An Israeli-Russian Princeton University graduate student who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2023 while conducting research there has been freed and will return to Israel Wednesday, according to U.S. President Donald Trump and her family.

Elizabeth Tsurkov was taken hostage in Baghdad on March 21, 2023, while doing research for her doctorate about sectarianism in the region.

In July 2023, the Israeli government announced that she was being held by Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Iraqi Shia militia that is backed by Iran. Separate from the Hezbollah that is based in Lebanon, it was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 2009.

Tsurkov’s sister Emma, a U.S. citizen and director of quantitiative research for the Anti-Defamation League, cheered her release and credited Adam Boehler, Trump’s hostage envoy who has also negotiated the release of hostages in Gaza, Russia and elsewhere since beginning his work earlier this year.

“We are thrilled for Elizabeth’s family and especially her sister Emma Tsurkov, our ADL colleague, who fought tirelessly for her release and thank the Administration for all they did to secure her release,” wrote the ADL in a Facebook post. “What a relief to know Elizabeth is free at last.”

Two Iraqi militia officials, who spoke to the Associated Press anonymously, confirmed that Tsurkov’s release came about as a result of negotiations and not through a military operation to free her. It was not immediately clear what, if anything, Kataib Hezbollah had received in return for her release.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that Tsurkov had been “tortured for many months” and used her release as an occasion to pressure Hamas, which is holding 48 Israeli hostages in Gaza, to free the captives it holds.

“I will always fight for JUSTICE, and never give up.” Trump wrote. “HAMAS, RELEASE THE HOSTAGES, NOW!”

Tsurkov’s mother, Irina, told Army Radio that she felt “crazy joy, happiness” that her daughter was coming home and that she “hopes all the families of our hostages get the same news.” She thanked Trump for his efforts.

Tsurkov, 38, was released to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday. She is set to be flown to Israel on Wednesday and will be taken to Sheba Hospital in Ramat Gan where she will undergo an extensive evaluation and rehabilitation process similar to that devised for the Israeli hostages who have been released from Gaza, Israeli media reported.

When I recently asked a group of middle schoolers how they define peace, they answered: the opposite of war, the ability to listen, and being able to see a common trait in someone unlike yourself.

I wish someone asked me that question 24 years ago, on 9/11.

That day defined my life. As a sophomore at Columbia University, I witnessed the world fracture. I will never forget the last time I saw the glistening Twin Towers. I will never forget 10:28 a.m., when my biology professor abruptly dismissed class as the north tower fell.

I will never forget learning about Josh Birnbaum, of blessed memory, a new Cantor Fitzgerald employee and my resident advisor’s best friend, trapped on the 102nd floor.

I will never forget driving out of the Lincoln Tunnel for the High Holidays witnessing the plume of smoke rising.

And I will never forget the trust that humanity lost. The iceberg of extremism, separating voices that once sat together, now unable to converse.

Since that moment, we have witnessed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as extremism movements such as the Taliban and the IRGC exporting terror from Iran around the world. A generation grew up hearing the word peace, but never being able to envision it.

In those two decades, as I graduated from Columbia and then rabbinical school and began serving in a large congregation in the city with the third largest Jewish population in the world, I could count the number of Muslims I had broken bread with. The communal pressure to not engage was real. So were my own personal fears.

We only need to look at what happened 700 days ago on Oct. 7, 2023, to verify these fears, with the murder of 1,200 men, women, and children in Israel, and 251 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas. With the rise of the horrifying humanitarian crisis in Gaza affecting innocent Palestinians, the fear and blame of the other continues to grow with no hope for a day after.

Yet, on this 9/11, 24 years later, I am choosing to engage in a difficult exercise that sometimes looks and feels like swimming upstream — but I believe has the ability to break open the dam.

At my congregation, I have been inviting in speakers whose role is to engage, not generate agreement, on topics that sit at the heart of our fear. In recent weeks, I’ve hosted talks with multiple people offering paradigm-shifting perspectives on Gaza: the chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation; the head of IsraAid, an Israeli nonprofit delivering aid to Gazans; and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American voice of pragmatism.

Now, on 9/11, we’ll be holding a communal conversation between our Jewish congregants and Muslims from Morocco, Egypt and Bahrain. If someone had told me 24 years ago that this would be on my calendar, I would have said, “You’re dreaming.” Yet, Psalm 126 tells us the Jewish people “are like dreamers.” And today that dream is a reality, made possible by a new generation committed to breaking barriers, dedicating the time to invest in community despite great obstacles to overcome. Governments sign peace agreements, but human beings look into each other’s souls. This must be the new path forward.

Sharaka, the group bringing these Muslim leaders to meet with my congregation about ways we can work together to forge peace despite our battling governments, is Arabic for partnership. The organization was founded in 2020 during the creation of the Abraham Accords, an economic model for Middle East peace and coexistence that has sustained itself even during the devastating unrest and war we have all witnessed. Sharaka is based not on fear but on love, focusing on normalizing people-to-people relationships.

This moment of Sharaka, partnership, takes courage. It takes courage for synagogues and mosques to welcome this conversation on their pulpits, and it takes courage to publicly speak, together, on a college campus, in the workplace, and on the town square — kippahs, burqas and crosses all engaging in productive dialogue and action.

