight grandchildren. His wife, Shirley Thaler, died in 2018. His son, Rabbi Richard Thaler, died in 1997. 

Thaler retired from Ramah Nyack in 1997 and was succeeded by Amy Skopp Cooper, its current director. “His visionary leadership, charismatic personality, and creative brilliance have left an enduring mark on Ramah,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

(JTA) — Israel’s military intelligence chief resigned, saying he assumed responsibility for the intelligence failures that failed to prevent the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion that launched the current war.

The resignation letter Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva sent Monday to the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Herzi Halevi, is unusual in that he assumed responsibility for the failures even before the launch of a state inquiry into the missteps that left Israel unprepared for the attack.

“The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the mission we were sworn to,” Haliva wrote in his letter, noting that he had first told Halevi of his intention to quit at the outset of the war. “I have borne that black day with me, every day, every night. “I will forever bear the terrible pain of the war.”

Haliva does not detail the intelligence failures, but a number of exposes in Israeli media have said that intelligence commanders ignored warnings from army trackers — many of them women — positioned on the Gaza border in the months leading up to the war that Hamas appeared to be carrying out exercises aimed at an invasion.

Haliva said he will stay in the job until a replacement is found. He called for a government inquiry into the failures leading up to Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped approximately 250. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, most of them civilians, in addition to more than 250 Israeli soldiers. More than 130 hostages remain in captivity.

“I am convinced, for the sake of the state of Israel, for the sake of the people of Israel, and for coming generations, that an official commission of inquiry must be established that is able to investigate and to make clear, thoroughly, exhaustively, pointedly and in depth, all the factors and circumstances that that led to these difficult occurrences,” Haliva wrote.

Mass protests in Israel calling for accountability and for Netanyahu’s resignation or replacement via elections have increased in recent weeks, and there have been similar calls from Israel’s allies, most notably from Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who as majority leader is the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history.

Netanyahu has not taken personal responsibility for the failures preceding the Oct. 7 attack and has rebuffed calls for elections, which he says would sap the will and focus of troops while the war is on. He says inquiries will occur once the war is over. His supporters have already been building a public case against others, including Haliva, who they claim misled Netanyahu.

(JTA) — Why are these macaroons different from all other macaroons? It’s a question that many American Jews may find themselves asking this Passover, and the answer will be: how they’re packaged.

That’s because Manischewitz, the iconic purveyor of kosher-for-Passover products, has shaken up its look, eschewing macaroon canisters for resealable bags, splashing the orange from its old logo all over its matzah boxes and covering its packaging with playful cartoon figures. It has won new fans in the process.

“I told my mom her Manischewitz box was yassified,” read one representative tweet about the rebrand, using a word that describes having undergone a makeover. (There’s an app for that.)

The rebrand — devised by the advertising agency Jones Knowles Ritchie, which has also worked on Uber, Adidas and Dunkin Donuts — has captured attention far beyond the Jewish shopper. New York Magazine has explored Manichewitz’s new look in its food vertical, and The Washington Post and The New York Times have given it the business-page treatment, with the latter even including a small photo spread and quoting prominent figures in the Jewish food world.

“My hope,” Amanda Dell, program director of the Jewish Food Society, told The New York Times, “is that this rebrand can instill a new sense of pride in Jewish food.”

But it’s not Jews the company is seeking to reach. The rebrand was part of “an effort to update the cultural relevancy with a younger Jewish audience as well as mainstream culturally curious audience,” Shani Seidman, CMO of Kayco, the parent company for Manischewitz, said in a statement released when the rebrand was announced in March.

The rebrand follows years of bumpy business for the company founded in the late 1800s by Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz, a matzah-making Eastern European immigrant in Cincinnati. The family business benefited from the advent of machine-made matzah, which Manischewitz took to a national market, where it found a willing audience of immigrants and their children hoping to recreate traditions from the old country in their new home.

As the American Jewish community grew into the second half of the 20th century, so did Manischewitz. But as the community grew less observant and less attached to traditional rituals and institutions, Manischewitz became associated with the old way of being Jewish in America. Jews stuck with the brand out of loyalty, tradition and, perhaps, a lack of less expensive options: The company was fined $1 million in 1991 for price-fixing.

