The city’s also got a complicated historical past. One entrepreneur has decided to showcase the hidden parts of his hometown’s history – and the way he’s done it has ruffled a lot of feathers.

Yurko Nazaruk helped found Kryjivka, a basement bar designed to imitate the underground kryjivkas – bunkers – where the Ukrainian Insurgent Army hid while battling Soviet invaders in World War Two.

To get into the bar, you have to first get pass the bouncer. He’s a burly guard in fatigues who cracks open the door and asks for the password – “Glory to Ukraine”.

Then he hands you a shot of vodka and opens a false bookcase, leading you downstairs to the secret bunker bar.

Musicians serenade diners as they munch on typical Ukrainian fare like pig ears and salty curls of pig fat. In the back there’s a BB gun shooting range, where you can take your best shot at a portrait of Stalin. It’s all good fun, right?

“For me it was not very easy to open such a restaurant,” said Nazaruk, the 29-year-old co-founder of the bar.

In many parts of Ukraine, the Ukrainian guerilla fighters are remembered as Nazi collaborators who helped murder Polish citizens. But Nazaruk considers the underground fighters as heroes who defended their land from Soviet invaders. He says the black and white photos, and guerilla army memorabilia on the walls, aren’t on display anywhere else in the country.

“All this material you can show in a museum. But still, how many people come to museum?” Nazaruk asked. “We are trying to help people understand better their own history.”

One Ukrainian lawmaker has called for the basement bar to be shut down. But it’s really popular with locals and tourists, and its success convinced Nazaruk to tackle other parts of Lviv’s touchy past, like Lviv-born writer Leopold van Sacher Masoch, whose gave Masochism its name.

Nazaruk opened Café Masoch, a kinky bistro with leather-clad waitresses. If you’re willing, they’ll greet you with masochistic flair – they’ll chain you to the chair and whip you on your back.

Nazaruk also opened a restaurant dedicated to Ukraine’s Freemasons, who were driven underground during Soviet rule. The restaurant has upset some modern Masons – particularly because of its bathroom. The toilet is shaped like the throne which figures prominently in Mason rituals.

Out of all of the restaurants, Nazaruk’s Jewish restaurant has probably provoked the most vocal criticism –from local historians and the city’s small Jewish community.

At the Under the Golden Rose restaurant, diners are offered black hats with curly artificial sidelocks attached –the traditional look of an Eastern European religious Jew.

“I am not Jew. But in this hat, I am a Jew,” says one diner, and laughs.

The menu features Jewish delicacies like gefilte fish and tsimmes – and also not-at-all-kosher pork sausage, and a cocktail named the Funny Jew.

The waitress explains that one thing is missing from the menu: the prices.

“It’s Jewish restaurant,” she says. “You eat…and after, bargain. It’s Jewish tradition.”

Meylakh Sheykhet, a leading figure in Lviv’s small Jewish community, is furious. The restaurant reinforces the negative stereotype of Jews being cheap, he said.

“In none of the Jewish restaurants all over the world, you will not find anything like this,” Sheykhet said.

Even more appalling, he said, is that the restaurant overlooks the ruins of Lviv’s once-famous Golden Rose Synagogue, which the Nazis blew up.

“It is a great pain that they make the Jewish traditional life so cheap,” Sheykhet said. “They exploit the Jewish feelings in favor of their business. This is a mockery.”

Before WWII, Jews were a third of Lviv’s population. During the war, nearly all of them were sent to death camps and a nearby labor camp. After the war, the Soviets took control of the city, eventually closing down synagogues and burying whatever was left of Lviv’s once-vibrant Jewish life. The same thing happened all over Ukraine.

So Sheykhet decided to take matters into his own hands: he goes out nearly every day to forgotten, destroyed Jewish graveyards around the country and works to preserve them. It’s the right way to honor Ukraine’s Jewish past, Sheykhet says.

Yurko Nazaruk insists that his restaurant also honors his city’s Jewish history.

“Some Jews say, ‘It’s not Kosher restaurant, you have no right to speak about our history, about our culture.’ And I say to them, ‘Yes, I have no right to discuss your history or culture, but still, I am making a restaurant about my city. And it’s not only your history. It’s the history of my city. And I want to show it.’”

Historians in Lviv say the restaurant franchise amounts to a kitschy, irresponsible and offensive commercialization of Lviv’s sensitive past.

Nazaruk defends his restaurants. They teach history, he says, and without the controversial gimmicks, nobody would care to learn.

“I love him, from the first sight,” Lana said with a shy giggle. “We fall in love, that’s what happened.”

Two days later, they were engaged.

Today, life is good for Lana and Taiseer in so many ways. They are married with two kids, a 4-year-old boy named Adnan and 3-year-old girl, Yosra. Taiseer is working on his doctoral thesis in anthropology and he is teaching classes. They live in a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood in Akko.

But that could all change, because of a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision. It ruled that most Palestinians – and this would include Lana Khatib – who are married to Israelis would not be eligible for Israeli citizenship.

Taiseer said the ruling puts Lana in danger of being deported, and that is no way for a democracy to treat its citizens.

“It’s not political, it’s human,” Khatib said, clearly frustrated with the new reality his family is facing. “The first victims of this will be my children, not me and not Lana. We are adults. We can survive it. Where’s the security of these two children?”

Every year for the last six years, Lana said she has applied for – and received – temporary permission to live in her husband’s hometown of Akko. But she would like to become a full-fledged Israeli citizen.

The Khatib family has lived together in Akko, Israel since 2005. The mother, Lana is facing the possibility of losing her residency. (Photo: Fouad Abu Ghosh)

As a Palestinian from the West Bank living in Israel on a temporary residency permit, Lana is ineligible for national health insurance. She cannot get a driver’s license. She cannot work legally.

