An investigation by Dutch journalists has led tantalizingly close to the recovery of a painting looted from a Jewish art dealer 85 years ago.

But no sooner was the work by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi glimpsed in a real estate ad for a luxury property in Argentina than it promptly disappeared.

Now, Interpol and Argentine police have joined the search, urgently trying to prevent “Portrait of a Lady” from disappearing once again, perhaps for good. But when they raided the home that had gone up for sale on Tuesday, the painting was not found — and different art was reportedly hanging in the location that had been pictured.

The search is focusing on the seller of the luxury property: the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi who took refuge in Argentina after Germany lost World War II. Friedrich Kadgien, a close advisor to Reichsmarschall Herman Göring, died in Buenos Aires in 1978, and his two daughters still live there.

The discovery has injected a jolt of drama into the field of looted-art restitution, which has slowed over time and more often is occupied by slow-moving legal battles over ownership.

“Portrait of a Lady” was one of nearly 1,000 works bought in a forced sale in 1940 by prominent Nazis — including Göring — after the untimely death of their owner, the prominent Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker.

Goudstikker died at sea in an accident while fleeing the Netherlands with his family, who ultimately settled in the United States. The collector, who reportedly helped other Jews escape during the war, is buried in England.

After the war, parts of his collection — which he recorded in a black book he was carrying when he died — were found and displayed in Amsterdam’s Rijkmuseum. In 2006, after a decade-long battle that overlapped with the establishment of international principles around the restitution of looted art, more than 200 works were restituted to Goudstikker’s only surviving heir, his daughter-in-law Marei von Saher, now 81. It was one of the largest acts of restitution since the Holocaust, and a major exhibition of the works was staged at the Jewish Museum in New York. Many of the pieces have since been sold to private collectors.

But the Ghislandi portrait, of Contessa Colleoni, was not in the trove. Painted in the early 18th century, it remains on more than one list of Nazi looted art, including that of the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency.

A reporter at the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, Cyril Rosman, began searching for the painting some 10 years ago, after receiving a tip from retiree Paul Post of Driehuis in North Holland. Post’s father had worked at the National Diamond Bureau in Amsterdam during the war. The occupying Nazis had extorted Jewish diamond traders, falsely saying they could avoid deportation by handing over their gems.

Post, who had discovered his father’s diary in his attic, kept at the story, tracing how looted diamonds were used to support the German war industry. A key figure in this scheme was Kadgien, whom Post learned had fled Germany with some diamonds and two paintings — one of them the portrait by Ghislandi.

Rosman tried in vain for years to speak with Kadgien’s two daughters, whom he did not name.

A break in the investigation came when one daughter put the family home in the coastal town of Mar del Plata up for sale.

On Monday, Rosman reported that the painting was seen in a photo on the website of the Robles Casas & Campos real estate company, hanging above a green sofa.

Art historians Annelies Kool and Perry Schrier with the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency said it looked like the real thing. “Recovering a painting like this is rare,” they told the paper.

The reporters also spotted another artwork reported as looted, this one by 17th-century Dutch painter Abraham Mignon, on one of Kadgien’s daughters’ social media posts going several years back.

Occasionally works are squirreled away in private hands and only come to light by chance. In 2013, a trove of Nazi-looted art was discovered in Munich after collector Cornelius Gurlitt was investigated for tax evasion.

Deidre Berger, chair of the executive board of the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Foundation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that an estimated 600,000 Nazi-looted artworks remain missing, whether in public and private hands.

More could be uncovered “if governments worldwide would digitize and transcribe their relevant archival holdings,” she said. But in the current case, the rediscovery was a matter of luck and hard work by journalists and the Cultural Heritage Agency.

After the painting was spotted, Algemeen Dagblad reporter Peter Schouten in Argentina contacted one of the daughters by phone. She told him to send his questions by email: “I don’t know what information you want from me, and I don’t know which painting you’re talking about,” she said.

After receiving the questions and a photo of the painting via WhatsApp, she responded that she was “too busy to answer right now.” And then, silence.

The real estate ad was pulled from the site. According to the newspaper, the daughter reportedly has also changed her name on Instagram.

Contacted by the paper after the discovery, heir Marei von Saher said it was her “family’s goal to recover every artwork stolen from the Goudstikker collection.”

Today, she has the Argentine Federal Police and Interpol on her side.

NOVOKATOVSK, Transnistria — In this tiny, hardscrabble village that could easily be mistaken for the fictional Anatevka in “Fiddler on the Roof,” farmer Or Cohen, 35, lives with his wife, Anya, and their 3-year-old son Adam, in a 100-year-old house built of clay.

In the backyard, Cohen raises chickens, turkeys and vegetables, while Anya, 31, works remotely for an Israeli startup developing online platforms for genetic testing. For extra income, they’ve fixed up a guest room to accommodate the occasional tourist adventurous enough to end up in this outpost of civilization less than 300 meters from the Ukrainian border.

“Just a few nights ago, we could hear the Russians bombing Odesa, and on the Telegram app, we saw they were ordering people into shelters,” said Cohen, a former taxi driver in Israel who has the Hebrew word “emet” (truth) tattooed into his right forearm. “But we have no fear here.”

Cohen is the only Jew in Novokatovsk, itself half an hour’s drive east of Tiraspol, capital of the self-declared “Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.” This breakaway region of Moldova, known to the rest of the world as Transnistria, is home to about 465,000 people — down 35% from the 706,000 who lived there in 1990, one year before the Soviet Union fell apart.

Yet the USSR still lives on here in Transnistria. Statues of Lenin and Stalin dominate the main square of Tiraspol, as does a Soviet T-34 tank prominently displayed on a pedestal. Enormous red stars line Pokrovskaya Street across from the Alexander Suvorov Monument, named after the Russian general who founded Tiraspol in 1792.

In fact, Transnistria — which means “beyond the Dniester” — is the world’s only entity whose national coat of arms includes the hammer and sickle. It’s so communist that half a dozen travel agencies in Moldova’s capital, Chisinău, offer “Back in the USSR” day trips to see this sliver of Marxist nostalgia wedged between the Dniester River to the west and Ukraine to the east.

“I find it really safe to live here,” Cohen said. “At night, we don’t lock the doors of our house. But I realize it’s not for everyone.”

Before 1939, Rhode Island-sized Transnistria was home to around 300,000 Jews. But after Nazi troops occupied the area in July 1941, they began carrying out mass executions — not only of local Jews but also those who had previously fled Bessarabia from the advancing Germans.

