Sasha Vasilyuk was surprised to be named a finalist for the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, wondering if the judges were going to honor an author whose “last name isn’t Jewish, and whose main character avoided being Jewish.”

Nevertheless, her debut novel, “Your Presence Is Mandatory,” won the $100,000 prize for a story inspired by her father’s father, a Jewish soldier in the Red Army who was captured by the Nazis during World War II. Under the Soviets, being taken prisoner was treated not as a tragedy but as a betrayal. Because POWs bore the stigma of treason, her grandfather never spoke to the family about spending much of the war as a forced laborer.

He also hid his Jewishness from his often antisemitic comrades and, for obvious reasons, from his German captors.

Although she didn’t intend “Your Presence Is Mandatory” as a “Jewish” book, it has found an audience among Jewish readers — many of whom have approached Vasilyuk to share their own families’ buried histories. 

“I think it’s important to be able to talk about those Jews, the non-Jewish Jews, whose story is just as valid as those who did get to eat challah and have menorahs and celebrate and really participate in it, because they could,” Vasilyuk said in an interview. 

Vasilyuk was looking forward to accepting the award in July at a ceremony in Jerusalem at the National Library of Israel, a co-sponsor of the prize; the ceremony was postponed after Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities and threw the region into further turmoil.

Instead she will receive the prize at a private ceremony in New York on Sept. 3; on Sept. 8, she’ll take part in an in-person and online discussion of the book with two former Rohr prize winners, Atlantic staff writer Gal Beckerman and the journalist and literary detective Benjamin Balint. The New York Jewish Week event will take place at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan.

“As Jewish communities worldwide face renewed threats and dangerous distortions, it is especially meaningful to recognize writers who confront these challenges with honesty, depth and imagination,” said George Rohr, in announcing the prize named after his father, a developer, philanthropist and book lover whose family fled Germany when Sami was a boy.

When Vasilyuk set out to write the novel, she wasn’t only piecing together the fragments of a family story. She was giving voice to a little-known chapter of Jewish and Soviet history — one that still reverberates 80 years later.

Through the grandfather figure, called Yefim in the novel, Vasilyuk explores secrecy, survival and the costs of silence. Growing up she was told that her grandfather, a retired geologist, had fought for the war’s duration and “made it all the way to Berlin” in 1945. She drew on a letter, discovered by his widow after he died, in which he confessed to the KGB that he spent much of the war as a forced laborer; she filled in the rest with research and survivor testimonies.

“These were real people,” she said. “Even if I fictionalized Yefim, I wanted the book to honor their reality.”

Vasilyuk’s debut novel, “Your Presence Is Mandatory,” is the 2025 winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Those real people include as many as a half million Jews who served in the Red Army, according to Yad Vashem; between 80,000 and 85,000 Jewish Red Army soldiers ended up in German POW camps, and fewer than 5 percent returned home. “It was incredibly difficult to find records about Jewish POWs,” Vasilyuk, who has an M.A. in jour­nal­ism from New York Uni­ver­si­ty and whose nonfiction work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and other outlets. “It was a group neither the Germans nor the Soviets wanted to acknowledge.”

The Soviet narrative cast prisoners of war as weak links, shirkers who sat out the fighting. Western audiences, by contrast, often see POWs through the lens of honor and sacrifice — like John McCain, who was lionized for his resilience during his years in captivity. Vasilyuk wanted her novel to speak to both worlds. For Soviet-born readers, the shame is instantly recognizable. For Western readers, the story is a revelation.

“Jews had this deeper dilemma, because they were stuck between two totalitarian regimes, neither of which had a fondness for them,” she said. While many Jews found refuge in the Soviet Union during the war (“A lot of my friends are alive today because of that,” she said), the postwar years were marked by an intense peri­od of anti­semitism under Stalin.

“There’s a huge tragedy in that,” said Vasilyuk. “I grew up in a place that tells you from the moment you’re born, through children’s songs and poems, that you live in this place of brotherhood, where all of these nations are united in their common belief and cause.”