The Supreme Court decision appears to have closed the door on that possibility for Lana Khatib and for thousands of other Palestinians like her, who are married to Arab Israeli citizens. The rule applies to Palestinian women under the age of 26 and men under 36. The reason most often cited for the decision is national security. But Taiseer Khatib said he doesn’t buy it anymore.

“You want security? I want security too. So, please go and check every case for its own,” Khatib said.

“At the beginning, they said security. But it’s mainly, the reason is just simple, it’s about the Jewish state and having a pure Jewish state. This is what they want.”

Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem told me, “this was one of those moments when I was really grateful not to have to be among those making the decision, because it’s simply unbearable.”

But Halevi added that the citizenship law puts two legitimate goals on a collision course. On the one hand, there is the desire for Israel to protect equal treatment for all its citizens, including Arabs – who make up 20 percent of the population. On the other hand, there is the fundamental Zionist mission to provide a safe haven for any Jew in the world.

“There is a moral responsibility [for Israeli] political and legal decision makers to make sure that there is a viable Jewish majority in this country,” Halevi said.

“Israel is the only place in the world where Jews actually get preferential treatment and I think that based on history and based on possible future need, there is a moral imperative to preserving Israel as a place that can grant preferential treatment to Jewish refugees.”

A panel of Supreme Court judges was split on this decision six-to-five. Typically, the human rights community in Israel has viewed the high court as a bastion of democratic values. But Hagai El-Ad – who directs the Association for Civil Rights in Israel – says the ruling amounts to a disaster for Israeli democracy.

“This is probably the most extreme piece of racist legislation that the Knesset has passed and now, it has the seal of approval from the highest court in the land,” El-Ad said in an interview with The World.

It is not clear how the new ruling will play out. Nor is it clear how many thousands of people would be affected. One expert on immigration issues in Israel, who asked not to be named, told me that government agencies have wildly different estimates of how many Palestinians are married to Arab Israelis. A statistic that is often cited, however, puts the number of Palestinians who have gained citizenship in Israel since the 1990s at more than 100,000.

As for the Khatib family in Akko, Lana said she has applied for another one-year residency permit. And she expects to get an answer from the government in the next couple of weeks.

Taiseer said they have been getting a lot of support from friends and colleagues. One Jewish Israeli family, he said, has even offered to help hide Khatib’s family from the authorities by letting them move into their home.

Here is a photo I took of several wall posters in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood accusing the Israeli government of trying to wipe out Judaism.

The Haredim – as Israelis refer to the Ultra-Orthodox – only make up about 10 percent of the population. But it is one of the fastest-growing segments of society, due in large part to high birth rates.

There are a whole host of issues at stake, from military service to work force participation to gender segregation in public places.

The Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim is an Ultra-Orthodox stronghold. It’s a place where the Israeli police tend to keep a low profile. An example of why came on Sunday.

As uniformed police officers moved into the neighborhood to arrest several suspects on tax evasion charges, dozens of men dressed in the traditional Ultra-Orthodox style – long black coats, big beards and black hats – confronted the officers in the street. Scuffles broke out when Haredi tried to block traffic to protest the arrests.

Down the street, Shmuel Yisrael runs a sewing machine repair shop. Yisrael is an observant Jew himself. But he resents the way the Haredim live in isolation from the mainstream.

“It’s not good,” Yisrael said. “They don’t pay taxes, they don’t serve in the army and they don’t contribute.”

It all goes back to a deal made by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The Ultra-Orthodox were given exemptions from military service and generous government subsidies so they could spend long hours in prayer and religious study.

This arrangement has endured. And it’s a win-win, said a 28-year-old Haredi man waiting at a bus stop. He gave his name as Yehuda and said he studied in a yeshiva nearby.

“The way we feel is that, when we learn and we study Torah all day, that’s a big merit for the survival of the Jews,” he said. “We feel that as long as there are people fighting in the army and there are people learning, they complement each other.”

As Yehuda sees it, the Haredim are being pressured by the media, by the government and by secular Israelis to make an unacceptable compromise.

“We will not give up on our standards of living a life of Torah,” he said.

“We’re religious and we’re completely committed to that. We’re not going to give up on those standards just because other people think we shouldn’t be religious.”

Around the corner from the bus stop, there was a much more extreme view from one segment of the Haredi community on display. It was a wall poster with names of several rabbis on it that accused the “evil government” of anti-Semitism. It said the authorities are trying to “destroy Haredi Judaism” by conducting a “brutal campaign of arrests” that harken back to the “darkest days of the Soviet Union.”

The poster is an example of what is wrong in the Ultra-Orthodox community, according to 52-year-old Yehuda Meshi-Zahav. He is a former Haredi extremist himself.

In the 1970s and 80s, Meshi-Zahav organized demonstrations against the Israeli authorities. He was an ardent anti-Zionist who rejected the idea of compromising with the Israeli government or making connections to the non-Haredi world.

But since the early 1990s, Meshi-Zahav has been very much engaged with the mainstream. He runs a highly-regarded volunteer organization of emergency medical responders called ZAKA. Many of the volunteers come from the Haredi community.

“Most of the Ultra-Orthodox community is completely sane,” Meshi-Zahav said in an interview at his Jerusalem office. “These people recognize that Israel is made up of different sectors that all belong here. But there are still extremists. They have too much influence on the community.”

Meshi-Zahav said the leaders of the Haredi community need to speak out against Ultra-Orthodox extremism. There have been incidents such as throwing rocks at police, spitting on school girls for not dressing modestly, or attacking businesses for not being religiously observant enough. Meshi-Zahav said these are the kinds of actions that more Haredi leaders need to denounce publicly.

In general, Meshi-Zahav and others like him want to lower the walls that divide the Haredim from the outside world. They want more people from the Ultra-Orthodox community to enter the work force, to serve in the army, and, more broadly, serve the nation of Israel.