Today, only 2,000 Jews live here as defined by Israel’s Law of Return, including the territory’s prime minister, Aleksander Rosenberg. Almost none are religiously observant or keep kosher. Tiraspol, which once boasted 11 synagogues, today has only one that functions.

In 1930, half the residents of Bender — just past the Russian-controlled checkpoint on the main highway from Chisinău to Tiraspol — spoke Yiddish as their mother tongue. Ninety-five years later, only one synagogue is in use, a remote outpost of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement that is the main provider of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union.

Transnistria’s current situation began in 1989, when a decree establishing Moldovan in Latin script as the sole state language infuriated Russian-speaking communities. On Sept. 2, 1990, local authorities proclaimed the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, or PMSSR, to preserve the Soviet model, though it lasted less than a year.

Growing tensions between pro-Moldovan forces and separatists supported by the Russian 14th Army led to the Transnistrian War, which lasted from November 1990 until a ceasefire was declared in July 1992. Russian troops were deployed to the region as a peacekeeping force.

Even though Transnistria is recognized internationally as part of Moldova, it has nonetheless maintained de facto independence for the past 33 years, with support coming from Russia. Information is hard to come by, in part because journalists are forbidden from entering without advance permission, which is rarely given.

And while Moldova considers the deployment of Russian military forces illegal, the United Nations won’t officially call it “occupied territory” because of the political sensitivities involved.

Oxana Zalunina, 37, is a full-time manicurist and pedicurist in Tiraspol. Jewish on her mother’s side, she has a 16-year-old son, Daniel, who attends the youth camp at the local Hesed Jewish Community Center. Both she and her son participate in all aspects of Jewish life in Transnistria.

“My grandmother, who was born in Ukraine in 1929, was also Jewish. She lived a very difficult life and remembered all the horrors of World War II,” said Zalunina, who at the age of 15 enrolled in a program that would allow her to spend four years in Israel — an experience she called “one of the brightest memories of my life.”

The biggest problem facing Transnistrian Jews these days isn’t antisemitism or Holocaust denial, but abject poverty.

Already the poorest place in Europe due to rising prices and stagnant pensions, Transnistria has seen conditions worsen dramatically since the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022. This past January — in the middle of a harsh winter — Russia’s Gazprom decided to stop supplying subsidized gas to Transnistria, thereby creating a crisis that could potentially destabilize Moldova’s pro-European government ahead of parliamentary elections next month.

As a result, Transnistria’s per-capita income has fallen by 12% this year, according to official statistics, and gas prices have doubled. In 2020, the average pension of $97 a month was barely enough to cover the $104 needed for basic necessities like food, medicine and utilities.

But in 2025, the average pension comes to only $113 — covering only half the cost of those same necessities, which now cost $217. And that doesn’t include clothing, hygiene items, transportation and unexpected expenses like home repairs or medical emergencies.

“It’s very unfortunate that this situation has developed,” Zalunina said. “Personally, I try to remain calm and focus on my family and loved ones. I concentrate on what I can manage in my own life.”

Unlike Zalunina, most Jews in Transnistria are elderly and neglected, with an average age of 80 — including some Holocaust survivors as well. Many lack access to medicines and are lonely. Homes are often old and deteriorated, with no central heating. Power outages are frequent.

“I never imagined that after retiring, I would have to struggle again—not with war, but with cold, a lack of medicine, and loneliness,” said Valery Apter, 85, a former factory worker.

This past winter, according to a report prepared for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, heating was cut off for extended periods, forcing seniors to sleep in their coats, relying on makeshift heaters and doing whatever they could to endure the cold. An electric heater costs the equivalent of $140 and electricity for the winter about $200. Add the cost of a warm blanket, bedding and basic repairs, and that comes to around $900 for the winter.

“For most seniors, these amounts are impossible,” said Natalia Tutorskaya, a Hesed social worker. “Winter isn’t just cold — it’s a threat to health and life.”

Cohen, who ended up in Transnistria somewhat by accident, is originally from Nesher, a city southeast of Haifa in Israel. In 2017, he met Anya while traveling in Ukraine and fell in love. The next year, they got married in her native Odesa and moved to Israel. But life was hard for the new couple, and they decided to go back to Ukraine.

Three months after their return, the war started.

“I woke up the first day of the war to buy groceries, and there was a checkpoint outside my street,” Cohen recalled. “In the evening, they declared a curfew and we were ordered to shut all the lights off and use just a candle. Anya was already pregnant. Four days after the war, we left with our two dogs and a cat.”

They ended up just over the border in Novokatovsk, the next village over from Pervomaisk, where Anya’s family lives. Anya isn’t Jewish, but nonetheless has taken a course in Hebrew, lights Shabbat candles every Friday night and bakes her own challah from scratch.

Cohen isn’t religious but says he feels very strongly Jewish — hence his tattoo. He also looks forward to visits by Moldovan Chief Rabbi Pinchas Zaltsman for holidays and special events.

It’s not clear whether Jews have a future in this breakaway republic, frozen in time. But if they do, it’ll be largely thanks to young people like Katya Kreichman, a first-year music major at the University of Tiraspol.

Kreichman, 20, also works at a kindergarten and volunteers as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp in Hungary for Eastern European teens.

“I was 15 when I decided to leave Transnistria. But I came back partly to help my family celebrate Jewish holidays,” she said, recalling her four years on an Israel study program. “I care about what’s happening in Israel but also in my country. I really like Jewish traditions and want them to continue.”

A Democratic National Committee panel blocked a resolution Tuesday that would have called for a suspension of military aid to Israel and recognition of Palestinian statehood, after a debate underscoring growing fissures within the party over its longstanding support of Israel.

The resolution, which was proposed by Allison Minnerly, a new Gen Z member from Florida, would have joined the growing chorus of calls in the House and Senate in recent weeks to block weapons sales to Israel. Following debate over the resolution Tuesday morning at the DNC’s summer meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the resolution received a resolute bloc of “nay” votes from the panel.

The committee unanimously passed another resolution, proposed by DNC Chairman Ken Martin, that called for the unrestricted flow of aid to Gaza, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a “two-state solution negotiated through direct bilateral negotiations.”

“One thing all of us in this room agree on is that the crisis in Gaza is urgent,” Martin said during the meeting. “This resolution is focused on the humanitarian crisis and makes clear that it must be addressed as the emergency that it is.”

But immediately after his resolution passed, Martin withdrew it, saying that he would instead convene a task force to continue discussing Israel issues. The series of developments both highlighted wide-ranging and changing perspectives on Israel within the Democratic Party and also underscored that a more traditional outlook continues to prevail.

Indeed, Martin’s resolution echoes long-standing positions on Israel held by the Democratic party as outlined in its 2024 platform, which affirmed that former President Joe Biden had worked “tirelessly” to ensure the “unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.”

