#Jewish emigration

[bixiebeet]

The embroidered textiles are called suzanis. They are found in Central Asian and particularly associated with Uzbekistan, which is where Bukhara is located. Suzanis are gorgeous, and Uzbekistan overall is known for its incredible textile production and arts! Ikat print—via fabric dying and weaving and painting—is another staple of Uzbekistan’s design style.

Bukhara has Persian roots and was a prominent center of trade, scholarship, and culture along the historic Silk Road. Even today, Tajik (a language related to Persian) remains a dominant local language, rather than Uzbek (a Turkic language).

Bukharan Jews were part of a larger group of Persian-speaking Jewish communities that also lived in modern day Iran and Afghanistan, as well as other parts of Central Asia. This was distinct from other Soviet Jewish groups in Eastern Europe, who primarily spoke Yiddish in the late 1800s and shifted to Russian in the 1900s.

Bukharan Jews are one of the oldest ethnic-religious groups in Central Asia, and their roots go back hundreds of years. Sadly, they also faced many periods of persecution.

In the 20th Century, the Soviet Union’s policies stressed assimilation and the removal of religious practice. Soviet propaganda painted all the ethnicities within the USSR as living in harmony and being equal, but this was never really the case. Central Asians—who are predominantly non-white, secular Muslims—continue to face discrimination and stereotyping even today. Antisemitism was also ever present during Soviet times, especially during the 1950s-80s.

Despite their rich history and deep roots, Bukharan Jews became more and more isolated. Many emigrated out of Central Asia to find more welcoming spaces. (Overall, Jewish out migration accelerated approaching and after the USSR collapsed in 1991.) A particularly notable community of Bukharan Jews settled in Queens in New York City. If you’re in the area, you should try to find some Uzbek food—like the textiles and art, the food is also incredible.

This was a super brief take! Here are some resources to read more:

In the former house of a wealthy Jewish merchant, Bukhara, Uzbekistan, 19th century.

[son-of-avraham]

It seems, sometimes, like people sometimes almost expect converts/converting people to hate where we come from, and if I'm honest... I think connecting with judaism has made me want to connect with my roots even more.

I'm thinking about starting to learn the languages (some of) my family would have spoken before emigrating to where I live now (german and italian), and, hell, I've learned a lot about xtianity since officially embracing judaism and diving head-long into it.

In my experience, judaism doesn't inherently demand that you forsake everything you were or are. What is asked of you is to embrace judaism. To recognize g-d, to worship g-d, to willingly join the jewish people. That is not the same as demanding you to spit on what led you where you are now. Nothing will change my past, my heritage, and judaism has actually helped me appreciate where I come from. I want to connect with myself, my family, because I embrace judaism.

I don't want to speak to other people's experiences, so just a reminder that this is only my story as a student, as someone who adores judaism and appreciates the experiences that were a one-way ticket right to where I am now.

[jewish-sideblog]

Russia, 1881: We’re gonna kill any Jew that doesn’t flee Russia. We’re restricting Jewish emigration to Europe, but permitting emigration to the Middle East.

Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia, France, and others, 1933-1945: We’re gonna kill every Jew in Europe. Flee to the US or Palestine, or die trying.

The US, 1927-1952: Yeah sorry we’re restricting Jewish immigrants to like. 300 people per country. So good luck getting in. We recommend that Jews go to Palestine instead. Btw we are looking to take in Nazi scientists if you know any

Egypt, 1947-1950: We’re rounding up all our Jews and deporting them to Israel

Iraq, 1951-1952: We’re rounding up all our Jews and deporting them to Israel

Algeria, 1962-1965: We’re pressuring and intimidating Jews in the hopes that they’ll all leave the country and go to Israel

Egypt, 1956: We’re rounding up all our Jews and deporting them to Israel (again)

Egypt and Libya, 1967: We’re rounding up, torturing, and killing all our Jews. The ones that survive can flee to Israel

Poland, 1968: The Jews in our country are already loyal to Israel. They will face dire consequences if they don’t leave our country and go to Israel

Ethiopia, 1974-1985: We’re going to marginalize and eventually try to kill all our Jews, and the only way they can escape is by being airlifted out of the country by Israeli helicopters

The US, 2023: Why can’t the Israeli Jews just go back to where they came from? Don’t they all have dual citizenship or whatever?