But for some Ultra-Orthodox Jews, these views amount to heresy.

Yoelish Krauss is a 39-year-old Haredi activist. He lives in a two-room apartment in the Mea Shearim neighborhood with his wife and their 13 children. Krauss used to run a chicken slaughterhouse in the area until the Israeli police shut it down, accusing him of tax evasion and refusing inspections.

Krauss said he was not surprised to hear Meshi-Zahav’s call for the Haredim to build more connections with mainstream Israeli society. “He runs an international organization,” Krause said. “Of course he would say such things.”

“If you ask me,” Krauss said, “the Haredim need to be more isolated from the rest of society. That’s how we can preserve our way of life.”

Krauss said engaging with the non-Haredi world is a slippery slope. And it would lead to one thing: the Ultra-Orthodox would inevitably become secular. “There’s no way around it,” he said.

Margolis family in Bet Shemesh, Israel. (Photo: Daniella Cheslow)

At issue is the treatment, and place, of women and girls in public life. 
The one girl who has put a spotlight on Beit Shemesh is Na’ama Margolis. She is a shy, blonde, second-grader who wears glasses and comes from a religious family. Her parents immigrated to Israel from the US and Canada. Last Friday night, Na’ama appeared in a news report that seized national attention. The 8-year-old talked about how she was scared to walk to school, even while holding her mother’s hand, and despite the fact her school is only 300 yards from her family’s home.

Na’ama is afraid of the ultra-Orthodox men who started showing up at her school a few months ago. The school is a religious one, and the clothes the girls wear tend to reflect that. But for this group of ultra-Orthodox extremists, the girls’ clothes aren’t modest enough.

The men have shown up at the school, shouting nasty names, like whore and slut, at young girls and their mothers. They’ve reportedly spit on them as well.

As a result, tensions between the ultra-Orthodox community and the rest of Beit Shemesh are running high. 
Mira Aaronson, whom I met while pushing her toddler in a stroller near her home, dresses like an observant Jewish Israeli woman: her hair is covered, she wears a long-sleeved sweater and an ankle-length denim skirt. Aaronson said this is sad situation, but in Beit Shemesh, nothing short of hatred has developed between Jews like her and the most extreme members of the ultra-Orthodox community.

A low point, she said, was when her daughter’s classroom was broken into and vandalized. 
“Feces smeared all over the classroom,” Aaronson said. “It was like a stink bomb of dead fish and urine.” 


The tensions in Beit Shemesh are partly about ideals of modesty, according to Shalom Lerner, a former deputy mayor. But Lerner said they’re also about territory.

“We have so many ultra-Orthodox people in Beit Shemesh, and in a certain way they’re trying to change the shape of the city,” Lerner said. “It’s becoming very orthodox, with them trying to change the lifestyles of other people.”

Lerner said Israeli authorities made a mistake years ago when they allowed ultra-Orthodox communities to put up street signs that instructed women how to dress modestly, or not to dawdle in front of synagogues.

When police removed signs this week, scuffles broke out between officers and crowds of ultra-Orthodox men. 
Zvika Borenstein, who works in a hardware store in an ultra-Orthodox section of Beit Shemesh, said he’s not happy with the men from his community who have tried to intimidate non-ultra-Orthodox women and girls.

“Modesty is something you learn from parents,” Borenstein said. “Shouting at girls isn’t going to accomplish anything.”


Outside the hardware store, another ultra-Orthodox man who gave his name as Mittelman said he hadn’t heard about the incidents at the girls’ school because he doesn’t read secular newspapers or listen to the news.

But Mittleman said the ultra-Orthodox community must remain segregated from the rest of Israeli society, including its Jewish neighbors.

Meanwhile, the Margolis family is getting a lot of public support. On Monday night, the family’s living room was full of news cameras there to film the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. Rabbi Haim Amsalem, who’s also a member of the Israeli parliament, compared ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists to the extremists in the Islamic theocracy of Iran.

“We don’t want to live here like in Tehran,” Amsalem said, citing examples of women being forced to cover up. 


Na’ama Margolis’s mother Hadassah told me that she sees the conflict at her daughter’s school as an example of a bigger problem in Israel.

“I’m hoping that all over the country we see a difference and we see a change in the way women are being treated at the moment. I want this craziness to stop,” Margolis said.

On Tuesday, thousands of people came out in Beit Shemesh to protest what they see as an attempt by religious zealots to impose their rules on Israeli society at large. Ahead of the demonstration, Israel’s president Shimon Peres urged people to stand up against Jewish extremism, in what he called a fight for the nation’s soul.

Owner Elias Josephai is better known around here as Babu, and his well-organized store is a sanctuary from the sensory overload of the surrounding market. But little do most of Babu’s customers know that the heavy teak doors at the back of the store open into a different kind of sanctuary: the Kadavumbhagum Synagogue.

Babu is one of about 30 remaining members of the Malabari Jewish community. They’ve lived here, on the Malabar Coast in the south Indian state of Kerala, for generations. In 1948, the State of Israel was established, and within five years, all but 100 of Kerala’s 2,400 Malabari Jews had emigrated there. Babu himself tried to go. But there were other reasons to stay in Kerala.

“My family wouldn’t allow me,” says Babu. “My grandmother said that there wouldn’t be anyone for Friday prayer services if I left. I was about to go to Israel but God kept me over here.”

Ernakulam’s Kadavumbhagum Synagogue was likely built in the 16th or 17th century. It’s been closed since 1972 because there haven’t been enough congregants to keep it operating. But the synagogue’s earlier grandeur is readily apparent.

