For Jews who support education about systemic racism, and oppose laws restricting such education, the Texas incident proves their point. Just like there is no historical debate about the historicity of the Holocaust, “there are also no ‘both sides’ to American chattel slavery, to systemic racism, to lynchings and land theft and Indigenous genocide,” tweeted Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, a prominent liberal Jewish voice.

“Remember, people, that the suggestion to teach both sides of the Holocaust has come up because there is a law in Texas that is there to censor teaching on antiracism,” wrote Ruttenberg, the scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women. “This is about white supremacy, yes, and/but at its root it’s about antiblackness.”

But some of the loudest American Jewish voices opposing critical race theory — or the associated idea of “wokeness” — say the incident in Texas has not led them to reconsider their stance. They say the Texas administrator’s message represents a distortion of the values they want to see in schools.

“The Holocaust, like the history of slavery in the US, is not an idea or an opinion,” David Bernstein, the founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and an opponent of education focused on critical race theory, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It’s a historical fact. One can support the free expression of ideas and still recognize that there are people pedaling hateful and stupid claims that must be debunked.”

Critical race theory is a concept in legal studies that says racism is baked into the laws and institutions of American society. Lately, conservative activists have seized on the idea that public school students are being taught history through a lens of critical race theory. Some states, like Texas, have passed laws that ban teaching the concepts underlying the theory.

Texas’ law states that when teachers teach “widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs,” they need to do so “from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.” Recently, the board of the Texas school district where the administrator works reprimanded a fourth-grade teacher for including a book about anti-racism in her classroom library, according to NBC News, which first reported the Holocaust comments.

Texas’ law is aimed at countering the idea that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” But the administrator in the tape suggested that its focus on balance applies to teaching historical events like the Holocaust.

Bernstein’s relatively new organization, the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, published a letter this year articulating a Jewish opposition to efforts to teach critical race theory in schools. “The way to fight racism isn’t to cease discussion and debate. To do so is antithetical to American ideals and antithetical to Judaism,” the letter says. “The way to fight racism is to insist on our common humanity––and to engage in dialogue, including with those who dissent.”

Some signatories of the letter said they oppose the Texas legislation, and distinguish between teaching historical events and teaching any one interpretation of the effects of those events.

“The dispute about the interpretation of events is completely legitimate, but the dispute about the existence of events is either dangerous or stupid or both,” said Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. “You can, for example, argue endlessly about the effects and causes of slavery but to argue that slavery didn’t happen is idiotic, or pernicious, and the same thing is true with the Holocaust.”

Bernstein said he isn’t opposed to teaching about systemic racism amid a wider discussion of race in America — but he is opposed to teachers exclusively saying that systemic racism is to blame for current racial disparities. He doesn’t think that stance inevitably leads to statewide bans like the one in Texas.

“Just because there are people trying to ban any discussion of CRT, which as I said I strongly disagree with, doesn’t mean that anyone who raises concerns about the ideological indoctrination of kids agrees with it,” he said. “Just because there are edge cases and gray areas doesn’t mean we should shut down the free expression of ideas.”

Russel Neiss, a Jewish educator who cautioned in an op-ed this year in the St. Louis Jewish newspaper that anti-critical race theory laws could have blowback on Holocaust education, said that people distinguishing between teaching historical events and their causes and effects don’t understand how Holocaust education generally occurs.

“The way that Holocaust education is taught in America is, it talks about systems of oppression, it talks about dehumanization,” Neiss told JTA. “I don’t even know what it means to just teach facts. Facts don’t mean anything unless they’re contextualized in historical context, unless they’re contextualized in a way of understanding that particular era. ”

He added, “When you begin to ban all these approaches to understanding history, you are banning the way we teach Holocaust education in America today.”

Neiss worries that Jews who advocate against critical race theory could end up aiding a movement that will undermine Holocaust education.

“We have folks with a particular political agenda who are using scare tactics to try to advance their political agenda, and it will come back to bite them in the ass as it has here,” he said. 

Holocaust educators are also speaking out about what the Texas incident could portend. The Holocaust and Humanity Center in Cincinnati said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” about reports of the administrator’s remarks.

“With hate crimes in the United States soaring to record highs, it is imperative that teachers are encouraged to devote instructional time to teaching the Holocaust, a seminal event in human history, freely,” the statement said, adding that teachers may feel inhibited from “providing necessary historical context and discussing the practices and ideologies that contributed to the Holocaust, such as stereotyping and antisemitism.”

Bethany Mandel, another signatory of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values letter, says she doubts Holocaust education in Texas will be hindered. She said she felt that the administrator in the recording sounded like she opposed the restrictions — the administrator tells the teachers, “I think you are terrified, and I wish I could take that away” — and that the teachers appeared to find her remark on the Holocaust ridiculous.

Mandel, who homeschools her own children, said she opposes the Texas law because she believes states should strive not to dictate what teachers teach. She feels that the Texas law mirrors the recently passed California legislation, favored by liberals, requiring that schools teach ethnic studies. The fight over ethnic studies has divided Jews in the state and has animated opponents of critical race theory, who argue that the state’s sample curriculum exemplifies what they’re fighting against.

“I don’t think that government should come in from on high and have these diktats in the classroom, both with ethnic studies and with the Texas law,” Mandel said. “It really hampers teachers’ ability to recognize what their kids need and how to best serve those needs.”

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President Biden’s envoy to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, argued in a statement that the move will not mean the U.S. does not stand with Israel.

“We will oppose the Council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the Council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country,” she said.

The council, which investigates alleged human rights abuses in U.N. member countries, has for decades routinely singled out Israel in reports and resolutions, particularly in the wake of the country’s many armed conflicts in Gaza.

Nikki Haley, former envoy to the U.N. under Trump, said in 2018 after the U.S.’ pullout that the council “was not worthy of its name.” Then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded the decision.

The pullout split Jewish lawmakers at the time, including Democrats.

The council, formed in 2006, held an internal election name its slate of 47 countries on Thursday, as it does every three years, and several countries with controversial human rights records made the cut — including China, Russia, Cuba and Eritrea.

Hillel Neuer, the head of UN Watch, a watchdog group that often calls the council and other U.N. bodies out for its Israel critique, lamented to the AFP that so many of what he calls “oppressive regimes” were elected.

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Brownstein is no amateur critic. He is a lecturer for Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies and the author of “Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide.” 

Yes, 400 films, all of which Brownstein has seen. Naturally, he has some thoughts, which you can read about in our Q&A with him. You can also join us for a virtual event with Brownstein on Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET to hear more of his takeaways and to ask questions.

Rich Brownstein is the author of “Holocaust Cinema Complete,” a guide to every Holocaust movie ever made. (Rich Brownstein)

After publishing these two stories, it quickly became clear that the topic of Holocaust films struck a chord with our readers. So, we asked: What is the one Holocaust film you think everyone should see? Why?

Dozens filled out our survey, naming 32 unique films. Some were obvious choices — “Schindler’s List” and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” both blockbusters in theaters, were both named multiple times — while others were lesser-known documentaries and foreign films. 

Why these movies? Here’s what you told us. Reader responses have been edited for length and clarity. 

More of you recommended “Schindler’s List” than anything else.

It elicits critical thinking; this movie helps you understand that everyone had a choice and that more people should have helped. — Faith Shotts-Flikkema, Michigan

As a former high school teacher who showed “Schindler’s List” every year in my junior English class, I found the film was a gateway to reading Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Most of my students had little concept of the Holocaust itself. The film opened their minds to so many varied discussions. Students in high school need an in-your-face dose of reality in order to have buy-in. 

“Schindler’s List” is based on a real-life person who was righteous in saving as many Jews as he could from the gas chambers. Most students have never heard of the Avenue of the Righteous and most, in fact, are not familiar with anyone who defied the Nazis. Students believe a movie is a respite from the rigors of high school English and so they’re excited about that. Little do they know that the film is so gripping, so raw, so honest, and so well-crafted that it really cannot be a break in the normal action of school. Many students will later tell me it’s their favorite film ever. — Lori Fulton, Paw Paw, Michigan

You asked for only one and this is all-encompassing. — Joel Katz, New Jersey

Several movies — including one that Brownstein disdains — got shoutouts from more than one reader.