[divinum-pacis]

American-Jewish visitors hold Torah scrolls at a synagogue in the old city of Damascus, Feb. 18, 2025. A Syrian-American Jewish family returned for the first time since emigrating from Syria to the United States more than three decades ago, as part of a delegation organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, in the wake of the fall of the government of former President Bashar Assad. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

[halalchampagnesocialist]

There's a good reason why we, as Palestinians, are so reluctant to engage with the "Jews are Indigenous to Israel" argument as some historical fact. Regardless whether it is factual or not, it is certainly not a neutral statement.

This phrase or argument has always been used in tandem with the argument of "Palestinians are just Arabs originating from the peninsula." In practice, it's been used to drive us off our land and displace us in order to make way for Jewish settlers, whether it be in the West Bank or in '48 territories. It is also used as a rebuttal whenever we describe Israel's relationship to Palestinians or Palestinian land as one of settler-colonialism, it is used to deny and dismiss that argument entirely.

Obviously I don't think it is helpful to deny Jewish connection to Palestine or cultural roots there nor do I think it's helpful to pretend that Jews only just started showing up once Zionism took hold. I just don't think we should accept this argument wholesale while Jews can emigrate from anywhere in the world to Israel and become automatic citizens with full rights while Palestinians are actively fighting our displacement still to this very day. Indigenous also does not mean 'native' but describes a specific position with regard to coloniality, and you can't be a settler and Indigenous simultaneously. Saying that also does not mean that all Jews living in Palestine are inherently settlers or non-Indigenous. Words mean things.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Someone asked me why I care about Israel at all.

I thought about it for a bit because I realized I wasn't quite sure.

I knew it wasn't simple tribalism. Maybe it's my neurodivergence, but tribalism doesn't speak to me. I've never really experienced tribal solidarity.

It's not because 80% of Israelis are my co-religionists, because I'm not religious and neither are a lot of Israeli Jews.

It's not because I have a lot of friends and loved ones in Israel because I only know a handful of Israelis.

It's not because I ever plan to make aliyah. I'm way too old to consider it now.

It's not because I admire the extraordinary things Israelis have accomplished, although I do admire that. Lots of countries have accomplished extraordinary things.

It sure isn't because of Israel's government, which I've spent a great deal of time feeling angry at for the last couple decades.

So...why? Why does it matter to me so much?

When I realized the answer, it came all at once in sort of a rush of images and reasoning.

Both sides of my family came to the US around the early 20th century. Like everyone else arriving in the US from Eastern and Central Europe, they emigrated looking for economic opportunity and safety. They were lucky, because they found it.

They (we) were lucky. They got to the US before the US closed its doors to Jews fleeing Europe.

Imagine they hadn't left Europe when they did.

Imagine they'd stayed in the shtetls in the pale of settlement.

If they had, the odds are that none of my family would be alive today.

I know this because we don't have any relatives we know of who survived the Holocaust in Europe. The only family we know of are those who came to the US before the US shut its doors to Jews fleeing Europe. The shtetls we came from now only exist as a handful of records in the Knesset library.

But imagine some of my family members managed to survive the Holocaust and were among those in the displaced persons camps after the second World War. Homeless. Stateless. Penniless.

Know where they and their descendents would be now?

Israel.

Israel is the best possible future that any of my relatives who didn't make it out of Europe in time could have hoped for, and none of them made it there. But a handful of their contemporaries did.

I keep thinking about the way Israel's enemies imagine a cabal of rich Jews plotting to steal from the Arabs of the Levant. I wonder what it would take to get them to understand that nobody went to Israel after WWII because it was incredibly appealing to them for economic opportunity or safety. They went because it's all there was.

