January 22, 2025

In Austria, the far-right is being invited to lead the government for the first time since World War II. Despite President Alexander Van der Bellen asking the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) to form a coalition, Austria’s small Jewish community retains its unlikely optimism. 

 The majority of the country’s roughly 15,000 Jews live in Vienna, where Hitler spent his young adulthood and later returned to proclaim the Anschluss to an adoring crowd from the swastika-swathed terrace of the Neue Burg. In recent years, particularly since the chancellorship of wunderkind Sebastian Kurz, the country has maintained a vocal support of the State of Israel while offering a proactively supportive environment for its Jewish citizens. 

Here Hasidic Jews walk unafraid, shopping in bustling kosher supermarkets and dining in restaurants with Hebrew names like Veahavta (“and you shall love”) and Mea Shearim (named for the town in Israel). The Parliamentary Library prominently showcases an exhibit warning against the threat of antisemitism to the country’s democracy while showcasing the values of lived Jewish life. 

According to the exhibit’s curator, Parliamentary advisor Rifka Junger, herself the Orthodox daughter of survivors, its goal is to embody the principle articulated by Psalm 34’s verse encouraging “turning from evil, and performing good.” Compelling video testimonials of photogenic Viennese Jewish youth discuss the hateful rhetoric they have been subject to. But other clips emphasize religious traditions and values as well as the Jewish contributions to wider Austrian society and history. 

A spike in antisemitic graffiti was seen after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack against Israel. But this is relatively benign compared to the large-scale and often unruly anti-Israel protests plaguing European cities with much larger Jewish populations like London, Paris and Berlin.

Danielle Spera, a prominent former broadcast journalist and curator of the local Jewish Museum, and her husband, psychotherapist and former Parliamentarian Martin Engelberg, credit strong civil ties cultivated organically, coupled with politicians looking to bridge divides, not exacerbate them. To a group of Yeshiva University Straus Center students I helped lead on a recent visit, the couple expressed gratitude to Turkey’s ambassador to Austria for preventing violent outbursts from the country’s 300,000-strong Turkish Muslim community. 

Spera and a local Turkish Imam just published a book in which they engage in respectful interfaith dialogue without shying away from the ripple effects the Israel-Gaza war has had on their respective religious communities. Israel’s Consul to Austria, Yaffa Olivitsky, remarked to us that she has found Austria a refreshingly supportive community, sympathetic to Israel’s efforts to free its hostages held by Hamas, and in which she can publicly practice her own Orthodox faith. 

All this in a country which sought to destroy its Jewish community three times. Under Duke Albert V, in what became known as the Vienna Gesera, Jews were starved, tortured, forced to convert to Christianity, or executed. In 1421, 200 Jews were burned alive. The local synagogue was razed. Its stones were then repurposed to construct the University of Vienna. A Latin relief still at the site of the murders reads, in part, “Everything dissolves that is hidden and sinful. Thus did the flames of hate rage through the entire city in 1421 and punish the terrible crimes of the Hebrew dogs.”

Two and a half centuries later, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I expelled the Jews, leading the cheering locals to rename what had been the Jewish quarter Leopoldstadt in his honor. 

Then came the deportation of 65,000 Jews to the concentration camps during the Holocaust. My own grandmother was one of the lucky Austrian Jews. She and her family escaped shortly after Kristallnacht and made it to the United States. As Richard Cockett describes in his history of Vienna, Kristallnacht “was more destructive and savage in Vienna than almost anywhere else in what was now Greater Germany. Up to 50 synagogues were burned and over 4,000 Jewish-owned shops looted. About 6,000 people were arrested, of whom at least 27 were murdered.”

German-speaking police now serenely guard their restaurants. Public displays of sympathy for the Nazis are outlawed, as is the giving of speeches from the terrace of the Neue Burg. And prayers are recited daily for the safety of their coreligionists in Israel. 

Despite their country’s history and the fraught current moment, the Jews who reside where both Sigmund Freud and the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, once lived, do not dream of relocating. German-speaking police now serenely guard their restaurants. Public displays of sympathy for the Nazis are outlawed, as is the giving of speeches from the terrace of the Neue Burg. And prayers are recited daily for the safety of their coreligionists in Israel. The Jewish virtue of hope for bright days ahead remains unabated. Austria’s Jews have survived worse. One kosher restaurant proudly displays a large Hebrew sticker. It reads in Hebrew shuva Yisrael, return O Israel.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”

After the horror, we witnessed the deluge of voices telling us to see it as a morality tale — a harsh but necessary lesson about the hubris of living in a beautiful but dangerous place. 

