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I.J. Singer is part of Italy’s Yiddish moment

JTA
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I.J. Singer is part of Italy’s Yiddish moment

By Simone Somekh

In September, 1932, Israel Joshua Singer boarded a ship bound for New York, where he had been invited to report on the US for Yiddish-speaking Jews like himself.

“Americans are a difficult people to understand,” the famed novelist wrote in one of his first articles from the US. “They have tried at all costs to be, in every aspect, the opposite of Europeans.”

In a series of articles commissioned by Abraham Cahan, the editor of the Yiddish Forverts, Singer sought to help his readers understand this mirror world. On the eve of the Nazis’ rise in Europe, he marveled at the landscapes, the Jewish strivers and dreamers and the Christians who lent a sympathetic ear to the challenges facing Jews back home.

Nearly a century later, Singer’s astonished first encounters with America have appeared together in translation for the first time — not in English, but in Italian. Viaggi in America (Travels in America), published by the historic Italian Jewish publishing house Giuntina and translated from Yiddish by Enrico Benella, brings together I. J. Singer’s witty American dispatches for the Forverts.

The articles follow Singer from New York’s Jewish heart on the Lower East Side to Coney Island, the Catskill Mountains, the Warner Bros. studios in Hollywood and a General Motors factory in Michigan, among many other stops.

Singer returned to Poland after his visit and moved permanently to the US with his family in 1934, but he continued to observe the country with the distance of a European Jewish outsider.

Most of the pieces in the new volume have never been translated, including into English.

‘Yiddish is alive and well’

The collection arrives amid an Italian revival of Singer and Yiddish literature in general, enabled by newly accessible digital archives, a new generation of translators and readers increasingly interested in Yiddish culture.

“Yiddish is alive and well — even in Italy,” said Shulim Vogelmann, the book’s publisher.

“Books like The Family Carnovsky succeed [in Italy because] they are books written in blood,” said Anna Linda Callow, who translated that Singer novel into Italian. Yiddish literature, she explained, emerged from a society being “violently confronted with modernity, the collapse of empires and profound historical questions.”

Born in Poland in 1893, I. J. Singer was the elder brother of the future Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. (Their sister Ester Kreytman also became a novelist and short story writer.)

Within the Yiddish-speaking literary world, I. J. was once the better-known of the Singer brothers, but his work has long been eclipsed by Isaac Bashevis’.

When the Italian publisher Adelphi published the first Italian edition of his masterpiece The Family Carnovsky in 2013, the book became a major success, selling more than 120,000 copies.

That was a watershed moment for Yiddish literature — and for I. J. Singer’s popularity — in Italy.

Before “Carnovsky,” Italian publishers had brought out a handful of Yiddish literary works, many of which were translated through English rather than directly from Yiddish.

Since the success of “Carnovsky,” over 50 new editions of Yiddish books have appeared in Italy, from authors including Kreytman, Sholem Aleichem and Chaim Grade.

‘Anything Jewish was to be excluded’

Yiddish began reaching Italian audiences in the late 1980s, when director Mara Cantoni and performer Moni Ovadia staged a Yiddish-themed production at one of Milan’s most established theaters. Their work helped popularize Yiddish culture in the years that followed. (Ovadia later became a Jewish anti-Zionist public figures.)

But Miriam Camerini, an Italian artist and theater director who specializes in Yiddish culture, said presenting Yiddish material live has become more difficult during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Speaking to JTA from Yiddish Summer Weimar, a festival in Germany that draws Yiddishists from around the world, she said theaters and cultural institutions increasingly told her it was “not the right time” for Jewish programming — even though her work focuses on diasporic and non-Zionist traditions.

“The fact that my work dealt with the history of the Bund,” Camerini said, referring to the Jewish socialist movement founded in the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century, “did not lead people to say, ‘How interesting — let’s listen to Jews with different, non-Zionist ideas.’ No: anything Jewish was to be excluded.”

The Yiddish publishing boom can trace its roots in part to a practical matter: The copyrights for Singer’s work expired in Europe in 2015.

While Elisabetta Zevi, an executive and Jewish literature editor at Adelphi, insisted on publishing “Carnovsky” just a couple of years before the copyrights expired, the financial barrier has been lifted for new titles.

Adelphi’s status as one of Italy’s most prestigious publishers also gave Singer a visibility in the country that earlier editions lacked and primed the pump for further interest.

“It was a masterful publishing coup,” Callow said, who recently began teaching a Yiddish course at the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in Ferrara.

Another factor in the Yiddish boomlet was the emergence of new translators able to work directly from the language, a tiny but significant trend helped along by technology and the commitment of a passionate few.

“There are no university-level Yiddish courses in Italy, so you either have to go abroad to study or learn on your own,” said Enrico Benella, the translator of the new collection, in an interview.

“It is therefore hardly surprising that so many major authors have been left behind.”

Within the narrow circle of Yiddish translators in Italy, Benella is an outlier — first and foremost, because he is not Jewish and did not start his career as a translator or a scholar of Jewish literature. Born near Padua in 1979, he only began learning Yiddish a few years ago, driven by a desire to read I. J. Singer’s work in the original.

Benella began studying through the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages, which offers free online courses on 18 Jewish vernacular languages, including various Judeo-Arabic dialects, Ladino and Judeo-Italian. He began reading and practicing translating Singer’s work.

Digital access, also made possible by US donors and research institutions, created another opening. Large collections of Yiddish books, magazines, and daily newspapers are now available online, including almost a century of the Forverts.

The Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library at the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts includes more than 11,000 Yiddish titles.