“Shoah”: As I watched this incredible film over two consecutive days, for the first time I understood what a true documentary is. From facts to personal experiences to interviews with every kind of participant in the Holocaust (victims, bystanders, upstanders, perpetrators and more), the film’s use of so many methods kept me engaged and learning while experiencing the gamut of human emotions. So engaged, in fact, that eight hours of film went by each of the two nights without me being conscious of so much time passing. I have used pieces of the film as teaching tools many times, with both teens and adults. — Debra Polsky, Dallas

“Son of Saul”: No humour. No melodrama. No Hollywood touches or impossibly happy ending. No glossing over. No gratuitous focussing on gruesome detail — but no airbrushed avoidance either. In Yiddish. Very little overt violence — just the ever-present threat. Reality of life as a (Jewish) member of the Sonderkommando — not involved in killing, but in disposal of corpses. It took me about 5 goes to watch, a few minutes at a time to begin with. Poignant. Deeply moving. — FionaYael Sweet-Formiatti, Australia 

“The Grey Zone”: I understood how this horror was accomplished. I understood the incomprehensible, I understood the unthinkable. — Kemeny Andras, Hungary

“Boy in the Striped Pajamas”: This movie shows the shared humanity of family members of a Nazi death camp commander alongside the humanity of a suffering Jewish father and son, juxtaposed with the inhumanity of the Nazis. It presents a powerful contrast, along with extremely powerful moments in the final sequence of events in the film. — Neil Edwards, Largo, Florida

Only one person picked each of these, but they made a strong case.

“Distant Journey” “Auschwitz. Majdanek. Treblinka…Only a few survived.” There would seem only two ways to effectively convey the Holocaust in film. Steven Spielberg’s unflinching verite approach, and this, Alfred Radok’s surrealistic expressionist nightmare, which replaces blood and gas with light and shadow, angle and curve. The remarkable mise-en-scene, with its multi-layered labyrinthine sets and Ravel-inspired score, conspire to create a genuine cinematic masterpiece. Watch this movie. You will never, ever forget. — Danny Silverman, Hudson Valley, New York 

“Come and See” The title is so innocent, you think the movie is innocent. It’s told from the point of view of a young person. You watch as everything is taken away from him. You read about the Nazis and their collaborators rounding people up into barns, then setting the barn on fire, but to see it on a screen, is unforgettable in a horrible way. How can people do this to people? — Vicki Simmons, North Carolina

“The Music Box”: The movie presents how so many Nazis were able to live “normal” lives, undetected, after the war. What I especially appreciated was how the film was able to portray Laszlo as a loving, kind, grandfather, yet by the end there was no sympathy for the character or the consequences he faced. It also showed the daughter as a woman of integrity who initially fervently believed her father was innocent and incapable of perpetrating crimes, changing to accepting the truth and acting on it. — Joan Edelstein, San Leandro, California

“Life is Beautiful”: It shows that even in the midst of horror, you can still find something to live for. — Evey Pinkham, England

Join us Wednesday, Oct. 20 at 1 p.m. ET for a virtual event with Rich Brownstein. Register and submit a question here.

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The projection was seen on the Synagogue of Malmö and on other buildings in cities across southern Sweden on Wednesday night, the day of the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.

Police are handling the case as a hate crime, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported.

The Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group, claimed responsibility for the incident, according to Dagens Nyheter.

The conference had brought together heads of state and other prominent government officials from dozens of countries in a city known for its high rates of antisemitism.

Israel’s strikes in Gaza in 2009 triggered a wave of antisemitic assaults in Malmö, which had then over 1,000 Jews. Then mayor Ilmar Reepalu reacted by instructing the local Jewish community to distance itself from Israel, giving many the impression that he was blaming the victims.

The Jewish community in Sweden’s third-largest city has since dwindled down to around 500.

Despite Wednesday’s synagogue incident, Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s coordinator on combating antisemitism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday that she thinks the conference shows that “change is possible.”

“The fact that the conference happened in Malmö sends a message, that this sort of thing will not be accepted and will be confronted,” von Schnurbein said.

At the conference, she presented a new strategic plan for combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life in Europe, published by the European Commission on Oct. 5.

Although the plan does not include a stated budget, von Schurbein said, “it will tap into programs in various departments” and its “components will receive millions of euros in funding in the coming period.”

Among the goals of the plan is to set up a cross-European methodology for documenting and reporting antisemitic hate crimes.

On Tuesday, Jewish community leaders at a separate conference in Brussels complained that the EU plan was “not serious” because it does not address two issues that have alienated local Jews for years: bans on the ritual slaughter of animals and attempts to ban non-medical circumcision.

Von Schurbein said the plan does reference the ritual slaughter issue. Members states need to find “a fair balance between respect for the freedom to manifest religion and the protection of animal welfare,” the document states.

The EU Commission and her office intend to facilitate efforts to strike the balance, von Schnurbein said, and call on “EU countries to ensure through policy and legal measures that Jews can live their lives in accordance with their religious traditions,” she added.

“But when it comes to the document, the Commission is bound by the ruling of the European Court,” which in 2020 upheld the rights of states in Belgium to ban ritual slaughter.

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(JTA) — Jürgen Krauss, the “basically a Jewish dad” on the latest season of “The Great British Baking Show,” lived up to his reputation during Desserts Week when he produced a Passover-inspired pavlova — complete with a traditional charoset topping.

The dessert also sustains a different tradition: the internationally popular show’s habit of not getting Jewish content quite right, when host Noel Fielding badly mispronounces “charoset” while describing Krauss’ creation.

Krauss, who is from the Black Forest region of Germany, is married to a British Jew, and their family belongs to a Reform synagogue in Brighton, where the Jewish Chronicle reported he has taught a challah-baking class to children. In the first episode of this season, a Passover Seder plate is visible behind him in a scene introducing viewers to his home and family.

That proved a prescient symbol in this week’s episode, which arrived on Netflix Friday for American viewers. Judges charged the contestants with producing a flavorful pavlova, a delicate dessert made with just whipped egg whites and sugar.

Pavlovas are naturally kosher for Passover because they lack flour, and Krauss leaned into that as he designed an inspired-by-Passover version with a charoset topping and pyramids of chocolate-covered matzah.

Jurgen Krauss’s “Passover Pavlova” was warmly received on “The Great British Baking Show.” (Screenshot)

Krauss makes his charoset in the Sephardic style, using dates, oranges and cardamom while eschewing the apples and nuts that are common in Ashkenazi versions. The Seder plate staple symbolizes the mortar that the Hebrews used as slaves in Egypt.

The fan-favorite series has drawn criticism before for its handling of Jewish foods. In Season Five, the instruction to make a “plaited loaf” left some viewers wondering if anyone on the show knew about challah. Then last year, rainbow-bagel and babka challenges did not delve into the Jewish significance of the bakes.

This time, the show did spend time there. After judge Prue Leith wonders whether the topping will be too sweet against the pavlova, Krauss explains charoset’s symbolism.

“It’s the mortar used by the Jews to stick the pyramids and Pharoah’s cities together,” he says.

“It’s carrying a lot, this little pavlova,” Leith responds, smiling.

“It is, it is,” Krauss answers with a laugh.

After Krauss’ creation earns a favorable review — judge Paul Hollywood announces, “Jürgen’s back!” — host Matt Lucas, who is Jewish, offers one more reaction.

“Mazel tov,” Lucas tells him before moving on to the next baker — one who channeled the colors and flavors of Easter.

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SIDE EFFECTS: Nearly 1 in 6 adult Jewish New Yorkers experienced financial setbacks during the pandemic, and three quarters of Jewish New Yorkers who said they have a substance abuse problem said it worsened during that period. (Jewish Week via JTA)

• That’s according to a forthcoming new study by UJA-Federation, which surveyed 4,400 Jews in and around New York City to guide its philanthropic efforts in the wake of the pandemic.

