Doug Collins, U.S. secretary of veterans affairs, and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) attended the ceremonies, which were Project Benjamin’s first at Arlington National Cemetery.

By Andrew Bernard, Menachem Wecker, JNS

Some 100 people, ranging in age from about 8 to 102, huddled for warmth as they braved 40-degree temperatures on a damp day at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to watch, as speaker after speaker put it, Pfc. Adolph Hanf and Pvt. David Moser “come home.”

Neither of the Jewish soldiers, who served in World War I and who have been dead for more than 100 years, underwent a geographic relocation.

But with the help of Operation Benjamin, a donor-supported nonprofit, Moser (1898-1919) and Hanf (1884-1918) received new gravestones with Stars of David rather than Latin crosses.

“We take a moment out of our busy lives to remember two men of the Jewish faith, long at rest in this cemetery but mistakenly commemorated,” said Rob Dalessandro, deputy secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

“Today, thanks to the efforts of Operation Benjamin and their team, we can better appreciate the shared Jewish sacrifice in the cause of democracy and freedom.”

Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, the president of Operation Benjamin, told the attendees that his organization’s work is “very important and precious and I would even say holy.”

Schacter told JNS that the new headstones finally provided the two men with a grave marker that was appropriate for them as Jews.

“What we have seen today is an extraordinary expression of the commitment of the Jewish people and of the leadership of the United States of America to set the historical record straight, to bring soldiers who gave their lives for America, as Americans and as Jews, under the marker that represents their ancestral faith,” he said.

Shalom Lamm, the chief historian of Operation Benjamin, noted that few people gathered at the cemetery had even heard of Moser and Hanf prior to two months ago. “What is it about their story that stirs the human soul?” he said.

“I’d like to suggest that we all feel a sense of justice being done after all these years for two young men, who sacrificed all for an idea bigger than themselves.”

“We instinctively know that when they lost their lives, they lost the ability to fight for their own identity. Our sense of fair play is aroused by our ability to make things right after all of these years,” Lamm said.

“We have a sense, I think, of paying a long overdue debt to these men. We got it wrong for over 100 years. We buried them incorrectly for over 10 decades.”

Doug Collins, U.S. secretary of veterans affairs, and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) attended the ceremonies, which were Project Benjamin’s first at Arlington National Cemetery.

Wasserman Schultz announced during her remarks that she and colleagues in the Senate and House are introducing legislation, which would authorize $500,000 per year, for a decade, to replace grave markers for Jewish American service members to represent their faith.

The legislation the members of Congress will be pursuing includes “an appropriation, so that we can make sure that over the next decade there is funding available to do the research and be able to go through the process of finding and replacing the headstones,” Wasserman Schultz told JNS.

“Identity is so incredibly important, especially for the fallen. As the ranking member of the Military Construction, VA appropriations subcommittee, honoring the entire arc of a service member’s commitment and service to our country is incredibly important, including in their death,” she said.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) shakes hands with Deborah Berlinger Eiferman, 102, at a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., during which a new tombstone with a Star of David was unveiled for Eiferman’s uncle Pvt. David Moser, April 7, 2025. Photo by Menchem Weker

“As a Jew, and as a member of a community that has been persecuted for millennia, making sure that the final resting place of our fallen is honored with their identity is incredibly important not just for them but for those that come to military cemeteries and help honor them,” she told JNS.

“Particularly now, given the massive precipitous rise of antisemitism and the incredible importance of our being able to be who we are publicly, making sure that our fallen can be as well is critical,” she added.

Torres represents Deborah Berlinger Eiferman, 102, who is Moser’s niece. The congressman noted that although Hanf has no known living relatives, Eiferman’s “grace and generosity” and love “extends not only across space but across time, not only to family and friends but also strangers.”

“Private Hanf is not alone,” Torres said. “He is part of a larger Jewish family, a larger American family. All of us Jews and non-Jews alike should claim and celebrate him as our own.”

Days before Passover, the holiday of redemption, those gathered at Arlington National Cemetery were engaged in “a form of redemption,” Torres said. “A restoration of identity. A reaffirmation that these men belong to their families, to their faith and to their country and that none of these are mutually exclusive.”

“As we approach Passover, we are redeeming ourselves by liberating the memory of these Jewish American heroes from the enslavement of an engraved error. Today, we are not rewriting history, we are rectifying it.”