YIVO, the Yiddish research center in New York, is digitizing its prewar library and archival collections.

“Yiddish literature will soon become the first modern literature to be completely digitalized,” Benella said.

‘His distance gives him a different perspective’

Singer, who arrived speaking very little English, often looked beyond the stories and places familiar to Yiddish readers, and instead reported from Harlem and Chinatown, compared poverty in New York with poverty in Warsaw, and explored American commerce, culture, and religion.

“There is America to be described, there are American Jews, and then there is Singer, who is neither an American Jew nor an American,” Benella said.

“Precisely for that reason, he has an additional point of view. His distance gives him a different perspective on an America that American Jews may be seeing from too close up.”

“You could define ‘Travels in America’ as the encounter between the Jews of Eastern Europe and true modernity in the United States.”

Singer encountered that modernity on his initial voyage. He marveled when the ship’s Christian passengers packed into a talk by a rabbi on the just-completed First Preparatory World Jewish Conference in Switzerland, Hitlerism and anti-Semitism.

“The large hall immediately filled with crowds of Christians,” Singer wrote. “They sat there listening . . . and applauded the speaker enthusiastically. It came as a surprise to me. Such a thing is completely incomprehensible to a Jew . . . and with what interest those genuine Americans listened to a Jewish man speak about Jewish problems!”

The dispatches also move from travelogue to comedy to political witness.

One of the collection’s most notable pieces recounts a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden — an article that Italian reviewers have highlighted in a country with its own fascist past and wartime alliance with Nazi Germany.

“Whenever Jews were mentioned, the crowd roared like bloodthirsty beasts,” Singer wrote. “That hall reeked of a medieval hatred and bloodlust directed against everything honorable, just and humane.”

Singer’s journalism and fiction cannot be neatly separated. He reported what he saw, but he also turned the people he met into characters.

Benella described Singer’s humor as understated. “It never makes you burst out laughing; it’s closer to a form of analysis, a kind of sly teasing that shows you reality and laughs at it — but not in order to diminish it or belittle it.”

Singer’s ‘honest sense of uncertainty’

Norich, who has studied and translated Singer for decades, edited a recent three-volume English-language collection of his work for the Israeli publisher Koren. (The collection does not include the American dispatches.)

“I think readers are responding to something that’s going on now in our own world,” Norich said. “Anti-Semitism and the condition of Jews in Europe are an ongoing theme of his.”

Readers are responding to Singer’s “honest sense of uncertainty,” she said, about “all of these panaceas, all of these cures, all of these convictions that don’t listen to one another.”

His work repeatedly returns to “Jewish arguments, political and religious messianism, and the fractiousness of communal life. As Singer put it, ‘I have the diagnosis, but not the cure.’”

Nearly a century after Singer used his European perspective to interpret America for Yiddish-speaking immigrants, the Italian translation adds another layer of distance: American Jewish life returns to contemporary readers through Yiddish and Italian.

“The sign of a great writer is that he’s steeped in his own world but speaks to other worlds and other times,” Norich said.

Is the Jewish soul ever imprisoned?

Hillel Goldberg
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Is the Jewish soul ever imprisoned?

Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the esteemed Ponovitcher rov, was asked why Jewish law states that one must leave a cemetery by a different route than the way one came. He responded, “Can any thinking person leave a cemetery the same as when he came?”

Who approaches Rosh Hashanah without profound concern for health or livelihood or relationships or peace, or without profound sadness over events in the past year? Rosh Hashanah is both a hopeful day and a heavy day. Depending on how things have gone this past year, the balance shifts for each person. Still, since no one can predict or control the future, the heaviness of the day weighs on every thinking Jew. The Creator is in charge.

Are we to conclude, then, that hope on Rosh Hashanah is a mirage, that the soul of the Jew is imprisoned?

I received an answer to that question back in the 1970s when I sat at the table of the late chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Bezalel Zolti. He offered a penetrating insight into the second “Admonition,” the frightening passage in this week’s Torah portion, “Ki Tavo.”

By far, the most frightening segments in the entire Hebrew Bible are the two “Admonitions,” one in Leviticus and one (as this week) in Deuteronomy.

Each Admonition is a very long list of dreadful punishments and sufferings that will befall the nation of Israel if it diverges from the ways of G-d.

One cannot listen to the sufferings laid out in either Admonition and not think of the sufferings of the Holocaust.

One has to listen hard even to hear the Admonition, since the verses are traditionally read in a low voice, hardly audible. Yes, the Admonition is in the Torah, and it must be read out loud on Shabbos morning, but it need not be emphasized. When we lived in Boston and the Admonition was read on Shabbos morning, the Bostoner Rebbe, upon the conclusion of the reading, recited a special blessing for the Torah reader (ba’al koreh), lest he bear an additional risk for having been the one to enable the community to discharge its obligation to hear that week’s Torah portion.

There is a fundamental difference between the two Admonitions.

The first, long list of the nation’s failing and punishments — the first Admonition — concludes on an upbeat note. The second Admonition does not.

The verse immediately preceding the conclusion of the first Admonition refers to the Israelite nation’s “treachery,” “betrayal” and “unfeeling heart.” Then, without transition, the next verse reads:

“I will remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac; and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember, and the Land [of Israel] will I remember” [the promised land that is now desolate, the nation having gone into exile]. . . . despite all this . . . I will not annul My covenant . . . for I am the L-rd their G-d” (Lev. 26:42-45).

More words of reassurance follow.

A nation is punished.

But not obliterated.

A nation is chastised.

But not all is lost.

If a nation fails drastically and dramatically, the Divine covenant stands. There is a future. There is hope.