Twenty-four years ago were some of the darkest moments of my life. I will never forget the smells of burning humans, the sights of horror, and the sounds of fear.

Now, twenty-four years later, I am proud to be involved in creating a moment of light that I anticipate also always keeping with me: the sights of embracing, the smells of the bread we break together, and the sounds of the dialogue of tomorrow.

We will never forget the tide turning as the pragmatists — the vast majority of us — join forces to expel extremism and embrace our commonality and yearn for hope, healing, and wholeness. Our children deserve to inherit not our fears, but our courage to build peace. The true memorial to 9/11 will not be in stone or steel, but in the bridges we choose to build.

When Jeffrey Epstein turned 50 in 2003, his then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell assembled a 238-page tribute album to mark the occasion. The so-called birthday book, handed over by Epstein’s estate to the House Oversight Committee and made public this week, is lurid and unsettling: filled with crude drawings of women’s bodies, tales of sexual conquest, and notes from powerful friends who seemed to celebrate rather than recoil at his predation.

Amid the misogyny, however, runs another, less examined thread: traces of Epstein’s Jewish identity. The book reveals his Jewish name, Yudel; shows him squeezing an accordion at a bar mitzvah; records a family trip to Israel in 1985; and contains affectionate notes from childhood friends who grew up with him in the Jewish enclave of Sea Gate, Brooklyn. 

It is a portrait of a man whose Jewishness, while never central to his public persona, was interwoven with his life story and social circles, which in later life included close ties with prominent Jewish figures like Leslie Wexner and Alan M. Dershowitz, both of whom contributed letters to the birthday book.

A letter signed “Leslie” features a drawing of a set of breasts below the words, “I wanted to get you what you want.”

The book also features the now well publicized poem attributed to Donald Trump, framed by the silhouette of a nude woman and with what appears to be Trump’s signature. The poem praises Epstein’s pursuit of women, echoing the crude bravado of other contributions. Trump’s representatives have denied his authorship.

Born in 1953 to Seymour and Paula Epstein, the children of Jewish immigrants, he grew up in Sea Gate, a gated community at the tip of Coney Island. In the 1950s and ’60s, Sea Gate was a predominantly Jewish, middle-class enclave, and the Epstein family lived across the street from the Kneses Israel synagogue, today affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

According to the 2017 investigative biography “Filthy Rich,” he was known to friends as “Eppy” and remembered as sweet and generous. He showed talent in math and the piano. Much of his extended family had perished in the Holocaust.

The birthday book adds new texture. A biographical note beneath his birth certificate appears to record his “Jewish name” as Yudel, a Yiddish form of the Hebrew name Judah. Before he took up the piano, Epstein played the accordion. A letter from his mother recalls him performing on the instrument at both his own bar mitzvah and that of his “uncle Lenny.” Another page features a photograph of Epstein playing the accordion, captioned “Aaron Brown bar mitzvah.”

A brief recollection by Epstein’s father notes that the family traveled to Israel in 1985 to visit relatives. The trip reflects a typical American Jewish connection to Israel, though with luxuries rare for the time, when Israel was far less developed than it is today. The account mentions stays at the Plaza Hotel in Tel Aviv and the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, “where my son Jeff hired a limo to take us around.”

This period in Epstein’s life coincided with his foray into international intrigue. In 1981, he founded Intercontinental Assets Group, a consulting firm he described as a high-level bounty-hunting operation, working at times for governments or billionaires and at other times for embezzlers themselves. 

By the mid-1980s, he was traveling frequently across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, and reportedly telling some people he worked in intelligence. He forged ties with defense contractors, financiers, and media baron Robert Maxwell, the father of his future girlfriend. One of his clients was Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who played a central role in the Iran-Contra affair by acting as an intermediary in the covert transfer of American weapons routed through Israel to Iran.

Several letters come from Jewish childhood friends, capturing the camaraderie of boys who came of age together in Sea Gate. These reminiscences are presented as tender and humorous, but they also hint at patterns that would later curdle.

One letter recalls Epstein’s antics at a Jewish singles weekend at the Concord Hotel, a Catskills resort that epitomized mid-century Jewish leisure. Epstein and his friends, the note says, were kicked out of the resort after setting a room on fire and throwing food. The letter also appears to recount a prank in which Epstein impersonated a rabbi to lure his daughter close, the payoff described as a chance to “touch her boobs.” 

Alongside these youthful stories appear tributes from some of the most powerful Jewish figures in Epstein’s orbit as an adult. 

The presence of Wexner — a major donor to Jewish causes and the billionaire founder of L Brands, the company behind Victoria’s Secret and other retail chains — reflects his well documented and longstanding ties to Epstein, which have caused angst among the many Jewish professionals who have received prestigious fellowships that still bear his name. 

A letter from Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor, jokingly boasts that, as a birthday gift, he persuaded Vanity Fair to shift the focus of an article away from Epstein and onto former president Bill Clinton. The private equity titan Leon Black, a benefactor of the Jewish Museum and other Jewish institutions, signed off “Love and Kisses” after likening Epstein to Ernest Hemingway’s fisherman in “The Old Man and the Sea.”