Jewish Israelis can accurately be described as all which the remains of the Jewish civilizations of Europe and of the MENA region and a handful of other locations. They're in Israel because there was no other place to go.

To be an antizionist is to rage at them for not dying.

To be an antizionist is to fault them for surviving the genocides and ethnic cleansings and building something extraordinary. For enacting the most successful indigenous reclamation from colonialism in human history.

It's a stupid thing to hate a people for.

And I know, thanks to the genetic bottlenecks of the Jews of central and eastern Europe, that some of them are my distant cousins.

They are what remains of my family which didn't leave Europe in time to avoid being murdered for who they were.

That's why I care about Israelis. If my family had been slightly less fortunate, we either be dead...or we'd be Israelis.

And that's why nothing seems to make me more angry than Jewish antizionists.

Am Yisrael Chai.

[chanaleah]

Today's Israeli claim to self-determination has no sense, since the vast majority of Israeli are Askenazi. They are litteraly mixed! And, have emigrated back to their land after over A THOUSEND YEAR. How can we still take seriously a claim to a land, you, supposevely, have habitated after a thousend? Gheddafi was right. Israel is a Rhodesia who has been succeful to replace the native population with white Europeans. Again, Askenazi are to be considered white Europeans, as they lost all of their middle eastern traits and completely mixed up with Europeans

again y’all let’s use our bestie Google!

the vast majority of Israelis are not Ashkenazi, which again, you would know if you took 5 minutes to do a quote Google search. But that doesn’t matter, because indigenity doesn’t expire.

Again, indigenity doesn’t expire.

The ancestors of today’s Ashkenazim were forced out of our land and prevented from coming back. But they never assimilated, and this can be seen in the food we cooked, songs we sang, and languages we spoke and prayed in.

How long must someone be prevented from returning to their land before they lose their indigenity? Are the Cherokee no longer indigenous to the southeastern US because they’ve been forced out of their land?

Not to mention that Jews maintained a consistent presence in א״י throughout the diaspora despite the constant empires trying to force us out.

Furthermore, while indigenity is not determined by genetics, genetic studies consistently show Ashkenazi Jews as plurally Levantine, and most every other Jewish diaspora group’s DNA is majority Levantine. This is corroborated by pretty much every reliable study of Ashkenazim.

Also, self-determination doesn’t require being an indigenous people. For example, Italians aren’t considered an indigenous people, but they do deserve self determination, and they currently do self determine in Italy. Jews have remained a distinct ethnoreligious group for around 3000 years, so just like any other ethnic group, we have the right to self determination. And our right to self determination doesn’t and shouldn’t alienate the rights to self determination of any other group.

Your blood quantum BS isn’t appreciated here, anon.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Genuine question, what did Stalin think of Zionism?

Stalin as an individual was never a fan of Zionism (or Jewish nationalism in general). For most of his political life, he spoke out against such ethnic and religious chauvinism, for example saying in 1913 in "Marxism and the National Question" on the question of whether or not the Jewish people constitute a nation that it is only religion that connects the disparate Jewish diaspora communities, asking "how can it be seriously maintained that petrified religious rites and fading psychological relics affect the 'destiny' of these Jews more powerfully than the living social, economic and cultural environment that surrounds them?" In addition, in Chapter 6 of the Foundations of Leninism, "On the National Question", Stalin stressed the importance of combating colonialism and promoting the national liberation of colonies as part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle.

Yet it is from this same opposition to chauvinism that led him to condemn at every turn antisemitism and hostility towards the Jewish people. As he stated quite clearly to the Jewish News Agency in 1931, "Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism." In this vein of communistic opposition to antisemitism, upon the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was founded in the Soviet Union in order to coordinate international support from Jewish communities abroad towards the Soviet war effort.

However, Stalin was neither a dictator nor an ideologue. His personal beliefs did not alone shape the policy of the Soviet Union, and he was often pragmatic in his dealings as a national leader. The Soviets, while initially advocating for a secular and multi-ethnic democracy in Palestine, ended up backing the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel as a Jewish state. The Soviet representative at the UN, Andrei Gromyko, explicitly invoked the recent memory of the Holocaust in his defense for the Soviet decision, decades before the West would adopt the same rhetoric in defense of Israel (probably because such rhetoric had been associated with the communists at first.)