No such reassurance concludes the second Admonition, the one we read this Shabbos in the Torah portion of “Ki Tavo.”

The words immediately preceding the conclusion of the second Admonition have the nation of Israel, in its exile, going back to Egypt. Things are so bad that the exiles beg the Egyptians to re-enslave them — to buy them — because the alternative is death. The estate of the exiles has fallen so low that even slavery looms as salvation. Then, the passage concludes, “there is no buyer.” No one wants the Jewish exiles even as slaves. There is no buyer. No hope. Only death awaits them.

As I say, one cannot read these passages and not think of the Holocaust. Or of the Chmielnicki massacres in Poland. Or of the massive violence against the Jews of Spain prior to their expulsion. Or of the Roman conquest of Israel 1,956 years ago, when, it is estimated, one million Jews were killed.

Rabbi Zolti offered an alternative reading of the conclusion of the second Admonition. The concluding two-word Hebrew phrase — “there is no buyer” (ein koneh) can just as well connote, Rabbi Zolti said, “there is no acquisition” (ein kinyan). The Jew can fall so low that his body can be enslaved, or killed, or punished, or made to suffer, but there is no acquisition of the soul of the Jew. A Jew’s body can be abused in the extreme — nobody wants it — but his soul remains his own.

Is this merely a nice thought, a hermeneutical twist, or is it rooted in Jewish tradition? Rabbi Zolti commented: Say that a Jew is imprisoned. He still has an obligation to pray. The daily prayers include this blessing, “Bless are You, L-rd our G-d, Who releases the imprisoned.” Rabbi Zolti asked: Should a Jew behind bars recite this blessing? Would it be a lie? Would it be taking the L-rd’s name in vain? After all, this Jew is imprisoned.

Said Rabbi Zolti: Jewish law rules that an imprisoned Jew does recite this blessing, daily. It is only the Jew’s body that is imprisoned, not his soul. The Jewish soul can never be imprisoned. The philosophic idea — no one else can fully acquire a Jew — finds its substantiation in the traditional, halachic, legal realm.

When I heard Rabbi Zolti say this, I thought of Yosef Mendelevitch, the Russian Jewish refusenik whose “crime” was wanting to emigrate from the USSR to Israel. For that he was sentenced to 11 years in Soviet forced labor camps and prisons. His autobiography (published decades later) details how he prayed in prison and defied the Soviet authorities, demanding for himself and for fellow Jewish prisoners the right to live Jewishly in many other ways, such as the right to own a Hebrew dictionary and to study Hebrew.

Long before Mendelevitch was released, news of his dedication to Judaism reached the outside world. Blessed are You . . . Who releases the imprisoned: Rabbi Zolti made it clear, Yosef Mendelevitch made it real. His soul was not imprisoned.

Any thinking Jew approaches Rosh Hashanah with his or her own package of worries, sufferings or uncertainties, but these do not imprison the Jew. The Jew’s soul is free. Free to stand before the L-rd, to listen to the shofar, to recite the prayers — yes, with trepidation. Also with hope. The Jewish soul is free, never imprisoned, not before man, not before G-d.

© IJN 2026

Holocaust across the generations — Cantor Zachary Kutner and Ami Gelman

IJN Staff
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Holocaust across the generations — Cantor Zachary Kutner and Ami Gelman

In 2023, for its 110th Anniversary Magazine, the IJN paired four teen interviewers with four Holocaust survivors for “Holocaust Across the Generations.” Ami Gelman, then in 9th grade at Denver Academy of Torah, interviewed Cantor Zachary Kutner. The project was conceived and stewarded by IJN Assistant Publisher Shana Goldberg. It is published online following the death of Cantor Kutner this week.

Before meeting Cantor Zachary Kutner, I thought I already knew a lot about him from reading his memoir and had a general idea of what he went through. Shortly into my interview with him, however, I realized that I was wrong. He had much more to say than what he wrote in his memoir, and his story and experiences are much more heroic, brave and inspiring than I could ever have imagined.

Meeting him in person was a huge part of this. His personality can only be described as positive, and even at 97 he walked up and down the stairs to get to the Intermountain Jewish News headquarters. His personality inspired me and gave me hope that people can go through the darkest of times and go on to live a fulfilling and spiritual life.

Cantor Kutner was born in Poremba (Poreba in Polish), Poland. He was the youngest of four and had two brothers and a sister. Poremba was a steel and agricultural hub in southern Poland. Cantor Kutner enjoyed growing up there. During our interview, he told me in his signature Yiddish accent, “The town was a beautiful town. We had a grocery store, and across the street, across the highway, was a lake, a mile long with all kinds of fish. And I used to love it.”

There were 15 Jewish families in the town and no rabbi, although a rabbi did come from a neighboring larger town every now and then.

Some of Cantor Kutner’s fondest memories from his childhood in Poremba are of his father davening at the shul in town. He told me with a smile that his “father was a baal koreh [Torah reader] and a chazzan [cantor]. He knew the Torah by heart.”

Later in his life, Cantor Kutner followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming the cantor at many shuls in Denver, including at BMH for 25 years as well as earlier at the (now defunct) Ostrover synagogue on the West Side.

In 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, Cantor Kutner was turning 15. The Germans took his father and thousands of others from the town as retribution for a German soldier who was killed by a Polish boy. Cantor Kutner says that he never saw his father again. After this, Cantor Kutner, like many other Jews in Poland at the time, was rounded up by the Nazis. He was sent to several camps, including the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau, which became the most recognizable concentration and extermination camp from the Holocaust.