A rainbow array of glass lamps hangs near the entrance, and overhead, scores of hand carved and painted wooden lotuses decorate the two-story ceiling. The ten large windows are said to represent the Ten Commandments. And an intricate red and gold Torah ark stands at one end of the room. But like most of the Jewish residents of this area, the Torah that once stood in the ark now resides in Israel.

For centuries, Kerala’s Jewish minority lived in harmony among Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Ironically – but perhaps not surprisingly, says Babu – the real conflict was with another group of Jews.

“It happens, all over the world,” says Babu. “Five Jews with six views.”

In the 16th century, Jews from Europe and the Middle East arrived in what is now Kerala and came to be known as Paradesis, a word that means “foreigner” in several Indian languages. A power struggle soon ensued between the lighter skinned Paradesi Jews and the darker skinned Malabari Jews as each group sought to establish itself as the first Jewish settlers in the region in order to claim certain privileges from local rulers.

Today, as Kerala’s young Jews emigrate to Israel and the elderly stay behind, these two communities now share a new commonality: both may soon be part of Kerala’s history.

In addition to the 30 Malabari Jews left in Kerala, there are only nine Paradesi Jews, making the Paradesi the smallest Jewish community in the world. According to Shalva Weil, a professor of anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a leading authority on the Jews of India, this makes the Paradesi the smallest Jewish community in the world. In fact, as Weil points out, there are actually too few Paradesis to even be called a community.

“According to Jewish tradition,” says Weil, “you have to have 10 men to be part of the minyan, which is a quorum, so there are not 10 Jewish men living there. And even if you add one or two Malabari Jews who might come occasionally, you still haven’t got ten men. Therefore, it’s really the end of a community from the point of view of the Jews.”

Babu plans to live out his days in Kerala. But he expects his younger daughter, 20-year-old Leya, to join her older sister, who has already moved to Israel. Leya, has mixed feelings.

“When I touched the Wailing Wall, it was, like, a totally different experience,” says Leya. “I felt proud to be a Jew. I cried, I had tears in my eyes.”

“If I leave India, I’ll surely miss my friends and the culture here,” she adds. “The culture here is different, no wall between Hindu, Muslims or Christians. There, you can see Muslims walking on one side and Jews walking on other side. Yeah, I will surely miss India.”

The Kadavumbhagam Synagogue has been closed since 1972 (Photo: Kavita Pillay)

“This is a holy land,” says Babu, offering a variation on a term traditionally reserved for Israel. “India is a holy land because of acceptance toward all the religions. This is my motherland, and I call Israel as a fatherland. But for the Jews, there is no life over here.”

This week, for the first time since the synagogue closed in 1972, the remaining Malabari Jews of Kerala will open the doors of the Kadavumbhagam Synagogue and light the menorah for Hanukah. For a dwindling community with an uncertain future, it’s also a chance to recall a moment in which abundance arose out of scarcity.

Anti-Semitic board game 'Juden Raus' (Photo: Wiener Library)

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: In mid 1930s Europe, the storm clouds of World War II were gathering and in Germany Adolf Hitler had begun his campaign of antisemitism. He was very effective at convincing Germans there was a Jewish menace. A holocaust museum in London is now displaying a chilling reminder of how that fear took hold. The Wiener Library recently relocated and it put on an exhibit in the new space: items that were formerly in storage. Among them, a board game. Think of it as a sinister version of Monopoly. Museum director Ben Barkow describes the game.

Ben Barkow: It’s called “Juden Raus” or “Jews out” and it is a bright yellow board. The board is in the form a town and you walk through the streets. You roll dice, you walk through the streets and you are hoping to land on circles which represent Jewish businesses or law firms or whatever, and the little wooden figures that you play with represent the Germans and the Jews are represented by small yellow cones, cardboard cones, with grotesque caricatures of Jewish faces painted on them. If the wooden figure lands on the Jewish circle, it “arrests” the Jew. The wooden figure goes back to his home base, puts the Jew into something called the “sammlung punktz” or the “collection point” and then goes back into the town to try to hunt down another one.

Mullins: So the more you collect. . .

Barkow: The first one to round up six Jews is the winner.

Mullins: Remind us when this game came out.

Barkow: This game was issued in 1936.

Mullins: And the timing represent what? In terms of treatment of the Jews.

Barkow: 1936, the year of the Olympic Games, two years before the November pogroms. By the mid 1930s, German society was absolutely saturated with anti-Jewish propaganda at every level. It started in the cradle. We have books for really tiny toddler, full of images of Hitler, full of messages that Jews are bad and so on. The regime was certainly trying to create a generation of willing executioners. That much is beyond doubt. So I think for a German family, the idea of the board game, maybe they thought, “Our children need to get into this mind frame to survive in this society.”

Mullins: Is it the Nazi regime that put out this board game?

Barkow: No. Interestingly, it wasn’t. It was a purely commercial product put out by a games manufacturer based in Dresden and so it demonstrates the commercial exploitation of the Nazi ideology and the Nazi antisemitism.

Mullins: So it was a commercial board game. Did people actually play it or is this kind of just a novelty?

Barkow: No. It is documented that it was a considerable commercial success and that many, many copies, possibly up to a million copies, of it sold at the time.

Mullins: And it was considered a family time activity?

Barkow: It was fun for all the family.

Mullins: I mean it was a commercial board game as you say, and it happened before the Nazi policy, the official policy of extermination. What does that tell you?

Barkow: Well, I think it points to the all-pervasiveness of their ideology and their anti-Jewish agitation on the one side and it points to, I think, the easy and cynical way in which the world of business and commerce was able to coexist and profit from this evil regime.

Mullins: We’re going to present a video of you showing how this particular board game works at theworld.org. Ben Barkow, director of the newly relocated Wiener Library in London, the world’s oldest holocaust museum. Thank you.

Barkow: Thank you.