“We couldn’t have stopped these fires,” cry our state and local officials and their defenders in the media. “Didn’t you see the size of those flames? The strength of those winds? Global warming had a lot to do with it, just like we’ve been warning for years. It was always preposterous to build a city in a hot dry land along an earthquake fault, and foolish to build homes in places where wildfires are a constant threat. The fires were tragic but inevitable.”

The people whose incompetence and lies are on full display would have us believe that not they, but we are guilty for choosing to live here, and shouldn’t expect them to do their best to protect us from the merciless avenging god. What, you expect water in the fire hydrants? Your mayor to keep her promise not to leave the country, just because her officials are warning of extreme fire danger? Firemen to respond to your 911 call begging for help to evacuate because you’re an old man in a wheelchair?  Don’t you understand it’s impossible to be safe in these perilous times?

Fires in California, and the Santa Ana winds, are indeed inevitable. Global warming probably did contribute to making the blazes worse. But there was nothing inevitable about how catastrophic they were. Global warming didn’t cut the LA Fire Department’s budget, turning it into the most understaffed fire department of any major American city. Global warming didn’t prevent California from building any of the reservoirs voters approved 10 years ago. Global warming didn’t make California cancel planned controlled burns last fall and fail to clear brush, leaving countless acres of fuel ready to ignite. Global warming didn’t prevent the city from pre-deploying firefighters where fires were most likely to break out. Global warming didn’t drain the Santa Ynez reservoir in the Palisades — 117 million gallons of water, exactly where it was needed — and leave it untouched and empty for nearly a year. It took people with political power to do these things, or fail to do them, and now they want us to believe that their obvious incompetence has nothing to do with the subsequent hellscape.

Global warming didn’t prevent California from building any of the reservoirs voters approved 10 years ago. Global warming didn’t make California cancel planned controlled burns last fall and fail to clear brush, leaving countless acres of fuel ready to ignite. 

You don’t get this level of ineptitude without some countervailing ideology behind it. Our true-blue leaders and officials just aren’t turned on by the drudgery of governance; their minds are enthused with the higher calling to purge society of its racism, sexism (or “gender-based inequality”), transphobia, neocolonialism and all manner of other social sins.  They are committed to redressing history’s countless injustices. They can’t be expected to think about all that and the infrastructure too. 

Those empty fire hydrants, for instance. A whistleblower told the Daily Mail that the fire department used to check every hydrant once a year, and often found them not functioning. The fire department would issue a report, and it would take months to get fixed. Last year the department, its budget cut beyond endurance, said they were simply too busy handling calls, and handed the job of checking hydrants to the water department. “I would be willing to bet DWP didn’t do this,” the whistleblower said.  

The DWP leaders had other priorities. On Karen Bass’ orders, last May the city somehow found the money to hire new CEO Janisse Quiñones at a salary of $750,000 — double that of her predecessor. She’d been a top executive at PG&E, which went bankrupt over its responsibility for several previous wildfires. She declared that putting an equity lens on everything was the “number one thing that attracted” her to her new role (the hefty salary presumably didn’t hurt). And she was a Latina, the first to head the corporation. Her elevation, in other words, was an inspiration for women of color everywhere. Why make a stink about an empty reservoir?

The LA Fire Department heads, too, were enraptured by the virtue of pursuing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, the department’s first female chief, created its first DEI Bureau and declared herself “super inspired” about creating a more diverse workplace. The day her appointment was unanimously confirmed by City Council, Crowley told NBC 4 she wasn’t looking for  specific numbers, because “it’s never enough.”

DEI proponents insist, of course, that no one is hired who isn’t qualified, but whistleblowers say that isn’t true; standards have been lowered to admit women. An anonymous firefighter told journalist Michael Shellenberger: “We no longer require two firefighters to be able to throw a 35-foot ladder because of the amount of women that were failing that. So now, it’s just a three-person ladder. We no longer require that as a job requirement. In the field that doesn’t work because we don’t have enough people to spare when a fire is happening to just throw one ladder.”

These DEI issues may very well have cost people’s lives. A fire department that was cut to the bone made a terrible situation worse by putting women in positions requiring the physical strength they simply don’t have. Material reality still matters, even in California.

