Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s charismatic Jewish leader is being admired around the world for refusing to back down in the face of seemingly impossible odds — Russia’s aggression against a sovereign nation of 40 million people — and he is fighting in the streets with his people against the Russian invaders.
More than a million of Ukraine’s Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and in 1941, 33,000 Jews were executed and left in ravines filled with bodies at Babyn Yar, outside the Ukrainian city of Kyiv. But now, a Jew has risen to the most prominent and powerful political position, and is being lauded by the world as a paragon of courage and hope. As Jeff Salkin wrote for Religion News Service, “Never before in modern history have the world’s eyes so clearly focused on a Jew, who is demonstrating a mix of character, patriotism and sheer courage.”
Ted Deutch
Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat from South Florida, has announced that he will not seek a seventh term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and instead will become chief executive of the American Jewish Committee. Deutch is the 31st member of his party to step aside ahead of the midterm elections.
He told The Forward that he had been preparing for his new role his whole life, crediting his formative years at Camp Ramah with teaching him to stand up for Jewish issues, and his time as a Hillel leader in college fighting for Soviet Jews. “If I think about what I did as a kid and the experiences that I had as a young adult, it probably would have been easier to anticipate a position like the one I’m going to more than the one I’ve been in.”
HIAS
HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, has received a $10 million donation from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The money recognizes the work of HIAS in aiding refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.
HIAS said the grant will go toward humanitarian relief, helping with resettlement in the countries of the European Union, including housing, education, health, language training, and mental health. Some of the money will help Jews from countries bordering Ukraine who choose to relocate to Western Europe, HIAS said.
Greta Weinfeld Ferusic
Greta Ferusic was 19 when she and her family were taken from their home in Novi Sad, in northern Serbia, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with thousands of other Serbian Jews. She was the only member of her family to survive the death camps. Nearly 50 years later, after a distinguished career as an architect and a professor, she refused to leave her home in Sarajevo when the siege of that city began.
“Once in my life, I had already been forced to leave my home,” she said in Greta, a 1997 documentary film about her life during two wars. “I will never again leave my home willingly.”
She died on Jan. 23 at her home in Sarajevo. She was 97. On Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, four days after her death, Bosnian National Television broadcast Greta in her honor.
Jeff Zucker
Jeff Zucker’s nine-year tenure as president of CNN ended in an abrupt fashion on Feb. 2, days after he acknowledged to company lawyers what had long been rumored in television news circles: He was in a romantic relationship with Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.
Ms. Gollust had worked alongside Mr. Zucker for more than 20 years, starting as a senior publicist at NBC’s “Today” show in 1997, when Mr. Zucker, then in his early 30s, was executive producer. Their relationship is central to Mr. Zucker’s resignation, which was forced by WarnerMedia, CNN’s parent company. WarnerMedia’s standards policy states that personal workplace relationships must be disclosed immediately to “avoid a conflict of interest.”
Lee Zeldin, Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz
Long Island GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin has nominated Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work as negotiators of the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco sand Bahrain.
Kushner is former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and was a White House advisor during Trump’s term; Berkowitz was Kushner’s deputy.
Kushner and Berkowitz were nominated for the prize last year by former Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker
In testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker credited security training with helping him and several congregants from Congregation Beth Israel, his synagogue in Colleyville, TX, engineer their escape. They had been held hostage for 11 hours. Rabbi Cytron-Walker joined other Jewish leaders in calling for a doubling of federal security funding for nonprofits. “Increasing funding for and making appropriate adjustments to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program would be an incredibly positive step in the right direction,” he said.
[In a Feb. 24 New York Times op-ed, Rabbi Cytron-Walker addressed the “sacred obligation to love the stranger.” He wrote: “I opened the doors of my synagogue and unknowingly welcomed the individual who would later attack me and my fellow congregants. That I opened the door will always weigh heavily on me. Still, I remain committed to the idea of welcoming and caring for the stranger and living that value.”]
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