That said, I have not been able to find a single quote from Stalin in his own words expressing support for Israel or Zionism. While many sources make the mistake of identifying Soviet policy with Stalin's own thoughts and beliefs, whenever it comes to the question of Soviet support for Israel, it is always other members of the Soviet government who are quoted. I cannot say for certain that Stalin was not in agreement with the Soviet decision to back Israel at the UN, but I cannot say for certain he was, either.

Soviet friendliness towards Israel would not last for long. The Soviets had been convinced, due in no small part to the fervent efforts of Zionist diplomats both during and after the war, that Israel would be a neutral, even Soviet-leaning nation. The reality of the matter quickly asserted itself, as Israel almost immediately sought ties with Western powers upon independence, as well as conducting active propaganda campaigns trying to convince the Jewish citizens of the Eastern Bloc to emigrate. By 1948, the year following Israel's independence, the Soviet Union began efforts to combat Zionism as part of a broader campaign against "cosmopolitanism", or pro-Western and pro-imperialist sentiment. (It should be noted that while the anti-cosmopolitan campaign during this period has often been maligned as "antisemitic" by Western commentators, and while I will not claim there was no excess or intolerance involved, the campaign was not at all targeted towards Jews. Zionism, while widespread, was not a very popular political position among the Jewish members of the Eastern Bloc and the opposition against Zionism came just as much from Jewish communists as it did from non-Jewish communists.)

Relevant reading:

The Soviet Union and the Creation of the State of Israel, Gabriel Gorodetsky (a detailed look into the diplomatic efforts to achieve Soviet support for Israel, primarily from the Zionist perspective)

Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend, Domenico Losurdo (while not focused on Israel, it provides more information on the Soviet perspective on the matter during the chapter addressing claims of Stalin's antisemitism. It does make the mistake of identifying Soviet policy with Stalin's own beliefs, however.)

Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Albert Szymanski (this and the previous book discuss in part the charges of antisemitism relating to the anti-cosmopolitan campaign)

[tigerlilypurr]

Jewish wedding crown

DATE 1850-1925

MATERIALS Silver with gilding, and glass

DIMENSIONS H. 8 in x W. 10 in x D. 10 in, H. 20.3 cm x W. 25.4 cm x D. 25.4 cm

CREDIT LINE Acquisition made possible by the Elizabeth E. Bettelheim Family Foundation

OBJECT NUMBER 2015.69

DEPARTMENT South Asian Art

CLASSIFICATIONS Metal Arts

INSCRIBED "I will raise Jerusalem above my highest joy' in Hebrew

MORE INFORMATION

In some Jewish wedding traditions, brides or grooms wore a crown or diadem. This elaborate one from a Jewish community in India was probably for a groom. It speaks to the different cultural spheres its user belonged to. The Hebrew inscription “I will raise Jerusalem above my highest joy” (Psalm 137, 5–6) was recited by the groom in some traditions. This was meant as a reminder of past suffering—the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians more than 2,500 years ago—even at a moment of great happiness. The design of paired birds and the “tree of life” motif are elements often used to adorn Jewish ritual objects. Here they are localized: the crown recalls the form of an Indian turban, the “tree of life” calls to mind turban ornaments (sarpech), and the birds here are peacocks. Jewish communities have deep roots in India. In recent times many Indian Jews have emigrated to Israel and other parts of the world. It is thought that fewer than 10,000 Jews remain in India.

https://searchcollection.asianart.org/objects/20305/jewish-wedding-crown

[son-of-avraham]

How I feel when I hear people speak german:

[fdelopera]

Yo Goyim! Looks like I'm going to need to give some of you a crash course on what antisemitic language looks like, because I've been seeing entirely too much of it from some of you here on Tumblr.