The debate over the two resolutions reflects a growing divide among Democrats over their stances on Israel as support for the country’s ongoing offensive in Gaza has sharply declined in the past year.

A recent Gallup poll found that among Democratic voters, approval for Israel’s war in Gaza had fallen from 36% in November 2023 to just 8% last month.

The DNC vote comes weeks after a record number of Senate Democrats voted in favor of two resolutions by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Jewish Independent from Vermont, seeking to block U.S. military sales to Israel. In the House, a growing number of Democrats are also signing onto a bill that would withhold the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel.

Despite waning support among Democratic lawmakers for Israel amid reports of mass starvation and journalists killed in the embattled enclave, the DNC appeared unready to wade into controversial positions such as an arms embargo.

Ahead of the debate over the arms embargo resolution, Minnerly called on the party to “follow the will of our voters and call for an end to U.S. involvement in this particular tragedy.”

“This is a moment that calls for leadership, listening and hard conversations,” Minnerly said. “We urge that beyond calling for a ceasefire, that we acknowledge the devastation and we also outline actionable items for our elected officials with the Democratic Party to align ourselves with the voters of our base.”

Minnerly told the Washington Post that after submitting her resolution, DNC staff contacted her to make “clear that they didn’t think that this resolution was the right thing for this moment.”

During Tuesday’s debate over the resolution, Harini Krishnan, a member from California, criticized the resolution for failing to put “any onus on a militant group that I think is also oppressing the Palestinian people,” referring to Hamas. She added that she hoped that “as a party, we can move beyond this issue.”

In a statement earlier this month, the Democratic Majority for Israel, an advocacy group, also called on DNC members to reject the resolution, calling it “flawed” and “irresponsible”

“Should it advance, it will further divide our Party, provide a gift to Republicans, and send a signal that will embolden Israel’s adversaries,” DMI president and CEO Brian Romick said in a statement. “As we get closer to the midterms, Democrats need to be united, not continuing intra-party fights that don’t get us closer to taking back Congress.”

But Sophia Danenberg, a member from Washington, said that passing Martin’s resolution was “not enough,” adding that “people want to hear a louder, stronger statement, and that this isn’t the time for subtlety.”

“Oct. 7 does not justify the actions of this right-wing regime massacring and starving and slaughtering the Palestinian people,” Danenberg said, later adding, “I do fear that we’re losing our future as a Democratic Party by not being courageous on this issue.”

The DNC, like its Republican counterpart, is charged with establishing the party platform, synching up candidate messaging across multiple elections and publicizing the national party “brand.”

This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 70 days to the election.

💰 Trump puts cash bail policy in the spotlight

• The candidates are reacting to Trump’s executive order on Monday that could cut federal funding to New York. The order threatened states that limit the use of cash bail in lower-level criminal cases.

• The White House is likely to target New York, citing cases in the city when suspects were released without bail and subsequently accused of committing another crime.

• If Trump decides to revoke federal grants, the NYPD could lose $200 million. Jessica Tisch, the Jewish NYPD Commissioner who has won praise from across the political spectrum, met with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday afternoon. She reportedly told Bondi that violent crimes in New York are at a record low and the city does not need National Guard troops, which Trump sent into Washington, D.C. and is threatening to send to other cities.

• As governor, Andrew Cuomo eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies in 2019. While many progressive Jewish groups have stood by bail reform, we covered debates over the law among New York Jews after a suspect in a series of synagogue attacks was released without bail in 2021.

• Gov. Kathy Hochul made several changes to Cuomo’s original law, and his opponents in the mayoral race are jumping on his record. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa said Cuomo’s bail reform “has been a disaster for New York,” while Mayor Eric Adams said “the former governor made a terrible mistake.”

• Meanwhile, frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, whose party opposes cash bail, continues to insist that he is the only candidate who will stand up to Trump. “We have seen that the best way to fight Donald Trump is to do exactly that. It’s to fight him. It’s not to cower, it’s not to collaborate, it’s not to call him,” he said, taking a shot at reports that Adams has cooperated with Trump and Cuomo has talked to him on the phone.

🚲 Bike lanes in the spotlight

• One surprising flashpoint in the mayor’s race? Bike lanes. A bike lane on McGuiness Boulevard in Greenpoint took the stage in Adams’ latest corruption scandal, after his former chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin allegedly took $12,500 in bribes and other favors to suppress the street’s redesign.

• The alleged bribes came from the owners of Broadway Stages, a production company that wanted to keep traffic lanes they used for film shoots.

• Adams previously ordered the removal of a protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, a move seen by many as a bid for Hasidic Orthodox voters who have protested cycling infrastructure.

• Not all Jews in the area are anti-cycling — Baruch Herzfeld and his son Rafe, who bikes to his after-school activities, sued the city to keep the protected lane. Herzfeld, who operates a company aiming to cut down on e-bike fires in the city, recently told the Forward that he hoped “a new mayor will be able to restore the bike lane” on Bedford Avenue.

The oldest synagogue in the Chilean capital was vandalized on Saturday with anti-Israel graffiti, including red paint and posters that showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a bullet hole drawn on his forehead.

The posters littered around the Bicur Joilim synagogue in Santiago read “Your silence is cooperation with Israel’s genocide,” in the latest synagogue vandalism to reflect the war in Gaza.

The Masorti synagogue, built in 1930, is located in downtown Santiago and has experienced anti-Israel graffiti at least three other times since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Jewish Community of Chile.

The latest attack took place during Shabbat and triggered recriminations from Jewish voices across the region.

“Chile is a country that values ​​freedom of worship, and that means we must respect, care for, and protect one another, regardless of our beliefs,” the Jewish Community of Chile wrote on social media. “Vandalism of a sacred site is not an attack on a community, but on the coexistence and peace of the entire country.”

The incident comes amid heightened tensions over Chile’s stance on the war in Gaza. President Gabriel Boric has adopted one of the most critical positions toward Israel in Latin America. His left-wing government recalled Chile’s military attachés from Israel, backed legal proceedings against Israeli officials in international courts and imposed an arms embargo.

Chile is home to the third-largest Jewish community in South America, after Argentina and Brazil. The roughly 16,000 Jews living in Chile account for about 0.11% of the country’s population. (Last year, they were joined on Yom Kippur by a famous guest, musician Paul McCartney, who attended services with his Jewish wife at the capital’s largest synagogue, located about 12 miles from Bicur Joilim.)