While in Auschwitz, Cantor Kutner was subjected multiple times to the camp’s barbaric selection process, where Nazi officers, including Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” would decide which prisoners were fit for work and which were not. Those who were not fit would be sent to the gas chambers or otherwise executed.

Cantor Kutner made it through the first selection process when he first arrived at Auschwitz, and six subsequent ones which occurred once a month while he was in the camp. According to Cantor Kutner, he survived the selection process and the camps only because of G-d’s will.

After almost five years of being sent from camp to camp, the war began to show signs of ending. Cantor Kutner was in a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp when the Americans began to bomb the area, specifically the city of Landshut.

“They took us to clean up the bombing . . . we went to a bridge.” It was there that Cantor Kutner witnessed an act of kindness that showcased the good in humanity but also the cruelty of the Nazis. “There was a lady walking on a Sunday in a nice dress with her daughter,” he recalled, nearly 78 years later. “The lady took out an apple from her purse and gave it to the little girl. We went on a bridge. She rolled the apple to us. I picked it up, I put it in my pocket.”

This act of kindness blew Cantor Kutner away. “At least there are some people that have a little piece of heart,” he said. However, shortly after, when he returned to the camp after cleaning the bridge, he was caught with the apple, and it was taken away from him.

“He took away the apple,” recalled Cantor Kutner. “Now I say this is barbarism. Hitler doesn’t have to see this. Hitler didn’t know, have to know from this. Let him have a piece of heart to know what we are going through.”

A short time after the apple episode Cantor Kutner was transported from Dachau through the Alps toward Seefeld in Tirol by rail. The prisoners were given one loaf of bread and a sleeping bag. They were told that they should make the bread last for a week. The prisoners were taken to a forest, “near a river and big rocks,” he said, and forced to crawl on all fours.

He and his fellow prisoners were supposed to be shot there. However, the general never came because, allegedly, his wife talked him out of coming, and instead he ran off. The rest of the soldiers, except for one, followed suit.

Reflecting on the one soldier who was left to supervise thousands of prisoners, Cantor Kutner said that the soldier was so close to him that he could have tripped him and then escaped, but “we were so enslaved that we let him do whatever he wanted. We were afraid.”

That soldier led the prisoners to a main road that was near several towns. The townspeople gave the prisoners food, but many of their stomachs could not handle it, and they died.

The next day, Cantor Kutner was liberated by the Americans.

Connection to Judaism

Cantor Kutner shared a story with me about how he put on tefilin [phylacteries] for two days when he was in Auschwitz. It was smuggled to the men’s side of the camp from the women’s side. According to Cantor Kutner, the women’s barracks were right next to the area where the Nazis stored everyone’s suitcases. He told me, with a face full of wonder, “In camp, in Auschwitz, I lay tefilin, two days.”

This story was extremely surprising to me at first. I could not believe that he would risk his life just to put on tefilin, but as our interview together went on I realized that this type of behavior is ingrained into Cantor Kutner’s personality. He is an extremely spiritual man who cares deeply for the Jewish people.

For example, at the end of our interview, I asked Cantor Kutner if he had ever been to Israel and his face immediately lit up. He told me that he had been to Israel at least four times and that his experiences there were “amazing.” He told me that he believes that people do not even fully understand what Israel can do for them.

This perspective makes sense, especially coming from a survivor who lived in a world where there was no place for the Jewish people to escape. Sometimes as a teen, I find it scary to see all of these terrible headlines about issues in Israel, but the fact Israel exists is a miracle. We are used to always having it to fall back on, but Cantor Kutner knows what it is like to live in a world without Israel.

One of the final questions I asked Cantor Kutner was: If he could give one piece of advice to teenagers right now, what would it be? He immediately responded with a stern look on his face, “To pack das Päckli [pack your bags] and go to Israel.”

This is one of the many unique perspectives that Holocaust survivors can give to the world, especially teens. Many teens, including me, sometimes feel apathy toward Israel. It is constantly being discussed, but America has everything we need, right? While that may be true, there is nothing more powerful than also to have a Jewish state.

However, it is up to Jews to ensure that the Jewish state holds up to their moral standards and is doing the right thing. Cantor Kutner knows what it is like when there is no one to stand up for the Jews, but luckily, with Israel’s existence, that does not happen anymore. Jews can be confident that there will always be someone there to support them.

Another example of the depth of Cantor Kutner’s faith: When he was in the camps, during the first selection process, people were separated into two lines. He could easily have switched from the left line to the right line or vice versa, but Cantor Kutner decided to stay in the line that he was sorted into because “this is where G-d put me. This is where I’m staying.”

Cantor Kutner is an amazing man with an incredible story. He highlights the importance of listening to and ensuring that Holocaust survivors’ stories are remembered. His positive mindset and adoration for the State of Israel are astounding and incredibly inspiring to me, especially as a teen.

Meeting anyone in person, but especially a Holocaust survivor, is so different from reading about them or hearing their story from a relative or someone who is familiar with it. Seeing them in the flesh is an entirely different experience, and I think that especially applies to meeting Cantor Kutner.

It is mind blowing to think that Cantor Kutner was almost exactly my age when the Holocaust started and only a little older when it ended. He came to America, to Denver, with nothing, knowing no one, but with the help of others, including Rabbi Manuel Laderman, he set about on a new life.

However, he continued the davening tradition of his father, being a chazzan first at the Ostrover shul and later at BMH. Cantor Kutner’s passion for music has inspired me to try to get better at piano as well. His discipline and determination when moving to America can be applied to how I look at the instrument and will help me grow my musical abilities.

