• Nearly 200 Columbia University faculty members sent a letter to the school’s interim president, urging stronger safety measures for Jewish students. (Columbia Spectator)
• Boston University rejected a proposal from Students for Justice in Palestine to divest from Israel. “The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate,” the school’s president said. (Algemeiner)
• A Massachusetts middle school student performed a Nazi salute in class, prompting the principal to assure parents that “appropriate action would be taken.” (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
• Pro-Palestinian protesters stormed Barnard College’s Milbank Hall, injuring a college employee and prompting new security restrictions. (JTA)
• Australia’s universities unanimously adopted a new definition of antisemitism that includes calling for the elimination of Israel. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered Hunter College to remove job listings for two Palestinian studies positions, follo9wing criticism from pro-Israel groups (Forward)

…and elsewhere

• Google Calendar no longer includes International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Jewish American Heritage Month in its default U.S. display. The tech giant said it removed them, along with other cultural events, like Black History Month, for apolitical reasons. Critics see it as part of a wider nationwide rollback of diversity initiatives. (JTA, The New York Times)
• How did Kanye West got local TV networks to play his Super Bowl ad promoting a website that sells T-shirts with a swastika on them. He swapped in the offensive clothing after the ad was approved. (The Wall Street Journal)
• The ADL criticized Steve Bannon following his gesture that resembled a Nazi salute. Bannon denied that his straight-armed gesture at CPAC was a Nazi salute. (Forward)
• German Jews expressed alarm after J.D. Vance’s comments boost far-right (AFD) ahead of election. (Forward)
• Police in Sydney, Australia, have charged a nurse after a viral video surfaced showing her and a colleague allegedly threatening Israeli patients and boasting about denying them treatment. (JTA)

When millions of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews perished in the Holocaust, their stories, culture, and way of life were wiped out. One survivor, the novelist Chaim Grade, made it his life’s mission to keep their memory alive. In scores of stories, poems and novels, Grade faithfully recreated the world he lost in pre-war Europe, vividly reimagining his formative years in Vilna and the yeshivas he attended.

After his death, his wife Ina Hecker kept his Bronx apartment off limits. But after her death in 2010, scholars began clamoring for access to the apartment, hoping to find an unpublished Grade novel.

The new English translation of his novel, Sons and Daughters, is the culmination of that search. The book, translated by Rose Waldman and published by Knopf, is set for release on March 25.

The narrative takes place in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. It describes the breakdown of tradition as modernity makes inroads into the shtetl way of life. Although the Holocaust itself is never mentioned in the book, it is felt on every page, foreshadowing the annihilation of Polish Jewry. It is this tragic awareness that animates Grade’s questioning and demand for answers.

—Excerpted from a review by Yossi Newfield/The Forward

• A Columbia University law professor retired after a school investigation found that she discriminated against Israeli students by alleging they were harassing Palestinian students on campus. Reported by The Times of Israel.
• In Trenton, NJ, two Jewish police officers have filed complaints, alleging workplace discrimination and antisemitism. Reported by newjersey.com
• Two synagogues in Sydney were defaced with swastikas and antisemitic phrases, and a Jewish child care center was torched, prompting police investigations amid a rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia. Reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
• In Italy, “Free Gaza” was spray-painted on a synagogue. Reported by Haaretz.
• Nearly 1,000 pro-Palestinian activists signed a petition asking a Brooklyn movie theater to stop showing “September 5,” a film about the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, calling it “Zionist propaganda.” Reported on X and also on Google.
• CBS News is facing accusations of anti-Israel bias over a Jan. 12 “60 Minutes” segment that criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. The segment relied largely on two former State Department officials with ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose executive director has praised Hamas. The two men, Josh Paul and Hala Rharrit, had resigned from the State Department in protest of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. Reported by The New York Times.
• There were 1,570 recorded antisemitic incidents in France in 2024, according to data collected by the government and local Jewish groups. In 2022, 436 antisemitic incidents were recorded. Reported by The Times of Israel.
• Harvard University has settled two antisemitism lawsuits, pledging to address anti-Zionist speech on campus and strengthen partnerships with Israeli institutions. Reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
• A committee at Johns Hopkins University has declined a request from several student groups to cut financial ties with Israel. Reported by The Baltimore Banner.
• The Rhode Island School of Design has rejected a proposal from Students for Justice in Palestine to boycott Israel. Reported by Algemeiner.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and Sen John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, have introduced a bill that would make it easier for Jewish students to file discrimination complaints. Reported by Jewish Insider.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in social media comments that he was “outraged CBS News would air such a biased and one-sided piece.” The American Jewish Committee added in a statement that it was “shockingly one-sided, lacked factual accuracy, and relied heavily on misguided information…perhaps most egregiously, the segment made almost no mention of Hamas’ actions that started this war…”

An article by Andrew Higgins in the Jan. 16 issue of The New York Times is illustrated by a photo of the house on Legionow Street in Oswiecim, Poland, once occupied by Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz. The house, which overlooks the former Nazi death camp, was occupied recently by Grazyna Jurczak, who sold it to the New York-based Counter Extremism Project that intends to open the house to visitors.

Workers are stripping away post-war additions and restoring the place just as Rudolf Hoess lived there. A mezuzah has been attached to the front door frame to honor Jewish tradition, and repudiate the fanatism of its former occupant.

Hoess was hanged in 1947 at a gallows placed between his house and a Nazi crematory.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Maciek Nabrdalik photo

According to a Dec. 31 article in The New York Times by Franz Lidz, “Camels laden with spices, gold and precious stones accompanied the Queen of Sheba on her biblical journey to Jerusalem in the 10^th century B.C. A thousand years later, Flavius Josephus , the Jewish Roman historian, wrote that the haul had included the balm of Gilead a fragrant, highly-prized resin also known as Judean balsam, which served as the basis for perfumes, incense and medicinal remedies.”

The plant vanished from the region by the 9th century, said Sarah Sallon, director of natural medicine research at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. But in 2010, Dr. Sallon obtained a mysterious seed from the archaeological archives of Hebrew University, hoping that it could germinate. The seed had been discovered in a cave during a 1980s excavation at Wadi el-Makkuk, a winter water channel in the northern Judean desert, and was languishing in storage. After determining that the seed was still viable, Dr. Sallon’s research team planted, sprouted and carefully tended it. When the husk was carbon-dated to between A.D. 993 and A.D. 1202, Dr. Sallon wondered if it could be the source of the balm of Gilead. On the hunch that it was, she named the specimen Sheba.

Since then, the 1,000-year-old seedling has grown into a sturdy 12-foot-tall tree with no modern counterpart. “Not only is it extremely lucky that this one seed survived for a thousand or so years, but that the team managed to successfully germinate the seed and grow the resulting tree to maturity,” Dr. Sallon said, noting that investigation continues, and the possibility that the seed is Judean balsam is intriguing.