Ben & Jerry’s long-time graphic designer, Susannah Levin, quit her job last week after 21 years of working for the company in the wake of its boycott on Israel. “Effective immediately, I have quit my job of 21 years at Ben & Jerry’s, over the statement on Israel,” Levin, based in Albany, stated in a Facebook post that has since been removed. Based on Levin’s Facebook page, she is a frum Jew, with her husband and sons wearing yarmulkes, and one son who made aliyah. “If you want to get an idea of why, please watch this wonderful video by the great Rabbi Jonathon Sacks, z”l, Levin wrote. “He explains how anti-Zionism IS the new anti-Semitism.

Firefighters on Friday declared the end of their search for bodies at the site of a collapsed Florida condo building, concluding a month of painstaking work removing layers of dangerous debris that were once piled several stories high. The June 24 collapse at the oceanside Champlain Towers South killed 97 people, with at least one more missing person yet to be identified. The site has been mostly swept flat and the rubble moved to a Miami warehouse. Although forensic scientists are still at work, including examining the debris at the warehouse, there are no more bodies to be found where the building once stood. Except during the early hours after the collapse, survivors never emerged.

A French Holocaust survivor has denounced anti-vaccination protesters comparing themselves to Jews who were persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. French officials and anti-racism groups joined the 94-year-old in expressing indignation. As more than 100,000 people marched around France against government vaccine rules on Saturday, some demonstrators wore yellow stars recalling the ones the Nazis forced Jews to wear. Other demonstrators carried signs evoking the Auschwitz death camp or South Africa’s apartheid regime, claiming the French government was unfairly mistreating them with its anti-pandemic measures. “You can’t imagine how much that upset me. This comparison is hateful.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday spoke with the CEO of Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, and made it clear that he will take legal action against the company in the wake of the ice cream company’s announcement that it is boycotting Jewish communities in Yehudah and the Shomron. Bennett made it clear to Unilever CEO Alan Jope that Israel views the boycott with the utmost severity and will take aggressive action against any boycott against their citizens. “As far as the State of Israel is concerned, this move will have serious repercussions, both legal and otherwise, and Israel will act aggressively against any effort to boycott its citizens,” Bennett told Jope. Ben & Jerry's You picked the wrong side.

Estelle Hedaya was the outspoken life of the party who loved travel and fashion. She lived on the sixth floor and quickly connected with fellow former New Yorker Linda March, an adventurous traveler who was renting out the penthouse. Nearly a month later, the two close friends are among the last of those missing in the Champlain Towers South collapse, along with Anastasia Gromova, a 24-year-old who had just been accepted to a program teaching English to students in Japan. The young go-getter was visiting friends at the Surfside condo for one last hurrah. “She always wanted to do as much as possible with her life,” her father Sergiy Gromov said Monday.

The Anti-Defamation League has called on Republicans and others to cease calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “Zuckerbucks,” JTA reported. The term has been used since last year after Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $400 million through the nonpartisan Center for Technology and Civic Life to assist local election offices ahead of the November vote. A conservative think tank, the Foundation for Government Accountability, published a number of articles that used the “Zuckerbucks” term, claiming that the donation unfairly tilted elections. The term actually made it into Congress this month when NY Republican Rep. Claudi Tenney proposed the End Zuckerbucks Act, which would bar nonprofits classified as tax-exempt and nonpartisan from donating funds to election offices.

Russia is grappling with a surge of coronavirus infections since early June, with the number of daily cases increasing from about 9,000 to 23,000 in a month’s time. There’s also been a record spike in deaths, with Russia’s coronavirus task force saying it is due to the spread of the Delta variant. The Jewish community in Moscow has not been spared. A 36-year-old member of the community passed away of the virus on Monday, leaving a wife and four children. Amiel Binyaminov, z’l, grew close to Yiddishkeit in recent years and became an active member of the community. Sadly, a member of the community also passed away of the virus a day earlier, on Sunday. Mr. Michael Gloz, z’l, in his 60s, served as the first president of The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FJCR).

Esther Bejarano, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp who used the power of music to fight antisemitism and racism in post-war Germany, has died at 96. Bejarano died peacefully in the early Saturday at the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg, the German news agency dpa quoted Helga Obens, a board member of the Auschwitz Committee in Germany, as saying. A cause of death was not given. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas paid tribute to Bejarano, calling her “an important voice in the fight against racism and antisemitism.” Born in 1924 as the daughter of Jewish cantor Rudolf Loewy in French-occupied Saarlouis, the family later moved to Saarbruecken, where Bejarano enjoyed a musical and sheltered upbringing until the Nazis came to power and the city was returned to Germany in 1935.

A man already charged with stabbing a rabbi outside a Jewish school in Boston now faces additional hate crime offenses, prosecutors said Thursday. Khaled Awad, who is originally from Egypt, arrived in the U.S. with biased views against Jews, Christians and American culture, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Margaret Hegarty said during a court hearing. Witnesses who knew or interacted with Awad told investigators he would become angry if his views were challenged, she said. “The witnesses also noticed that the suspect would stereotype various differences in racial groups and behavior, which included whites, Blacks and that he was especially harsh on Jews,” the prosecutor said.

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer obtained a US visa for two-year-old Alta Fixsler to enable her parents to bring her to the US to continue her medical care. Since Alta’s father, Avraham Fixsler, is a US citizen, she is eligible for US citizenship. Alta is dependent on life support, and as Schumer wrote in a press release about the visa, she is in “grave danger after a UK court ruled to discontinue her care, against the family’s wishes.” Schumer previously wrote to Karen Pierce, the British Ambassador to the US, requesting that the UK suspend all health decisions regarding Alta. “All the Fixsler’s want is to follow their faith and get their little girl the best care in the process,” the press release from Schumer’s office stated.