Another letter comes from the real estate and media magnate Mort Zuckerman, a past president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Peter Mandelson, the British diplomat of Jewish heritage, and the late Nobel prize laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Gerald Edelman, the mathematician and biologist Martin Nowak, and the influential Harvard administrator Henry Rosovsky round out the group.

Many of the men who once praised Epstein have since sought to explain or distance themselves from the relationship. Wexner has said he was “deceived” by Epstein, who misappropriated vast sums of his fortune, while Dershowitz has downplayed the entry and denied any wrongdoing. 

Black called the association a “terrible mistake.” Mandelson said he deeply regrets the relationship. Others, including Nobel laureates and prominent scientists, acknowledged Epstein primarily as a patron of research but later condemned his conduct.

Rosovsky, a refugee from the Nazis who shaped Harvard for decades including by nurturing Jewish life on campus, died in 2022 at age 95 without commenting publicly about the allegations against Epstein. Decades earlier, Epstein and Wexner had underwritten Rosovsky Hall, the home of Harvard Hillel, in his honor; the building had a plaque naming Epstein that was removed as he became associated with scandal.

Last month, Rosovsky was implicated in Epstein’s exploits for the first time, when a court transcript was released showing that Ghislaine Maxwell testified that he had received a “massage” — a euphemism for a sexual encounter — at Epstein’s townhouse.

The entry in the birthday book attributed to Rosovsky is in keeping with the dominant theme. “For the man who has almost everything — but never enough of these!” it says in handwritten cursive, alongside two color images labeled “tit print.”

With the birthday book now in the congressional record, its contents are poised to ripple through partisan battles in Washington, as lawmakers debate what, if anything, should come next in reckoning with Epstein’s web of connections.

The White House issued a sharp rebuke to Israel’s strike on Hamas leadership in Qatar on Tuesday while backing its goal, marking a split between U.S. and Israeli leadership over the unprecedented military action.

“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Six people were killed in the strike, but Hamas said its top leaders were not among them and Israeli officials reportedly were increasingly doubtful on Wednesday that the strike had been a success.

Israeli media reported that the military’s top brass had opposed the timing of the strike but were overruled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump said he had been warned of the attack only as it was in progress and had instructed U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar, but the warning came “too late to stop the attack.”

Following the strikes, Trump spoke with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and assured him that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil,” his office said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had sounded similar notes early in the day, amid reports that Trump had given Israel the green light for the strikes. Later, Netanyahu’s office said that it had acted alone and took “full responsibility” for the attack. Trump also spoke to Netanyahu on Tuesday.

Trump said he believed the attacks, which represented an unprecedented incursion into Qatar, could amount to an “opportunity for peace” between Israel and Hamas, even as Israel appears to have targeted Hamas’ top negotiators in a country that has both given them refuge and brokered ceasefire talks.

The White House’s comments represented a departure from the mainstream attitude among Republicans, who largely supported the strike. Among Democrats, most lawmakers expressed criticism, although Sen. John Fetterman, a staunch Israel supporter, posted a gif signaling glee and Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he viewed “anything done to support Hamas’ leadership” as a positive development.

Major Jewish organizations in the United States were split over the attack, largely but not only along partisan lines.

“Israel is taking justifiable action to ensure Hamas leaders pay a price for October 7th atrocities and their reign of terror,” said the Democratic Majority for Israel in a statement. “The international community must now use this moment to put more pressure on Hamas to finally accept the ceasefire and hostage deal.”

But Hadar Susskind, the president and CEO of the progressive Zionist group New Jewish Narrative, said the strikes were evidence of Netanyahu’s ambition to prolong the war in Gaza. They came as Israel ordered an evacuation of Gaza City, where a planned takeover has not drawn opposition from Trump.

“This strike shows yet again that Netanyahu wants this war to continue. He has no exit strategy because he doesn’t want an exit strategy. Why else would you blow up a meeting to review a ceasefire proposal?” Susskind said in a statement. “I’m terrified of the implications for Israel’s future – and for the lives that will be lost.”

The strikes also drew “deep concern” from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which wrote in a statement that the move could imperil the remaining hostages in Gaza.

“The families of the hostages are following the developments in Doha with deep concern and heavy anxiety. A grave fear now hangs over the price that the hostages may pay,” the forum said. “The chance of bringing them back now faces greater uncertainty than ever before.”

By the time the playwright Liba Vaynberg and I manage to steal a few minutes on Zoom, it’s already midday on a Friday, which means I’m running late from an appointment at a wig maker and frantically marinating a chicken for Shabbat dinner. 

I wouldn’t normally describe the circumstances of an interview in an article, but it seems relevant given the subject of Vaynberg’s upcoming play, “The Matriarchs.” It’s a deeply Jewish work that follows six recently bat mitzvahed Modern Orthodox girls — as well as a snippy yet maternal, possibly omniscient voice off-stage — as they move from their early teens through adulthood, and face struggles with faith, fertility, marriage and grief.

Opening Wednesday at New York City’s Theaterlab, “The Matriarchs” begins with the heroines — who are all loosely based on Biblical foremothers, such as Miriam and Sara, with whom they share names — as middle schoolers studying Talmud in a basement in suburban New Jersey. Their banter covers everything from childbirth to snacks to whether squeezing a blackhead is forbidden on Shabbat (on this, they ultimately reach a tentative agreement). The overall effect is “Gilmore Girls” meets Chaim Potok. Or maybe, with its rapid-fire, heavily female dialogue, it’s closer to Lena Dunham’s “Girls” — if the titular girls were rabbinic sages rather than Brooklyn hipsters.