Now, I think it's time for a Jewish history lesson, because I've been seeing way too many Nazi-related conspiracy theories going around. If you hear contradictions to the basic information that I am about to share (i.e., if you hear someone saying that the Jewish people are "a race that originated in Europe"), it is likely that you are hearing a white supremacist, anti-Jewish conspiracy theory.

So, here's the basics of Jewish history. Jews are indigenous to the Levant have been there for thousands of years. The Levantine people that Jews descended from have been in that area of the Levant since the Bronze Age. Jews as a distinct people have been there since the Late Bronze Age. Before it was Palestine it was the Kingdom of Judah, then Judea, and then Judaea, and that is literally where we are from. The word Jew means "a person from the Kingdom of Judah." The Romans renamed the area Syria-Palaestina (which they borrowed from the Greek name Palestina) in the 2nd century CE after destroying the Second Temple in Jerusalem and leading another campaign to try to eradicate the Jewish people (guess what, we're still here, motherfuckers).

And even after the Romans tried to annihilate us, even after they scattered many of us into European diaspora, many Jews came back, again and again over the ages, and there have nearly always been Jewish communities in the region throughout history.

And if you come for me or try to dispute any of this history with white supremacist bullshit, I am a Jew who has studied way more Jewish history than you. And as politely as possible, you can take your white supremacist conspiracy theories and fuck off into the sun.

Okay, with all that out of the way, let's get into it!

Gloves are coming off, because this is just a sampling of the Nazi dogwhistles I've been seeing here on Tumblr about the Jewish civilians who were tortured, murdered, and worse:

- If you say shit like, "The Jews got what they deserved"...

GUESS WHAT? You're talking like a white supremacist, and you need to fucking check yourself.

- And if, on the other hand, you say shit like, "The reports were probably overblown. I think those were paid actors. I don't think those Jews were murdered. No Jewish children were killed. No Jewish bodies were desecrated" blahblahblah...

GUESS WHAT? You get to sit with the Nazis at their table for lunch.

- If you tell Jews "go back to Europe where you came from"...

GUESS WHAT? Not only are you telling the descendants of Jewish refugees to go back to the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, and the Nazi gas chambers, as I explained in this post, but you are also repeating a white supremacist conspiracy theory about the origins of European Jews.

Jews are a Levantine people from the area of the Middle East currently called Israel (formerly called the Kingdom of Judah, and then Judea). While there was some emigration to Europe during the late Roman Republic and the early days of the Roman Empire, the first mass migration of Jews to Europe was a forced migration. Gentiles from the Roman Empire dragged us there as captives after 70 CE, the year Rome destroyed the Second Temple.

- And if you're telling yourself that there are "good Jews" and "bad Jews," and those Jewish civilians were "bad Jews," so they deserved to be tortured and killed...

GUESS WHAT? You're spouting white supremacist ideology.

Antisemitism takes a long time to deprogram.

A lot of gentiles grow up with anti-Jewish ideology that they have never questioned.

And a lot of Christians are kept ignorant about Jewish history because preachers and priests fear it would make Christians question the many inaccuracies in the Bible.

But the first step in noticing antisemitic beliefs is to notice when you start singling people out *because* they are Jewish.

And I have been seeing some of you gleefully celebrating the murder of Jewish civilians *because* they are Jewish.

And that is antisemitism.

That is one step closer to the next generation of Jews getting shoved into the gas chambers. And there are only 16 million of us left in the entire world. We're 0.2% of the world's population. And we cannot afford another Holocaust.

And if your response to me saying that is, "Well, those Jews deserve it."

Guess what. You are making it easier for Nazis and white supremacists to spread hatred and commit acts of violence against Jewish people. And you will have to live with that blood on your conscience.

So...

If you are a gentile, and you see other gentiles repeating these kinds of white supremacist dogwhistles about Jewish people, here's how you can help:

1. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Help them direct their focus away from attacking random Jewish people online and towards helping Palestinians.

Actions that people can take right now are contributing to verified charities and relief organizations that help the people of Gaza. Only donate to organizations that are verified by CharityNavigator.org and CharityWatch.org.