Born in Ukraine and raised between there and Moscow until she was 13, Vasilyuk absorbed her family’s Jewishness in fragments. Her father was given a Ukrainian surname for his safety; the family’s Jewish name disappeared. Although her father’s non-Jewish mother worked at a Jewish relief organization after the war, her grandfather — whom she would would visit on family trips to Ukraine — never celebrated holidays nor spoke openly about his ethnic identity.

It was Vasilyuk’s own mother, born Jewish, who brought Jewishness into her childhood: taking her to a Purim party when they lived in Moscow and sending her to Jewish summer camps before and after the family emigrated to Northern California. In San Francisco, Vasilyuk started a magazine for Russian-speaking immigrant teens, sponsored by the local Jewish family and children’s service, and first visited Israel when she was 16.

Still, an absence lingered. “I couldn’t help but wonder how my own identity would have been different if I had carried my grandfather’s Jewish last name,” she said.

Growing up in Ukraine and Russia, Sasha Vasilyuk knew her grandfather as a World War II vet­er­an and a retired geol­ogist. Only later would she learn about his real experiences in the war. (Courtesy Sasha Vasilyuk)

For Vasilyuk, the complicated legacy of what the Soviets called the “Great Patriotic War” informs the current war in Ukraine, launched by an authoritarian Russian president intent on restoring lost Soviet glory. She finished her manuscript in February 2022, just before the Russian invasion. “By erasing memory, by silencing people for generations, you end up with a historical hole that can easily be filled by politicians such as Putin and weaponized for a new conflict,” she said.

In writing the book, she worried most about how Soviet-born readers might receive it. “I thought they might tell me I got everything wrong. Instead, they’ve told me it made them ask questions they never dared to before,” she said.

At 42, with two children and a life straddling Ukraine, Russia and the United States, Vasilyuk is already at work on her next project — a novel about the post-Soviet immigrant experience. This time, she says, she wants to step away from World War II and examine how identity, nationalism and memory continue to collide today.

For Vasilyuk, writing is both reclamation and contribution. “Maybe telling my grandfather’s story,” she mused, “is my way of giving something back to the Jewish community, and of reclaiming my own heritage.”

A couple in a suburb of Atlanta are facing consequences after being accused of yelling antisemitic slurs at the father of an Israeli soldier who was killed in 2023.

Mark Bouzyk has been fired after he and his wife were taped lobbing insults at David Lubin, the father of Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin, a lone soldier who was stabbed to death by a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Jerusalem on Nov. 6, 2023.

Lubin  told Atlanta News First that the incident began earlier this month as he was distributing stickers honoring his daughter’s memory.

“When I heard her say, your daughter deserved to die and called me a kike, that’s when I walked across the street,” he said.

In a video of the confrontation posted on X by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism, Anna Bouzyk, can be heard telling Lubin that his daughter went to Israel “to kill.”

“You are calling yourself a kike, you know what you are. You know what you are better than me,” Bouzyk can be heard saying alongside her husband, Mark, who periodically joined in the altercation.

“You are a corrupt politician with a daughter in the IDF that went there to kill, and she was killed maybe by friendly fire because the Israeli soldiers they kill each other all the time, and you know very well,” continued Bouzyk.

Bouzyk later confirmed to Atlanta News First that she had called Lubin the derogatory term prior to the filmed confrontation, telling the outlet, “I don’t regret what I said, and I’ll it say a million times again.”

She blamed Lubin — who ran unsuccessfully for Georgia State Senate in 2024, aiming to unseat a politician who did not sign onto an antisemitism bill — for the interaction.

“He started calling me a Jew hater. He started calling me names, so I called him a kike,” Bouzyk told the outlet. “He was provoking me. He was putting his phone in my face. He didn’t have the right to do that, because I went to talk to him about vandalizing.”

Lubin told the outlet that he heard in Bouzyk “that same hate that happened during the Holocaust towards Jews.” He is also considering involving the police, according to the outlet.