Eiferman told attendees that being at the cemetery that day to unveil the new tombstone for her “baby uncle” is an “overwhelming experience.” (The whole family called him a “baby,” she said, because he only lived to 20.)

A new tombstone with a Star of David rather than a Latin cross is unveiled for Pfc. Adolph Hanf at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., April 7, 2025. Photo by Menachem Wecker.

The 102-year-old said that she hopes attendees will take away from the day that going to a cemetery isn’t always an awful experience, but can be “morally justified.”

Eiferman said that her grandfather (whom she called zayde, using the Yiddish term) had a stroke when he heard that Moser, her uncle, had died and never spoke again thereafter.

At the time, in the 1930s, wheelchairs weren’t as available as they are today, so her grandfather pushed a wooden chair with four legs around the house to get around, she said.

“This day is profound in the context of Judaism,” she said. “We were aware of the fact that for over a century, my baby uncle David, his identity as a proud Jew was hidden. He was so patriotic.”

She added that at 102, “it was a bit of a miracle from shamayim,” from heaven, “that I’m here today to give honor to my baby uncle David Moser and to my new adoptee Adolph Hanf.”

“Adolph you’re not alone,” she said. “I’m here for you.”

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“Throughout the work on the exhibition, we discovered how much, even during her short life, she managed to touch so many people.”

By Aryeh Savir/TPS

Border Police soldier Hadas Malka, who was killed in a terrorist attack almost six years ago, is the focus of a traveling exhibition that illuminates the image of Hadas and her legacy, that of devotion to Jerusalem, to her country, a life of dedication.

In June 2017, three Arab terrorists armed with guns and knives attacked Border Police troops securing the Damascus Gate area in Jerusalem. The troops neutralized two of the terrorists, when the third who managed to escape towards the Damascus Gate and attacked Hadas with a knife.

Hadas was evacuated in critical condition to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was 23 years old.

19-year-old Hadar Cohen was also killed in the shooting and stabbing attack.

The death of the two female soldiers in battle sent shock waves throughout the country.

Her parents, David and Geula Malka, say their daughter was characterized by “diligence and action,” and “was a model who inspired those around her. Power, activism, sensitivity, determination, and daring were an integral part of her, as well as her wide smile.”

The exhibition in her memory presents two timelines: the first is Hadas’ path from her enlistment to the army and the Border Police to her death based on texts she wrote, some of which were taken from her Facebook page, and the second is based on the memories of the soldiers she commanded and the people she touched during her life. The exhibition includes obituaries from the time of her death in battle until now.

David and Geula shared that “the idea for the exhibition was formed after we were exposed to things she wrote, expressed, and photographed during her period as a fighter and commander. Hadas was a special daughter, an amazing, powerful, patriotic, and exceptionally valued girl. After her death, we found many photographs and texts she wrote which allowed us to bring Hadas’ special story to the general public, in a credible and unmediated way.”

The curators of the exhibition are Inbal Marili and Sharon Israeli, graduates of the Department of Visual Communication at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design.

“Throughout the work on the exhibition, we discovered how much, even during her short life, she managed to touch so many people. ‘So that its light will not cease to shine,’” they said.

One panel showcases Hadas’ leadership of a project in which soldiers visited Holocaust survivors. Another panel highlights her dedication to the troops she commanded and their gratitude to her.

Retired Deputy Superintendent Gideon Mor, a friend of the family, told TPS while visiting the exhibit that its essence is “the notion of a life mission and the belief in the mission,” and “Hadas expresses in the most explicit way the idea of defending the homeland, of service.”

The exhibit shows “that she was successful in inspiring others to follow this path. Her courageous personality realized these values, and unfortunately, in her death as well.”

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Rabbi Zsolt Balla discusses his role as the Germany Army’s first rabbi since the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and explains why Jews should want to serve in that country’s military.

The post WATCH: German Army’s first rabbi since Hitler’s rise says should be ‘normalcy’ for Jews to serve appeared first on World Israel News.

Federal administration branch that works with military agencies takes down anti-Semitic website posting after complaint by religious freedoms group.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The U.S. federal administration responsible for providing administrative services to military agencies in Washington posted a blatantly anti-Semitic Easter sermon on its website that blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported Thursday.

The Washington Headquarters Services has some 1,600 employees who provide administrative support for more than 78 defense-related facilities, mostly in the Washington, D.C. area.