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He’s not exactly happy that the moderate Islamic political party, Ennahda, is heading the new government. But he doesn’t see it as the end of the world, either.

“We have to give time, to see what happens on next 8 months, and see where the conductor takes the train,” he said.

Jacob Lellouche is one of 1,200 or so Jews in Tunisia’s population of 10 million people. (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Lellouche is actually more concerned about issues like preserving women’s rights in one of the Arab world’s most secular countries, than about the status of Jews here.

Lellouche spoke at an old, high ceilinged house that he’s turned into the only kosher restaurant in Tunisia. It’s called Mamie Lily, after his 83 year old mother, who’s the chef.

The kitchen staff clean up the silverware and plates after lunch. Two Muslims work in the kitchen, and people from all religions dine here, Lellouche said. In the dining room, the walls are decorated with black and white family pictures and Jewish “Yad,” or Torah pointers. But Lellouche said most Tunisians don’t even know there’s an indigenous Jewish community in Tunisia, which long precedes Christianity or Islam. His desire to change the idea of what is a “Tunisian” spurred him to run for public office.

“A lot of Tunisians think that when you are not Muslim, you cannot run for anything and not contribute to political life in country. You have to live here and be quiet, and it’s enough,” Lellouche said. “But I want to prove to al the Tunisians,, and in this way, I think that I won my election, because I break something in the Tunisians minds. Even if you are Christian or Jewish or Bahia, or without any faith, you can involve yourself in the Tunisian life.”

Lellouche’s restaurant is located in the seaside town of La Goulette, a suburb of Tunis. He said this area used to be home to thousands of Jews.

“In a city like Goulette, all the restaurants were kosher restaurants. Because before the 60’s, there was one mosque, one church, and 14 synagogues,” Lellouche said.

Eighty percent of the town was Jewish. Now, most have now left. Lellouche called the history of Tunisian Jews “big and sad.” Archeological evidence shows Jews have been in Tunisia since at least the third century B-C. The population peaked just after World War II at more than 100,000. It’s been reduced to just over 1000. Most left in the 1950’s and 60’s when violence flared during the Arab-Israeli wars. Other Jews left for better economic opportunities in Europe or the US. But Lellouche said much still remains.

“We have Jewish schools, synagogues, kosher butcher, and kosher restaurant, even if the last one in the country. And for us it is ok,” he said.

Most of the community, and the synagogues and schools, are located on the island of Jerba, in southeastern Tunisia. But Tunis is home to the country’s “Grand Synagogue.” It’s a few blocks from a massive mosque. There have been no instances of violence against Jews since the revolution that overthrew strongman Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January. But during one of the anti-government marches, there was a demonstration that briefly turned anti-Jewish in front of the synagogue.

The demonstrators chanted “Go Jews, the Army of Mohammad has returned!” for about a minute, then moved on. Roger Bismuth, the head of the Jewish community, said the chants were started by Ben Ali’s undercover police posing as Islamic extremists to make people afraid OF Ennahda and other Islamic political parties. The Ennahda party, which won most seats in the current constitutional assembly, condemned the incident. Since then, Bismuth said, the party’s leaders have gone out of their way to reassure Tunisia’s Jews.

“I was promised by the people from Ennahda,” Bismuth said. “They said ‘no, don’t worry, there will be no change.’”

Bismuth said the Jewish community has not expressed serious fear to him about their future in Tunisia, at least no more so than what he hears from his Muslim friends.

“I’m not worried, as a Jew, but I’m worried as a Tunisian,” Bismuth said, “because our country is in a difficult position. We need to rebuild. If we don’t start having calm, and having tourism comeback here, it’s a big job to make a country start all over again, it’s not that easy. We all share the same worries.”

The 85-year-old Bismuth is no foreigner to anti-Jewish sentiment. He was 16 in 1943when the Germans occupied Tunisia, the only Arab country to be directly ruled by the Nazis during World War 2. He was forced to work in a Nazi labor camp.

In the decades since the war, the strongly secular and tolerant tendencies in Tunisian society have helped to keep the Jewish population here. Though small, it is the largest Jewish community, by percentage, in the Arab World. Gilles Jacob Lellouche hopes things will stay that way. With the fall of Ben Ali’s government came the lifting of restrictions on starting non-governmental and cultural organizations. So, Lelouche has founded a cultural center called “house of memory” to preserve the history of Jews in Tunisia.

And he hopes to open a Jewish museum in Tunis next year.

• Movie review: The Jews of Lebanon

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins:  In the years after the holocaust, many Jews headed to Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Jews mostly from other Arab countries settled in Beirut and they thrived there. That is until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. That’s when the city became more hostile toward Jews. The majority of them left. Today fewer than 200 Jews remain in Beirut. Nada Abdelsamad draws attention to this period of Lebanese and Jewish history in her book called “Stories about the Jews of Beirut” and in her follow up TV documentary. She told us she didn’t get very far when she first set out to speak with members of the Jewish community in Beirut about their experiences.

Nada Abdelsamad: So I turned it around and I tried to find people that used to live in the Jewish area which was called Wadi Abu Jamil and Abu Jamil is the name of one of the prominent figures in the Jewish community. So, I interviewed people who used to live in this area knowing that neighbors or friends or lovers. Anything that they have any connection with this community. I did interviews and I rebuilt this society through these interviews and it was the book.

Mullins:  When you say you rebuilt this society through the interviews you conducted, give me an idea of what that society was like and how you learned about it though the various people you spoke with.

Abdelsamad: What was surprising for me because I’m not from the generation who knew the period where the Jewish community was living in Lebanon. What was surprising for me is that this period was very normal. They had good relation with other communities. They didn’t have any problems in terms of being Jew or something like that. So, this is what surprised me because I haven’t noticed since the end of the war that we really had a Jewish community that was living normally in my country.