Sitting across from Cantor Kutner was an almost overwhelming experience. I could not believe that I was looking at someone who had been through hell and back yet had come out and built himself a successful life in a new place. He came to America knowing very little English, yet he adapted and built for himself and his family a life. He is the definition of hard work yet is still extremely humble.

Cantor Kutner has taught me that one can get through the darkest of times. At times it can feel like the world is falling apart in front of our very eyes. It is difficult, as a teen, to escape the endless images of natural disasters, war, terrorist attacks and other terrible things. However, Cantor Kutner actually saw his world fall apart in front of him but he persevered and built himself a life in America.

His story has taught me that there is always a way through the dark and, though it may not be easy, it is possible.

© IJN 2023

Jewish musician’s concert canceled over ‘Zionist views’

JNS
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Jewish musician’s concert canceled over ‘Zionist views’

By Aaron Bandler

Jewish musician Mikey Pauker is appealing a federal court ruling that dismissed his discrimination lawsuit after a California retreat center canceled his scheduled Chanukah concert due to his support for Israel.

Pauker’s attorneys filed their opening brief in the appeal with the US. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Aug. 14, arguing that the district court erred in finding that Harbin Hot Springs could not be held liable for responding to discriminatory customer complaints.

Stanford Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic and the National Jewish Advocacy Center are representing Pauker in the appeal. The center announced the appeal on Aug. 21.

Matthew Mainen, litigation counsel at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, said:

“Mikey needs to demonstrate three things: Zionism is part of his Jewish identity, the cancellation campaign against him was anti-Jewish, and businesses cannot cater to such customer bigotry.

“The lower court already agreed with us on the first two but not the last,” he said. “We anticipate the appellate court correcting this error.”

Pauker said that “for many Jews, Zionism is inseparable from our Judaism, ancestry, peoplehood and our religious and historical relationship to the Land of Israel.”

“Discriminating against a Jewish person because of that deeply held relationship should not be dismissed simply by labeling it ‘political,’” he said.

“I hope this case helps establish stronger protections for Jewish Americans and encourages more Jewish musicians, artists and other creatives who experience discrimination to stand up for their rights.”

Pauker sued Heart Consciousness Church, which owns and operates Harbin Hot Springs in Middletown, Calif., in April, 2025, alleging that the cancellation of his 2024 Chanukah concert violated Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California civil rights laws.

According to the appeal, the venue canceled Pauker’s show after community members complained about his “Zionist views” and Harbin said it wanted to avoid “politics and divisiveness” related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At the center of the complaints was a Facebook post Pauker made after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which he shared an image of two Israeli soldiers in a tank with an Israeli flag and the words “I stand with Israel” over the picture.

An anonymous user responded by accusing Pauker of playing “genocide music” and urging others to pressure Harbin to cancel his concert, according to the appeal. The anonymous user later commented on another photograph of Pauker participating in a Jewish ritual, accusing him of playing “terrorist music.”

Harbin canceled the concert the following day and referenced Pauker’s “I stand with Israel” post in its explanation, per the appeal.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed Pauker’s lawsuit in February, ruling, among other things, that he had not sufficiently alleged that Harbin canceled the concert because of his race or religion.

The court also found that Harbin’s initial willingness to host a concert for the Jewish holiday by Pauker weighed against an inference that the venue had discriminated against him.

Pauker’s appeal challenges that reasoning, arguing that under current law “a business cannot cave to discriminatory customer preference” and that because the venue’s rationale included Pauker’s Facebook post, “the alleged animus was not limited to customers but included Harbin directly.”

The brief further alleges that Harbin allowed musicians who were openly anti-Israel to perform, including one whom Pauker says engaged in Holocaust denial and quoted Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, whom the brief describes as one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack.

Regarding the district court’s reasoning that the venue was unlikely to have discriminated against Pauker after initially booking him for a Chanukah show, the appeal states that “the law forbids taking adverse action based on stereotype or distinctions within a protected class.”

“In short, Harbin cannot discriminate against Pauker as a Zionist Jew in concluding that, unlike celebrating Chanukah, embracing Zionism contradicts its subjective vision of an acceptable Jew,” the appeal states.

Dutch woman who saved Jewish baby honored 83 years later

JNS
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Dutch woman who saved Jewish baby honored 83 years later

By Etgar Lefkovits

KIBBUTZ NA’AN, Israel — The personal wartime diary, assiduously written by the young mother, detailed the infant’s early development, from his first smile to his weight and even a curl of his hair.

It was Jacqueline Meents-Lenstra’s first experience of parenthood. Still, the baby whose milestones she so meticulously recorded was, in fact, not her own, even as the diary itself tells the story of her devotion to the child.

It was 1943 in Nazi-occupied Holland, and the Jewish baby boy, Efraim Kochba (born Ernst Bernard van Coevorden), had been entrusted to the Dutch Christian woman and her Jewish husband by a Jewish couple who were neighbors and later perished in the Holocaust.

More than eight decades later, as the baby boy she saved was about to turn 83 in Israel, Meents-Lenstra was recognized by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as Righteous Among the Nations, Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

“It was a closing of the circle for me,” Kochba said last week.

Wartime secret

For months during that fateful year, Meents-Lenstra walked around with a pillow on her stomach, feigning pregnancy so that when Kochba was born, she could check into an Amsterdam hospital with the help of underground activists without arousing the suspicion of her neighbors.

Baby Efraim was handed over to his adoptive mother, while his biological mother was whisked away to a safe house where his father was staying.

The baby would never see his biological mother again or ever meet his father, as both Martha van Coevorden and Ziegfried Fritz were later caught and died in the Holocaust.