Tensions between the neighbors in Dunwoody, Georgia, had been building since last year, when Anna and Mark Bouzyk allegedly posted pro-Palestinian signs in their front yard. On one sign posted this month that read “Stop Funding War Criminals,” the word “kikes” was written 24 times.

Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch condemned the signs in a post on Facebook last week, writing that they were “deeply disturbing and offensive.” She later updated the post thanking a local resident for convincing the homeowners to remove the signs.

Mark Bouzyk has since been fired from his job as the co-founder and chief scientific officer at AllaiHealth, an AI-driven patient medical history platform, the company announced on Thursday.

“We are deeply disturbed and disheartened by the video circulating involving Dr Mark Bouzyk,” CEO Robert Boisjoli said in the statement. “The behavior displayed in that footage is reprehensible, completely inconsistent with our values, and has no place in our organization or society.”

The incident joins another recent attack on the family of an American who moved to Israel to join its army. In St. Louis, a hate crime inquiry was opened by local police after three cars were set ablaze and “Death to the IDF” was written outside of the home of a family whose son recently completed two years serving in the IDF.

As a rabbi with a love of fashion, Loehmann’s — the iconic off-price retailer — has always held a special place in my heart. That’s why my Jewish self was giddy upon hearing of its pop-up reopening in Deer Park, just five minutes from my hometown on Long Island.

After rearranging my schedule to be there on opening day, I shlepped out to Long Island on a Friday (never a great idea!) and made it there within an hour of the store’s grand reopening. On a breezy summer morning, the step-and-repeat was out, the fluorescent lights were blazing, and salespeople were scurrying to get those 50%-off signs just right.

I placed my black handbag on the floor to peruse a rack of animal-print jackets, when an older woman gave me the unmistakable Bubbe stare and muttered, “You shouldn’t do that.” I was home.

Loehmann’s, which closed in 2014, was never just about bargains. It was about the chorus of unsolicited advice, with the communal dressing room as its sanctuary. Under the merciless glare of fluorescent lights, grandmothers, mothers, and strangers alike weighed in on your outfit options — whether you asked or not. You could always count on someone’s Bubbe in the corner telling you that skirt was too short, that shade was too harsh, and that you could do better.

From a young age, shopping there with my mother and grandmothers (Bubbe and Grandma), I can still recall the smell of that fitting room: part new clothes, part mildew, and part Bubbe’s perfume. It was also an introduction to aging. No sag was left unseen. Long before Facebook fed me wrinkle-serum ads, Loehmann’s gave me a front-row seat to the realities of gravity.

Many women found that pursuing Loehmann’s bargains and trying on designer outfits at a more reasonable price was the ideal American experience. It embodied the promise of the Goldene Medina — the Yiddish phrase describing a golden land where the streets were paved with gold (this was, of course, before the age of “quiet luxury”).

For me, Loehmann’s wasn’t only cultural — it was spiritual. One of my last major purchases at Loehmann’s was a kittel — the traditional white cloak worn on the High Holidays. The racks didn’t contain an official kittel but that white Romeo & Juliet couture jacket was practically begging to be one. (I even went back to buy a second one just in case something happened at the dry cleaner!). Each year I stand on the bimah leading prayers, literally clothed in Loehmann’s. In that dressing room, faith and fashion became stitched together.

Last week, when I heard about the reopening, I couldn’t resist asking on Instagram whether it should, in fact, count as a Jewish holiday. The comments section exploded and thousands of memories poured in. Women recalled shopping with their mothers, their grandmothers, their best bargains, and the outfits that launched their careers.

My playful question quickly became something bigger: a collective discourse on Loehmann’s. The whole thing felt quite Talmudic. Just as the rabbis once asked, “Mai Hanukkah? What is Hanukkah?” at the start of a sugya (Talmudic passage) — and answered not with a simple definition but with layers of debate and memory — so too did my post spark ritual and nostalgic conversation.