Mullins:  So it wasn’t that it was so exceptional because it stood apart. It was exceptional because it was so integrated in Lebanese society.

Abdelsamad: Exactly, and because there is no one left. This is a community that they decided to put and end to their presence in Lebanon because of the conflict in the region and because of many other reasons. Those that are still in Lebanon we think they might have changed their community names and so on.

Mullins:  One of them men you came across used to live in this Jewish area of Beirut. He bought some books that he though were antiques. Turns out that these books, three of them, were written around 1947 to 1950. They are actually memoirs. And he said that he was hoping you would be able to locate the family that was talked about in these memoirs and he wanted to give the books back to them. So you did indeed track down and tell us how–how you tracked down the family.

Abdelsamad: In the book I found a letter written by Désiré Liniado to his daughter Dany and that’s why I tried to search for Dany Liniado on Facebook and I found her. I sent her a message saying that I have the memoir of her father and I’m willing to send these books to her in Mexico and asked her if she can be interviewed while receiving these books and she accepted.

Mullins:  So this is a Jewish-Lebanese woman, her father had written these memoirs. She had fled to Mexico. She fled Beirut during the civil war in 1976. You went to Mexico to film her as you handed over these three original memoirs as you mentioned. Let’s hear what happened then.

Dany Liniado: I have to speak in Arabic

[Speaking in Arabic]

Mullins:  Nada, tell us what was going on there and what she was saying.

Abdelsamad: She was saying that those books were written by her father and each one is part of his life. Those books were written for her especially because all of these books were for his daughter saying that when you grow up I want you to read these books. That’s what happened because of the documentary we did.

Mullins:  The film has been shown in Lebanon. Tell us what the reaction has been and what you would like to accomplish with it.

Abdelsamad: People were divided. People were asking me why I was interested in this topic. And I shouldn’t be interested in this topic because we are in a war with Israel and we don’t want to see people from the Jewish community as you show them. Other people they said they knew for the first time that we had a Jewish community in Lebanon that used to live peacefully that are in total nostalgia of their living here so Dani [xx] also said that when she was living in Lebanon that was the best period of her life and she couldn’t find happiness elsewhere

Mullins:  Thank you for telling us about the film, the book and the neighborhood that you profiled in the film Nada Abdelsamad thank you very much.

Abdelsamad: Thank you.

Mullins:  Author Nada Abdelsamad’s book is called “Stories about the Jews of Beirut”

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Sarah Palin, in her video addressing the shootings in Arizona, used the term ‘blood libel’ to describe what she argued was an erroneous argument: the linking of heated political rhetoric to the actual violence in Tucson.

“Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible,” she said.

But the term ‘blood libel’ is itself a piece of language that brings a lot of heat.

Historically, blood libel is a false accusation that Jews murder others in order to use their blood in ceremonies. Blood libel is a standard feature of anti-Semitism, stretching back centuries. The false accusation would be made, passions stirred.

“And what that then legitimated was not just anti-Semitism but violence towards Jews,” said John Esposito, an expert in religious and international affairs at Georgetown University.

History is littered with examples of Jews suffering retaliation at the hands of those accusing them falsely of sacrificial murder, he said.

It’s quite a jump, then, to recast ‘blood libel’ as a false accusation leveled at those behind heated political speech, the accusation being that that speech in some way contributed to the violence in Arizona.

“It shows there is a problem and they know they have a problem,” Esposito said. “And so what they’re trying to say is ‘we’re innocent victims’.”

Sarah Palin’s use of ‘blood libel’ is particularly confusing because, in constructing an argument separating heated political discourse from the violent acts of an individual, she invokes a phrase that is itself enormously loaded with meaning.

“We don’t get any greater clarity, it almost distracts from what the actual issue is here, and I think that’s the intention,” said Esposito.

Esposito calls Palin’s use of the term ‘inaccurate, objectionable and insensitive.’ It didn’t take long for Jewish groups in the United States to respond to Palin’s recasting of the term.

Jeremy Ben-Ami leads J Street, a self-described ‘pro-Israel, pro-peace’ organization in Washington.

“It is very confusing,” said Ben-Ami.

“But the bottom line is that this is historically a horrific charge that was used in a clearly anti-Semitic way that resulted in the murder and great harm to Jewish populations, particularly in Russia in the 19th and 18th centuries — and the term was banned and outlawed.”

Yet the phrase has never really gone away.

Today conservative commentators were quick to point out that, over the years, journalists, activists and politicians on both sides of the aisle have drawn on the rhetorical power of ‘blood libel’ to make their points.

It didn’t start with Sarah Palin, or others who have been using the term this week. And, Jeremy Ben-Ami said, it’s used in politics beyond the US.

“If you Google the term on the leading newspaper in Israel, Ha’aretz, if you Google the term ‘blood libel’ on their pages you’ll find it as well, frequently,” he said.

Which Ben-Ami said, is just as painful to him as hearing it used in the United States.

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by Matthew Bell

The Western Wall is considered one of Judaism's holiest sites (Photo: Matthew Bell)

Last week, a Palestinian official put up an article on an official website of the Palestinian Authority that claimed the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem was neither holy to Jews, nor did it belong to the Jewish State, but to Muslims.

The Israeli government quickly condemned the article. On Tuesday, the US State Department followed suit, saying it amounted to “denying historic Jewish connections to the land.”

The offending five-page article has been removed from the website. But the incident highlights a daunting obstacle to any leader who would seek a final status peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Who will control Jerusalem’s holiest site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary?

Jews pray at the Western Wall, or “Wailing Wall,” because it’s the holiest place on earth where they are allowed to pray.

The huge stone wall, which happens to be the most popular tourist destination in Israel, is part of what remains of four ancient retaining walls built to support what Jews call the
Temple Mount.