“I always call that moment the eternal farewell,” Kochba recounted in the interview.

His adoptive father, Max, was himself arrested and taken to a transit camp but managed to escape and reunite with his wife and the baby.

The three survived the remainder of the war in hiding.

Legal battle and new life in Israel

After the war ended, Kochba’s uncle, who had been outside Holland, returned to Amsterdam and sought custody of the two-year-old boy.

A legal battle followed, since the adoptive parents, who did not have children of their own, said that his biological parents had given them to understand that they could keep him if they did not return.

A court ruling in their favor was overturned on appeal after Kochba’s adoptive mother suddenly fell ill and died of cancer at 32.

“If that had not happened, I would surely have stayed in Holland and been Dutch,” Efraim Kochba said.

He was brought to Israel by his uncle and aunt, who raised him with their children on a communal farm in central Israel, where he lives today.

“Until the age of 13, I called them mother and father because I did not know the story,” Kochba said.

Reunion and a mission to honor

After completing his military service and learning of his past, Kochba traveled to the Netherlands, determined to meet his adoptive father.

“It was not a simple meeting,” he said. “It was charged at times. He had lost first his wife and then me.”

It was during that 1965 meeting that his adoptive father gave Kochba the diary that his adoptive mother had kept.

“I was so moved because I felt that I had something from that time because as a two-year-old I did not remember anything,” he said.

Kochba, who went on to have four sons of his own, maintained contact with his adoptive father, who subsequently visited him in Israel over the years until his death.

The sprightly octogenarian survivor never forgot his adoptive mother, who had died all those years ago, and was determined to have her honored by Israel’s Holocaust memorial for her heroism, even posthumously.

Earlier this month, Kochba was notified by email that his adoptive mother had posthumously received the recognition from Yad Vashem, where an independent public commission headed by a former Supreme Court justice decides who qualifies for the distinction.

Her name will now be engraved in the Garden of the Righteous at the Jerusalem hilltop memorial.

“We are on a tireless mission to award these unique individuals who did not conform to the laws and norms of the time and instead rescued Jews at their own peril,” said Joel Zisenwine, director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem. “Even over 80 years later, we see this as our mission.”

More than 28,000 people from 51 countries have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, with the Netherlands having the second-largest number of honorees.

Now Kochba is determined to track down his adoptive mother’s descendants so he can give them the certificate.

“It is theirs,” he said. “I owe it to them.”

A different song this summer

Karen Galatz
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A different song this summer

Remember the days when we bought 7” vinyl 45 RPM records with the Side A and the flip Side B songs? And do you remember when summer came, we had a beloved song that defined our carefree days?

Well, this summer, I have a distinct playlist, and it indeed has a Side A and flip Side B song, but unfortunately, it is hardly sunny and carefree.

The Side A tune seemed promising enough for a summer tune. Upbeat.

“Everything’s going to be all right.”

Yet, then again, somehow, it was slightly off. A little too breathy, wistful and desperate. I wanted to embrace it, but I just couldn’t.

Oh, but that Side B song was worse, way worse. The lyrics were harsh, off-kilter, unmusical. A song you definitely didn’t want to hear or sing along to.

“If you’re going to have breast cancer, this is the best kind to have.”

My husband started singing the “Everything’s going to be all right” song right after the first mammogram showed an anomaly. He repeated it after the second diagnostic mammogram confirmed “there’s something there,” and in the days and sleepless nights while we waited for that biopsy report. Then, he held me tight, whispering it after we heard that awful word, “cancer,” for the first time, and in the days and months since then, he’s repeated, “Everything’s going to be all right” on autoplay non-stop.

A couple of our doctor friends immediately started serenading me with the “best kind of cancer” tune, but it sounds false and off-key. They hadn’t seen the test scans, and they acknowledged that more tests were needed. Still, in their efforts to console, they quoted survival rates of 90% for this “best kind of cancer.” But each time they did that, I pictured the 10 women who didn’t survive.

Still, for all my fear then and now, I am sublimely fortunate. Thanks to annual exams, a thorough mammography technician, and an attentive radiologist, the cancer was detected early. It was Stage 1, slow-growing and a bunch of other “best kind of cancer” medical terms. Thanks to excellent health insurance and an army of skilled, compassionate doctors, nurses, technicians and administrative staff, I’m receiving great care.

I had a lumpectomy in June and a second surgery 10 days later to remove a bit more tissue because one of the “margins” showed some wayward cancer cells — my non-technical explanation!

My surgeon got it all, and she and the medical oncologist are confident I will be fine.

Later this month, I start a short course of radiation therapy, and then it’s on to five years of medication. It’s a lot, physically and emotionally, but again, I’m going to be fine.

“Everything’s going to be all right.”

Yes, my lovingly lovely husband, who, while he doesn’t have perfect pitch, doggedly keeps crooning that Side B ditty. And I must admit it’s catchy. In fact, sometime along the way, I’ve taken to singing it back to him. You see, amid all the constant, tender hand-holding and moral support he was providing, the man was scared and exhausted, too. He needed the words as much as I did.

As for you, cancer, listen up. Next summer, I plan on singing a new, healthier tune, maybe . . . “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

A few closing notes:

If you or someone close to you has breast cancer, I recommend: The Breast Advice by Dr. Elisa Port. Dr. Port is the chief of breast surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. In her book, Dr. Port explains all the frightening, complicated issues related to breast cancer in simple terms. She’s brilliant, skilled and kind. Also, lucky me, she’s my doctor.

Three personal patient “pro tips”:

First, find a skilled physical therapist to work with. PT can help ease post-surgical pain, break up scar tissue and improve mobility.