The opening scene feels so authentic that it’s surprising to hear Vaynberg, who is “in her thirties,” has never studied Talmud herself. The daughter of Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union, Vaynberg describes her West Coast Jewish upbringing as “eclectic, and I’m very grateful for that.” She attended Chabad schools through fifth grade — like many Russian Jewish families, the Vaynbergs found a welcoming environment at Chabad — but was not traditionally observant at home. 

By her teenage years, Vaynberg switched to a secular school; at Yale, she studied molecular biology, thinking she’d be a doctor. (Vaynberg’s parents, she said, still find her change of career path “devastating.”) She now lives in the Bronx, where she attends a progressive Orthodox synagogue, with her husband and young daughter (and one on the way).

The idea for “The Matriarchs” came in 2021, after she witnessed a Shabbat afternoon study session for young Orthodox girls led by a college friend of her husband’s, a female Talmud teacher. “I’m a big fan of the movie ‘Yentl,’” Vaynberg said, “but I had never actually heard women or girls fully embody a Talmudic space.” 

Inspired, she began to envision a play populated with young girls like these, but structured like the Talmud, which is dominated by male voices. Like in the canonical text, Vaynberg’s characters are meant to be focused on one core issue, but frequently go off on tangents and contradict each other and themselves in the process. (In the script, the setting is listed as “wherever the Torah didn’t bother with its women.”)

For the actor Arielle Goldman, who plays the theatrical, doomed Rachel and who, in real life, attended Jewish day school from kindergarten through twelfth grade, playing a version of herself onstage was “surreal.” 

“It felt really exciting to be in a play that’s taking these girls and their reality and really normalizing their experience,” Goldman, who describes her upbringing positively but characterized her younger self as “a little bit rebellious,” said. 

The play “really initiated a lot of memories” for her, like the time she found herself grating when a camp friend told her women didn’t need to read from the Torah because they were “naturally more spiritual” than men. That’s exactly the type of feminist awakening that could have been lifted straight from Vaynberg’s script. 

The play’s very specific setting still manages to be inviting to those with little or no personal experience with Orthodoxy. Though costume designer Johanna Pan was tasked with outfitting characters in modest wedding gowns and wigs, they come from a background far removed from tri-state area Jewish environs: a devout Christian community in Singapore. 

As the daughter of a prominent Presbyterian pastor, Pan, who now identifies as agnostic and “the black sheep” of her own family, related to the characters who found themselves bristling under the strictures of communal expectations. “The things that these girls are going through, which is a sense of growing up and grappling with your faith, and who you are and what your identity is, whether or not you live inside of that community, I think is something that is very universal,” they said. 

Most of the performances, which run through Sept. 28, will include a talkback. That’s theater-speak for an onstage conversation after the show, usually including the playwright, director or cast members. At “The Matriarchs” many of the featured talkback guests, who include the Yiddishist Rokhl Kaffrisen and the creator of the web series “Soon By You,” Leah Gottfried, are some flavor of observant themselves. (Full disclosure: I’m doing one on Sept. 25.) 

Talkbacks are famously divisive — in 2017, David Mamet announced that any productions of his work that included talkbacks could face hefty fines. But Vaynberg sees them not only as a way of potentially deepening the audience’s understanding of the play, but also as an “important litmus test” for whether she’s doing right by the community she’s depicting. “We’ve all been to the shows where Orthodox stuff is misquoted or misrepresented,” she said. “If [featured guests] feel seen by the play, then that’s hopefully a sign that I’m doing something that makes them proud to be represented in the theater.” 

I’ll avoid spoilers here, but suffice it to say those with a cursory knowledge of Torah plot lines might see some of these character’s arcs coming. Noticeably absent from the story, though, are some of the standard tropes of Jewish art today, whether it’s the “brave young person flees repressive sect” — a la the Netflix series “Unorthodox” — or a fixation on the Holocaust or Israel, though the ongoing conflict there has cast a pall over so much of the discourse since Oct. 7, 2023. 

“It’s a complicated time to produce Jewish art, and a lot of companies are actually explicit about the fact that Jewish art is something that they’re not necessarily going to be leaning into,” Vaynberg said. 

But it was important to her that she turn her attention — and in turn, prompt others to turn theirs — to some of the less examined parts of the modern Jewish experience. “The Holocaust and Israel, these are not the only things we are,” she said. “And there’s just not enough art about all the other things that we are.” 

“The Matriarchs” plays at TheaterLab (357 West 36th St.) Sept. 10 through Sept 28. Click here for tickets. 

An anonymous group of Jewish student activists has broken away from Jewish Voice for Peace to form a new national organization, the Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front, that pledges to escalate campaigns against Zionism on college campuses.

In a statement released this week, the group framed itself as part of what it termed a global “student intifada” and said it was aligning with the “Popular University,” a loose network of pro-Palestinian activists.

“We work to dismantle Zionism in its entirety by confronting Zionist institutions on campus, to struggle for divestment, and to pursue the criminalization of Zionism as a white supremacist weapon of war,” the statement said.