Chile is also home to the largest Palestinian population outside the Middle East, with estimates of up to 500,000 people; it recognized a Palestinian state in 2011. One of the country’s main soccer team is the Palestinian Sports Club, which wears the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Gabriel Silber, the Jewish community’s director of public affairs, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the government had turned a blind eye toward antisemitic incidents during the war.

“Unfortunately, we see a certain invisibility and denial of this reality by the authorities in our country, which leads to inaction and is a breeding ground for impunity for these serious actions against our community,” Silber said. “Here, the motive for the attacks is not Israel, but Chileans who suffer hatred and constant stigmatization simply for being Jewish. We see no real concern from the Chilean state regarding this issue.”

During Sunday morning services at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Rabbi Jeffrey Fox had just opened the door to the ark and turned to put his prayerbook down on the lectern when he heard an “unthinkable” sound: One of the Torah scrolls kept in the cabinet had fallen to the floor.

His heart sank, and gasps were heard at the Modern Orthodox congregation in the Bronx, where Fox is a member and plays an informal rabbinical role when the paid clergy are otherwise engaged. Tradition regards the dropping of a Torah scroll as such a dishonor that it demands communal penance — famously although not compulsorily, some authorities say the dropper and witnesses should fast for at least a day and maybe 40. 

Meanwhile, just the day before, the same thing happened at Altshul, the independent egalitarian minyan that meets at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. There a scroll fell out of the ark during Saturday morning Shabbat services.  

Torah scrolls are treated with such reverence that on the rare occasions that they are dropped, it becomes news, at least in the Jewish media. For those with a superstitious bent, two such incidents in the same weekend are ominous signs. 

For the congregations themselves, however, the accidents were teachable moments, although the responses were different. 

Fox, head of the yeshiva and dean of faculty at Maharat, the first yeshiva to ordain women to serve as Orthodox clergy, knew the traditional penance, as well as the alternatives. 

Instead of advising a fast, he encouraged those in the room to give tzedakah, or charity. He took a moment to confirm his counsel with Rabbi Steven Exler, the senior rabbi at HIR, who was officiating at a separate bar mitzvah service being held in the building the same day. Exler suggested that Fox use the accident to teach a lesson from the Torah itself. 

Fox returned to the chapel  to offer a sermon on individual and communal responsibility on Rosh Chodesh Elul, the beginning of the Hebrew month that ushers in a period of introspection preceding the High Holy Days. 

“The symbolism of the Torah falling on the floor on the last day of Av, the first day of Rosh Chodesh Elul is powerful, scary and jarring,” Fox said, according to a Facebook post he wrote that evening. “I sense a gap between the Torah that is being taught ‘out-there’ in the world and the Torah that this generation truly needs. Almost like the Torah has been dropped. I pray that I might be a small part of picking up the Torah and bringing that sorely needed spark into the world.”

The leaders at the lay-led Altshul made a different decision after consulting Rabbi Ethan Tucker from Hadar, who serves as the community’s mara d’atra, or rabbinic authority. Following his advice, the leadership announced a community fast day on Tuesday, lasting from sunrise to sundown. 

A memo to the congregation also encouraged those who witnessed the incident and other members to give tzedakah and learn Torah “in honor and repair of such an occurrence.”

“This occurrence coincided with what was a lovely auf ruf [engagement] celebration and another all-around spirited and special davening as a community,” the email to the community read. “Yesterday, as we celebrated, and today as we reckon and repair, we endeavor to focus on the blessings of our beautiful moments together while acknowledging the collective ordeal.”

Fox and Tucker, who sit in ideologically similar spaces — the former on the liberal side of Orthodoxy, the latter on the traditional side of egalitarian Judaism — agree that a dropped “sefer Torah” can be an ordeal in a setting where the scrolls are crowned with silver, cradled like a child and kissed as they pass along the aisles, but also hope congregants keep things in perspective. 

“People have a strong visceral reaction to seeing it fall. It conjures  up images of the Holocaust with Torah scrolls strewn on the street,” Tucker said in an interview. “Spanning denominations, Jews are very symbolically aligned that the sefer Torah is our most prized procession. Seeing it on the floor is very traumatic.”

At the same time, he said, while tradition wants people to take the laws around handling a Torah seriously, congregants can be “paralyzed if they don’t have a contained way to respond and move forward.” 

“Rav Ovadia Yosef was one of the authorities who advised keeping a dropped Torah in perspective and that learning Torah in honor of and atonement for its falling is just as valuable if not more so than fasting,” said Tucker, citing the late Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel. 

In advising Altshul, Tucker wanted actions that acknowledge the pain of seeing a Torah hit the floor, as well as options so that as many people as possible could take part.

“Either way, it’s a communal event, and there needs to be a communal response in which people should have a variety of ways to participate,” he said.

Responding to Fox’s essay describing HIR’s call to give tzedakah, a number of commenters felt the synagogue hadn’t gone far enough. “Any Shul that doesn’t fast when a Sefer Torah hits the ground is a Shul I wouldn’t trust,” wrote Lorelai Kude, an author and Jewish astrologer. “Why? Because it indicates a lack of personal responsibility communally and personally. “

But Jewish law is mindful that responsibility can be expressed in a variety of ways, said Fox.

“Looking back at the classical material, it appears to me that unless a person does something really mean to a safer Torah, like you’re walking [on it] and you throw it on the floor, God forbid, the most authoritative practices hold that either in addition to or instead of fasting, giving tzedakah is okay,” said Fox.

Tzedakah was the remedy when a Torah scroll fell out of an ark opened by the Viznitzer Rebbe of Monsey, a leader of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty, earlier this summer. Following the incident in Nyack, New York, the rebbe didn’t proclaim a special fast, but instructed the congregation to remember the incident during the annual fast held on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, and to give to charity.  

Ultimately, Jewish law is not looking for witnesses to a dropped Torah to be punished, but to be reminded that a breach in communal protocols is an opportunity for introspection.

“It’s clearly meant to have us do some type of a self-assessment,” said Fox, who admits he was shaken by the event and felt a sense of guilt having witnessed the Torah fall. “It’s a sign that the community maybe has its values out of whack, and we need to recalibrate in one way or another.  

“I don’t want to take away the sense that it’s really bad when the Torah falls on the floor, because I think we should experience it that way. But I want it to spur people to be better Jews and better human beings.”

Tucker cited a passage in the Talmud, “If a person sees that afflictions are befalling him, he should investigate his deeds” (Berakhot 5a).

“I think the sense of that statement is that when bad things happen, it may be very upsetting, but you have an opportunity to focus your energy on self-improvement,” he said. “Does it trigger us to say that we can be doing something better here, and leverage this unsettling, upsetting event to step up? Tzedakah represents how we do better in the world.”