The previous year, Manischewitz had exited the family’s control, having been taken private in a management buyout for $42.5 million. Pressure continued to mount: The kosher moscato Bartenura, for example, became a household name as the squared bottles of cloying Manischewitz wine sat on shelves. In 2019, the company sold to Kayco, its biggest competitor, for an undisclosed price.

Since then, the company’s biggest changes have been to its social media, where it has emerged as a consistently viral presence with a loyal following and a penchant for tapping into trends.

For the solar eclipse earlier this month, for example, the brand posted an image of a matzah ball with a corona familiar for anyone who has seen images of when the moon blocks the sun. The post got nearly 600 likes, whereas earlier posts before the rebrand rarely made it into the low three-digit range.

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Faux Manischewitz foods (usually involving gefilte fish) shared to social media from the brand began appearing around the High Holidays in 2021, stoking the food fights that were until recently a hallmark of Jewish Twitter.

On the inventive menu: fake gefilte donuts and crypto gelt for Hanukkah; gefilte fish-topped pizza; Bamba gefilte puffs; gefilte dogs; gefilte pops; literal borscht belts; horseradish, matzah ball, and matzah pizza macaroons; and pumpkin spice gefilte fish.

The redesign aims to bring the social media vibes — if not the flavor profiles — offline and into the shopping carts and pantries of the brand’s consumers.

So far, it seems to have mostly hit the aesthetic mark, although whether that translates into sales figures remains to be seen. “The Manischewitz redesign is so cute,” one user of X, formerly Twitter, shared. “So excited to do my Passover shopping.”

“I have no visual sense so take this for what it’s worth, but I kind of love the Manischewitz rebrand,” wrote another user.

A few social media voices have expressed wistfulness about the old, more utilitarian design, which was on shelves for two decades.

“Something about the OG Manischewitz branding that made it homey and nostalgic…” tweeted Aleesa Kuznetsov, a Jewish reporter in Wisconsin. “It’s like rebranding a tradition. Sigh.”

For a company that has befuddled its followers with promises of hash brownie macaroons and matzah-patterned sneakers, the very real changes — which are set to be followed by new foods meant to be eaten all year long — have left some people scratching their heads.

Tweeted one user, “I thought the Manischewitz rebrand was an internet meme.”

WASHINGTON (JTA) — After months of debate, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved emergency defense assistance for Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza on Saturday — but with a vote that demonstrated an erosion in the body’s once near-unanimous support for Israel aid.

The House approved the $26 billion Israel-Gaza bill on Saturday in a 366-58 vote, along with separate bills providing aid to Ukraine and Taiwan. The package also includes $400 million in grants for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which funds security measures for U.S. synagogues and other Jewish community institutions. 

The package of bills, in their totality, closely resembles a $95 million Senate foreign aid bill passed in February. The Senate may approve the House package as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden, who called for the additional aid, is expected to sign it. 

The lopsided margin in favor of Israel aid showed that the country still retains strong support in Congress despite growing criticism of U.S. support for its military campaign in Gaza. That dissent was reflected in “no” votes from 37 Democrats and 21 Republicans, in addition to seven representatives who withheld their votes.

Those numbers were bound to make Israel advocates uneasy: Among the Democratic nays were members who have been reliable votes for Israel assistance, including two Jewish lawmakers — Reps. Becca Balint of Vermont and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who were among the first Jewish lawmakers to call for a ceasefire.  

And among Republicans, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie had long been the lone congressman voting “no” on pro-Israel measures. This time, 20 others joined him.

By contrast, a 2021 vote to fund Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system passed 420-9 — a margin that itself, at the time, stirred controversy. 

Biden welcomed the passage of the assistance, which he had requested almost as soon as Hamas launched its war against Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking approximately 250 hostage. In a statement, Biden said the approval “comes at a moment of grave urgency, with Israel facing unprecedented attacks from Iran, and Ukraine under continued bombardment from Russia.”

The aid package comes after U.S. forces led a coalition that helped Israel repel a recent massive Iranian drone and missile attack. It also passed as the Biden administration is expected to announce a withdrawal of funding for an Israeli army unit alleged to have abused Palestinians, an unprecedented action.