Jewish Voice for Peace, the country’s largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization, confirmed the separation. The group has grown in prominence in recent years, staging high-profile demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza and partnering with progressive advocacy groups. But it has recently shifted its energy toward political lobbying after not achieving its organizing goals.

The Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front presents itself as more radical, questioning whether existing nonprofit structures are effective for campus activism and rejecting the centrality of messaging like “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

Instead, it says it will focus on direct confrontation with “Zionist institutions on campus” and on pushing for divestment. Its logo features the Yiddish phrase “L’chaim Intifada” surrounded by an Arabic slogan that reads, “Where there is oppression, may there thrive resistance.”

The announcement appeared on Instagram, posted by the account of the Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front and tagged as a collaboration with five others: campus chapters at George Washington University, Georgetown University and American University; the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, an activist group formed in 2008; and anti-Zionist activist Anna Rajagopal.

The organization did not respond to an press inquiry. Rajagopal responded to a request for comment to say that she did not represent the groups involved and had “no desire to talk to an employee of the Jewish Telegraph[ic] Agency about any topic, ever.” She did not respond to further questions.

The announcement video cites numerous Jewish concepts, including “tzedek” or justice and “doikayt,” the Yiddish word meaning “hereness” that anti-Zionist Jewish activists have adopted as a watchword.

The video features footage from George Washington University, where pro-Palestinian advocacy has been notably fierce. Just weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, students there projected anti-Israel messages including “Glory to our martyrs” on a university building. The school suspended both JVP and Students for Justice in Palestine in the aftermath.

Both groups have since disaffiliated from the school. The school’s chapter of JVP told the student newspaper last month, after it was suspended for another year, that it would cease to function as a student group.

Now, it is also ceding from the national JVP organization, a move that JVP’s senior manager of campus organizing, Jonah Rubin, confirmed in a statement.

“The decision to amicably separate comes after long and principled discussions between all parties,” Rubin said. “While we share the goal of mobilizing anti-Zionist Jews working towards Palestinian liberation, our analyses of the strategy and tactics best suited to respond to the current moment of genocide in Gaza and rising fascism at home have diverged.”

He added, “Through our discussions it became clear that the best path forward was to pursue our shared goals in separate organizations. We wish these students the best.”

Rubin added that JVP’s more than 100 local chapters will continue to build “a grassroots movement of anti-Zionist Jews dedicated to taking strategic action to combat racism, fascism, genocide, and apartheid.”

The Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front, too, promises a robust future, animated by a belief in “rejecting Zionism and upholding Palestinians’ right to return, remain, and resist.”

“Students are learning and adapting every day in the fight against the American and Zionist imperialist beast,” the group’s video says. “Our numbers grow, our principles fortify, and our dedication to enacting substantive change has never been stronger.”

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 56 days to the election.

💪 Real estate tycoons gather to back Cuomo over Mamdani

• The sirens are blaring for some of New York’s wealthiest. On Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m., a group of real estate tycoons gathered to meet Andrew Cuomo in Midtown’s Seagram Building and help him defeat Mamdani.

• An email about the emergency meeting came Monday night from Jeff and Lisa Blau, a powerful couple in real estate and investment who have donated generously in the city, including to Jewish groups.

• “Sorry for the late notice, but there is no more time for delay, discussion, or dithering — we must act decisively to ensure that the next mayor of New York is Andrew Cuomo,” said the email seen by The New York Times.

• Lisa Blau is the executive director of Be Counted NYC, which has been calling on New York Republicans and non-affiliated voters to switch their party registrations to allow them to have an impact through primary elections.

• The invitation was signed by other influential Jewish developers and philanthropists including Aby Rosen, who co-owns the Seagram Building, and Laurie M. Tisch, a billionaire who is also the NYPD commissioner’s aunt.

🚔 Can Mamdani win over the police?

• Mamdani has been quietly seeking to win over the police through several meetings in recent weeks, despite skepticism from much of the force, according to The New York Times. And he has said he is open to keeping NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who hails from a prominent Jewish family, if he is elected.

• But that doesn’t mean Tisch is ready to fall in line with Mamdani’s views. In a meeting with the Citizens Budget Commission yesterday, Tisch blamed bail reforms — which Mamdani has supported — for New York City’s crime spike in 2020.

• “In my opinion, crime went up as a result of the drastic changes being made in our criminal justice laws in New York State, not as a result of the pandemic,” said Tisch, according to Politico.

• Later in the day, Mamdani pushed back at a separate public safety forum hosted by Columbia Journalism School and Vital City. “My opinion is one that looks at that spike in crime across the country over the course of the pandemic and sees similar spikes regardless of what any of those one states pursued with regard to criminal legal reform,” he said.

• Still, Mamdani is striking a diplomatic tone and distancing himself from his previous calls to “defund the police” in 2020.

📊 Numbers to know

• Mamdani’s lead is undeniable in a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College, with 46% of likely voters saying they will vote for him. He was trailed by Andrew Cuomo with 24% of the vote, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with 15% and Mayor Eric Adams with 9%.

• The poll of 1,284 likely New York City voters was conducted from Sept. 2-6. It has an error margin of 3.6%.

