For the eighth time this past decade, Russian authorities told a foreign Chabad rabbi living in Russia to leave the country.Josef Marozof, a New York-born rabbi who began working 12 years ago for Chabad in the city of Ulyanovsk 400 miles east of Moscow, was ordered earlier this week to leave because the FSB security service said he had been involved in unspecified “extremist behavior.”Marozof appealed the decision in a supreme court but his appeal was denied Saturday, the news site Jewish.ru reported Tuesday. He, his wife and six children, who were all born in Russia, have left for the United States.Marozof had a residence permit well into 2021 but it had been revoked over the charges, which he denied and asked they be made public so he could challenge them. The court declined to order the FSB to specify the charges.Last year, a court in Krasnodar ordered the deportation of Ari Edelkopf, who had been working as Chabad’s emissary to the city of Sochi, on grounds that he was a threat to national security. Edelkopf’s appeal against the unspecified charge, which he denied, were dismissed.Chabad of Russia, which enjoys friendly relations with President Vladimir Putin, strongly protested Edelkopf’s expulsion, which the movement said was disconcerting because of the allegation that he endangers state security.Behind the expulsion of Edelkopf and the other rabbis, according to Boruch Gorin, a senior aide to Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, is an attempt by the state to limit the number of foreign clerics living in Russia – an effort that has led to expulsions not only of rabbis but also of imams and Protestant priests.“It’s not targeting the Jews,” he said. Rather, Jews are “collateral damage” in this broader effort.
Tag: judaism
Three-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish children told ‘the non-Jews’ are ‘evil’ in worksheet produced by London school
British three-year-olds have been told “the non-Jews” are “evil” in a Kindergarten worksheet handed out at ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools in north London, it can be revealed.
Documents seen by The Independent show children are taught about the horrors of the Holocaust when they are still in kindergarten at the Beis Rochel boys’ school in north London.
A whistle-blower, who wished to remain anonymous, has shown The Independent a worksheet given to boys aged three and four at the school. In it, children were asked to complete questions related to the holiday of 21 Kislev, observed by Satmer Jews as the day its founder and holy Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, escaped the Nazis.
The document refers to Nazis only as “goyim” – a term for non-Jews some people argue is offensive.
Emily Green, who used to teach at the same Beis Rochel girls’ secondary school, now chairs the Gesher EU organisation which supports ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to leave the community.
“It’s not uncommon to be taught non-Jewish people are evil in ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools. It is part of the prayers, teaching, their whole ethos,” she said.
Describing it as a form of “indoctrination”, Ms Green added: “Psychologically, you become so afraid of the world out there after being taught how dangerous and bad and evil non-Jews are, that it makes it harder to leave.”
Independently translated from Yiddish for The Independent, the worksheet’s first question reads: “What have the evil goyim (non-Jews) done with the synagogues and cheders [Jewish primary schools]?” The answer in the completed worksheet reads: “Burned them.”
Another question asks: “What did the goyim want to do with all the Jews?” – to which the answer, according to the worksheet, is: “Kill them.”.
“It doesn’t explicitly refer to the Holocaust,” the source said. “It’s a document that teaches very young children to be very afraid and treat non-Jews very suspiciously because of what they did to us in the past.
“It’s not a history lesson – you can’t say that. It’s a parable that is actively teaching the children extremism, hatred and a fear for the outside world.”
A spokesperson for Beis Rochel said that the worksheets would be amended and apologised for any offence. However they argued the phrase “goyim” was not offensive and accusations that they were indoctrinating children were “without basis”. “The language we used was not in any way intended to cause offence, now this has been brought to our attention, we will endeavour to use more precise language in the future.”
TikTok CEO Reveals Coordination With 2 Dozen Jewish Groups to Police Speech
A chilling blueprint for the censorship of pro-Palestine voices on social media has been exposed, directly from the mouth of a top tech executive. Adam Presser, the newly installed CEO of TikTok’s U.S. operations following its forced sale to a consortium led by billionaire Larry Ellison, detailed in a recent resurfaced video how the platform systematically silenced critics by labeling their speech as hateful. This admission confirms the worst fears of free speech advocates and reveals a coordinated effort to shield Israeli government actions from public scrutiny by conflating political criticism with bigotry.