¿QUÉ PASA?: Spain promised citizenship to descendants of Jews persecuted and expelled during the Inquisition. At a rally in New York this week, activists and politicians asked why the Spanish government is slow-walking their applications. (Jewish Week via JTA)

SHELF LIFE: A half-day conference Sunday will urge archivists at museums and libraries to use their holdings and programs to foster understanding of and fight antisemitism. (Jewish Week via JTA)

• “We need to bring the history of antisemitism to life in order to combat it,” said Bernard Michael, president and CEO of New York’s Center for Jewish History, which is co-sponsoring the virtual, public event. The presidents of Princeton and Harvard Universities and the Librarian of Congress will take part. 

AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD, WITH JTA

• Former football great and Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker canceled a fundraiser after learning that its hosts used swastika imagery in their anti-vax advocacy.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “every” option was on the table if Iran does not engage in a good faith effort to negotiate the U.S. reentry into the nuclear deal.
• Sefaria, the online repository of  Jewish text, has added a monumental German translation of the Talmud to its library.

TODAY’S BIG IDEA

Sally Rooney speaks onstage during a conference in Pasadena, California on January 17, 2020. (Erik Voake/Getty Images for Hulu)

Erika Dreifus was distressed when novelist Sally Rooney (above) said she wouldn’t allow her latest novel to be published in Hebrew by an Israeli publisher. Then she remembered how a 19th-century reader confronted Charles Dickens about antisemitism, showing the possibilities for engaging with authors who let you down. (JTA)

NEW YORK NOSHES

DIY: Carnegie Deli and the Brooklyn-based Matzo Project are selling a do-it-yourself home chicken soup kit.

• The $79 Better Than Bubbe’s Matzo Ball Soup Kit includes eight servings of the (not kosher) soup plus the ingredients for matzah balls.
• The deli’s iconic 7^th Avenue restaurant closed in 2016, but the brand sells its meats and desserts online.

SHABBAT SHALOM

It’s never too late to change, as a 70-year-old Abraham finds out when he sets out this week on the journey of a lifetime. “What emerges, as the journey progresses, is Abraham’s dogged resolve to always move forward despite whatever difficulties he encounters, and realize his covenantal destiny,” writes Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens.

• More wisdom: Judaism is a tradition of study and ritual, but also of song, writes Rabbi David Wolpe.

WHAT’S ON

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of their membership in the Reform movement, Temple Shaaray Tefila presents a conversation with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism; Dr. Andrew Rehfeld, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; Rabbi Hara Person, chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Cantor Claire Franco, president of the American Conference of Cantors. Moderated by Rabbi Joel Mosbacher, senior rabbi of Temple Shaaray Tefila. Register at www.shaaraytefilanyc.org to attend in person or online. Saturday, 7:30 p.m.

Photo, top: Protestors in front of the Spanish Consulate in New York City rally for those seeking citizenship under a law meant to repatriate Jews with Spanish heritage, Oct. 11, 2021. (Julia Gergely)

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But Bernard Michael recalled the gum wrappers stored in one of the archives at New York’s Center for Jewish History, where he is president and CEO. Each wrapper, smuggled out out of the Soviet Union in 1982 by an American visitor, contains tiny hidden messages by and about Jews who had been denied permission to emigrate. The microscopic notes reminded him of the love and desire for connection that real people felt when they were separated from their families due to systematic antisemitism.

“We need to bring the history of antisemitism to life in order to combat it,” said Michael. “We are bringing history to the present day, so that people can make use of that history, understand how we got here, and decide where we want to go.”

CJH, in collaboration with jMUSE, is presenting an all-day conference Sunday to do just that. “Confronting Antisemitism: Activating Archives, Libraries, and Museums in the Fight Against Antisemitism” will feature seven virtual sessions dedicated to combating antisemitism through the use of archives in libraries, museums and universities. 

The symposium is the first of its kind. It will urge archivists and curators to use their holdings and programs to foster understanding of antisemitism and promote change.

“The goal of the symposium is to have a conversation about connecting historical study with contemporary action and future impact,” said JMuse CEO Michael Glickman, who founded the organization to help Jewish cultural institutions and their funders “think big” in presenting new ideas and content. “When we focus on places of memory and places of learning, and when we make these materials available, it will help the audience get a better understanding of why something in the past is relevant today.” 

The event will feature librarians, archivists, and academics from several universities across the globe, including a panel with Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, and David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States. Among the speakers is Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, whose goal has been to counter negative stereotypes about Jews.

The Center for Jewish History and its five partner organizations — the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research — possess the largest and most comprehensive archive of Jewish historical artifacts in the world outside of Israel. 

“This will go beyond the statistics and data, it will present a storyline through history of how we got to where we are today. It will empower people to go forward and come up with ways in which people can come up with their own solutions to take action and combat antisemitism,” said Michael. 

With thousands already registered, the organizers hope that the event will have an impact across the globe. “There is a reason that we have gone broad with our reach on this. We really truly deeply believe in the ability to combat, fight, and confront antisemitism by bringing thoughtful people together who believe in debate and discussion about how history has impacted where we are in the current moment,” said Glickman. 

 Confronting Antisemitism: Activating Archives, Libraries, and Museums in the Fight Against Antisemitism will take place on Sunday, Oct. 17. Register and see the full list of speakers here.

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NBC News obtained an audio recording of the official, the Carroll Independent School District’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, speaking to the teachers about how to work under the constraints of the new law, known as House Bill 3979. The law was passed amid a wave of efforts in Republican-led statehouses to prevent “critical race theory,” “divisive” topics and concepts related to race and bias from being taught to children.

“Just try to remember the concepts of 3979,” Peddy said in the recording. “Make sure that if, if you have a book on the Holocaust that you have one that has an opposing — that has other perspectives.”

Gasps and sounds of nervous laughter can be heard on the recording, as one teacher asks aloud, “How do you oppose the Holocaust?”

Peddy responds: “Believe me. That’s come up.”

A Texas lawmaker who drafted a new version of the bill told NBC News that matters of “good and evil” are not subject to the education legislation.

But the possibility that the wave of conservative education legislation could get in the way of Holocaust education crossed the minds of education observers in at least some places over the last year.

“Under this law, it would be impossible to teach that Nazi Germany was inherently anti-Semitic, or that the Third Reich oppressed Jews simply because they were Jews, because that would identify Nazis as inherently biased and Jews as inherently and systemically oppressed,” Russel Neiss, a Jewish educator in St Louis, wrote in the St. Louis Jewish Light in May about legislation that had been proposed in Missouri. Lawmakers there are continuing to push for anti-critical race theory rules for schools.

The episode comes a year after a Florida school district fired a principal — twice — who told a parent that he could not say the Holocaust was “an actual, factual event” because not all parents shared the same belief. Florida’s school board has since enacted a ban on Holocaust denial in schools — as part of a ban on teaching critical race theory.

In Texas, the recording suggests that Peddy does not necessarily support the new law but does anticipate conflicts over its enforcement. Four days before the training, the Carroll school board had overturned a district ruling and formally reprimanded a teacher who drew a parent complaint for keeping an anti-racism book in her classroom.

At one point in the recording, a teacher says she is “terrified.” At another point, an educator asks whether “Number the Stars,” the classic Holocaust novel, would require another book to balance out. Peddy does not address that question on the recording.

“You are professionals. We hired you as professionals. We trust you with our children,” Peddy tells the teachers prior to offering the Holocaust book example. “So if you think the book is OK, then let’s go with it. And whatever happens, we will fight it together.”

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That’s according to a new study by UJA-Federation, which surveyed 4,400 Jews in and around New York City to guide its philanthropic efforts to meet the most pressing needs of New Yorkers. 

The survey found that while Jewish New Yorkers overall experienced less severe economic and psychological effects of the pandemic than other populations, they were hardly unaffected.

The poll found that 22% of adults in Jewish households faced reduced hours or income in the last year, 8% had been laid off and 12% had been furloughed. It also found a 12% unemployment rate for adults in Jewish households compared with 10% in the overall population in New York City and Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties.

The study found that 1 in 5 adults in Jewish households reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, and 1 in 5 has experienced more symptoms since the start of the pandemic. One in 10 adults in Jewish households indicate they have a substance abuse problem, and 72% of those who reported an abuse problem said it worsened during the pandemic. 