Judaism teaches that the Temple Mount is the dwelling place chosen by God for his divine presence. It’s where God gathered dust to create Adam. It’s where the “holy of holies,” which contained the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses, was stored. It’s the spot where the first and second temples built by Jewish kings once stood, and some believe, it’s where the third Jewish temple will one day be constructed.

“It’s our heart,” Shmuel Rabinowitz told me. He’s the rabbi of the Western Wall.

“I don’t believe Jews need to show anyone that Jerusalem or the Temple Mount is ours.”

But what about sharing this place known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, because it is also where the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock were built centuries ago?

Rabinowitz said he has a difficult time fathoming any Israeli prime minister agreeing to give up Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

“It’s irrelevant to talk about that,” he said. “Why talk about changing the status quo?”

Here’s how the status quo at the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount works.

Israeli law – though not the international community – considers all of the city of Jerusalem as sovereign territory of the Jewish state, including the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary. Israeli police and security forces control the entire Old City, which includes many of the most important holy sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Israel security forces also control access to the to the al-Aqsa mosque compound, which includes the entire Temple Mount complex. During Muslim holy days, for example, men under the age of 50 have been prevented from entering.

But here’s where things get complicated. It is the Islamic authorities of the Wakf foundation who are responsible for the religious affairs and administration of the Noble Sanctuary, including the mosques there.

Yusuf Natsheh is an archeologist and historian with the Wakf. He says the status quo with regard to the Haram al-Sharif, as the Noble Sanctuary is known is Arabic, is fundamentally flawed, starting with the way Israelis refer to the site.

“The Haram al-Sharif, it’s not the Temple Mount, because using the Temple Mount in our point of view, it’s a replacement, an eradication,” Natsheh said. “This area is called the Aqsa mosque for 1400 years. By emphasizing or repeating the Temple Mount, this is like calling someone whose name is Muhammad by calling him John.”

Natsheh said the biggest problem with the status quo is the way Israel maintains sovereignty over the third most important holy site for Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

“It is by force,” he said. “It is not by the Palestinian will. It is not by agreement, it is by might. People are under occupation. If you ask a Palestinian, he will say that the Western Wall is a property of Muslims.”

Israelis often point out, however, that while they have allowed Palestinians to keep some control over the Noble Sanctuary, Jews were not even allowed to visit their most important holy site under the previous authority.

Jordan controlled the Old City of Jerusalem after 1948 and it prevented Israeli Jews from praying at the Western Wall for 19 years. That changed in 1967, when Israeli paratroopers took control of Jerusalem’s Old City during the Six Day War. Within hours of the doing so, however, defense minister Moshe Dayan made a historic decision: to give the Islamic Wakf authority over the Temple Mount.

Muslims would have access to the place from which they believe the prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven. Non-Muslims would be forbidden from praying anywhere in the mosque compound.

Former Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin was a soldier at the time, who visited the Western Wall a few days after Israel’s victory.

“We the soldiers went to the Wailing Wall. We were not interested at all in the mosques on the other side. It was a Muslim place,” Beilin said.

“Now, historically, it is more than reasonable to believe that it is the Jewish holiest place. And for the Arabs it is very difficult to admit it, because if this is true, it means that their holy place is built on Jewish ruins.”

Politically, Beilin is an important figure in the Israeli peace camp. He was part of an independent effort between Israelis and Palestianians to map out a workable Middle East peace plan, called the Geneva Initiative.

What about the fact that some Palestinians deny there was ever a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount? The late Yassir Arafat reportedly said as much. Palestinian officials also continue to say that they see no solid archeological evidence that proves the existence of any Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. I asked Beilin how he feels about such claims.

“You know it’s not very pleasant, but if you ask me whether it destroys my day, the answer is negative,” he said.

“I am living with my truth and I don’t need them to verify it. In any peace treaty, those who would like to go there will be allowed to go there. There is no peace agreement which will prevent Jews from going to the Temple Mount and this is why I believe the problem is more artificial than we think.”

Nonetheless, the problem has never been resolved.

In the summer of 2000, president Clinton sequestered Israeli and Palestinians leaders and they finally started negotiating many of the toughest issues at stake. Control over the Temple Mount proved to be one of the toughest hurdles of all.

According to Clinton’s memoir, the Israelis offered the Palestinians “custodianship” over the Temple Mount and “sovereignty” over the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. But Arafat, Clinton wrote, wanted full sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary and nothing less. The talks ended without a peace deal. And several weeks later, the second intifada broke out.

During a speech in September 2010, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert detailed a proposal he’d made to the Palestinians two years earlier. Olmert’s offer was to create an arrangement where the Temple Mount and Western Wall would be administered by an international trusteeship of Israelis, Palestinians, Saudis, Jordanians and Americans. Olmert says he never got a response to the offer from the Palestinians.

Still, he told an audience in Tel Aviv, there is no other alternative.

“We cannot reach an agreement if any of the sides claim exclusive sovereignty on the Holy Basin,” Olmert said, referring to the Old City and its immediate surroundings.

“About this question of the sovereignty of Holy Basin of Jerusalem. It won’t be ours and it won’t be the Palestinians’,” he said.

Still, even if Palestinians were to buy into such a deal, it’s hard to imagine that Israel’s current right-wing governing coalition would go along with it.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Turkey is increasing security for its Jewish citizens and institutions today.  Historically Jews in the Turkish Ottoman Empire faced little of the discrimination and violence suffered by Jews in Europe.  But today, the long history of friendliness between Muslims and Jews in Turkey is under pressure like never before after Monday’s events off the Israeli coast.  Matthew Brunwasser reports.

MATTHEW BRUNWASSER:  At the Jewish Museum in Turkey, one of the few in the Islamic world, curator Naim Guleryuz explains the history of Turkey’s Jews to a group of Dutch tourists.  Most Jews here are Sephardic.  They are descendents of Jews invited by the Sultan after their expulsion from Spain in 1492.  He says they brought with them a rich culture of their own.