This wildfire tragedy has roots that go beyond our state’s legendary absorption in tofu, yoga and airy-fairy beliefs, and they involve the kind of society we want to live in, and how we view ourselves. To our elected officials, above all Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, we are all groaning with sin and need to atone. We live on stolen land, enjoying wealth created by slavery and bloody imperial conquest. Only partial redemption may be granted to those who do the necessary penance. In this world, lies are not only permissible but virtuous, as long as they aren’t the other side’s lies. 

“I’m literally talking to the president right now,” Newsom told a distraught LA resident who confronted him about her daughter’s school burning down. He pointed to his phone. “To specifically answer the question of what we can do for you and your daughter,” he added.

“Can I hear it?” the woman asked. “Can I hear your call? Because I don’t believe it.” Newsom pointed again to his phone, his face registering helplessness. “I’m sorry, there’s literally– I’ve tried five times, that’s why I’m walking around to make the call.”

This ignominious scene — the state’s highest elected leader, lying to a citizen about what he was doing about the disaster that took place under his watch — should really be his epitaph. But it goes beyond him, or Bass, or Quiñones, or any of the other grifters who have so far failed to take any responsibility for their role in this horror show. It’s about a mindset fundamentally at odds with keeping people safe. DEI must DIE, or we will.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”

“I’m an old-school Liberal Zionist, which means I support Israel and I hate myself for it.” — an anonymous acquaintance.

At its best, Liberal Zionism aspires to reconcile Jewish and Palestinian national ambitions, insisting that these aspirations are not mutually exclusive. At its worst, it is a way to virtue-signal: “I’m not that kind of Zionist.” Yes, Liberal Zionists support Israel, but they do so by wagging their finger at the Jewish state, tut-tutting its every move, and trying to “save it from itself.” 

Liberal Zionism is thus a paradox: a stance of support wrapped in apology, as though Zionism were a sin requiring indulgence. It seeks to stand with Israel while undermining and delegitimizing it at every turn. It insists that “a Jewish state” isn’t the problem — just this Jewish state.

Since Oct. 7, a wave of think pieces have declared the “crisis” of Liberal Zionism, arguing that Liberalism and Zionism have become incompatible, or perhaps that they always were. Writing in New York Magazine, Ayelet Waldman described an “inherent contradiction and willful blindness” in Liberal Zionism, calling it an ideology that “lost much of its political influence long ago” and, for her, was finally shattered by Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Waldman is far from alone. Many people, watching Israel’s intense campaign against Hamas in the wake of Oct. 7, have come to associate Israel not with liberalism but with violence.

But the real problem isn’t a conflict between Liberalism and Zionism. After all, there is nothing illiberal about a nation defending itself from a terrorist invasion or fighting back after civilians are massacred. The deeper issue is that Liberal Zionism has largely accepted the core premises of anti-Zionism — namely that Israel is an illegitimate aggressor, or even that it is guilty of genocide. A Zionism which has absorbed these beliefs is unsustainable.   

The deeper issue is that Liberal Zionism has largely accepted the core premises of anti-Zionism — namely that Israel is an illegitimate aggressor, or even that it is guilty of genocide. A Zionism which has absorbed these beliefs is unsustainable.

Joe Biden’s presidency provides a painful case in point. More than any other president, Biden embodied this shamefaced Liberal Zionism: He supported Israel but seemed embarrassed to do so. He stood by Israel during its darkest hour but simultaneously undermined its leaders, rewarded its enemies, and made it sound as though even he doubted the justice of the war he was bankrolling.

The result was incoherence. Zionists found his support lukewarm and conditional, while anti-Zionists saw him as complicit in war crimes.

But incoherence is only part of the story. More damaging was the ineffectiveness, now laid bare. Trump, for all his many and serious flaws, did more before officially starting his term to secure a hostage deal than Biden could in 15 months. Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an exit interview with The New York Times, admitted why: Biden’s policy of pressuring Israel emboldened Hamas to dig in its heels.

Of course, Biden wasn’t the only obstacle. Ben Gvir and Smotrich played their part to keep the hostages in darkness, as they have now admitted. But the takeaway is undeniable: Liberal Zionism failed to end the war and bring the hostages home. By contrast, unapologetic Zionism is already working to improve life for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Unapologetic Zionism need not be uncritical Zionism. Nor does it mean — in the context of the presidency — giving Israel a free pass. We have already seen that Trump is better able to apply pressure and extract compromise from Netanyahu than his predecessor. That said, when Israel is being attacked by jihadist militias on all sides, unapologetic Zionists will not seek to comfort or coddle those in America who want nothing more than to see those militias win and Zionists lose. Rather, they will make the case, loudly and without quibbling, for why America, and Americans, ought to stand by Israel.