Those numbers are lower than the Centers for Disease Control reported for the population as a whole from August 2020 through February 2021, when the percentage of adults with recent symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder increased from 36.4% to 41.5%. Similarly, almost half of all workers and a majority of low-wage workers in New York City lost employment income in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Robin Hood, an anti-poverty foundation.

The federation, which raised $250 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, distributes funds to health and human services providers, community centers, food pantries and community-based mental health efforts. (The New York Jewish Week receives UJA-Federation funding as well.) Mark Medin, the federation’s executive vice president of financial resource development, told eJewishPhilanthropy earlier this month that smaller donors were challenged during the pandemic, but high-level donors stepped up to give more, enabling the organization to increase giving for hunger relief and other pressing needs.

Brooklyn, home to large haredi Orthodox communities, represented the highest levels of Jewish poverty in New York, with 37% of Jewish households classified as poor or near poor, according to the survey. Across the region, 4% of adults in Jewish households are not up-to-date on rent or mortgage payments, and 9% of adults in Jewish households are food-insecure.

The survey authors point out that cash benefits and government transfers prevented a much more sizable increase in poverty than New York City would have seen during the pandemic, and that “as relief efforts subside, these rates are likely to rise.”

A similar study of the New York Jewish community hasn’t been done since 2011, measuring the effects of the 2008 economic downturn. And according to Eric Goldstein, UJA-Federation’s CEO, it is so far unique during the pandemic.

The survey is “the first representative survey in the nation offering statistics about social isolation, mental health, domestic violence, and substance abuse in the Jewish community,” Goldstein said in a statement. “There is no vaccine for poverty or hunger, and the effects of the pandemic will be felt in our community for years to come.”

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He has condemned former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for using violence to quell demonstrations, but has reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. He has assailed rocket attacks on Jerusalem and southern Israel by Hamas, but endorsed the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran despite Israel’s opposition. And he favors a two-state solution, but opposes forced evictions of Arab residents from East Jerusalem.

In other words, the Louisville Democrat, a descendant of Russian and Austrian Jews, backs Israel on his own terms.

That will end on Jan. 3, 2023. Yarmuth, 73, announced Tuesday that he will not seek reelection next year, setting the stage for a wide-open campaign for Kentucky’s 3rd Congressional District that could wind up with a pro-Palestinian candidate in the seat.

Yarmuth, who addressed the press Wednesday at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, said he debated his decision for months.

“I’ve been saying for some time, if I ever wrote a book about my experience, I would call it ‘House Arrest,’” Yarmuth said. “Because once you get there, it’s very difficult to leave. There is an addictive quality to it.”

Even though Yarmuth disagreed on specific policy issues over the years, Israel could always count on his support in times of need, said Matt Goldberg, director of the Louisville Jewish Community Relations Council.

“His commitment to the security of the State of Israel is rock-solid,” Goldberg said. “Even his criticism of Israeli actions, which we haven’t always agreed with, is born of that affinity for Israel.”

It’s not clear whether his successor will have the same orientation. So far, two candidates have announced they will run for Yarmuth’s seat: Kentucky State Sen. Morgan McGarvey and State Rep. Attica Scott.

Scott, a progressive Democrat, appeared at a pro-Palestinian rally in May, during the conflict then between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Scott told the crowd, “We are anti-war, anti-oppression and anti-apartheid,” the Louisville Courier Journal reported. Her remarks irked some Jewish residents. She has also spoken out strongly against legislators in her state who have compared abortions to the Holocaust, saying the comparison is a “reprehensible evil perpetuated against Jewish people here in Kentucky.”

A third potential candidate would keep the seat Jewish, and in the Yarmuth family: John’s son, Aaron Yarmuth, is considering a run.

“Kitchen-table issues” – not Israel – are likely to dominate next year’s campaign, according to University of Louisville Political Science Professor Dewey M. Clayton, a close observer of Kentucky politics.

“It may very well come up as an issue, but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge factor given the other problems we’re dealing with,” Clayton said.

Yarmuth agreed. “In terms of what voters in the 3rd District will base their vote on, I would doubt that’s in the top 10,” he said.

A Louisville native and graduate of Yale University, Yarmuth cut his teeth in politics as a legislative aide for then-Sen. Marlow Cook, a Kentucky Republican, from 1971-74.

In 1976, Yarmuth ventured into journalism, founding Louisville Today and then the Louisville Eccentric Observer in 1990, which is still publishing as LEO Weekly. Aaron Yarmuth previously served as LEO’s editor before he sold the paper in June to Euclid Media Group.

In 2006, Yarmuth ran against and defeated the incumbent congresswoman from Louisville, Anne Northup, a Republican.

He has since moved into leadership, currently serving as chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Yarmuth has never needed to depend on the Jewish vote to get elected. Of the 700,000 people in his district, only about 8,000 are Jews.

Still, Yarmuth’s connection to the Jewish community has remained strong throughout the years. A member of The Temple, the largest synagogue in Louisville, he frequently speaks at community events and Mens Club functions. He also likes to mention how he learned to play basketball at the local Jewish community center.

“Meeting with him and his staff … has always been a pleasure,” the JCRC’s Goldberg said. “He has legislatively prioritized many of the issues that we care about so much, such as increasing funding to social safety net programs.”

Yarmuth may not be the only Jewish congressman from the South pondering retirement this year. During his briefing Wednesday, he mentioned that his colleague and close friend, Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, is facing the same decision.

“He’s agonizing over whether to run right now,” Yarmuth said of Cohen. “He said, ‘I’m losing my best friend.’ And that’s kind of how many of us feel.”

Requests for comment to Cohen’s office were not returned.

Yarmuth’s son, Aaron Yarmuth, has never held elected office. He said this week he would only run if he felt his candidacy would help Democrats hold the seat. The news that he was considering a run came as a shock to many, including the editor of his former paper, and the already-declared candidate Scott made an oblique reference to Aaron in a statement, saying, “No political seat belongs to any family member, front-runner, or legacy.”

John Yarmuth said he will not endorse anyone for his seat unless Aaron runs.

“If Aaron gets in the race,” he said, “I’m going to be 100% for him.”

This story was published in collaboration with Louisville Jewish Community.

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With around one third of its inhabitants born outside of Sweden, many of them often living in ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods, the city has also become a synonym for Sweden’s integration problems.

But this week, Malmö — and by extension, Sweden’s government — aimed to turn that reputation on its head with a conference about combating antisemitism attended in person or on video by nearly 50 heads of state, foreign government ministers, European Union officials and World Jewish Congress representatives. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and French President Emmanuel Macron sent in video messages. 

YouTube, led by Jewish CEO Susan Wojcicki, pledged over $5 million to nonprofits and government entities to fight online antisemitism. Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, meanwhile, who has spoken publicly about how her Jewish ancestors escaped persecution in Europe to the United States, joined live by video, and said her company is devoted to meticulous reviewing of its users’ content — despite its past issues with moderation on the topic.

Unlike in other similar conferences on the subject, The Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism did not end with a joint declaration signed by all of its attendees. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said he preferred the leaders present to focus on discussing “concrete measures” that can be used to curb antisemitic incidents and behavior.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who joined virtually from Brussels, introduced the newly adopted “EU Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life (2021-2030)” plan and proposed the creation of a Young European Ambassadors for Holocaust Remembrance program.

​​“We are not looking for another declaration, we are looking to translate these principles of these documents into reality,” Löfven, who is leaving his office next month, said in a speech Wednesday.

If and how the conference serves as a turning point for the country’s on-the-ground antisemitism problem remains to be seen. While the heads of state held the spotlight, Swedish media reports in recent weeks have told stories of the local Jews who are continuing to leave Malmö, some after suffering antisemitism directly in their daily lives.

“You can hold your nice speeches, we’re moving while you’re doing it,” the mother of a 12-year-old Jewish girl told Sweden’s newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Her daughter described how she had found graffiti reading “Free Palestine” and “F–k Israel” by her school locker, and how someone spit on her jacket. It has proven too much for the girl’s mother, who is relocating their family to Israel next summer, despite not speaking any Hebrew.

That story is not unique — all of the Swedish Jewish students interviewed in a survey published by the City of Malmö earlier this year said they had been exposed to some form of antisemitism at school.