2. Call that shit out. Tell people that they're being antisemitic, and explain that Jew-hatred is dangerous to Jewish people. Antisemitism gets Jews attacked and it gets Jews killed. In the US, many synagogues require round the clock security to protect against white supremacists who want to murder Jews. In Pittsburgh, my old home town, a group of Nazis from north of the city planned the murder of Jewish congregants at Tree of Life Synagogue, and so far only one of them (the gunman) has been arrested and convicted of the murders. The others are still at large.

3. Explain to them that it is antisemitic to celebrate someone's death *because* they're Jewish. ALSO, it is antisemitic to blame a random Jewish person for the actions of ANY government, whether that be the Israeli Government or the US Government.

4. Explain to people that they're not going to solve this conflict by posting antisemitic statements and memes online. All they will do is alienate the Jewish people in their lives and make those Jews feel scared and unsafe. And they will contribute to this current wave of antisemitism.

Antisemitic hatred doesn't help Palestinians. All it does is put Jewish people around the world in danger.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Conversation between me, and another high educated Jewish women whose opinions I respect

Her: What's missing here are the facts. If we stuck to the facts there wouldn't be so much intensity surrounding this issue. Me: But you and I are both highly educated Jewish women, and we can't even agree on the facts regarding the history of Palestine as a place name, ethnic identifier, and nation. If we can't even agree on those facts, how on earth can facts help anyone move forward?

There's the question. Not just for Jews, but for everyone involved in, or concerned with this conflict. How do we move forward if multiple sides of the room dispute the veracity of such basic statements as:

-Jews are a globally oppressed minority ethnic group, the hatred of which is deeply embedded in Western thought and rhetoric.

-The Naqba was a period of ethnic cleansing in which the government and military of the new State of Israel expelled Palestinian Arabs from their homes and property; a dispossession and a series of events which continue to traumatize and negatively impact the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians.

-The Holocaust was a traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people, the legacy of which is embedded in the psyches, world views, and collective trauma of the Jewish people, and invariably impacts how this group views global issues.

-Palestinian Arabs had a full developed sense of identity and statehood before the British Empire fucked off, and made their discomfort with increasing Jewish emigration clear to the British before the outbreak of the Second World War.

-Jews had nowhere to go before, during, or really, after the Holocaust; and the governments of many Arab States ethnically cleaned their own ancient Jewish communities in retribution for the creation of the State of Israel.

-The State of Israel does not exist because the Holocaust happened, or as an "apology" for said event.

THIS POST COMPRISES A SERIES OF RHETORICAL QUESTIONS MEANT TO MAKE US APPRECIATE THE DEPTHS OF THE DISCURSIVE PROBLEMS HERE; NOT A POST FOR "DISCOURSE" AND HATEFUL, AGGRESSIVE SHIT.

If you feel you have to do that, copy & paste into your own separate post.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Israel’s security cabinet has approved a controversial proposal to facilitate Palestinian emigration from Gaza, a move critics warn could amount to ethnic cleansing.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday said the security cabinet approved the proposal by Defense Minister Israel Katz to organize “a voluntary transfer for Gaza residents who express interest in moving to third countries, in accordance with Israeli and international law, and following the vision of US President Donald Trump.”

The decision marks a remarkable endorsement of a plan once considered a far-right fantasy – and comes despite the prime minister’s earlier pledge not to permanently displace Gaza’s civilian population.

Critics have said that any mass displacement of Gazans in the midst of a devastating war would amount to ethnic cleansing, an act associated with war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law. Israeli officials have countered that emigration would be voluntary and in line with international legal standards.

But aid groups argue that Israel’s war has made life in Gaza nearly impossible. Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ top emergency relief official, has called the enclave “uninhabitable,” saying its people are “witnessing daily threats to their very existence.”[...]

The Palestinian Authority’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shaheen told CNN’s Becky Anderson last month that Palestinians “are steadfast to stay in their land and will not move.”[...]