Many comments were joyful, even liturgical. One person declared, “This is a blow-the-shofar kind of day,” while another called it “holy and sacred.” Others insisted it should absolutely count as a Jewish holiday — maybe even a national one.

But the dressing-room memories dominated. People swapped recollections of the “murky odor” and the treasures they unearthed inside, along with the unsolicited opinions that always came with them. Some admitted they were “still traumatized” by the fitting rooms, while others laughed about the secrets revealed there — like the mom who discovered her daughter’s belly ring under those fluorescent lights. One woman even confessed that she once got so stuck in a dress that the saleslady had to cut her out with scissors.

Still other stories were tender, even profound. A woman remembered every single bat mitzvah dress she bought at Loehmann’s. Another recounted dashing in with her toddler in a stroller, finding a $55 suit for a second interview, and landing the job that made her the first female lawyer in her firm after twenty-five years. Someone else shared that her last shopping trip with her mother, before she went into hospice, was to Loehmann’s — a memory she still treasures. Several described the line of dutiful fathers camped out at the store’s entrance, waiting with the other men while wives and daughters scoured the racks.

Loehmann’s, it turns out, was always more than bargains — it was a gathering ground for humor, unsolicited wisdom, identity, and cultural belonging.

I would be remiss not to report on my purchases. In truth, I walked out empty-handed — though I did linger over a pair of sparkly platform sneakers. Even at 50% off, however, justifying a $975 Back Room price tag would take nothing short of divine intervention.

Still, my return to Loehmann’s was a true Shehechiyanu moment, fluorescent lights and all. The communal dressing room — may its memory be a blessing — has not returned, but in its place stood drapey grey portable stalls bunched together, hopefully ready to spark a new chorus of criticism, advice and communal camaraderie.

A large Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn is requiring parents to prove they are registered to vote before the new school year begins — in an unprecedented policy that comes as a democratic socialist and critic of Israel leads New York City’s mayoral race.

In a brief letter to families this week, Magen David Yeshivah, a flagship institution of the city’s Syrian Jewish community, framed the requirement as a way to strengthen civic engagement and safeguard communal interests.

“We trust that our parent body understands that this policy stems from and reflects our school’s commitment to ensuring that our community plays an active role in shaping the policies that affect us all every day,” the letter said. “Registering to vote is a small but critical step toward protecting the future of our yeshivot and our broader community.”

School officials did not respond to questions from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about how the policy will be enforced or why it was introduced now.

But the move appears to be a response to the prospect of an election victory by frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist with pro-Palestinian views, who is feared and opposed by right-wing and Orthodox Jews in the city.

Magen David Yeshivah is located in the Gravesend section of South Brooklyn, a hub of New York City’s Sephardic Jewish community. The area largely voted for Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election; among those registered as Democrats who voted in June’s mayoral primary, the vast majority cast ballots for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a bid as an independent but lagging behind Mamdani. (The incumbent, Eric Adams, did not run in the primary but is running in November, as is a Republican, Curtis Sliwa.)

One of the figures behind the school’s new policy is local politician Joey Cohen-Saban. Cohen-Saban, who has been exhorting New Yorkers to oppose Mamdani, is a Democratic party official in Brooklyn and chief of staff to State Sen. Sam Sutton who narrowly lost a recent bid for Assembly in a district that includes Gravesend. He didn’t follow through after offering to give an interview.

The principal of the elementary school at Magen David Yeshivah, Ezra Cohen-Saban, is among 50 rabbis in the Syrian Jewish community who recently signed a declaration attaching existential stakes to the mayoral election.

“This appears to be part of an organizing effort to ensure that the Jewish community votes in large numbers this November, especially in light of the perceived threats of having Zohran Mamdani as mayor,” said Jeffrey M. Wice, a professor at New York Law School who specializes in election law.

Wice said that acting through private schools is a “smart move” for Orthodox voter turnout efforts, calling it “a new and unique concept.”