The problem extends far beyond the classroom. In 2017, the Malmö synagogue’s windows were shattered with stones. In 2020, the city had to suspend its partnership with the Arab Book Fair, as an antisemitic book appeared on its website (the title has subsequently been removed). 

But it was perhaps an experiment conducted in 2015 by a Swedish journalist that drew the most attention to the situation. The reporter, wearing a kippah and a Star of David pendant, was verbally and physically attacked while walking through various Malmö neighborhoods.

In Malmö and beyond, Swedish Jews have felt caught between different streams of antisemitism — from both radicalized Muslim immigrants and neo-Nazi movements.

Members of the far-right Nordic Resistance Movement march through the town of Ludvika, central Sweden, on May 1, 2018. (Ulf Palm/AFP via Getty Images)

“Yes, you are taking a risk when you walk around with a Star of David,” Frederik Sieradzki, the spokesman for the Jewish Community of Malmö organization, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview before the conference. In 2019, in the wake of a report on the city’s declining Jewish population, he told JTA that his Jewish community could disappear entirely by 2029.

But Sieradzki struck a more optimistic tone in talking about this week’s conference. The community, he said, is forging closer ties to Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, Malmö’s mayor since 2013, who detailed plans to “create better conditions” for Jews in the city in an interview with Haaretz before the conference.

“We’ve been working with the Jewish community in several ways to map the problem, to create an understanding of the problem and, today, we have a long-term commitment. We’re investing more than 2 million Euros ($2.3 million) over four years,” she said. “We’re also working within our school system, mapping the problem there too, and creating different ways to prevent prejudice.”

Sieradzki confirmed that within the last 20 years, the number of Jews in the city has been halved, to approximately 500 members today. But he was careful in drawing cause and effect conclusions, and emphasized that the fear and experience of antisemitism is not the only factor driving the numbers down. Younger generations have better career opportunities in Stockholm, and also more ways of engaging in religious life; older people move to the cities where their children and grandchildren live; many older members of the Malmö community, among them Holocaust survivors, die out over time. 

Even those who decide to leave for Israel point to multiple reasons for their moves, he said. And Sieradzki has noticed that in the past two years, the curve has flattened, and the number of Community organization members has remained practically unchanged. He takes that as a good sign.

During an event held before the conference celebrating Jewish life in Sweden, Ronald Lauder, the head of the World Jewish Congress and a prominent Republican donor, spoke of another factor that has been a flashpoint in the country for decades: the harsh criticism of Israel common in Swedish society and government.

Ronald Lauder speaks at a Malmö synagogue, Oct. 12, 2021. (World Jewish Congress/Shahar Azran)

Speaking in Malmö’s main synagogue, he expressed disappointment with the United Nations, where Sweden had until recently regularly signed on to resolutions singling out Israel for international rebuke. Before this September, Israel and Sweden’s foreign ministers had not spoken to each other for seven years, a historic low in relations.

The previous mayor of Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, was also known for his sharp anti-Israel stance, and for blaming attacks on Jews on their support of the Jewish state.

“What if Sweden was under attack today?” he said to the audience, which included Löfven, defending Israel’s actions in armed conflicts with the Palestinians and others in its region.

Over a decade ago, Lauder wrote an op-ed in which he heavily criticized Swedish politicians and media for inspiring antisemitic attitudes with what he deemed their over-the-line Israel rhetoric. But his tone on Tuesday was dramatically different.

“Ten years ago Sweden was not friendly at all, not only to Israel, but to the Jewish people,” Lauder told JTA. ‘We worked day and night. We watched and we listened to what the prime minister and his government were doing. It was like a miracle… I will use Prime Minister Löfven as an example when I speak to people. I hope other countries will follow.”

Löfven, who has led Sweden since 2014, has been clear that he wants to leave behind a legacy of defending Jews. He first visited the Auschwitz museum in 2017 and on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2019 he declared that Sweden would create a state museum devoted to memorializing the Holocaust. In 2020, an allocation of over $1 million towards the goal was announced, and last month the government declared further support of approximately $3.5 million dollars to be given to the National Historical Museums Agency responsible for the task.

It has now been confirmed that the new museum will be located in Stockholm — even though opinions on that choice were split both among Swedish Jews and scholars. Stockholm — the city of Sweden’s most famous Righteous Among the Nations, diplomat Raoul Wallenberg — and Malmö were the two most frequently mentioned locations. 

Malmö, which lies in the southernmost part of Sweden, just 25 miles across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen, became a safe haven for several thousand Danish Jews in 1943 and for four thousands more in 1945, when it took in evacuees from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Despite that, some feared that the Holocaust history would have been used to hide Malmö’s current problems. Others argued that the contemporary issues made it more important to place a museum about Jews there.

Despite the gestures, 97-year-old Holocaust survivor Lea Gleitman, who has lived in Malmö since 1946, succinctly summarized the feelings many Swedish Jews had about the Malmö conference, in an interview with Sweden’s national broadcaster SVT.

“It is important, but only if it really leads to something. Sometimes it is just talk, but we have hope, maybe,” she said.

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Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tafoya calls himself a “proud Sephardic Jew rediscovering my roots.” So from Inwood, in northern Manhattan, he tracked down all the required documents, created a genealogy chart and hired an attorney. He detailed his family’s heritage from their departure to Spain and arrival in New Mexico some 500 years ago. He even bought a small stock in Santander Bank to prove a monetary link — what the application requirement defines as a “special connection” — to Spain. The Jewish Federation of New Mexico certified his application.

Tafoya had seemingly done everything right. But for the last 25 months, he has been waiting for an answer from Spain that hasn’t come. He hasn’t gotten any indication that he’ll ever get an answer.

“The waiting is the hardest part,” he said. “If I knew I was rejected, I could start the appeals process.” Appeals can take four to five months.

Until this year, only one applicant for the Spanish citizenship program had been rejected. But in 2021, over 3,000 applications have already been denied, according to the American Sephardi Federation, and more than 20,000 have found themselves in an extended period of waiting — not just for citizenship, but for an explanation of what appear to be endless delays. 

Tafoya was one of about 30 people who gathered in front of the Consulate General of Spain in New York on Monday to protest the denials and delays. Calling their protest “Yo Soy Parte” (“I am a part”), members of both Latino and Jewish communities to call out what they see as the injustice and hypocrisy of these rejections. 

The protest was the result of a collaboration between American Sephardi Federation, a Jewish group, and The Philos Project, a New York-based nonprofit that helps Christian leaders, mostly evangelicals, “understand and engage with important Near East issues,” according to its website. 

The event emerged after Jason Guberman, executive director at the American Sephardi Federation, spoke to Hispanic leaders around New York about the issue at the invitation of Jesse Rojo, the head of Philos Latino who often collaborates with Guberman’s group. 

Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico, flew in for the event and spoke to the crowd in an expression of solidarity.

“I stand with you as somebody who has a deep connection to Spain, its history, and the Sephardim,” Fernandez said. “Like many in Northern New Mexico, my ancestors include the Spanish, the indigenous, the Apache, the Pueblo, and yes, the displaced Sephardim.”

A congressional letter that she initiated addressed to Spanish President Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón and would introduce on Oct. 12 was read aloud at the protest. 

“We urge you to rescind these changes and ensure that every eligible Sephardic Jewish descendant can receive citizenship to their ancestral home under the law as the Cortes Generales intended,” said the letter, signed by nine members of Congress, including New York Democrats Alan Lowenthal and Ritchie Torres.

Spain’s Law of Return passed unanimously in the Cortes Generales, the Spanish legislature, in 2015. It allowed for any descendent of Sephardic heritage to apply for citizenship. Similar versions of the law existed throughout the 20th century, but the 2015 version said applicants need not be practicing Jews, and that they could apply for dual citizenship. 

That opened the door for over 132,000 people who applied for citizenship under the program, claiming ancestry through family trees that included Sephardic Jews with roots in Spain and non-Jewish descendants of “crypto-Jews” whose ancestors were expelled or fled Iberia during the Inquisition. More than half of those people began their application in the last month before the Oct. 1, 2019 deadline. 