Meanwhile, HIR is also responding in less lofty ways to Sunday’s incident. Fox said the synagogue is looking to attach “seatbelts” to keep the Torahs in place.

Returning to Chicago from an artist residency in Maine, Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González surveyed the local Jewish museum scene and found it wanting.

“When I came back to Chicago, I wanted to get involved with the ‘Jewish Museum of Chicago,’ and, you know, lo and behold, it doesn’t exist,” said Chalfin-Piney-González, who uses they/them pronouns. “I found that kind of strange.”

So Chalfin-Piney-González set about creating the museum they dreamed of — a cultural center without walls that would offer a hub for Jewish artists in Chicago to connect and showcase their work.

The Jewish Museum was founded during Passover in 2023 and described itself in its first Instagram post that August as a “community-run museum crafting accessible multi-faith and multigenerational entry points to diasporic storytelling, organizing, and cultural art practices.”

It has also found an additional motivation — to create a community space for anti-Zionist Jews in Chicago who have been galvanized during the war in Gaza but feel that the city’s Jewish institutions are not welcoming to them.

“A lot of the people I know who are interested and involved in this community are people who are trying to find meaning outside of any sort of state, any sort of government,” said Chalfin-Piney-González. “I left Judaism for a long time because I didn’t see any of their options, and I think that this community is surfacing because it needs to.”

Two years later, the museum has hosted over a dozen exhibitions and Jewish community events, beginning with its founding “Liberation Seder” in 2023 and continuing through the recent announcement of an artists collective that drew dozens of applications.

So far, the initiative hasn’t taken firm steps toward its ultimate goal of having a brick-and-mortar space in Chicago. But it has gained attention from both Jewish and non-Jewish artists in the city — and from Jewish critics who believe anti-Zionism is a rejection of a key component of contemporary Jewish identity and a repudiation of the safety and security of the 7 million Jews who live in Israel.

Sarah Zarrow, a professor of Jewish history at Western Washington University, said the Jewish Museum of Chicago stands out against other contemporary Jewish museums like the Jewish Museum in New York.

“This is a Jewish museum that will be out of step with the Jewish mainstream,” said Zarrow, who has studied Jewish museums. “So in that regard, this museum seems totally new, that it will just be an absolute minority, presenting a minority view within the Jewish community.”

Indeed, Jay Tcath, the executive vice president of Jewish United Fund, Chicago’s Jewish federation, said the new project was “not representative of a significant swath of the American or Chicago Jewish community.”

Despite the pushback, the initiative has borne out the ambitions of Jewish anti-Zionists who say there is a need to add distinctively Jewish content to the coalition building they have done since the start of the war in Gaza.

“It was really a special experience to work with the Jewish Museum of Chicago because they’re really cultivating a different generation and a different community of Jewish people who normally don’t have as much of a grounding presence within the art world,” said Grace Gittelman, a ceramicist who showed an exhibition titled “The Dybbuk in the Mirror” with the museum last fall.

“If we mean to fight the weaponization of our identities, we will have to create a version of them we can fully inhabit,” Arielle Angel, the editor of Jewish Currents, wrote in a recent essay calling for new institutions for anti-Zionist Jews. “If we hope to weaken Zionism within Jewish communities, we will need to develop a substantial vision for contemporary Judaism; we will need to meet those who want an exit from the rot with something beautiful and real. We cannot ask them to jump and decline to catch them.”

Chalfin-Piney-González has a foundation to build on in Chicago. The city is home to the first anti-Zionist synagogue in the United States, Tzedek Chicago, with which it collaborated for a Purim event this year.

Brant Rosen, Tzedek Chicago’s rabbi, praised the museum as part of a “growing ecosystem in Chicago of anti-Zionist projects,” including the Chicago chapter of the pro-Palestinian activist group Jewish Voice for Peace, the traditional egalitarian minyan Higaleh Na and the Klezmer band Upshtat Zingerai.

“What we share is these common values of looking at Judaism from a Diaspora point of view, rejecting Jewish nation-statism as the primary lens for understanding what it means to be Jewish collectively,” Rosen said, adding, “They’re doing it from the lens of artistic expression, and we’re doing it in the lens of spiritual expression, and I think there’s a lot of overlap.”

Rosen said that Tcath’s characterization of the Jewish anti-Zionist community in Chicago as representative of a tiny minority was “problematic,” adding that “many Jews, and particularly young Jews, are disaffiliating from identification with Zionism and with Federation-style Judaism.” Tzedek Chicago has added around 100 new families since Oct. 7, 2023, Rosen said.

“If organizations like the Jewish Federation and other Jewish institutions that are pro-Israel and Zionist represent the Jewish people, then, God help us,” said Rosen. “We are small and we are modest, but we are growing, and we are ready to receive the numbers of Jews who will undoubtedly peel away from a Judaism of oppression and genocide, and will be happy to build a new Judaism.”

Tcath said that JUF would not be promoting, endorsing or funding the museum’s activities, adding that he believed their involvement would be at odds with the museum’s mission.

“From what I’ve read from their worldview, they should feel sullied were they to seek out our hekscher [kosher endorsement] or our money because we, in their worldview, are part of the complicit American Jewish establishment, complicit in the misrepresentation of the Holocaust, what the Holocaust means to Jewish life in the alleged oppression of the Palestinians,” said Tcath.

Chalfin-Piney-González grew up going to Temple Beth-El, a Conservative congregation in Poughkeepsie, New York, where they attended Hebrew school and celebrated their bar mitzvah.

A fissure came when they were 14 and began taking a Wednesday night class about “conflict in the Middle East,” Chalfin-Piney-González said. When they asked a question about the Palestinian perspective, it did not go over well.

“I was reprimanded in front of the class, and then asked to not continue coming to that class, so I stopped going to the school altogether,” said Chalfin-Piney-González.

It wasn’t until around 2020 that Chalfin-Piney-González reconnected with Judaism, and not until the following year that they began to encounter a way of engaging with tradition that felt like a clear fit. That year, Chalfin-Piney-González moved to Maine to establish an artist residency at the Colby College Museum of Art. There they discovered the Maine Jewish Museum, which hosts rotating contemporary Jewish art exhibits.

During their time in Maine, the Jewish museum hosted several artist talks, a virtual art auction, a cyanotype printing workshop and exhibitions.

When they returned home in 2022, they looked for that kind of community locally — and came up short.

The Spertus Institute, a longstanding center for Jewish education in Chicago, offers an academic approach to Jewish culture and history, with scholarly programming and a vast closed-stacks and remote-access library — but not much in the way of arts or community activities.