🎙️ Gillibrand holds the line

• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is holding firm to her criticism of Democrats who condone the pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada.” At a meeting with Jewish leaders in Borough Park, a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn, Gillibrand said the phrase was equivalent to saying “end Israel” and “destroy Jews.”

• Her stance offered an implicit rebuke of Mamdani, who has declined to condemn the phrase despite repeatedly saying he would “discourage” it.

• Though Gillibrand did not name Mamdani, she said, “I’m going to make sure that my Democratic colleagues — who sometimes, in my opinion, don’t use the right words or aren’t sensitive to the impact of those words — I will use my expertise to give them this perspective.”

🐝 Social media buzz

• Mamdani has parodied the wealthy panicking about his potential mayoralty with a viral video featuring a dispatch by The New York Times, “How are the very rich feeling about New York’s next mayor?”.

• A dramatic reading of the text was performed by “The Gilded Age” star Morgan Spector, whose father is Jewish.

• Spector’s grandmother was an actress in the Yiddish Theatre of New York. In a 2014 interview with Playbill, he said, “I would love to go back and see her do Shakespeare in Yiddish.”

• The video raised eyebrows among some eagle-eyed Jewish viewers who said they saw a painting of an Orthodox Jew in the art portrayed as representing the very rich.

A round of layoffs at the University of Oregon that Judaic studies professors had feared would affect their program appears to have spared them entirely.

No tenured or tenure-track faculty or degree programs will be affected as part of the latest round of budget cuts intended to address a $29 million deficit, university administrators announced late Monday. Around 20 unspecified “career faculty” positions will be eliminated, and vacant positions will be left unfilled, but the stated cuts would leave positions including the school’s tenure-track chair in Holocaust studies unchanged.

Requests for comment to the university and to senior Judaic Studies faculty were not immediately returned. The school’s provost told KLCC, the local NPR station, that the school had “prioritized the university’s academic mission and student success,” while the head of the faculty union credited their advocacy for staving off the worst of the cuts.

The news comes after weeks of dire warnings from the school’s faculty, during which they had rallied around what they said were concrete threats to Judaic studies and Holocaust studies and to tenured positions more generally. Their concerns come amid budget cuts at several universities amid pressure on higher education from the Trump administration, which has yanked funding from some schools under the stated goal of fighting antisemitism.

Leaders of the national Association of Jewish Studies; the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network; and dozens of Jewish studies scholars from around the globe had joined a full-court press to preserve Jewish studies. One letter to the school’s president and provost from the latter group stated bluntly, “Why don’t UO’s administrative leaders want UO students to learn about Jews?” 

But Jordan Schnitzer, a Portland-area Jewish philanthropist whose family endowed the Judaic Studies department at Oregon and who recently gave the school another $25 million donation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency before the cuts were announced that he believed the faculty would be safe.

The frenzy at Oregon comes amid particular pressure for Jewish studies, as some universities striking deals with the Trump administration to restore funding have committed to supporting the field. Some Jewish studies faculty remain wary at the perception that the field is getting special protection from an administration that claims to be fighting antisemitism.

“The Trump administration’s ‘deals’ turn Jewish studies into the court Jew of old,” a trio of established scholars in the field wrote in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed. “Left unchecked, this spells disaster for the field. By stoking resentment and deflecting criticism from those with power, these deals cultivate conditions that, historically, produced vitriolic forms of antisemitism.” 

Israel has struck at Hamas targets inside Qatar, in a dramatic escalation of its efforts to kill leaders of the terror group it is battling in Gaza.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who this week warned Hamas to accept a ceasefire offer or face consequences, reportedly gave the Israeli military the green light for the strikes, which took aim at a U.S. ally that is home to a major U.S. military base.

Israeli sources said they believed they had killed their targets, but Hamas said its leaders had survived the strikes, which rocked the Qatari capital Tuesday afternoon.

Qatar has until now played a prominent role in brokering unsuccessful ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

It is also home to many of Hamas’ political leaders, whom Israeli officials said after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that they intend to hunt down regardless of their location. The strikes Tuesday took aim at a residential compound that Reuters said was known to be the home of some of the leaders and has been under Qatari guard during the current Israel-Hamas war.

Among those targeted in the attack was Hamas’ chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya, who met with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Doha on Monday, according to CNN. Other Hamas leaders known to be living in Qatar include Khaled Mashal — who helmed the political division before Ismail Haniyeh, whom Israel assassinated last year — and Zaher Jabarin, the group’s top finance official

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel had acted alone. “Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation,” the office said. “Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.”

The strikes add Qatar to the list of countries where Israel has conducted operations since Oct. 7. It has conducted a ground war, airstrikes and a strategic operation in Lebanon, which houses Hezbollah; bombed targets in Iran, where it assassinated Haniyah; struck Hezbollah targets inside Syria; and has bombed the Houthis in Yemen, who have sent dozens of missiles toward Israel.

The Israeli military acknowledged Tuesday’s strikes in a statement that did not explicitly name Qatar. “The IDF and ISA conducted a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Israeli military wrote in a post on X. “The IDF and ISA will continue to operate with determination in order to defeat the Hamas terrorist organization responsible for the October 7 massacre.”

Qatar condemned the strikes, which a Foreign Ministry spokesman tweeted writing on X that they had targeted a “residential headquarters.”