The video, originally presented to the World Jewish Congress, features Presser, who was then TikTok’s Head of Operations and Trust & Safety, outlining specific policy changes. “We made a change to designate the use of the term Zionist as a proxy for a protected attribute as hate speech,” Presser stated. In practice, this means using “Zionist” in a negative context could get a user banned, while phrases like “proud Zionist” remain permitted. This creates a politically motivated double standard where one side of a heated geopolitical debate is granted linguistic immunity.
A tripling of bans and outside influence
Presser boasted of aggressive enforcement, revealing that TikTok “tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity” over the course of 2024. This timeline coincides directly with the global outcry following Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. He further explained that “over two dozen Jewish organizations” are “constantly feeding us intelligence and information when they spot violative trends,” and that these groups help inform TikTok on “what is hate speech.” This outsourcing of content moderation decisions to explicitly partisan advocates strips away any pretense of neutrality, effectively allowing pro-Israel groups to police and silence their critics on a global platform.
The consequences of this policy are not theoretical. Award-winning Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, who had built an audience of 1.4 million followers on TikTok while documenting the war from Gaza, recently found her account permanently banned. In a video, Owda connected her ban directly to Presser’s remarks and to comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last year called the TikTok purchase “consequential” and stated, “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media.”
Sending army to protect Sydney’s Jewish community not ruled out by NSW premier
Deploying the army to Jewish areas to protect the community has not been ruled out by the NSW premier as he contemplates security changes following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
At a press conference on Sunday, Chris Minns also warned that Sydneysiders could expect to see more police officers carrying long-armed guns before and beyond New Year’s Eve.
Mr Minns said that “nothing was off the table” in response to a question about the deployment of troops, confirming that discussions about it were ongoing.
“We’re going to look very closely at security programs and measures in the future. We have to do things completely differently,” he said.
“The situation as it currently stands, it can’t continue … there’s a big challenge ahead of us to rebuild Jewish life in Sydney. So I’m not going to take anything off the table.
Colombia says 17 minors rescued from Jewish cult Lev Tahor amid abuse allegations
Colombian authorities said Sunday they had rescued 17 minors from Lev Tahor, an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect under investigation for alleged child sex abuse.
“We have rescued 17 boys, girls and teens,” the country’s immigration service said on X, posting pictures of some of the children with their faces blurred or shielded from view.
Five of the minors rescued were identified as missing persons whom Interpol had issued “yellow notices” to find, authorities said.
Founded in Jerusalem in the 1980s, Lev Tahor — literally, “pure heart” in Hebrew — has been dogged by allegations of child abuse for years, and Israel and others have called it a cult. Its leader is in prison for kidnapping children.
A group called Lev Tahor Survivors has estimated the sect’s membership at several hundred people and says it is led by a core cohort, with the rest being held mostly against their will.
The group adheres to an extreme, idiosyncratic interpretation of Judaism and kosher dietary laws that largely shields members from the outside world.
Women and girls above the age of 3 are required to dress in black robes that completely cover their bodies, leading some to call the group the “Jewish Taliban.” The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying specific portions of the Torah.
Thousands of Orthodox Jews rally in New York to protest change in Israel’s military draft rules
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed the streets and sidewalks for blocks around the Israeli consulate in New York City on Sunday to protest issues including a potential end of an exemption for religious students from compulsory service in Israel’s military.
The protest at the consulate, a block from the United Nations campus in Manhattan, illustrated the complex relationship between Israel and segments of the large population of very religious Jews in New York and its suburbs.
The two influential, and often rival, grand rebbes of the Satmar community both called on adherents to participate in the demonstration. The Central Rabbinical Congress of the U.S.A. and Canada, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish groups, said it helped organize the protest.
It comes after Israel’s Supreme Court last year ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the military. There had been a longstanding enlistment exemption – dating to the founding of Israel in 1948.