Federal and state laws bar anyone from coercing others to vote, and public schools likely cannot condition enrollment on voter registration, but private schools have the freedom to set such a requirement, according to legal experts.

“This may or may not be a good idea, but there is no legal issue here,” said Samuel Issacharoff, a professor of constitutional law at New York University. “The state could not coerce them in this way but private organizations such as private schools can do what they wish.”

Magen David Yeshivah’s freedom to enact its policy is not absolute. It cannot condition enrollment on parents’ choice of political party, steer their votes toward particular candidates or penalize them for refusing to vote.

“They have to be careful but if it is done in an entirely objective, fair, non-discriminatory manner, I think the school can withstand any kind of a legal challenge should one occur,” Wice said.

The New York State Board of Elections said it could not weigh in.

“New York State Election Law does not speak directly to this specific issue,” spokesperson Kathleen McGrath said in an email. “We have not heard of this situation or policy, so we would not comment further. An interested party could certainly seek a formal/advisory opinion from Board Counsel if more guidance is desired.”

The stakes in the mayoral race are unusually high for New York’s Jewish community. City Hall exerts enormous influence over issues central to Jewish life, from yeshiva regulation and funding for private school security to the city’s approach to policing hate crimes and navigating tensions over Israel and Gaza that play out on local streets.

For Orthodox Jews in particular, whose schools and institutions often depend on city partnerships, the outcome could shape daily life in tangible ways. At the same time, many non-Orthodox Jews see the election as a chance to advance progressive priorities on housing, immigration and policing.

The sharpest fault line, however, runs through Mamdani’s outspoken criticism of Israel and embrace of the boycott movement, which have led many Jewish leaders and activists to accuse him of antisemitism — a charge he rejects.

Magen David Yeshivah’s policy lands amid a flurry of Jewish get-out-the-vote efforts in New York, including the Jewish Voters Action Network’s peer-to-peer registration push, Jewish Voters Unite’s canvassing across Jewish neighborhoods, the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition voter-information and reminders, and the progressive Jews for Racial & Economic Justice’s “The Jewish Vote” pledge and voter guide.

UJA-Federation of New York, the city’s Jewish federation, says it has observed renewed interest in local activism and is supporting dozens of groups in get-out-the-vote initiatives in the city. Its voter registration and mobilization work has an “emphasis on hard-to-reach communities such as Russian, young adults, Haredi and Sephardic,” a spokeswoman told JTA this week.

Maury Litwack, the CEO of Jewish Voters Unite, said in a statement that Magen David Yeshivah’s approach reflected the moment’s pressing needs. Though officially nonpartisan, Litwack’s group is widely seen as part of the effort to curb Mamdani’s rise.

“The Jewish community across the country is waking up to the importance of voting, and we’re going to see more creative approaches to registration and turnout until we reach 100% participation,” Litwack said. “Elected officials who have taken the Jewish vote for granted can no longer afford to do so.”

Reactions on the Jewish right were mixed: Shabbos Kestenbaum, an activist who sued Harvard University over antisemitism, urged other institutions to adopt the policy, while Elliot Resnick, a former Jewish Press editor pardoned by Trump for his role at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, argued that schools should not “play parent to parents.” Stephanie Neta Benshimol, a Trump supporter and pro-Israel advocate, said she was against “using children as pawns,” though she emphasized that in her home, all who could vote would.

Leaders of the Sephardic-Syrian Jewish community are presenting voting not as a civic choice but as a religious imperative. In a sweeping new declaration, signed by more than 50 rabbis from New York and New Jersey including Ezra Cohen-Saban and two teachers at Magen David Yeshivah, they describe registering to vote as a Jewish legal and moral responsibility on par with prayer, charity and Jewish education.

“This is not optional. It is a mitzvah,” the statement says, warning that the upcoming elections will shape Jewish identity, safety, and institutions for years to come.

