Briefs

YEMEN’S JEWISH POPULATION, ONCE OVER 50,000, DROPS TO BELOW 10

(JTA)—Amid the ongoing civil war in Yemen, 13 Jews have immigrated to Egypt, leaving the country’s once vibrant community of at least 50,000 with a population of fewer than 10.

Some reports claimed that the Iranbacked Houthi rebels, who control part of Yemen, forced the Jews to leave. The Times of Israel reported that the refugees instead struck a deal with the Houthis to leave peacefully for Cairo.

They also reportedly refused an offer to go to Israel.

Other Yemeni Jewish families have left for the United Arab Emirates in recent months, according to The Times of Israel. The UAE is newly on formal diplomatic terms with Israel after signing onto the Abraham Accords peace deal last year.

Tens of thousands of Yemeni Jews left for Israel shortly after its establishment as a state in 1948, spurred by the wave of anti-Semitism across the Arab world that the founding had triggered. A group of 19 Yemeni Jews were brought to Israel on a secret mission in 2016 coordinated by the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Attacks against Jews in Yemen had risen sharply since 2008, when a Jewish teacher was murdered in Raydah. In 2012, another Yemeni Jewish citizen was murdered in Sanaa, and a young Jewish woman was abducted, forced to convert to Islam and forcibly wed to a Muslim man. (JTA)

1 IN 4 AMERICAN JEWS HAS EXPERIENCED ANTI-SEMITISM SINCE 2016, ADL FINDS

An annual survey from the AntiDefamation League found that a quarter of American Jews have personally experienced anti-Semitism in the past five years, and that most American Jews have witnessed anti-Semitic comments targeting others.

In that same time period, 9% of Jewish respondents said they have been the victim of an anti-Semitic physical attack.

In total, 63% of Jewish respondents reported that they had either witnessed or experienced anti-Semitism in the years since 2016, an increase from 54% last year. The survey was taken in early January and includes responses from 503 Jewish-American adults. The margin of error is 4.4%.

The proportion of Jews who said they have experienced anti-Semitism or been the victim of a physical attack are slightly higher than they were last year, but are within the margin of error. Last year, 20% of Jews said they had experienced anti-Semitism over the past five years, while 5% reported being the victim of a physical attack.

In addition, 40% of respondents said they heard anti-Semitic comments directed at someone else over the past year. Some 59% of respondents said they feel Jews are less safe in the United States than they were a decade ago, similar to the figure from last year’s survey. (JTA)

THE LAST KNOWN JEW IN AFGHANISTAN IS LEAVING

The man who has been known as the last Jew in Afghanistan for well over a decade is leaving for Israel, fearing that the U.S. military’s promise to leave the country will leave a vacuum to be filled with radical groups such as the Taliban.

“I will watch on TV in Israel to find out what will happen in Afghanistan,” Zabulon Simantov told Arab News.

Simantov, 61, said he will leave after this year’s High Holidays season in the fall.

His wife, a Jew from Tajikistan, and their two daughters have lived in Israel since 1998. But Simantov has stayed in his native Afghanistan to tend to its lone synagogue, located in the capital Kabul, through decades of violence and political turmoil, including a period of Taliban rule and the country’s war with the U.S.

“I managed to protect the synagogue of Kabul like a lion of Jews here,” he said to Arab News.

Simantov, a carpet and jewelry seller, was born in the Afghan city of Herat, which decades ago was home to hundreds of Jews. He eventually moved to Kabul but fled to Tajikistan in 1992 before returning to the capital city.

Without him around, the synagogue will close, ending an era of Jewish life in the country that scholars believe began at least 2,000 years ago.

“If the Taliban return, they are going to push us out with a slap in the face,” Simantov told Radio Free Europe for an article on the exodus of many of the country’s minority populations. (JTA)

TOP NAZI OFFICIAL WHO SPIED FOR US WAS ALLOWED TO AVOID TRIAL UNTIL HIS DEATH IN 1975

A top Austrian Nazi who was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews avoided prosecution until his death in 1975 because he spied for the West, The New York Times reported.

Franz Josef Huber, a top Gestapo officer serving in Vienna who helped Adolf Eichmann round up and murder the Jews of Central Europe, was a wanted man in his native Austria for crimes against humanity, The Times article published Tuesday, April 6 said, citing newly released archive material.

But U.S. occupation and intelligence authorities thwarted an Austrian extradition request on bureaucratic grounds, as well as attempts by Nazi hunters to prosecute Huber, who had moved to Germany. In that country he was given only a short probationary sentence and a fine.

The lenient treatment was because of Huber’s extensive network of contacts on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, which he agreed to use to obtain information useful to Germany and the United States in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, according to The Times.

The Federal Intelligence Service of Germany made Huber retire in 1964 amid fears that his service would cause a public relations problem. He died 11 years later in Germany, where he had received a public service pension until his death. (JTA)

YALE TO OFFER BEGINNER YIDDISH COURSES

Yale will launch beginner Yiddish classes in the fall that will allow students to fulfill their language requirements, according to the Yale Daily News.

Yiddish studies now offered at the Ivy League university focus on reading for translation and research purposes rather than on spoken Yiddish. The courses did not count toward its language requirement, meaning students had to take them as electives.

The beginner courses will likely develop into levels of increasingly advanced courses in Yiddish as a spoken and written language.

Recent decades have seen an increased interest in learning Yiddish among younger Jews. Just this month Duolingo, the language learning app, added Yiddish to the list of languages it offers on its app, and earlier this year the Yiddish Book Center released a new multimedia Yiddish textbook. (JTA)

ANTI-SEMITIC ASSAULTS WORLDWIDE DROPPED 2020 DUE TO PANDEMIC

A 19% decrease in the number of anti-Semitic assaults recorded worldwide in 2020 from the previous year was attributed to lockdowns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an annual report published Wednesday, April 7.

The lockdowns limited personal interactions generally, the authors of the Report on Anti-Semitism Worldwide said. There were 371 cases of physical assaults last year.

Vandalism, however, increased by 25%. Anti-Semitic activity against cemeteries and Holocaust monuments rose to 96 incidents “because these sites are open and unprotected,” the report by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University said. The prevalence of anti-Semitic rhetoric increased online, as well, with much of it coming from conspiracy theorists writing or speaking about the pandemic.

Anti-Semitic vandalism against private property also fell, by 35%, to 84 incidents from 130 in 2019, “because people mostly stayed at home,” deterring would-be perpetrators, the authors said.

Moshe Kantor, the initiator of the Kantor Center and president of the European Jewish Congress, warned in a statement that the pandemic may have further ripple effects on anti-Semitism.

“We have yet to see the results of a younger generation forced indoors during a protracted period of their formative years, with the closure of educational institutions and employment and entertainment opportunities and exposed in some cases at the click of a switch or the touch of a screen to 24-7 anti-Jewish hate in online forums,” he wrote. (JTA)