The anti-Semitic sermon, “What Did the People Talk About at the First Easter” by Chaplain Lt. Aristotle Rivera of Camp Lejeune, was posted on the WHS webite on March 30.

In his sermon, Lt. Rivera cited passages from the New Testament of the account of the apostle Peter preaching to “men of Israel” the redemption available in Christ’s death.

Rivera’s interpretation of those verses is addressed to the “Men of Israel.” He wrote: “A way to summarize the early Easter message was this: ‘Jesus lived. You killed him. God raised him. We saw him. Say Sorry.’”

The Albuquerque, NM-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) saw the posting and demanded the WHS remove it from the website.

The foundation said it was “outraged at this blatant anti-Semitism purveyed by the Department of Defense’s Washington Headquarters Service” and called on the WHS to “apologize for condoning and spreading Chaplain Rivera’s anti-Semitic poison.”

The MRFF says its mission is “dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

Following the complaint, the WHS removed the sermon from its website, which is administered by the Department of Defense and now generates a “Page not found” error message.

The foundation and the Jewish War Veterans called for an inquiry into the sermon. Both groups demanded disciplinary action against Rivera, saying the sermon contradicted rules against proselytizing and peddling bigotry.

In a press release, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America said that “in addition to an apology and admission of wrongdoing by Lt. Rivera, we also ask the Department of Defense to issue a statement acknowledging the anti-Semitic nature of the article.”

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Before a mass exodus following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Jews numbered between 100,000 and 150,000 in Iran.

By World Israel News Staff

Against the backdrop of growing tensions between Iran and Israel, members of the Iranian Jewish community along with the Revolutionary Guards and Muslim clerics paid tribute to the Iranian Jewish soldiers who died during the Iran-Iraq war, reports Israel’s Mako news site.

During the ceremony, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards saluted during the recital of a Jewish prayer dedicated to the memory of the soldiers.

After the prayer, the Guards helped clean the graves.

In 2014, Iranian authorities inaugurated a monument in memory of the Jewish soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war that was fought between 1980 and 1988.

According to a 2018 report by PBS, Iran has the Middle East’s second-largest population of Jews, with around 15,000 living there today. In Tehran, there are 13 active synagogues, five Jewish private schools, and several kosher restaurants.

Before a mass exodus following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Jews numbered between 100,000 to 150,000 in the country.

The PBS report about Iran’s Jews was widely criticized for its glowing representation of safe and stable Jewish life in Iran, in stark contrast with the genocidal anti-Israel rhetoric Iran continually spouts.

According to a JTA article by Larry Cohler-Esses, a journalist who visited Iran and reported on the Jewish community for the Forward, “Iran accommodates some 9,000 Jews — according to the community itself — viewing them in a compartmentalized fashion as an age-old indigenous community totally separate from the malignant international forces of Zionism.

“The government may also see propaganda value in being able to point to the community’s continuing existence to international journalists. But Iran’s indulgence of its tiny Jewish minority doesn’t mean it wouldn’t wipe out Israel, the state of the Jews, if it could,” Cohler-Esses added.

In the Iranian parliament, there are five reserved seats for religious minorities. There are two seats for Armenians and one for each other minority: Jews, Assyrians, and Zoroastrians.

Dr. Siamak More Sedegh, the director of the Tehran Jewish Committee, is the current holder of the Jewish seat.

He is no friend of Israel.

Sedegh said in a statement in May, “Jewish Iranians consider participation in [annual anti-Israel] Quds Day rallies as a national and religious responsibility… All walks of the honorable Iranian nation obey the orders of Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, and will shout slogans against the U.S. and Israeli occupiers in a united and integrated manner,” reported Iran’s Fars news agency at the time.

With regard to actual equality for Jews living in Iran, the reality is a far cry from the version presented by PBS.

Speaking to that point, Cohler-Esses commented, “Under Iran’s sharia law code, different penalties are laid out for Muslims and non-Muslims for a variety of violations, almost always disfavoring the non-Muslims.

“The government also insists that each of the Tehran Jewish community’s five schools must be run by a Muslim principal — a requirement that the head of the Jewish community bluntly, and courageously, condemned on the record as ‘insulting’ in my 2015 interview with him. If a Jew murders a Muslim, the proscribed penalty is death. If a Muslim murders a Jew, the payment of blood money is an option,” Cohler-Esses explained.

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