Like Magen David Yeshivah’s new enrollment policy, the rabbis’ letter does not mention any candidate by name. Instead, it frames the upcoming election in broad terms — a “turning point” for the community.

Other leaders, however, are speaking more directly. In a fiery sermon posted to Instagram, Rabbi Shlomo Farhi urged congregants to abandon what he characterized as a culture of apathy around voting, dismissing excuses such as the fear that voter registration would lead to jury duty or the increased likelihood of tax audits.

“We should be embarrassed of the fact that there is an antisemite who hates Israel,” Farhi said. “You have the chance to stop it, and if you did nothing because of some selfish reason, I don’t care what it is, shame on you.”

Jackie Hajdenberg and Joseph Strauss contributed reporting.

This story has been updated since publication to remove a portion of a statement from Jewish Voters Unite that was sent in error.

The head of the militant pro-Israel group Betar USA will be permitted to attend this fall’s World Zionist Congress as a delegate, months after the congress had barred him from the position over his “aggressive, hateful tone and vulgarity.”

An appeals tribunal within the congress ruled Thursday in favor of Ronn Torossian, the combative public-relations executive who encourages Betar’s followers to engage in street actions — against not only anti-Zionists, but also other Zionists who disagree with the group’s tactics and approach to advocacy. 

“The AZM Tribunal reverses … the preclusion of Mr. Torossian from serving as a delegate on the ZOA Coalition slate,” the unanimous decision reads, according to a copy provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Torossian. 

The document’s authenticity was confirmed to JTA by a member of the ruling tribunal, who declined to comment further. Two tribunal members recused themselves.

The case hinged on Torossian’s conduct during a months-long feud between himself and Shai Davidai, a Columbia University professor and pro-Israel activist who had campaigned on behalf of a rival slate. In its ruling the tribunal said that Torossian’s private correspondence with Davidai, while “inappropriate,” should not count against his ability to attend the congress. 

Public statements that Torossian and Betar USA had made against Kol Israel, the opposing slate, were also not grounds for removal because, the tribunal said, they had focused on the issues.

The ruling means Torossian can attend the 39th World Zionist Congress meeting in late October and speak on behalf of his slate, the right-wing ZOA Coalition, as the congress debates how to allocate $5 billion in Israeli government funds. 

The ruling also tamps down on what had been growing pushback to Betar USA’s rhetoric and tactics from within the pro-Israel movement, where stridently Zionist voices have joined more liberal ones, alongside the Anti-Defamation League, in calling the operation extreme and unhelpful to Jews. Earlier this year the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group, had security remove Torossian from one of their meetings after attendees said he barged in uninvited as a means of challenging the ADL.

Betar presents itself as a new incarnation of the early Revisionist Zionist militia of the same name led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and claims to have sent the Trump administration lists of pro-Palestinian protesters to be deported.

Torossian told JTA he was “pleased with this decision” and vowed to attend the congress — something he had previously said he would do even if the initial ban was upheld. 

“We will not be silenced. Betar and Jabotinsky’s followers will arrive with the ZOA at the Congress organized and ready to defend revisionist traditional Zionism from those who seek to subvert it—from radical activists to so-called ‘Tikkun Olam’ Reform voices who distort Zionism for progressive agendas,” Torossian wrote in an email. “These same circles have empowered anti-Israel figures like Zohran Mamdani and normalized woke antisemitism across the West.”

He added that he would continue to pursue charges against his opponents in a different venue: a local beit din, or rabbinical court.

Israeli professor Shai Davidai outside of Columbia University, April 22, 2024. (Luke Tress)

Davidai did not immediately respond to a JTA request for comment on the ruling. In a statement to JTA, Kol Israel said it was “disappointed by the Tribunal’s decision, which fails to reflect the spirit of the election rules.”

Accusing Torossian of targeting candidates “with bullying and blackmail,” the statement continues, “There is no excuse for the shameful smears and threats directed at us. Such harmful behavior should carry serious consequences, but has now been given a free pass by the Tribunal.”