“While the State of Qatar strongly condemns this attack, it affirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and the continuous tampering with the region’s security, nor any action targeting its security and sovereignty,” wrote the spokesman, Majed al-Ansari.

CHIȘINĂU, Moldova — For most of her life, Peruvian-born Yvette Merzbacher wondered where her four paternal great-grandparents were buried. All she knew was that her grandparents came from Bessarabia, and that her grandmother, Liza Bronstein, had emigrated to Lima, Peru, in 1932 with her two older sons, following her husband, Yoil, who had moved there five years earlier.

Researching the Peruvian National Archives in 2010 led to the family’s place of origin: Edineț — a town in what is now northern Moldova. It had been known as Yedinitz in the Yiddish of the Jews who once lived there, and now are present only in its cemetery.

Merzbacher’s curiosity led her to establish LivingStones, a Swiss-based nonprofit that’s leading efforts to preserve Jewish burial grounds throughout Moldova and protect them from antisemitic vandalism — including the one in Edineț.

“In July 2021, I started a project to photograph every surviving tombstone in that cemetery, and two years later, I found it,” said Merzbacher, 61, said of the final resting place of her great-grandmother Rachel Koifman, who died in 1921. “For me, recovering a piece of my family was breathtaking. When I finally put a stone on her grave, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

For the past five years, LivingStones has also offered informal Jewish education through its project Likrat Moldova. This project trains teenagers to fight antisemitism and dispel stereotypes when speaking about Jews in high schools throughout Moldova.

Such programs are badly needed, said Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association.

According to a 2024 poll of nearly 1,000 Moldovans published by EJA and the Brussels-based Action and Protection League, 48% of respondents said they didn’t like Jews, with 13% saying they “really dislike” them.

“Despite the government’s efforts, deep-rooted antisemitism persists in Moldova,” Margolin said recently. “It will take much more than the adoption of IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definitions and changes in the legal code to affect existing antisemitic attitudes in the country. The change in school classrooms is an urgent matter, and it if doesn’t happen, the next generation will perpetuate and carry the virus of antisemitism with them.”

Indeed, when it comes to antisemitism, the former Soviet republic of Moldova has a dismal track record.

Its capital city, Kishinev — now called Chișinău — is synonymous with a 1903 pogrom sparked by blood libel that killed 49 Jews, injured over 600 and sparked mass emigration from the Russian Empire to North America, changing the course of modern Jewish history.

During the Holocaust, about 60,000 Jews were killed in the region of Bessarabia, which includes parts of Ukraine and Moldova. Even today, politicians routinely downplay the Shoah and glorify Nazi collaborators, while cemeteries are often desecrated — most recently on the night of June 3, when vandals spray-painted swastikas on 37 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Chișinău.

“The escalation in the Middle East is accompanied by a wave of antisemitic incidents across Europe, underscoring the urgent need for increased vigilance to protect Jewish communities on the continent,” Moldovan Chief Rabbi Pinchas Zaltzman said in a statement referring to Israel’s war in Gaza and its conflict with Iran. “Unfortunately, Moldova is not immune to this trend.”

Yet Israel-Moldova ties are friendly, and this past April — 30 years after establishing bilateral relations — Israel finally inaugurated an embassy in Chișinău.

In late July, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, whose paternal grandfather was born in Moldova, visited the country and met with top government and Jewish officials. Among the items on their agenda: commemorating victims of the Kishinev Ghetto and arranging for the passage of haredi Orthodox Jews traveling to Uman — a holy site in neighboring Ukraine — via Moldova ahead of Rosh Hashanah.

“We don’t have embassies everywhere, but we decided to open one here because Israel has very strong links and a longstanding friendship with Moldova,” Ambassador Yoram Elron said in an interview from his temporary office in a downtown shopping mall.

Elron presented his credentials to President Maia Sandu on Friday, making his presence in the country official. “There’s a vested interest on both sides to cultivate relations, a confluence of interests — political, economic, strategic and cultural — and of course the Jewish community serves as a human bridge between our two countries,” he said.

That community, which numbered 98,000 at its peak in 1970, had already fallen to about 65,000 by the time the USSR collapsed in 1991 and Moldova declared its independence. Today, the country — one of Europe’s poorest — is home to some 5,000 Jews, or between 10,000 and 12,000 as defined by the more lenient standards of Israel’s right of return.

Aliona Grossu heads the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova, known as JCRM. She said about a third of Moldova’s Jews live in Chișinău, with smaller communities in Bălți, Orhei, Soroca, Bender, Tiraspol, Grigoriopol, Dubăsari and Rîbnița.

At the moment, Moldova’s biggest concern is the ongoing war between neighboring Ukraine and much bigger Russia — a conflict that’s been raging since February 2022. For Moldova, one immediate consequence was the sudden arrival of 800,000 to 1 million refugees, about 100,000 of whom have opted to stay here permanently.

“This has affected us directly. From all points of view — energy, inflation, security — life here has become very tough,” Grossu said, estimating that since the war, JCRM has assisted more than 15,000 refugees.

“We don’t discriminate or ask about their religion, but probably half of them are Jewish,” she said. “In the beginning, it was more about rescuing them and offering emergency humanitarian assistance like food, shelter and medication. Now it’s evolved into relocation and repatriation to Israel for those who want, and to other countries.”