The ultra-Orthodox worry that mandatory enlistment will impact adherents’ ties to their faith. But many Jewish Israelis have argued that an exemption is unfair. Rifts over the issue have deepened since the start of the war in Gaza.
Rabbi Moishe Indig, a Satmar community leader, said he’s not sure organizers expected so many people to show up but he said he felt urgency building around the issue.
He said he was appreciative of the governments in New York and the U.S. “for giving us the freedom and liberty to be able to live free and have our children go to school and study and learn the Torah.”
Maryland State University Student Government Excludes Jewish Students From Vote On Boycotting Israel
On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, the University of Maryland (UMD) Student Government Association (SGA) passed a boycott, sanctions, and divestment resolution against the state of Israel, 29-0 with one abstention.
Because Jews fast, pray, and abstain from work on Yom Kippur, Jewish students, who comprise 20 percent of UMD’s student body, were not able to participate in the voting process. The bill was initially scheduled for a few days prior on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Only two SGA members supported a motion that would have pushed the vote after the Jewish holidays.
One SGA member claimed, in a statement to UMD’s student newspaper, The Diamondback, “The priority for us was to make sure that there was [sic] accommodations, and I believe SGA did provide them,” referring to proxy voting measures.
This does not take into consideration the fact that observant Jews do not work or use electronics on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.
“The timing denied our community the opportunity to engage in a fair and meaningful discussion,” said Meirav Solomon, a junior at UMD on the pre-law track. “This decision adds to the growing sense that Jewish students are not safe or heard on campus. SGA is meant to represent the entire student body, and that means ensuring that every community has a voice in decisions that impact them.”
The Trump administration has opened Title VI investigations into various universities, including Harvard and Columbia, for campus antisemitism. Given how Jewish students are being treated on UMD’s campus, there may very well be a case against the university, so long as leadership allows open hatred to continue unfettered.
In First, Ben Gvir Leads Settler Raid On Al-Aqsa Mosque Under Heavy Guard
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led hundreds of settlers in storming Al-Aqsa Mosque complex on Sunday, were they loudly performed Jewish Talmudic prayer, under a heavy police guard, and attempted to antagonise Muslim worshippers.
Videos seen by Middle East Eye showed hundreds of settlers storming the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque where some could be seen dancing and shouting, seeking to disrupt the Muslim place of worship.
The status quo in Jerusalem has long maintained that Jewish prayer is forbidden on the raised plateau in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, where Al-Aqsa Mosque stands.
However, over the past century, Zionist groups have repeatedly violated the fragile arrangement, launching unprecedented attacks on what’s considered one of Islam’s holiest sites.
Residents in Jerusalem’s Old City told MEE that before and after Ben Gvir’s raid, the area had come to resemble a “military base” due to the “many checkpoints” that had been set up and the “heavy Israeli security presence”.
They said that Israeli forces severely restricted Palestinians from accessing the mosque, with only a few local residents allowed to pass. Speaking to reporters after the raid, Ben Gvir said: “The Temple Mount is for the Jews, and we will remain here forever.”
Since becoming a minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Ben Gvir has led at least 11 assaults on the mosque. Meanwhile, several other far-right politicians have advocated for the destruction of Al-Aqsa and the construction of a temple where they claim Jewish temples once stood.
Among the hundreds of people to take part in Sunday’s raid was right-wing Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi, who has repeatedly advocated for Israel to destroy all water, food and energy sources in Gaza.
In June 2023, he tabled a bill that would divide Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews, a plan that would see shared access from the courtyard of the Dome of the Rock to the end of the northern border of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Palestinians fear that the incursions at Al-Aqsa, which have intensified since Israel went to war on Gaza in October 2023, are laying the groundwork for the mosque to be divided similar to how the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron was in the 1990s.
Muslims currently have limited access to that site, and just last month, Israel transferred the authority of the mosque from the Palestinian-run Hebron municipality to a settler council.
Aouni Bazbaz, the director of international affairs at the Islamic Waqf, the organisation that administers Al-Aqsa Mosque, described Sunday’s raid as “painful and regrettable”, telling MEE that it was a threat to the “historical status quo and an incitement to violence”.