The Chicago suburb of Skokie is home to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, which doesn’t focus on Jewish art and, Chalfin-Piney-González said, runs counter to what many Jewish artists aim to showcase in their work.

“A contemporary Jewish art museum and the Holocaust being synonymous with each other, to me, is not fair to Jewish art at large,” they said. “We want to tell stories that are not just about strife and suffering, but are also about joy and longevity and not based around fear.”

Tcath pushed back on the museum’s comparison to the Skokie Holocaust Museum, which he described as “unfair and wrong.”

“It’s unfortunate, but also telling, that they feel compelled to define themselves in critical contrast to the vast majority of the Chicago Jewish community, whether it be the Zionism of that community, the understanding of the importance of Israel and the Shoah to our community, and the misrepresentation of our wanting to learn and educate about the Holocaust as being some type of white, privileged Ashkenazi-motivated impulse,” said Tcath.

In the Jewish Museum of Chicago’s first social media post after Oct. 7, Chalfin-Piney-González wrote that they hoped the platform would offer those interested in anti-Zionism “space to grieve, tangible forms of solidarity and care, organizing and art opportunities,”

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Last year, the group hosted a series of art auctions from dozens of Chicago artists and donated the proceeds to Palestinian families, according to Chalfin-Piney-González. It also partnered with Pushcart Judaica, an online shop that sells Jewish art and ritual items, to host a pop-up market, fellowship exhibit, and community workshops.

With the museum’s work unfolding amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, Chalfin-Piney-González said the project has drawn backlash on social media as well as in-person confrontations they described as “very dogmatic and very one-sided.”

“I think it’s emboldened a lot of hate in many directions.” said Chalfin-Piney-González, adding that they had grown exhausted from moderating the amount of “hate mail” coming into the museum.

But for the artists who have already been drawn to the Jewish Museum of Chicago, the endeavor has brought relief.

Gittelman, whose work often explores their upbringing in a Korean-Jewish household, said their exhibition with the museum last fall was the “first time” they were able to present their work primarily as a Jewish artist.

“I feel like it really changed the way that I felt about myself as a Jewish artist,” said Gittelman about the exhibition experience. “I felt really proud to be a part of the Jewish Museum, and I felt like, okay, this is something that I can do and not be so scared of what it would feel like to be the only Asian person in a space.”

Gittelman said that prior to the museum’s founding, they had recognized a lack of a “home base” for Jewish artists in Chicago.

“I saw that Gabriel had started this museum, and I was immediately very excited about it, because of the need that I had already seen within Chicago to create this kind of sense of community within Jewish artists,” said Gittelman.

Maya Kosover, a multi-media collage artist who is the initiative’s artistic director, said the project is a “supplement” to Chicago’s Jewish ecosystem. For her, the museum’s anti-Zionist underpinnings are only part of the story, and its mission is ultimately about building something broader.

“I imagine it being a really active hub for a lot of this cultural arts building and community building,” said Kosover. “It really has a transformative justice ethos, and it’s really a love-based project for ourselves as Jews and for the communities that we’re in solidarity with.”

To that end, the team is now in the process of forming an artists collective.

While the effort is still in process, Chalfin-Piney-González said that an initial inquiry form collected about 65 applications.

Nearly two years on from the museum’s founding seder, Chalfin-Piney-González said that they hope the project remains “able to change” and “adapt to the needs of the community.”

“We’ve decided to keep the name Jewish Museum of Chicago, but if you look at what we’ve actually been doing, it’s much more of like a community center than anything else,” Chalfin-Piney-González said. “I think that’s really where it’s going,”

With $274 million in federal security grants about to go up for grabs, dozens of progressive Jewish groups and several synagogues say they are boycotting the program.

In an open letter launched last week, they said they can’t accept the strings attached to the money, despite the risk of being targeted with violence. The letter comes in response to new requirements that grantees support federal immigration enforcement and avoid programs advancing diversity introduced earlier this year by the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are committed to upholding our communal values and will not comply with these repressive conditions,” reads the letter.

The letter arrives as some Jewish leaders press those in need of funds to apply, arguing that objections may be settled before recipients must formally agree to the conditions.

Many of the signatories are progressive groups, including Bend the Arc: Jewish Action and pro-Palestinian groups such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

But they also include a handful of nonpartisan synagogues. Other synagogues independently have also decided to boycott the program as long as the controversial conditions are in place.

“Jewish safety requires inclusive democracy and inclusive democracy requires Jewish safety. We do not comply so we will not apply,” Jill Maderer, the senior rabbi at Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, posted on Facebook. She declined to be interviewed.

Meanwhile, one rabbi, facing what he described as a choice between his congregation’s safety and his sacred obligations, said he wishes to speak out. But he agreed to discuss the matter only anonymously, fearing that public protest could endanger two community members who are refugees.

“Money is being given to us on condition that we violate a specific mitzvah,” the rabbi said, referring to the religious commandment to welcome strangers. “I don’t see how we can possibly accept that money.”

Anxiety over the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which Jewish groups have long sought to expand, represents the latest instance of some American Jews saying that Trump administration policies force their priorities and values into conflict. The unease is heightened by the administration’s chaotic rollout with mainstream Jewish organizations working intensely behind the scenes to shape the policies while offering a limited public response.

“Jewish Federations of North America strongly encourage institutions in our communities to apply for critical, life-saving Nonprofit Security Grant Program funds,” JFNA’s CEO, Eric Fingerhut, said in a statement. “We are working closely with DHS and stand ready to provide guidance to any institution seeking support around this process and raise any issues that come up along the way.”

A spokesperson for the organization, which represents 141 local Jewish federations, said officials there had come away from meetings with DHS optimistic that Jewish institutions would not need to compromise on their values to secure the security grants.

JFNA was a leading force in building the grant program, which is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency under DHS. Created in 2004 and expanded after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018, it is the main federal source of money for houses of worship and nonprofits to bolster protection against terrorism and hate-motivated violence. Rising concerns about antisemitic attacks have sharply increased demand for the grants, for which Jewish groups have also encouraged other houses of worship to apply.

The grants can cover things like cameras, alarm and alert systems, hired guards, fencing and barriers, or screening tools such as metal detectors. They are meant to help nonprofits deemed at high risk of terrorist or extremist violence strengthen both physical and digital security.

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, shares many of the concerns raised by groups to her left but is still urging congregational rabbis and lay leaders to apply. Submitting applications now, she says, gives communities time before deciding whether to accept the funds — time in which the Trump administration could yet rescind the controversial conditions.

“There is a deadline by which they have to apply, and the terms and conditions only kick in if you accept the funding, so there is still time,” she said.