I pray this latest deal holds. Nothing matters more than the safe return of the hostages and the beginning of Palestinian rebuilding after such devastating loss.

We’ve seen too much heartache, fear, and bloodshed. Both sides of the border deserve peace and liberty. To say so is an affirmation of my Zionism, not an apology for it.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.  

Pacific Palisades, our home for 42 years, is a holy place. My family is now part of the Palisades diaspora, having been forced to evacuate, losing our home and all our possessions. Since its founding, people from around the world have come to the Palisades as a place of refuge in Los Angeles. Beverly Hills residents were an example of those who sought safety and shelter in our land. Sacred sites including the Temescal Gateway Park, Will Rodgers State Beach, Will Rodgers State Historic Park, and the Palisades Recreation Center are a few of our holy places. The Palisades Village was our “Temple Mount,” eliciting so much attention and emotion. 

Originally founded by Methodists in 1922, religions of all faiths called the Palisades home.  Places of worship include the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine, the Corpus Christi Christian Fellowship, the Parish of Saint Matthews, the Calvary Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, and the Lutheran Church. The Jewish community would gather at Kehillat Israel and Chabad.  Every Thanksgiving, Palisades residents would gather for an interfaith service. Everyone co-existed and the biggest conflicts generally happened on the flag football or soccer fields.  

In addition to spiritual leaders, the Palisades has had a series of Honorary Mayors. Jerry Lewis, in 1953, was one of the earliest. Past Mayors including Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Anthony Hopkins and current Mayor Eugene Levy all lost their homes in the 2025 fires. Current town leaders including Rick Caruso, who rebuilt the Palisades Village in 2018, and Steve Soboroff, who was just appointed as the Chief Recovery Officer for the Palisades, will provide the leadership to restore the destruction of our community. 

People in the Palisades live in distinct neighborhoods ranging from the Palisades Highlands to the north, the three mobile home parks on Pacific Coast Highway to the south, Castellammare to the west and the Rivera to the east.  The Alphabet streets, named after founding Methodist ministers, were the center of the Palisades, and felt like its “Old City.”  New homes sat side by side with original cottages.  Rustic Canyon, a hidden gem, has a rich history that includes the Tongva people, European explorers, experimental forestry, the Uplifters social club and a bohemian community. Santa Monica Canyon, Mandeville Canyon and Sunset Mesa are disputed territories claimed by neighboring Brentwood and Malibu. The residents in Topanga Canyon always felt occupied by the people from the Palisades.

Many say that the Palisades seemed like two different countries. In the morning you could wake up to an ocean view sunrise in the affordable Palisades Bowl mobile home park (where I first lived in 1982 and proposed to my wife Dana), and in the afternoon make aliyah or go up to the luxurious and laidback Huntington Palisades or the Village. The economic, demographic, spiritual and political differences helped to define the Palisades.  

Despite differences, in the Palisades we spoke the same language, ate the same foods (shout out to Café Vida which took over as a central gathering place when legendary Mort’s Deli closed) and had a shared sense of sacred space. Ritualistically we had our festival holidays. We would participate in the annual Fourth of July race, watch our friends in the Palisades Parade, and elaborately decorate our homes for Halloween. Every Sunday, there was a pilgrimage to the farmer’s market. The Pacific Palisades Baseball Association (PPBA) was its own religion. We would hike and bike our trails. My most spiritual times included regular early morning walks from our home next to the Village to grab Starbucks coffee, followed by a stroll to the Via Bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I would always stop to look for dolphins swimming in the surf. For me, finding them was a sign.

Education was one of the highest values of the Palisades People. We strived for excellence in education whether at our charter public, private, or religious. Palisades High School was the cultural center of our town both spiritually and physically. Pali High was the location of so many films and TV shows ranging from Mod Squad to Modern Family.

Ultimately the people of the Palisades are more than the land. We are the people of the (Library) book. We are a united people who shall last for generations. In New York City last weekend, there were over 150 young adults from the Palisades who rented a bar to gather and recreate a sense of our community. Since the fires, when we pray, we face the Palisades hoping to return as a people. Everyone I have spoken to has said we will return and rebuild for our kids.  

Ultimately the people of the Palisades are more than the land. We are the people of the (Library) book. We are a united people who shall last for generations. 

L’dor v’dor from generation to generation. Kol Palisades Arevim zeh bazeh. All the people of the Palisades are responsible for one another.

Rick Entin is a long-time member of Kehillat Israel, where he formerly served as a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Israel Matters Committee.