In Congress, the number of progressive Democrats criticizing Israel has increased as the Palestinian death toll in the war has mounted. It now exceeds 33,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. Israel says about a third of the dead are combatants. More than 250 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the invasion. 

Among those voting against the package were lawmakers — including Raskin, Balint, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Oregon and Rep. Ro Khanna of California — who have been endorsed by J Street, the liberal Israel lobby, which itself endorsed the defense assistance.

“J Street strongly supports funding for the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Iron Beam missile defense systems,” it said in its statement on Saturday. “Iran’s attack on Israel last weekend demonstrated the importance of funding these defensive systems and resupplying Israel’s diminished stocks.”

Balint said she could not vote for the package while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains committed to invading Rafah, a city on Gaza’s border with Egypt where Hamas remains a substantial presence, and where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge.

“This was an opportunity to make a very strong statement about how there needs to be a course correction when it comes to Netanyahu’s war in Gaza,” she told MSNBC after the vote.

A number of Republicans who voted against the aid package cast their nays in pro-Israel terms, citing the package’s funds for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. Members including Chip Roy of Texas and Ryan Zinke of Montana said they were certain the money would reach Hamas. 

“No aid for Gaza until an unconditional surrender and release of hostages,” Zinke said. 

Rep. Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who is speaker, was emphatic that money would not reach Hamas.

“There is a lot of misinformation out there about the bill,” Johnson told reporters after the bill’s package. “We also have language that prevents any of the funding going to Hamas, or any other bad actors.”

Notably, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC explained its support in part by citing the humanitarian assistance for Palestinians. “The bill helps Israel protect its families from Iran and its proxies, helps create American jobs, and sends humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” it said in a tweet after the vote.

Other Republicans who opposed the bill insisted that Israel aid be offset by spending cuts elsewhere — a position that once was unthinkable in Congress. “I have concerns about all deficit spending when sending money to any country, even if that country is a great ally or under attack,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, said on Instagram.

Johnson pushed all of the aid bills through by separating them into separate components. Following the Senate vote in February, resistance to the Ukraine aid from Republicans and to the Israel aid from some progressive Democrats had threatened to tank the package in the House.

The Ukraine aid drew opposition from more than 100 Republicans, but all of the bills in the package passed. The maneuvering earned Johnson rare bipartisan praise.

“It was long overdue, as the Senate passed a similar package months ago,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Jewish Florida Democrat. “Yet I welcome Speaker Johnson’s decision to end this horribly harmful holdup.”

But Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most outspoken opponents of Ukraine aid, called on Johnson to resign, or she would initiate steps to oust him.

(JTA) — A Holocaust romance, sparked when a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau is forced to tattoo a number on another prisoner’s arm and they fall in love at first sight, sounds almost implausibly uplifting for a story set in a concentration camp.

But “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” a new television series, is based on two Slovakian Jewish prisoners — Lali Sokolov and Gita Furman — who really did meet at Auschwitz, survive, marry and move to Australia together after the war. The six-part drama premiering May 2 on Peacock and Sky draws from a 2018 novel of the same name by Heather Morris, who interviewed Sokolov over three years before his death in 2006.

“It’s what drew me in, when I read the book a few years ago — that something like this could happen was so surprising,” Jonah Hauer-King, who plays young Lali at Auschwitz, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Any kind of love at first sight is surprising, let alone in a context like this.”

Alongside Hauer-King, known for his role as Prince Eric in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” Academy Award nominee Harvey Keitel plays Lali’s older counterpart in his late 80s, recounting his experiences to Morris (Melanie Lynskey) from his home in Melbourne shortly after Gita (Anna Próchniak) has died.

Directed by Tali Shalom-Ezer and executive produced by Claire Mundell, the series will also feature an end-title song by the legendary Jewish artist and EGOT holder Barbra Streisand. “Love Will Survive” is Streisand’s first recording for a TV series, set to release on April 25 ahead of the series premiere.

“Because of the rise in antisemitism around the world today, I wanted to sing ‘Love Will Survive’ in the context of this series, as a way of remembering the six-million souls who were lost less than 80 years ago,” Streisand said in her announcement. “And also to say that even in the darkest of times, the power of love can triumph and endure.”