On the conditions concerning immigration enforcement, the Trump administration might have already retreated, a development that isn’t yet widely understood in part because of confusing and contradictory messaging by the administration.

Since April, those closely observing the DHS communications have been whiplashed by conflicting directives, first exempting synagogues from immigration enforcement rules, then suggesting those rules still apply.

DHS had unveiled conditions that were said to apply to all DHS funding, part of a broader Trump administration effort to wield the federal bureaucracy for political purposes.

Soon after, 20 states filed a lawsuit arguing that it is illegal to condition government funding on assisting with federal immigration enforcement, handled through the agency known as ICE. One immediate impetus for the lawsuit was the worry that the Trump administration would withhold disaster recovery funds from victims of the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year.

In a June 6 filing, federal lawyers defended the immigration-related conditions by saying they wouldn’t be applied to a range of grant programs including the one for securing nonprofits. Then, in late July, DHS appeared to confirm the exception when it gave official notice for this year’s nonprofit security grants.

The relief was short-lived because about two weeks later, on Aug. 13, DHS released another notice featuring new language that seemed to contradict the earlier exemption. The notice said the immigration conditions “may be material to the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to make this grant award, and the Department of Homeland Security may take any remedy for noncompliance.”

Spitalnick, whose team has been tracking the issue for months, communicating regularly with federal and state officials, said she was told the latest language is a mistake that will be corrected in a forthcoming notice.

She acknowledged how dizzying the bureaucracy can be for prospective applicants.

“We have heard extensive confusion and concern from national, state, and local Jewish and interfaith partners,” she said.

To clear things up  — and because rules against diversity and inclusion work are firmly in place — Spitalnick on Friday sent a letter pleading with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The Jewish community is incredibly diverse — from LGBTQ+ Jews, to Jews of Color, to immigrant and refugee Jews,” she wrote to Noem. “Many synagogues and Jewish institutions host programs and services to engage and support these vital parts of our community, as well as to support and advance core Jewish values of justice, charity, and equity with our neighbors and in our broader communities and society.”

The letter continues, “Our communities desperately rely on this security funding — and they need clarity that what they are agreeing to in accepting these funds won’t force them to override their deeply held religious values and beliefs.”

It wouldn’t be the first time the Trump administration retreated after placing controversial conditions on government money. Earlier this year, the Trump administration floated a requirement that applicants for disaster relief funds pledge not to support boycotts of Israel. While that provision was withdrawn after legal and political pushback, vague language against “discriminatory prohibited boycott” still appears in broader DHS rules, leaving some uncertainty about enforcement.

DHS didn’t respond to specific questions from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, instead releasing a statement saying the department “will no longer fund grant projects that don’t align with President Trump’s priorities.”

“Unlike the previous administration, grants will no longer be used to support DEI agendas, and illegal aliens in our country,” the statement says. “These Biden focused initiatives don’t serve the interest of the American People.”

Beyond Spitalnick and JCPA, many national Jewish organizations are not publicly engaging with the concern that, for some congregations, the Trump administration’s terms force the dilemma of choosing between security and conviction.

Two groups that have long championed the grant program, the Anti-Defamation League and Secure Community Network, didn’t respond to questions from JTA.

Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday, accusing Tehran of orchestrating antisemitic arson attacks on Jewish institutions, as police in Melbourne announced a series of arrests tied to synagogue fires and vandalism that have rattled the country’s Jewish community.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Iranian-directed attacks were “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression” designed to destabilize Australia.

The government will also designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and suspend operations at its embassy in Tehran. It has already moved Australian diplomats to a third country.

“ASIO has now gathered enough credible intelligence to reach a deeply disturbing conclusion,” Albanese said at a press conference Tuesday, referring to the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. “The Iranian government directed at least two of these attacks. Iran has sought to disguise its involvement but ASIO assesses it was behind the attacks.”

He added, “These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil. They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community. It is totally unacceptable.”

Iran has a long track record of sowing violence against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad, including over the last two years as its proxies in the Middle East battled Israel on the ground. Police in multiple European countries have accused Iran of orchestrating recent attacks on Jewish and Israeli sites.

The Australian response appears to be the most extensive. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the expulsion of Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi and three other Iranian officials was the first time Australia has taken such a step since World War II.

“We have made this decision because Iran’s actions are completely unacceptable,” she said.

Authorities said Tehran was behind at least two 2024 incidents: the October firebombing of Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a kosher deli in Sydney, and the December arson attack on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue that destroyed much of the historic house of worship.

ASIO chief Mike Burgess said investigators traced the operations to the IRGC, which used proxies to disguise its role. “Iran and its proxies, literally and figuratively, lit the matches and fanned the flames,” he said.

The government’s announcement came alongside breakthroughs in the domestic investigation into the wave of antisemitic violence that has roiled the country and its sizable Jewish community.

In mid-August, police charged a 20-year-old man from the Melbourne suburb of Meadow Heights with arson, conduct endangering life, and theft of a motor vehicle. He is the second suspect charged in the case after police arrested a 21-year-old man in July.

“This investigation has been one of the highest priorities for the [Joint Counter Terrorism Team],” Australian Federal Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Nick Read said in a statement. “We remain laser focused on identifying those responsible and holding them to account.”

The December firebombing was described by Jewish leaders as a turning point in the country’s fight against antisemitism.

In a separate case, police announced Monday that they had arrested a 37-year-old man accused of repeatedly vandalizing Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in South Yarra.

Authorities said the suspect defaced the synagogue on six occasions between March and August, sometimes riding a scooter and wearing a “Ghostface” mask from the Scream horror film franchise. He was charged with multiple counts of criminal damage and graffiti, along with driving-related offenses. He was released on bail and is due in court in November.

The arrest followed another July 8 attack in which the entrance to the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation was set ablaze. Four people were arrested in that case, including a man charged with arson and endangering life, according to the Jewish Community Council of Victoria.

The arrests highlight what Jewish leaders describe as a worsening security crisis. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded 2,062 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024 — a fourfold increase from the previous year.

Recent incidents include synagogue and school firebombings, and threats against Jewish patients by hospital staff. In January, police discovered a trailer filled with explosives, which investigators later said was part of an elaborate hoax orchestrated by an organized crime boss.

“Our community will perhaps find some solace from this breakthrough in the investigation and in knowing that the skill and devotion of our law enforcement and security agencies is there to protect us,” said Daniel Aghion, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, following the announcement about Iran’s involvement in recent attacks. “Yet there will be great anxiety that we have been targeted in such a callous and calculated way, by a ruthless and violent foreign force, because of who we are.”