But the 59,000 people who had submitted their materials well before before the October 2019 closing date should have gotten an answer by now. Of them, approximately 34,000 have been granted citizenship, and another 22,000 still await a response. 

For the Sephardic descendants, it seemed as though Spain was genuine in its attempts to make reparations. “It was an amazing gesture,” said Guberman, who has worked with many applicants to get their documents in order. 

Which is why it feels like such a betrayal when applications are suddenly and inexplicably rejected, protestors said.

“It’s an insult on top of an insult,” said Tafoya, referring to Spain inviting its Sephardic descendants back in after acknowledging the horrific acts of the Inquisition, only to reject them once again. 

“The broken promise of the noble gesture of reparation wounds more than if Spain had never made the offer of return in the first place,” the congressional letter concludes.

It is unclear why there has been a sudden slew of rejections. The congressional letter cites complaints by applicants who were approved by Spanish judges, only to be rejected by the Ministry of Justice — a move that is illegal, according to the New York Times. Many applicants have been asked to provide more in-depth genealogy charts, and some face bureaucrats’ insistence that the “special connection” donation to the Spanish economy must have been made before the law was announced in 2015. Others have seen certificates of Sephardic origin from Jewish institutions outside of Spain rejected. 

The window to apply closed on Oct. 1, 2019, which makes it even more frustrating that the rules for approval changed after that deadline and applications were already in, protestors told The Jewish Week.

The Jewish Federation of New Mexico, located where a number of people claim Spanish Jewish ancestry, is one of only a few institutions in the United States that grants certificates of Spanish-Jewish origin to non-Jews. Many of those applicants have been denied. 

The New Mexico federation helped certify 20,000 people from more than 50 countries across the globe, it said. A majority of the applicants came from Venezuela Colombia, and Mexico. 

The wave of rejections is especially heartbreaking for Venezuelans who applied, Tafoya said. The law seemed to offer a safe, legal opportunity for them to leave their beleaguered country and become European Union citizens. Many had emptied their savings to afford the application process, which costs at least $7,000 to complete.

Jason Guberman, executive director at the American Sephardi Federation; Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-New Mexico; and Jesse Rojo, director of Philos Latino (with his son) at a rally in New York City pressuring Spain to approve citizenship applications for those with Jewish roots in the country, Oct. 11, 2021. (Julia Gergely)

Some of the protestors speculated that the halt in approvals is due to sentiments of antisemitism in the new Spanish government, which is led by a left-wing party that came to power in November 2019. Others wondered if the ruling party, which was not responsible for the Law of Return, is wary of introducing new voters into the country who might support the previous, more conservative party that had accepted them. 

The Consulate General of Spain in New York does not provide information on the status of pending applications, it told JTA by email.

“I believed the Spanish government when they said that they were sorry for the sins of the past,” said Jason Gomez. a third-generation New Yorker who learned about Spain’s citizenship program while it was under discussion. He subsequently interviewed his older Puerto Rican relatives about the strange customs of his childhood — eating only beef, not pork; placing rocks on graves and only marrying into certain families, all reminiscent of Jewish traditions. 

Gomez discovered that his family is descended from a community known as Xuetas, Mallorcan Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity, but continued to practice their faith in secret.

“In 2015 the Spanish government said that they recognized the generations of suffering in this terrible history and wanted to make amends,” he said in his speech. “But only six years later they have turned away from us.”

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It was 1935, two years after Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, and Goldschmidt himself had already fled to London. Over the next decade, virtually every Jew in Germany either escaped or was murdered. Goldschmidt’s feat — he was the first to complete a full translation of the Talmud into any European language — was recognized, but his work had little practical impact.

Now, nearly 90 years later, German-speaking Jews are getting another chance to engage with Goldschmidt’s work. Sefaria, the website that makes Jewish texts available and interactive online, has added Goldschmidt’s translation to its library.

“The original publication of this document was a milestone event in German Jewish life,” said Igor Itkin, a German rabbinical student who led the team that adapted Goldschmidt’s translation for online use, in a statement released by Sefaria. “Making it available online not only preserves that legacy, but also introduces it to future generations.”

Itkin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he has already heard from Germans who have begun using the translation in their study of Daf Yomi, the daily page of Talmud that Jews around the world learn in unison. “The response has been very positive,” he said.

Scholars of Judaism in Germany have sought to make Jewish texts available in German for decades, but the Talmud translation project gained steam after Itkin and his colleagues, German and Austrian scholars, took on the project after he realized that Goldschmidt’s work would enter the public domain at the beginning of this year.

It took them five months for the team to make its way through the 9,434 pages of Goldschmidt’s translation, reviewing and correcting errors in the scanned version and formatting it so users can navigate among the German, English and Hebrew/Aramaic translations that Sefaria makes available. (Sefaria’s CEO, Daniel Septimus, is a board member of 70 Faces Media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s parent company.)

The translation will be the subject of an online event Oct. 24 featuring scholars who will speak to its significance. But it already took center stage once, premiering earlier this month in Berlin as part of this year’s “Festival of Resilience,” a series of events celebrating how German Jewish communities have persisted in the face of hate.

“It was very important to us to do an event in German, because this is a tool for a German-speaking audience,” said Rabbi Jeremy Borovitz, director of Jewish learning for Hillel Deutschland, who helped coordinate between Itkin’s team and Sefaria. “There’s a lot of excitement from German rabbis because finally, it’s opened up a way that they can really bring Talmud learning to their audiences.”

The translation’s accessibility comes amid surging interest in Jewish studies at German universities as well as in less formal settings. Sefaria’s tools allow users to draw from its library to create source sheets, or Jewish study texts, meaning that individual classes and communities will be able to tailor the new materials for their needs.

The digital German Talmud represents “a way of making important Jewish texts available and accessible for a new generation of German-speaking Jews who are eager to learn and explore what it means to be Jewish today,” Katharina Hadassah Wendl, an Austrian student at the London School of Jewish Studies who assisted with the project, told JTA.

She added, “For me personally, this project has opened my eyes anew to the depths of Torah and the vast sea of Talmudic discussions and wisdom.”

Joshua Foer, an author and cofounder of Sefaria, said in a statement that the translation’s online release represents the triumph of Jewish tradition over the forces of hate that lapped against Goldschmidt as he worked.

“Goldschmidt released the translation at a time of rising antisemitism to dispel dangerous myths and make the text accessible to all German speakers around the world,” Foer said. He added, “That this translation is being made more accessible today with the help of German and Austrian rabbinic students and scholars representing the future of German Judaism is a fitting celebration of Goldschmidt’s legacy.”

Goldschmidt died in 1950, shortly after the Royal Library in Copenhagen acquired his collected works and papers. His other contributions included the first German translation of the Quran and a parody commentary on creation that he published under the moniker Arzelai bar Bargelai.

Sefaria is in the process of adding French and English translations of the Jerusalem Talmud, an alternate form of the foundational Jewish text, that also recently entered the public domain. And with their work on Goldschmidt’s Talmud complete, Itkin and his team will get to work on translating other texts, such as the Mishnah, with commentary from prewar German rabbis including David Zvi Hoffmann and Eduard Baneth.

One day, they hope that text and others will appear on Sefaria in German as well, ready to engage German students and synagogue-goers in their native language.

“There’s a source of pride that the first language other than English on Sefaria is German,” said Borovitz. “It speaks to some of the resilience of this text and also this community and that it’s growing, and that people are optimistic about the future.”

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During Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s first meeting with President Biden in August, Bennett was happy with what he heard: the American president, despite his desire to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, said that if Iran does not engage in good faith diplomacy with the nations involved in the deal, the U.S. would consider “other options” in getting Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

It was a sign that Israel and U.S. Democrats, long far apart in their opinions on how to best contain Iran, were coming closer together. 

Lapid, on his official trip as foreign minister in Washington, pushed things along even further.

He looked on Wednesday as Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said “every” option was on the table if Iran does not engage in a good faith effort to negotiate the U.S. reentry into the nuclear deal.

It was one of those blink-and-you-miss-it moments in diplomacy, but it had significant weight. According to insiders involved in the issue, “other options” can be seen as referring to enhanced sanctions, or other non-military forms of pressure. “Every option” means military action may be on the table as well. 