Mark Dovev, head of the Israeli government authority Nativ’s office in Ukraine, said that since the fighting began two and a half years ago, he and his Chișinău-based counterpart, Marina Anukov, have helped thousands of Ukrainian and Russian Jews make aliyah via Moldova.

“Our office has operated for 30 years here in Moldova,” he said. “Before the embassy opened, we were the only Israeli government office in the country.”

Israel today is home to roughly 75,000 Moldovan-born Jews including lawmaker and former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Also of Moldovan origin: Tel Aviv’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, and Shmuel Cohen, composer of the Israeli national anthem “Hatikvah.”

In November 2024, Moldova’s Western-leaning president, Maia Sandu, won reelection and vowed to pursue membership in the 27-member European Union. Even so, pro-EU and anti-EU factions continue to divide the vulnerable country, which shares a 759-mile border with Ukraine. Its future could be decided by parliamentary elections set for later this month.

Complicating the situation is Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova squeezed between the Dniester River to the west and Ukraine to the east. Some 465,000 people, including 2,000 Jews, live there — most of them in Tiraspol, capital of this self-proclaimed entity heavily influenced by Moscow.

“There was a fear that Russia would try to invade Moldova. I think that [with Sandu’s reelection] this train of thought has calmed down,” said Israel’s Elron, noting that parts of missiles fired by Russian forces have occasionally fallen inside Moldovan territory. “That’s why it’s so important for Moldova to join the EU.”

Meanwhile, Moldova’s Jews are aging, with many people leaving and few babies being born. The country currently has two functioning Jewish schools and seven synagogues: four in Chișinău — Agudat Israel, Bet Yosef, Chabad-Lubavitch and Lemnaria — and one each in Orhei, Tiraspol and Soroca.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, active in Moldova since 1921, says it is “delivering lifesaving aid” in the form of food, medicine and homecare programs to more than 2,000 seniors and over 200 children and families through Hesed social service centers.

“Many Moldovan Jews were thrown into poverty with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And today, with rising inflation and meager pensions, a significant portion of Moldova’s Jews struggle to survive on as little as $2 a day,” according to a JDC fact sheet. In 2024, more than 1,400 volunteers participated in JDC-sponsored programs in Chișinău, Balti and Tiraspol.

Other ongoing JDC programs in Moldova include Active Jewish Teens — a youth initiative that spans 63 cities across the former Soviet Union — and JoinTech, an effort that alleviates loneliness by connecting elderly and isolated Jews to family, friends and the community via specially designed smartphones. Since its launch, JoinTech now reaches more than 1,000 clients in Chișinău, Beltsy, Tiraspol and Rîbnița.

In recent years, Moldova has become a popular destination for foreign Jewish travelers seeking their Bessarabian roots. They come not only from Israel and Western Europe but also from the United States, Canada and even Latin America. Many, like Merzbacher, have family ties to the territory: At the time of the 1903 pogrom, 46% of the 110,000 inhabitants of Chișinău were Jews.

Since 2017, Merzbacher’s LivingStones has installed three Holocaust memorials in villages across northern Moldova, including one in Zaicani, the hamlet where her grandfather Yoil was born. In addition — after recovering information that had long receded from public view — it erected a plaque on an obelisk erected by Jews as a memorial in the 1950s that had been abandoned in the middle of a field. All include QR codes for self-learning and guiding.

Over a four-year period, she and her team in the United States and Israel mapped and digitized all surviving 2,872 graves at the Jewish cemetery in Edineț. The graves had already been photographed in 2021 and translated from Hebrew and Yiddish into English in 2023; the idea is to help descendants in the United States, Israel, Switzerland and elsewhere find lost relatives.

This past January, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the group sponsored and inaugurated a new memorial in Cupcini, along with a local charity, Nemurire, to honor Moldova’s 79 “Righteous Among the Nations,” or non-Jews who sought to protect their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.

“This monument is a testament to the power of standing up for what is right, and to honor their memory and carry forward their legacy of kindness and courage,” Merzbacher said.

Grosso said that while Jews and Israelis are not being threatened in the streets of Chișinău — as has become the case since Oct. 7 in some other European countries — a more insidious type of antisemitism seems to simmer just below the surface.

“We are mostly concerned with the lack of proper investigation of antisemitic incidents, Holocaust denial or distortion or glorification of Nazi perpetrators,” she said. “Unfortunately, these cases — even the ones we’re monitoring — never make it to the court.”

The latest incident involves a 12th-grade history textbook recently approved by Moldova’s Ministry of Education. Grossu said it minimizes and distorts the role of Romania’s Antonescu regime during the Holocaust.

“The textbook conceals or distorts fundamental historical facts regarding the genocide of Jews and Roma; portrays in a positive light the dictatorial and criminal regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu and replaces a critical analysis of this regime with an apologetic, dangerous approach, incompatible with democratic values and human rights education,” JCRM said in a statement.

The community called upon Education Minister Dan Perciun to immediately withdraw the book from use until it’s fully revised, and to initiate a public debate with participation from historians, educators, Holocaust survivors and civil society.

“In the absence of these measures, we reserve the right to challenge the ministry’s decision in court,” Grosso said. “We cannot educate future generations in the spirit of truth and tolerance if attempts are made to falsify the past.”