Israel’s embassy in Canberra also praised the move to blacklist the IRGC, saying in a post on X, “Iran’s regime is not only a threat to Jews or Israel, it endangers the entire free world, including Australia.”

The announcements come amid strained ties between Israel and Australia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Albanese on Aug. 11 for his plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations next month, calling him a “weak politician who betrayed Israel.”

Netanyahu also accused the Australian leader of failing to address antisemitism, giving him a deadline of next month’s Rosh Hashanah holiday to act.

Albanese brushed off the criticism, noting Netanyahu has made similar remarks about other world leaders.

The last thing one might expect from Jeff Ross — the perennially raunchy, abrasive insult comedian known as a “one-man verbal assault unit” — is a poignant and hilarious Broadway show that, at times, feels like the most Jewish production on the Great White Way since “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Ross is best known as the “Roastmaster General,” thanks to his decades of hosting and appearing on celebrity roasts at the Friars Club and on Comedy Central and Netflix. In this role, Ross’s language is often saltier than schmaltz herring; his pointed barbs have made him comedy’s successor to the late Don Rickles.

All that, however, takes a back seat at Broadway’s Nederlander Theater, where Ross’s delightful and very Jewish solo show, “Jeff Ross: Take A Banana For The Ride,” written by him and directed by Stephen Kessler, is playing until Sept. 28.

I’ve known about Ross’s gentler side for quite a while. Around 2015 or so, I was chatting with him in his dressing room at the Westbury Music Fair when a family of European tourists were ushered in for a brief hello. Ross greeted them graciously, saying, “I’m Jeff; so nice to see you.” He then pointed to me, a bearded man in my 60s, adding, “And this is my lovely wife, Denise.”

I wasn’t aware, however, of Ross’s passionate feelings about his Jewish heritage, which was a driving force behind the creation of his Broadway show. “I thought of the achievements the Jewish people have brought to the world,” he said, “the inventions, the creativity, the ingenuity. That’s thousands of years old.”

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Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1965 as Jeffrey Ross Lifschultz (a last name that, he contends, is “an old Hebrew word meaning, ‘Hey, you oughta change that’”), Ross was raised in a loving and somewhat eccentric Jewish family that ran a kosher catering hall founded by his great-grandmother Rosie (hence his middle name).

He credits his older relatives, all fans of Borscht Belt comics, with helping him develop his sense of humor. “I wasn’t old enough to watch those Catskills comedians, but I lived with people who were watching them,” he said. “My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were all funny, and I felt that energy, that delivery, that timing, that sarcasm. All that stuff seeped into my brain.”

Ross soon learned that humor could be a useful tool to disarm antisemites. In high school, Ross faced “a bully who called me ‘a dirty Jew’ and used to jump out of hallways and punch me in the nuts,” he recalled. “I thought, the next time he comes after me, I’m gonna get up and hit him back. But when he punched me again, it hurt so bad I was writhing on the floor and couldn’t.  So instinctively, I started making fun of him. When I did that, everyone laughed except him. He was embarrassed and a bit humiliated, even though I was the one on the floor. And I learned the power of the insult.”

I asked Ross what exactly he said to the bully. “I remember he had hairy knuckles and was bigger than everyone else. He had a big forehead, so I said, ‘Is that a forehead or a five-head?’ Everybody laughed, and a young roastmaster was created.”

“Take A Banana For The Ride” peels away Ross’s usually rough persona and takes the audience on a revealing, sweet, sad, funny and moving ride through his often pain-filled life, which is clearly rooted in the Jewish experience. His mother died of leukemia when he was 14, and his father succumbed to a cocaine-induced brain aneurysm when Ross was 19. Following college, he lived with his grandfather, who had served in World War II as a shipbuilder. After the U.S. Navy captured a Nazi U-boat, it was then “schlepped to Baltimore,” as Ross puts it. There, Pop Jack, as Ross calls him, removed a bolt and made it into a ring. Ross wears that ring to this day, showing it to the Broadway crowd.

In fact, the name of Ross’s show comes from something his grandfather used to tell him when he was just starting out in standup comedy, taking the bus from New Jersey to clubs in Manhattan. Pop Jack would always advise him to “take a banana for the ride” just in case he got hungry.

Ross agreed with my guesstimate that perhaps 80% of those attending this show are non-Jews, which makes the Judaic content of the production somewhat surprising. Along with references to brisket, bar and bat mitzvahs, Hanukkah, his possibly antisemitic German shepherds, and the fact that his uncle helped liberate a concentration camp, there is one particularly stunning moment that caught the attention of the prominent Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Manhattan’s Central Synagogue. She commented on social media that she knew she’d laugh at Ross’s show, but “I didn’t expect to be so moved and touched by this comic reflection on mortality, caregiving and some Nazi rescue dogs. (Nor a full audience singalong to ‘Don’t F*** with the Jews.’)”

During the show, Ross goes through a litany of Hebraic heroes — running the gamut from the Maccabees to Mark Spitz — and asks the audience to join him (and two onstage musicians) in a cheerful ditty with the refrain, “Don’t f*** with the Jews/If you wanna hear cheers and not boos/Never again, f*** with the Jews.” He also lists inventions by Jews, from matzah balls to Prozac to the theory of relativity.

Ross wrote the play before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent rise in antisemitism around the globe. In light of that, I asked whether his expressions of Jewish pride have taken on new meaning. “I don’t overthink it,” he said. “Like any song that resonates, it hits at the right time. For me, it’s an anthem of cultural pride, in that I come from a family of caterers and war heroes and firefighters and hardworking, blue collar union people. To me, setting a good, strong Jewish presence in the world is my mission. But the song is not to combat antisemitism; that’s not my lane. To me it’s about putting your chin up, keeping a positive attitude in the face of the hatred that’s out there in the world.”

Ross had a deep personal need for that positive attitude last year, when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Following surgery and chemo, “I feel great,” he said. “This show is the perfect medicine for me.”

Next month he’ll mark his 60th birthday – halfway to the traditional Jewish optimal age of 120. At one point in the show, he sorrowfully laments the too-early deaths of his close friends and comedy colleagues Bob Saget, Norm Macdonald and Gilbert Gottfried, all within an eight-month period.

Given his lifetime of loss and tragedy amidst the laughter and applause, I asked whether he had any particular advice for surviving it all. “You know,” Ross said, “I do a mental trick, which is to put a fake smile on my face. And more often than not, it becomes a real smile. It actually has gotten me through some very difficult times.”

“Jeff Ross: Take A Banana For The Ride” is at the Nederlander Theater (208 West 41st St.) through Sept. 28.  For tickets and information, click here.