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TikTok Star Montana Tucker Follows Holocaust
Series by Emceeing Embassy Event
TikTok star Montana Tucker, who documented a family trip to Auschwitz last year for
her millions of followers, emceed the Israeli embassy in Washington’s event celebrating
Israel’s 75th anniversary.

The 30-year-old actress and singer is best known for her short dance videos, which
often include celebrities. She has more than 9 million TikTok followers and close to 3
million Instagram followers.

Tucker’s selection as the emcee for the Israeli embassy event, held June 6 at the
National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., comes as the star builds a reputation
for Jewish content.

Last June, Tucker and her mother visited Auschwitz, the former Nazi death camp that
is now a museum and memorial in Oswiecim, Poland. Tucker’s great-grandmother and
other relatives were murdered there during the Holocaust.

Tucker narrated a series of short videos about the trip, which she titled “How To:
Never Forget” and collected into a 23-minute video on YouTube in January, ahead of
International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

She has said that she was inspired in part to educate others about Holocaust history
and antisemitism by Kanye West’s series of antisemitic rants last fall. She was also
disturbed by a 2020 Claims Conference survey on millennial and Gen Z knowledge of
the Holocaust that found that 63% of those demographics in the United States did not
know 6 million Jews died during World War II.

In March, Tucker then posted a conversation she had with second gentleman Doug
Emhoff, who had visited Auschwitz in January and who is also focused on efforts to combat
antisemitism. She attended the first White House Jewish Women’s Forum days earlier.

Tucker, who grew up in Boca Raton, Fla., and also releases pop music, was close with
her grandparents who survived the war and recorded testimony for Steven Spielberg’s
USC Shoah Foundation archive.

“My whole life, I always knew my grandparents’ stories,” Tucker told Variety in
January. “I’ve always felt very, very attached to them. They used to speak at all the
schools down in Florida. My zaide … would wear a pin that said, ‘I’m a survivor.’”
Tucker also has ties to Israel, where she had her bat mitzvah ceremony, as Jewish
Insider reported. She said it’s a “big priority” to visit again soon.

— Gabe Friedman | JTA
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Tredyffrin Jews Respond to
Antisemitic Incidents
Jarrad Saffren | Staff Writer
Courtesy of Howard Griffel
I n this era of rising antisemitism, it can
pop up anywhere, out of nowhere and
for seemingly no reason.

Why Zoom bomb a random
synagogue in the Philadelphia suburbs?
Why put a swastika sticker on a sign in a
synagogue parking lot in South Jersey?
Why ask a librarian in the Central Bucks
School District to take down an inoffen-
sive poster with a quote from Holocaust
survivor Elie Wiesel about combating
oppression? These are just some examples from
the Philadelphia area over the past
few years. The perpetrators are often
nameless and faceless, as in those first
two cases. Or, as in the case of the
Central Bucks School District leaders,
not really that antisemitic if pushed. (The
district allowed the librarian to put the
poster back up the next day.)
But perhaps no local outbreak
of antisemitism is more random and
unexplainable than the recent spate in
Tredyffrin Township. The Chester County
town with almost 30,000 residents has
Jews in its community, but it does not
have a synagogue, a JCC or any other
major center of Jewish activity.

Yet in late March, antisemitic graffiti
was found at separate businesses at
the Gateway Shopping Center and on
Valley Forge Road, respectively. A day
after that, a resident discovered “antise-
mitic symbols at Valley Forge Middle
School,” according to a patch.com
article. A month later, on Adolf Hitler’s
birthday, April 20, “swastikas were
found on Chesterbrook Boulevard,” at
Jenkins Arboretum, the Forge Mountain
neighborhood, the intersection of
Walker and Thomas roads and behind
the Gateway Shopping Center.

Tredyffrin Township Police arrested
a 15-year-old for the March incident
at Valley Forge Middle School. He is
charged with “numerous counts of crimi-
nal mischief and ethnic intimidation”
through the juvenile system, accord-
ing to Lieutenant Tyler Moyer. But his
One of the swastikas found in Tredyffrin Township
The yard signs that Tredyffrin Jews placed on lawns during a rally in the
Forge Mountain development on June 4
motivation is unknown since the police
have not had a chance to interview him.

The culprit behind the April outbreaks is
still at large.

“We realize that this is multifaceted.

We’re struggling to figure out the why.

Why is there suddenly this national
uptick that, now, we’re finding in our
backyards?” said Lisa Schreiber, a Jewish
Tredyffrin resident organizing a commu-
nity response. “I have three children in
high school, and I’m constantly talking
about: Where is this coming from? Is it
social media? Is it the celebrity part like
Kanye West putting this garbage out?
Is it their parents at home? This is likely
coming from multiple sources, so I’m
guessing it requires multiple solutions.”
Schreiber moved to the town with her
family 13 years ago. Though they moved
there “sight unseen” and did not realize
how few Jews lived in the community,
they experienced few incidents before
2023. Yet after the March incidents,
which occurred near her home, Schreiber
decided that a town with no organized
Jewish presence needed to have one.

She connected with 25 Jewish families
in the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District,
forming the T/E Jewish Connections
group. The group started its work by
asking the Tredyffrin Township Board of
Supervisors to take a stand. At its May
23 meeting, the board obliged with a
resolution condemning antisemitism.

Around the same time, T/E Jewish
Connections took to GoFundMe to raise
more than $7,000 for future advocacy.

On June 4, the group, Howard Griffel, a
Jewish township resident working with
Schreiber, and other Jewish residents
gathered to place anti-hate yard signs
in the Forge Mountain development.

The next step might be billboards on
Lancaster Avenue in the township,
according to Schreiber.

“That would be the public awareness
piece,” she said.

Schreiber and Griffel are also speak-
ing with interfaith leaders on the Main
Line who expressed interest in “trying
to support the Jewish community in
any way they can,” Schreiber said.

And at the end of May, Schreiber and
other parents had a two-hour meeting
with Richard Gusick, the superinten-
dent of the Tredyffrin/Easttown district,
and Oscar Torres, the district’s equity
director. They discussed teaching
the Holocaust “within the context of
the modern-day Jewish experience,”
among other topics, according to
Schreiber. “I’m hoping that will continue over the
summer and into the school year,” she
said of the conversation.

Throughout the process, Schreiber has
gotten advice from the Anti-Defamation
League, the Jewish Community
Relations Council and StandWithUs. She
is encouraged by how much progress
her group has made in a little more than
two months. And it has gotten a positive
response from the community.

“The number of people who care and
who aren’t antisemitic, you know it’s
more than the people that don’t. I have
seen such goodwill come forth in our
community at every level,” Schreiber
said. “As a mother of three children, I
have to teach them that the world is
inherently good.” ■
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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