Smotrich said Sunday that the security cabinet also approved the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, noting that 13 areas in the West Bank would be split from existing settlements and would be recognized as independent settlements.

24 Mar 25

[gliklofhameln]

Challah cover from Corfu, Greece, c. 1900-1913, silk with metallic ribbon

It is customary to cover the loaves of challah with a cloth until they are eaten. Several explanations are offered for this practice: the bread, our staple food, should not be offended that the blessing over wine is said first; the manna, which the loaves symbolise, was found covered with dew; and, finally, this sanctified food should be given a measure of respect.

This challah cover was brought to America by the donor's mother when she emigrated from the Greek island of Corfu in 1913. Home to a Jewish community of long standing, Corfu attracted powers from east and west and for centuries was under the political and cultural influence of Venice.

[dragoneyes613]

During Hitler's first five years in power, the Nazis did a great deal to make the lives of Jews miserable. They revoked their citizenship, ejected Jewish students from German schools, boycotted Jewish stores, and banned Jews from a large number of professions. On occasion, individual Jews were sent to concentration camps; the Nazis, however, had not yet created death camps and, remarkably enough, people were sometimes released from concentration camps and allowed to go home.

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis' discriminatory policy toward the Jews changed to wholesale violence as they carried out the largest pogrom in the history of the world. The official pretext for this action was the killing in Paris of a low-level Nazi diplomat by a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, Herschel Grynspan. The boy's Polish-born parents had been deported several weeks earlier from Germany back to Poland. The Poles, however, refused to accept Grynspan's parents, along with seventeen thousand other Polish-born Jews deported by the Nazis. These unfortunate Jewish refugees were left to rot, penniless, in the no-man's land separating Germany and Poland. Cut off from contact with his parents, Gwynspan shot the German official in retaliation. When the man died, the Nazis decided to punish all of German Jewry for Grynspan's deed.

The pogrom that ensured became known as Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. On that night, the glass windows in almost every German synagogue, and in most Jewish-owned businesses, were shattered. Shattered, too, were the lives of almost all German Jews. Ninety-one Jews were murdered during Kristallnacht; thirty thousand more were arrested and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds of them died.

World leaders denounced the Nazi pogrom, and American Jewry reacted by forming the United Jewish Appeal, which soon became the greatest fundraising organization in Jewish history. The Nazis scoffed at the protests. They announced that Kristallnacht had been carried out in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther, the sixteenth century antisemitic religious reformer whom Hitler greatly admired. The Nazis also announced the imposition of a one-billion-mark fine against the Jews; they would be forced to pay for the damage the Germans had inflicted on their synagogues and property.

German Jewry now knew that their situation was hopeless. While large numbers of them had left Germany during the first five years of Nazi rule, half of the community of 600,000 had remained, hoping that Nazi antisemitism would moderate. After Kristallnacht, they recognized that such thinking was illusory; between that event and the outbreak of World War II, less than ten months later, virtually every Jew in Germany tried to emigrate. Few countries, however, were willing to accept them. The British imposed a White Paper in Palestine to ensure that it not become a haven for Jews fleeing Hitler. Some of the Jews who tried to emigrate to the United States succeeded; most did not. In Canada a high government official was asked how many Jewish immigrants the country could accommodate. "None is too many," he answered.

It is no coincidence that Kristallnacht brought about the formation of the United Jewish Appeal, later to become a major financial supporter of Israel. More than any other event of the time, Kristallnacht converted large numbers of Jews into Zionists; the price of not having a Jewish state, they realized, was too, too high.

- Jewish Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, pages 390-391

[bobemajses]

Jewish woman’s coat from Ottoman Temesvar, Hungary (now Timisoara, Romania), early 19th century.

In a region straddling central and eastern Europe, the western Romanian city of Timișoara is known as a melting pot of people, cultures, and traditions. Among the groups that forged its multi-national identity under Hungarian, Ottoman and Habsburg rule were vibrant Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities, who established an important architectural and cultural legacy in the city. However, uprooted by World War II, Communism and emigration, the once-sizeable community counts only 600 members today.