Keep moving. Even if you feel rotten, go for walks and, with your doctor’s OK, exercise.

Always take somebody with you to medical appointments. The amount of information doctors throw at you makes you feel like your brain will explode. The minute somebody starts talking about your “survival rate” . . . well, at least for me, that’s the moment my entire thought process shuts down!

Finally, second only to skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the US, accounting for approximately 30% of all new female cancers each year, according to the American Cancer Society. So, please remember to schedule your annual mammogram.

It just might save your life.

Sanctions threatened over E1 expansion

JTA
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Sanctions threatened over E1 expansion

By Tovah Lazaroff

JERUSALEM — The UK threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of Ma’aleh Adumim.

Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a statement on X.

The Israeli government sees the alternative as Palestinian detatching parts of Jerusalem from Israel’s capital city.

Miliband wrote summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Aug. 20 to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Aug. 18, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.

“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote.

Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”

He said that the UK government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of anti-Semitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”

The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the UK, Sa’ar wrote.

Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.

Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the US, with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the UN General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.

The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Aug. 19 and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27.

Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.

The move reverberated globally, with the UK signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.

They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.

Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”

What a life! Cantor Zachary Kutner, 1925-2026

IJN Editorial Staff
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What a life! Cantor Zachary Kutner, 1925-2026

At age 99, he led yizkor with the zest of his youth. He had survived seven selections yet emerged with a contagious joie d’vivre.

What a loss.

What an immeasurable loss.

Zachary Kutner.

Survivor of Auschwitz.

Survivor of seven (!) selections by the accursed Mengele at Auschwitz.

Zachary Kutner.

Centenarian.

Passionate cantor.

Lover of life.

Cantor Kutner loved to daven so much that he did not need a bimah, did not need a crowd, did not need a Shabbos, did not need a holiday, did not need a special event. For him to lead the weekday prayers in a small minyan was just as desirable and brought out the power of his kavvanah, his intention and focus and joy, just the same.

What a loss!

As deeply as so many people deeply feel his loss, as so many shed tears, as so many realize that they will never again hear Cantor Kutner lead the prayers, as so many will never again see his zest for life, evident in his every expression and conversation, evident in the way he woke up each day to embrace the world, we may equally say: What a life!

What a survivor. What a positive person. What a lover of humanity. What a zest. What a davening — not just the words, not just the tunes, but the way his whole body moved rhythmically to the tune. Sometimes even dancing. Often gesturing. Always in joy — a much overused word, but in Cantor Kutner’s case, the only word, the perfect word, to describe the feeling he put into his davening.

And do not dare! Do not say that Cantor Kutner was too old to lead the prayers! He led always led the yizkor at BMH-BJ even after he retired. When he did so the year before last on Shavuot, it was as if 30 years had peeled away. When he was 99 years old —the years peeled away. One was listening to the Cantor Kutner of 40 years prior. The power of his voice came not only from his voice but from his kavvanah — his intention; and both, the voice and the kavvanah, emerged in full strength at age 99. What a life!

And what playfulness. Cantor Kutner prayed to G-d and represented the congregation in this sacred task. He could also be playful. Just one example: When he was honored years ago at an EDOS dinner and a well known musicians was invited to provide the entertainment, how surprised that performer was when the guest of honor arose from his seat, put his body to the rhythm, began to dance and joined the official performer, buoyed him, magnified him, stunned him —suddenly, a duo.

Duo. This is a living metaphor for much of Cantor Kutner’s life. He was happily married twice, first to Frieda, a faithful and fellow survivor who bore their children and who predeceased him. Cantor Kutner was broken. But he came back. He married Trude Kutner.

He paired his cantorial commitment with a commercial enterprise. He survived by the work of his hands, driving hundreds of miles to sell his wares even into his late eighties (or for all we know, into his nineties).

He was a cantor and he was a teacher — not in the classroom, but a teacher by example. He was a role model for love of humanity and joie d’vivre.

He was a Polish Jew, East European through and through; he was a native Yiddish speaker. Equally, he was an American, fluent in the language and the idiom, and comfortable in the culture.

He was a victim of the Holocaust, and he spoke without self-pity. He was s disseminator of knowledge of the Holocaust. He told his story to whomever wished to hear it, including teenagers.

Perhaps, the emotions and the experiences, the faith and the flair, the physical disruptions and spiritual continuities of Cantor Kutner’s life came to their most profound expression in his recitation of the Scroll of Lamentations on Tisha b’Av night. Truly, here was a person who lived the destruction, set down by the Prophet Jeremiah in the scroll. Truly, here was a man who could recite and convey this in all its depth. “I am the man! Ani ha-Gever!” Jeremiah cried out. “Iam the man! Ani ha-Gever!” Cantor Kutner cried out. “I am the witness! I am the survivor! I carry this!”

Truly here was a man, by virtue of his freedom to recite the Scroll of Lamentations in a land far from the bloody fields of his birthplace —here was a man who was a living symbol of both the devastation and the rebirth, of the before and the after, of the pain in Jewish history and the unfailing messianic hope of the Jewish people.

Cantor Kutner brought the Scroll of Lamentations with him, so to speak, to each funeral of a Holocaust survivor. He wanted to be the one to recite the memorial prayer, the E-l Male Rachamim, for as many survivors as he could. The daughter of two survivors observed that Cantor Kutner lived very long so that he could pay this final tribute to his fellow survivors in a way that only a cantor who was also a survivor could do. He wanted to be the one at the grave of a person who, like him, had escaped the grave decades earlier. It was he who could bring the right emotion, the real power, the unique feeling.