The slate adds, “At a time when Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are facing horrific antisemitic attacks, those who sow division within our community damage their own credibility and empower our enemies.”

The ZOA Coalition that includes Betar received 3.6% of votes cast in the United States during this spring’s elections, according to the American Zionist Movement’s latest “preliminary” results, and will have a proportionate number of delegates at the congress. The election was marred by several allegations of voter fraud among other parties; some, mostly Orthodox-aligned slates have been found guilty of fraud and have been banned from the congress.

In its new ruling, the tribunal acknowledged that Torossian had engaged in “inappropriate or even threatening” spats with Davidai. But, the judges ruled, private communications should not be held to the same standards as campaigning or public commentary. (JTA has viewed many private WhatsApp exchanges between the two men, in which they slung frequent personal attacks at each other.)

The tribunal also found nothing wrong with a selection of four public comments made by Torossian or Betar USA that it reviewed, because it said those statements were attacking Davidai as an individual, rather than Kol Israel. Davidai voluntarily stepped down as a Kol Israel delegate in February.

“Moreover, although the tone and substance of some of the comments were vulgar and not civil, many of these tended to focus on issues and not on a particular slate,” the verdict reads.

Actions and images from Betar US and its allies since its formation in 2024 include (from top-left, clockwise): a button associated with the original Beitar group; messages on a truck driven outside Washington, D.C., during a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu; a masked Betar member planning to disrupt a pro-Palestinian protest; a brass-knuckle menorah shared on Betar social media; Betar former executive director Ross Glick knocking on Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s office in Capitol Hill; Betar member Jakob Schanzer spraying over a pro-Palestinian mural in New Orleans; and singer Matisyahu endorsing Betar. (Collage by 70 Faces Media)

Betar USA is active on social media, where it frequently posts incendiary pro-Israel comments and memes. In the past these have included remarks like “We demand blood in Gaza,” video of men hurling abusive language at mosques, and demands for the Israeli government to bar left-wing Jews from entering the country. 

Its posts seem to be gaining influence: In May, a federal judge overseeing a campus protester’s deportation case ruled that the case “seems to have been almost exclusively triggered by Betar Worldwide.”

While a growing number of Jewish voices — including Davidai — have criticized Israel’s conduct in Gaza, Betar has instead egged them on. On Wednesday the group’s X account posted, in Hebrew, “If you will it there is no Gaza!” — a meme riffing on the famous remark by Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, accompanied by an apparently AI-generated image of Herzl in an IDF uniform overseeing destruction in Gaza. (In a reply, Betar said the post was intended “to share the normal Israeli perspective.”)

Betar USA has not been shy about publicly going after the Kol Israel slate, either, calling its members “lying hypocrites” in a May post. In a July post the group urged all its rival’s delegates to resign while Torossian fought the congress ruling.

The World Zionist Congress tribunal stated that it “should not be viewed as condoning any of the communications, or Mr. Torossian’s choice of language or any of Mr. Torossian’s conduct.” It also urged the organization to find new ways to discourage conduct similar to Torossian’s in the future.

The Zionist Organization of America, a right-wing group whose namesake coalition includes Betar USA, also celebrated the ruling in a statement to JTA. In their remarks, both ZOA and Torossian said their central issue with Davidai was not personal but policy-related: namely, an essay Davidai penned last year in which he said he would “refrain from buying products manufactured beyond the 1967 armistice line,” a stance ZOA disagrees with.

“Criticizing the positions of a member of another slate is allowed under the election rules,” ZOA director Mort Klein wrote in a statement.

Torossian has long maintained that his group’s full-throated encouragement of bloodshed in Gaza, and backing of far-right Israeli ministers, is more in line with mainstream Zionism than other American Jewish groups. Even as he gloated over the tribunal’s ruling, he framed the intra-Jewish debate over Israel in a way that many others would likely agree with.

“There is a major disconnect between the American Jewish community—particularly its liberal, Ashkenazi segments—and the political realities in Israel,” he wrote.