“The Tattooist of Auschwitz” joins a crop of World War II-period TV series inspired by buzzy bestselling novels. Hulu recently launched “We Were the Lucky Ones,” based on Georgia Hunter’s 2017 novel about her Jewish family’s dispersion across the world. And in just the past year, Netflix adapted “All the Light We Cannot See” from Anthony Doerr’s 2014 war novel and aired “Transatlantic,” about Varian Fry’s mission to rescue Holocaust refugees, based on Julie Orringer’s 2019 book “The Flight Portfolio.”

Like the other networks, Peacock has billed its series as “inspired by the real-life story,” with the added interest of a real-life romance “in the most horrific of places.” But preserving the authenticity of Lali’s story in a TV show, based on a novel that fictionalized his testimony 12 years after his death, comes with a new set of challenges — especially when the novel was critiqued for inaccurately portraying life in Auschwitz.

Morris’s “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” raised eyebrows from the Auschwitz Memorial in 2018, which said the book “cannot be recommended as a valuable position for those who wish to understand the history of the camp” and is “almost without any value as a document.”

A report from Wanda Witek-Malicka of the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center said the book’s “based-on-facts” marketing, combined with its international success — selling over 12 million copies with translations into more than 40 languages — raised concern that many readers might treat it as a historical source on the realities of Auschwitz, despite several errors and misleading representations.

These inaccuracies include the number that Lali was forced to tattoo on Gita’s arm in the story’s pivotal scene. In the book, she is branded with the number 34902, but Gita herself said in a testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation that her number was 4562, a claim supported by evidence from the Auschwitz Memorial.

Witek-Malicka also disputed a plot line in which Lali obtains penicillin for Gita’s typhus in January 1943, saying this event was “impossible” because penicillin only became readily available after the war. Elsewhere, the book depicts a revolt by the “Sonderkommando,” predominantly Jewish prisoners who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoriums. Though the Sonderkommando did revolt at Auschwitz in 1944 and set fire to one crematorium, the book says they blew up two.

The sexual relationship between an SS commander and a Jewish prisoner in the book also raised questions for Witek-Mailcka, who said the possibility of such a long-term relationship was “non-existent.” She also pointed out that the building where the characters supposedly rendezvoused was only completed in January 1945 and never put into use.

Meanwhile, Lali’s son Gary told the New York Times he was bothered to see his father’s name misspelled “Lale” in the book.

Some of these inaccuracies have been corrected in the TV series, which depicts Gita’s original number and corrects the spelling of Lali’s name. But Shalom-Ezer told JTA that she relied heavily on the judgment of Morris, who worked as a story consultant for the show.

“Heather devoted her life to this,” Shalom-Ezer told JTA. “I’m not just talking about the last three years of Lali’s life, when she spent three times a week sitting with him for hours, listening to his story — all the 11 years it took her to find a publisher for the book and even later, she just devoted herself to this. So I felt confident enough that I believe her, that she’s trying to tell us the story in the most genuine way she can, as close as possible to his truth.”

Morris herself has said that she did not aim to write an academic historical account, only to share Lali’s memories of his life.

“It is Lali’s story,” she told the New York Times in 2018. “I make mention of history and memory waltzing together and straining to part, it must be accepted after 60 years this can happen but I am confident of Lali’s telling of his story, only he could tell it and others may have a different understanding of that time but that is their understanding, I have written Lali’s.”

In its TV form, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” nods to the fickle nature of memory, particularly the memory of a traumatized person. Sometimes the viewer sees one version of events — for example, Lali discovering that a younger friend was selected for the gas chamber at random — and then the older Lali remembers a different story, in which his own number was on that selection list, only changed to his friend’s after the Nazis employed Lali as a tattooist.

The character Lali shares some of these revisions with the character Morris. Others come to him after she has left, when he is alone and haunted by the dead who occupy his kitchen at night. The series shows Lali talking to these ghosts, bargaining with his memory and making deals with the guilt of survival.

“I think that this is the nature of trauma, it creates a kind of dissociation from what happened so you cannot really remember it correctly,” said Shalom-Ezer. “So the team and I, we thought that this is the most authentic way to portray a man with a trauma that for the first time is trying to share his story with someone.”