Not that one had to be a survivor, or even be Jewish, to feel the uniqueness of Cantor Kutner. Years ago, the ADL held its annual Governor’s Holocaust remembrance in a large theater downtown. Gov. Bill Ritter was scheduled to speak after Cantor Kutner’s memorial prayer for the dead. The cantor’s voice and emotion filled the chamber and silenced the chamber. Itwas like the Scroll of Lamentations. When the cantor finished. Gov. Ritter up to speak — and he could not. He had not understood a word of the Hebrew prayer, but he did not need to. He understood the meaning that Cantor Kutner had made viscerally, ineffably, uniquely clear.

What an infinite loss! No less, what a life! What a privilege to have witnessed it. What a privilege to have interacted with it. What images of Cantor Kutner will remain forever etched in individual memories throughout this community, and in the collective memory of this community — and in the collective memory of the Jewish people.

© IJN 2026

Defining anti-Semitism

Shana Goldberg
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Defining anti-Semitism

A hot topic of debate these days is defining anti-Semitism — almost to the point where the definition is discussed more than the actual anti-Semitism. The hearing at Boulder Valley School District earlier this month was a perfect illustration. A large chunk of people spent more time decrying the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the ADL and Israel than they did expressing concern that children were physically harassed and bullied because they were Jewish.

For the record, the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism does not mention Israel, though a number of its accompanying examples do.

The example that is blindingly obvious is this one: “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” When the only permanent agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council is about Israel, the case is pretty much closed.

The typical response to the double standard argument is that it’s a form of whataboutism. As in, “Why are you asking me if I care about Syria/Sudan/Nigeria? It doesn’t change that what Israel is doing is wrong.” Potentially a sound argument. It falls apart when witnessing the mass hysteria of thousands of people becoming violently passionate about a topic and region they know almost nothing about.

Another argument is that “we are funding genocide with our tax dollars” and that has to stop.

Yet no similar protests exist against a different key US ally in the Middle East — Turkey — where until about two weeks ago, its Kurdish minority was personae non grata. Where were protests when Kurds were prevented from speaking their language, eating their cultural foods and forcibly moved? Even after the ceasefire in the mid-2000s, discrimination continued, including until about a year ago, forbidding Kurds from writing their university papers in Kurdish.

Where were protests against apartheid in Turkey? Against the US sending aid to Turkey?

That’s the double standard.

In countries like Syria and Lebanon, Palestinians are not permitted to acquire citizenship. Some even still live in refugee camps, close to 80 years later. It was and is apartheid — but never mentioned by so-called pro-Palestinia activists.

The double standard is real. It does not absolve anyone of bad behavior, but anyone who claims to be intellectually honest must acknowledge it.

Definitions matter.

© IJN 2026

Obituaries: Julian Gelfand, Joel Saslaw

IJN Staff
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Julian Gelfand
Julian Gelfand

Julian Gelfand

Longtime Denver resident Julian Gelfand passed away on June 26, 2026, at the age of 74. A service was held on July 2 at Emanuel Cemetery. Feldman Mortuary made the arrangements.

A native of Calgary, Alberta, Canada and born on June 8, 1952, Mr. Gelfand developed love of the Yiddish language at the I. L. Peretz School. Following high school, Mr. Gelfand earned a bachelor’s degree in archeology from the University of Calgary.

After those studies, Mr. Gelfand began a 40-year career in the North American oil and gas industry, identifying rock samples at exploration well sites in Canada’s high-Arctic.

Mr. Gelfand moved to Denver in the early 1990s. He met Barbary Eddy. The two were volunteers at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Mr. and Mrs. Gelfand were married for more than 30 years until Mr. Gelfand’s passing.

“Julian was kind, compassionate and quick to laugh,” his family said. “He went out of his way to help those in need and donated to many worthy charities.

Survivors are Mr. Gelfand’s wife Barbara Eddy; brothers Shael (Lee Anne), Jan (Cecilia), Stephen and Jeff (Anne Marie); nieces Hilary, Hayley, Luciana and Naomi; and nephew Luis Roberta.

Contributions may be made to Humane Colorado.

Joel Saslaw

Joel David Saslaw died on August 1, 2026. He was 38. A service was held on August 9 at Golden Hill Cemetery. Feldman Mortuary handled the arrangements.

Born on October 13, 1987, in Bakersfield, Calif., Mr. Saslaw earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Sacramento State in 2010, and a master’s in higher education at the University of the Pacific in 2013.

A former member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, Mr. Saslaw mentored young university men through SigEp’s Building Balanced Men program. He became property manager for the University of Kentucky, then property manager for the Illinois, Ohio and Michigan chapters of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority.

While working for the sorority, Mr. Saslaw was stationed in Denver, which became his home. He was often seen umpiring for the South Suburban Recreation District softball leagues, and worked as a timekeeper for the district’s basketball games.

This last spring, Mr. Saslaw decided to return to his history/education roots, taking a substitute position at Excel Academy in Arvada. In a short time he was offered a full-time position teaching 6th and 7th grade history and social studies. His first day was to have been August 4.

“At the time of his death, he was in his happy place — the Colorado Railroad Museum,” his family said, “having just completed a successful run of the 1899 Rio Grand South Narrow Gauge. He was relaxing with his friends there — fellow volunteers — when he experienced a massive heart attack.”

Survivors are Mr. Saslaw’s father Larry and stepmother Jill Egland; and stepsister Amelia Egland. He is also mourned by his partner, Joshua Kappel.

Contributions may be made to the Colorado Railroad Museum.

© IJN 2026

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