“There were terrifying numbers of people [Israeli settlers] present and some were important figures,” he said. “This was part of a project. The extreme religious right seeks to undermine the status quo and to clearly follow the example of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
Federal security grants to US synagogues to resume after two-month Trump freeze
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has lifted a freeze on security funding for religious institutions this week, ending a months-long pause that drew alarm from Jewish groups that had advocated for expanded federal security funding.
The Nonprofit Security Grant Program provides funding for synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers to pay for security measures to protect their buildings from attack. Congress provided $274.5 million for the program in 2025.
Reimbursement payments to participating institutions were halted in March as part of an overall funding freeze on FEMA, the federal disaster relief agency. At the time, nearly 80 members of Congress from both parties signed a letter urging the Trump administration to reverse course.
Nechamia Dsatmar on October 13, 2023. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
JTA — The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has lifted a freeze on security funding for religious institutions this week, ending a months-long pause that drew alarm from Jewish groups that had advocated for expanded federal security funding.
The Nonprofit Security Grant Program provides funding for synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers to pay for security measures to protect their buildings from attack. Congress provided $274.5 million for the program in 2025.
Reimbursement payments to participating institutions were halted in March as part of an overall funding freeze on FEMA, the federal disaster relief agency. At the time, nearly 80 members of Congress from both parties signed a letter urging the Trump administration to reverse course.00:20 / 37:55
That appears to have happened this week, Jewish Insider reported on Friday, citing an email sent by Jewish Federations of North America to its member federations.
“Nonprofit Security Grant Program funds are essential to keeping our communities safe, especially amid rising antisemitism,” Karen Paikin Barall, the Jewish Federations of North America vice president for government relations, said in an emailed statement. “We are relieved that the government’s review process has concluded and that funds will now be released, allowing nonprofits to be reimbursed for critical security investments they’ve already made.”
From Torah to trauma: A Satanic child abuse scandal blows up in Israel
There are crimes so profound that words fail to capture them. Last week, several survivors testified to the Israeli Knesset about just such a horror.
The story broke with an investigative report published by Israel Hayom, which unearthed a long-standing pattern of ritual sexual abuse, psychological manipulation, and spiritual desecration occurring not on the margins of society but from within its most sacred institutions. Survivors speak of torment that begins in early childhood and lasts decades, often committed under the guise of religious observance. It is not just a crime of the flesh. It is a theft of the soul.
Israeli children, some as young as infants, were subjected to methodical abuse masked in religious ritual. Survivors describe ceremonies invoking biblically-vilified deities, conducted by members of observant Jewish communities. As a survivor named Noga (all of the victims’ names are changed in the report) recalled: “The gods I remember are Baal Peor and Ashtoreth… our lord Peor and our lady Ashtoreth.” (Note: All these deities are categorically condemned in the Bible).
The culprits are not fringe radicals. These are individuals who keep kosher, celebrate the Sabbath, and adhere to the minutiae of Jewish law even as they engage in acts so depraved that they defy comprehension. Here is snippet from a survivor’s testimonies:
“I remember a pentagram on the floor, usually in red. When the ceremony was in the forest, the pentagram was marked with a hoe and surrounded by lit candles in a circle. The rabbi would bless…they would repetitively read Psalms, like ‘A Psalm of David, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ They told me ‘you are special, you are chosen’ and they would insert… I remember a palm branch, Hanukkah candles, a shofar.”
Some of these perpetrators are qualified to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah — a high privilege among observant Jews. Family members, most of whom may have once been victims themselves, are often the ones who hand over their little ones to these monsters.
Several rabbis’ names appeared repeatedly in survivor testimonies. Multiple complaints filed at different police stations across Israel were quickly nipped in the bud. Prosecutions leading to imprisonments are rare. Much like anywhere else on this planet. Have any elite members of the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile network – itself rumored to be a Mossad operation – been charged in any court of law? Have the victims been asked to identify the perpetrators of these wicked deeds during the trial of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell?
Hellbound and Down 
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