“We will look at every option to deal with the challenge posed by Iran,” Blinken said at a press conference called to announce initiatives that would advance the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab nations. “We continue to believe that diplomacy is the most effective way to do that, but it takes two to engage in diplomacy, and we have not — we have not seen from Iran a willingness to do that at this point.”

Blinken made the statement on the State Department’s eighth floor, flanked by Lapid and the United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The foreign ministers were together to announce new Abraham Accords initiatives, but the symbolism of Blinken’s stronger language in the company of two of the Middle East nations who feel Iran’s threat most sharply was unmistakable.

A senior Israeli official told reporters after the meetings that the Israeli and U.S. delegations discussed Iran extensively behind closed doors. “While there may not have been agreement, there was the discussion of options that have not been on the table previously,” said the official, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the information. 

Along with Bennett, Lapid has spearheaded the effort to repair Israel’s ties with the Democratic Party, which were corroded during the 12 years Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister. Netanyahu was antagonistic toward that half of the American polity, toward which the clear majority of American Jews are oriented.

Netanyahu has accused Bennett and Lapid of showing weakness by not more robustly opposing the Biden administration’s efforts to reenter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump left in 2018 at Netanyahu’s behest.

Bennett and Lapid’s strategy appeared to pay dividends during Lapid’s 48 hours in the U.S. capital this week. The Biden administration, frustrated with the new hard-line Iranian government elected this summer, is edging closer to Israel’s posture, a development that came about without tensions.

Blinken’s language on Iran was tougher than it has been since President Joe Biden made good on his pledge to seek to reenter the 2015 sanctions relief for nuclear rollback deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Biden sees it as the best option to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“Despite the fact that we’ve made abundantly clear over the last nine months that we are prepared to return to full compliance with the JCPOA if Iran does the same, what we are seeing – or maybe more accurately not seeing from Tehran now – suggests that they’re not,” Blinken said. “I’m not going to put a specific date on it, but with every passing day and Iran’s refusal to engage in good faith, the runway gets short.”

Lapid culled other dividends from his visit. The Biden administration showed itself fully committed to cultivating the Abraham Accords, one of the few areas of agreement it has with the Trump administration, which brokered the accords. Blinken at the press conference announced the launch of two working groups comprising Israeli, U.S. and Emirati officials, one tackling religious intolerance and the other fostering cooperation on water and energy.

Lapid also met with World Bank officials to discuss plans to seek investors for infrastructure projects in the Gaza Strip as a means of lifting the standard of living in the poverty-stricken enclave, while limiting the influence of Hamas, the terrorist group controlling the strip with which Israel periodically wars. The United Arab Emirates would likely also play a role in the investments.

Lapid, who is set to take over as Israel’s prime minister in 2023, met Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris, and with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In a brief appearance for reporters, Pelosi emphasized bipartisan support for Israel, a pointed rejection of the calls by progressives within her party to cut funding to the country. 

On the U.S. side, Blinken said the Biden administration remains dedicated to reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Biden, he said at the press conference, has been “clear that a two-state solution is the best way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace alongside a viable, sovereign, and democratic Palestinian state.” Bennett has said that a Palestinian state will not arise on his watch, while Lapid has been less clear on the issue.

Blinken did not refrain from mentioning points of contention, including American plans to reopen a dedicated consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem, replacing the one shuttered by the Trump administration. 

“We’ll be moving forward with the process of opening a consulate as part of deepening those ties with the Palestinians,” Blinken said, although the Israeli government is on the record as opposing it.

State Department statements on the meetings also pointedly said that China was a topic of discussion with Lapid. The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, objects to the extent of Israel’s commercial ties with the most formidable rival to the United States in the international arena.

Lapid is set to meet with Jewish organizational leaders in Washington on Thursday before he returns to Israel. He is expected to make the case to them that he wants to repair relations neglected by Netanyahu, who gravitated toward evangelical Christians as a more natural pro-Israel base.

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The producer, Bettina Sofia Viviano-Langlais, was set to host a fundraiser for Herschel Walker, a retired football player who is running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Georgia.

Viviano-Langlais and her husband, Jim Langlais also hosted last year’s mask-burning bonfire organized by the Dallas Jewish Conservatives to celebrate the end of COVID restrictions in Texas.

Viviano-Langlais’ Twitter profile picture showed four syringes arranged in the shape of a swastika, an emerging symbol in the anti-vaccination movement that has made comparisons between public health rules and the Holocaust a mainstay.

Asked for comment about the image by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the campaign first responded with a statement Wednesday morning saying the image was “clearly an anti-mandatory vaccination graphic” and that “Herschel unequivocally opposes anti-semitism and bigotry of all kinds.”

But within a few hours, the campaign changed course, calling the image “very offensive” and saying it “does not reflect the values of Herschel Walker or his campaign.” It canceled the fundraiser, which had been set for this weekend.

Viviano-Langlais denied that the image was antisemitic in a since-deleted tweet, though she misspelled the word in the process.

“I am the poster and because of the Left’s need to silence free speech I took it down,” she wrote Wednesday. “It’s insane to think that pic was Anti-Semetic. Desperate actually. It was a pic showing what happens when fascists demand people insert foreign material into their body they don’t want…”

If he wins the Republican nomination in May 2022, Walker would face Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in the general election in November 2022. Walker has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT RUTH: In a new memoir, Katie Couric says she edited out comments by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a 2016 interview in order to “protect” the elderly Supreme Court justice. (Daily Mail)

• In the interview for Yahoo News, Ginsburg apparently had harsh words for NFL players who took a knee during the playing of the national anthem — at a time when most liberals were defending the players. Couric decided that RBG was “elderly and probably didn’t fully understand the question,” but says she has “lost a lot of sleep over” her decision to leave the comments out.
• Conservatives and colleagues accused Couric of malpractice and worse. “This is toxic on a lot of levels,” tweeted Maggie Haberman, the New York Times Washington correspondent.

NEW FACE: Asaf Zamir began his new term as the Consul General of Israel in New York. (Times of Israel)

• The 41-year-old Zamir, who lived in Florida until age 9, is a former deputy mayor of Tel Aviv and served as Minister of Tourism as a member of the Blue and White Party. He founded a movement to increase political participation among young people.
• Quotable: “It is a great honor to be in New York and experience life in the Big Apple, all while serving the State of Israel,” he said in a statement. “We want to be a resource for the Jewish community here, and they should know that the Consulate General of Israel in New York wants to be meaningful and prominent in their lives.”
• Zamir succeeds Israel Nitzan, who served as acting consul general after Dani Dayan left in 2020.

CYBER BULLIES: A Palestinian restaurant in Bay Ridge said it is getting harassing telephone calls and suspiciously negative online Google reviews. (The Eater)

• Abdul Elenani, owner of Ayat, said he got an anonymous phone call from someone saying that they were “refused service for being Israeli.” Soon after, the bad reviews piled up on Google, often under names that appeared to be Israeli or Jewish.
• In an Instagram message, Elenani said the restaurant would never refuse service to someone who is Israeli.  We “make sure you’re satisfied no matter the color, race, religion and ethnicity and thats what Islam teaches us,” Elenani posted.

NEW CHAPTER: Former Congressman Steve Israel, a Democrat who represented Long Island for 16 years, plans to open a bookstore in Oyster Bay next month. (Newsday)

AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD, WITH JTA

• Three years after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the city will play host to a high-profile global summit to explore the rising tides of hate.
• Jewish leaders in Europe criticized a European Union plan to fight antisemitism because it doesn’t address widespread bans on kosher slaughter and attempts by some to outlaw ritual circumcision of boys. (Ritual slaughter is effectively illegal in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Slovenia.)
• A Jewish man convicted of killing a cop in Texas won a new trial after arguing that the judge who sentenced him to death used antisemitic slurs.