NAIM GULERYUZ:  The Sephardic Jews coming from Spain, bring with them the knowledge of The Golden Age in Andalusia when the Christians and Muslims and Jews together performed a lot in the arts.

BRUNWASSER: Guleryuz says Jews thrived in the multicultural empire because it was Ottoman policy to welcome ethnic minorities seeking a better life.

GULERYUZ: To be benevolent, not only to the Jews, but also to others, people coming from different countries, Jews, Christians, Muslims.

BRUNWASSER: But the political culture today in the Turkish Republic has changed.  The Islamic ruling party has moved Turkey closer to its fellow Muslims in the Middle East at the expense of its historic strong ties with Israel.  After Israeli commandos this week killed Turkish activists.  Public anger is Turkey is burning and Guleryuz says the 22,000 Jews of Turkey are feeling the heat.

GULERYUZ: In politics there are not the feelings which count, it is the interests.  The national interests of the countries guide the attitude.  So what will happen tomorrow, I don’t know.  For today, its really hard period and we Turkish Jews are very affected by what happened.  We share the feelings of the whole country.

BRUNWASSER: Looking back at similar tensions in December 2008 during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Guleryuz says Jews were initially frightened, but then things calmed down.  Soli Ozel, the foreign editor of the Haberturk newspaper, who is Jewish, says Jews needn’t worry.  He says Turkish to the Gaza crisis was much worse, and that blew over.

SOLI OZEL:  This time around the government has been extraordinarily careful, in my judgment, very responsibly from the first moment onwards in making sure that one made a distinction between Israeli, Israeli policies, Jews in general, and especially Jews in Turkey.  Everybody who ever opened their mouths was careful to point this out.  That was not the kind of care we saw during Gaza.

BRUNWASSER: Back then he says, Anti-Semitic signs were posted in government buildings.  Ugly language about Jews was used by the public and officials without restraint.

OZEL:  I think so long as the state maintains its cool, and this is the kind of attitude that the state adopts, I don’t really see things worsening.

BRUNWASSER: Turkey sees itself as a responsible and constructive power in the Middle East, Ozel says.  And it doesn’t want to jeopardize its position.  But in this tense atmosphere, Turks seem unable to imagine how relations with Israel could recover.  The Jews of Turkey hope the government will step in to prevent attacks.  For The World, I’m Matthew Brunwasser in Istanbul.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  We mark this year’s Jewish holiday of Passover with an extraordinary Rabbi.  He’s 97 years old and now lives in San Francisco.  But he hasn’t always lived there.  He grew up in Germany.  In fact, he is the last living Rabbi who led German Jewish communities during the Nazi holocaust.  Reporter Lonny Shavelson takes us to a special family Seder in northern California.

LONNY SHAVELSON:  Rabbi Leo Trapp’s voice is strong and clear.  His memory even more so.  Last Monday on the first day of the Passover holiday, he joined his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in San Rafael, California around an elegantly set Passover table.

RABBI LEO TRAPP:  God’s promise of redemption in the ancient days sustains us even now.

SHAVELSON: This is the 74th year Rabbi Trapp has conducted a Passover ceremony, which commemorates the enslavement of Jews in ancient Egypt.  Trapp’s first Passover as a Rabbi was in 1936.  He was 23, newly ordained, and living in Oldenburg, in Nazi controlled Germany.

RABBI TRAPP: And what we all had to suffer, Jews sent away to concentration camps, Jews dying.  It was a very rewarding rabbinate because the Jews needed me.

SHAVELSON: That sense of finding something to appreciate, even in the most devastatingly bleak circumstances imaginable, defines Rabbi Trapp’s core.

RABBI TRAPP: I have to I have to fear, for instance, that my mother went to her death, concentration camp, knowing that she did something for God.

SHAVELSON: Rabbi Trapp also traces his most intense experience of God to the concentration camp.

RABBI TRAPP: We were called out at 4:00 in the morning.  The head of the camp, he said you are the dregs of humanity. I don’t see why you should live.  These machine guns on the towers around the camp were all directed toward us.  The only thing that came to me is dear God, if you want me to die for you at this moment, I’m ready, I’m ready.  And then in the strangest of ways, God was with me.  I know God was there, in the concentration camp with me.  And it was the worst place for it.  That’s why it was the best.

SHAVELSON: At the Passover Seder, Rabbi Trapp tells the next three generations of his family how his experience with the Nazis connects him to the Jews enslaved in Egypt.  But the Rabbi doesn’t see either of those two disasters for the Jews as past history.  Rather, he says, they are omens of the future.  The Passover readings say that in every generation people have tried to annihilate the Jews.

RABBI TRAPP: It has happened over and over and over and over again.  And you better not only be prepared, but have the inner strength to endure it and we shall fight against it.

SHAVELSON: Because, says the Rabbi, every holocaust has been followed by an ever deepening freedom.

RABBI TRAPP: And freedom is the most significant element in Jewish life.

SHAVELSON: The Rabbi breaks the matzo, the unleavened bread that symbolizes the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

RABBI TRAPP: This year we are here.  Next year we’ll be in the land of Israel.  This year there are many people who are enslaved and impoverished.  Next year, may all human beings be free.

SHAVELSON: For The World, I’m Lonny Shavelson in San Rafael, California.

WERMAN: Lonny also produced a video that takes you inside that family Seder.  You can check that at the world dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Construction has just started in Warsaw on the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It will not simply be a museum about the Holocaust. The museum team wants to focus more broadly on centuries of Jewish life and achievements in Poland. Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska has our story. Her report was produced with the help of Feet in Two Worlds, a project of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.