PEOPLE & PLACES

(Jewish Week)

KEEPING IT 100: (In some versions of yesterday’s newsletter, the caption for the above photo was mistakenly omitted.) Gil Erdan, third from left, Israel’s representative to the United Nations and ambassador to the United States, and participants from The Jewish Week’s Write On For Israel and Fresh Ink programs attended the 8th Annual Algemeiner J100 Gala in Rockleigh, New Jersey, Oct. 12, 2021. The Jewish newspaper honored Erdan with its “Warrior for Truth” award, along with TV host Meghan McCain, philanthropist Nina Rennert Davidson, actress Debra Messing and Algemeiner editor in chief Dovid Efune and his wife Mushka.

TODAY’S BIG IDEA

I’M NOT A JEW BUT I PLAY ONE ON TV: Comedian Sarah Silverman stirred a debate by complaining that non-Jews are too often cast as Jews in film and television. The rabbi and writer known as MaNishtana reminds us that she really meant “white Ashkenazi Jews,” and that the debate over “Jewface” threatens to erase Jews of color. (JTA)

NEWS QUIZ

(Janice Hwang)

Today we get meta: Last night on “Jeopardy!” host Mayim Bialik asked a question from the “Sabbath” category that stumped the contestants: “Exodus 35:3 bans doing this on the Sabbath, hence the Jewish dish, ‘cholent,’ which can go on the stove Friday and cook until Saturday lunch.”

What was the accepted answer?

1. “What is cooking?”
2. “What is work?”
3. “What is lighting a fire?”
4. “What is staying awake after eating a dense meat, potato and barley bomb?”

(Answer below.)

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Jewish Policy Center presents Richard Heideman, whose new book, “The Bloody Price of Freedom,” addresses the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. Heideman discusses Israel’s battle for legitimacy and security since 1948, analyzing the attacks and worldwide propaganda against it, and economic, academic and other boycotts. Click here to sign up. Noon.

An ethical will is not a legal document, but a letter of legacy, sharing hopes, wishes, and dreams. Lesley Simpson will introduce a repository of these letters and illuminate how powerful these modes of Jewish memory can be for both the writer and the recipients. Register here for this Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning session. 1:00 p.m.

The Liszt Institute New York presents an in-person meet-and-greet with Patrícia Eszter Margit, author of the bestselling novel “The Jewish Bride.” The book provides insights into the ongoing identity-search by third generation Holocaust survivors and the mystical world of Kabbalah through an engaging love story.Register here for this event at the Consulate General of Hungary, 223 East 52nd Street. 7:00 p.m.

Answer to News Quiz: 3, “What is lighting a fire?”

Photo, top: Asaf Zamir, shown at a conference in Warsaw in 2017 when was the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, began his new term Wednesday as the Consul General of Israel in New York. (Karol Serewis/Gallo Images Poland/Getty Images)

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The clue, for $400 in the “Sabbath” category: “Exodus 35:3 bans doing this on the Sabbath, hence the Jewish dish ‘cholent,’ which can go on the stove Friday and cook until Saturday lunch.”

The contestants got close with guesses of “What is cooking?” and “What is work?” but failed to name the exact Shabbat prohibition Mayim Bialik, the show’s temporary host and herself an Orthodox Jew, was looking for.

In the end, Bialik explained the answer: “What is ‘lighting a fire?’ And the word ‘cholent’ is from the French ‘chaud lent,’ [meaning] ‘cooks a long time.'”

Explaining cholent on national television was a fitting role for Bialik, the first Jew to host the popular quiz show.

Bialik, who starred in “The Big Bang Theory,” served as a celebrity host during the search for longtime “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek’s replacement and was named a host for primetime specials in August. After Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer who was selected to host the show full-time, was revealed to have made offensive comments about women and Jews, Bialik was temporarily promoted to full-time host. While Jeopardy producers continue to search for Richards’ permanent replacement, Bialik has said she’d like to keep the gig permanently.

Bialik frequently writes about her Jewish identity and posted a video about her Jewish identity to Twitter Wednesday as part of a social media campaign organized by Hillel International to help Jewish college students feel proud of their Jewish identity. Bialik produced a series of videos for My Jewish Learning this year.

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Trayon White, who has served represented the city’s 8th Ward since 2016 quietly made the announcement in the comments section of an Instagram post noticed by a reporter for the Washington City Paper. White confirmed to the paper that he intends to run to replace current D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has not yet decided whether she will run for re-election in the June 21, 2022, Democratic primary.

In 2018, White made national headlines for posting a Facebook video in which he accused “the Rothschilds,” the Jewish banking family, of controlling the climate to make money. It was then reported that White had made a $500 donation from his campaign funds to the Nation of Islam’s Saviour’s Day gathering in Chicago, at which the organization’s leader, Louis Farrakhan, made several antisemitic comments.

White apologized for his Rothschilds comment and subsequently sat down with local Jewish leaders to discuss antisemitism. He also visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum at the invitation of the local Jewish Community Relations Council, but left the museum midway through his tour — a move that upset the council and several D.C.-area rabbis.

White has a colorful history as a politician: He has also appeared to disparage vaccines on social media, and has asked Bowser to declare a state of emergency in his ward to address the area’s disturbingly high homicide rate. Ward 8, in the District’s majority-Black Southeast, has long struggled with chronic poverty and high rates of gun violence.

If White follows through on his mayoral campaign, he would go up against another White: D.C. At-Large Councilmember Robert White Jr. (no relation), who formally announced his candidacy on the same day. The Whites are the only major declared candidates for mayor so far.

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But I also take solace in a correspondence, celebrated in a new children’s book, that showed how one Jewish reader engaged an author who she felt trafficked in anti-Jewish tropes. That the correspondence took place in the 19^th century, and the author in question is Charles Dickens, does not make its lessons any less timely.

I was distressed when Irish novelist Sally Rooney said Tuesday that she wouldn’t allow her latest novel to be published in Hebrew by an Israeli publisher “that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”

Saddened but not surprised: Earlier this year, Rooney signed a “Letter Against Apartheid” — a text issued in the wake of the latest round of violence between Israel and Hamas. It called for governments to “cut trade, economic, and cultural relations” with the Jewish state, which it said had committed “ethnic cleansing,” “massacres” and more in its response to the thousands of rockets fired into Israel by Hamas.

With their particular focus on words, writers should do better, especially when they organize, join or promote such endeavors. If their misrepresentations are without malicious intent, they’re in desperate need of further education.

How such “education” might best be carried out is the subject of “Dear Mr. Dickens,” a new picture book written by Nancy Churnin and illustrated by Bethany Stancliffe. This true story of correspondence between the celebrated author and a reader named Eliza Davis — a Jewish woman who launched the exchange to protest antisemitic tropes in “Oliver Twist” — imparts a timeless lesson about speaking out against injustice.

(Disclosure: Churnin and I currently belong to the same writers group; I hadn’t seen this manuscript before being granted pre-publication electronic access to an advance review copy.)

Davis (1817-1903) refused to be daunted when writing the famous author, whose portrayal of “the Jew” Fagin in “Oliver Twist” landed “like a hammer on [her] heart,” as Churnin describes it. Davis lacked Dickens’s stature. But “she had the same three things that [he] had: a pen, paper, and something to say.” Quoting the correspondence, Churnin conveys Davis’s message: Fagin “encouraged ‘a vile prejudice’” against her people. According to Churnin, Davis had considered Dickens especially heroic — and the Fagin character especially discordant — because Dickens “used the power of his pen to help others.”

In response, Dickens declared that Fagin was based on real-life Jewish criminals. In a mix of what we’d today call gaslighting and mansplaining, he went further: “Any Jewish people who thought him unfair or unkind — and that included Eliza! — were not ‘sensible’ or ‘just’ or ‘good tempered,’” Churnin relates. Davis tried again; evidently, Dickens didn’t write back.

But the Jewish character in his next novel — the estimable Mr. Riah in “My Mutual Friend” — was no Fagin.

After that novel appeared, Davis thanked Dickens for “‘a great compliment paid to myself and to my people.’” This time, Dickens responded much more warmly. He went further, notably in a magazine essay in which he referred to Jews as “an earnest, methodical, aspiring people” and in changes to a subsequent printing of “Oliver Twist,” when he instructed the printer to remove many instances in which he referred to “the Jew” and to use Fagin’s name instead.

There’s still another aspect of Eliza Davis’s story that resonates: Instead of calling Dickens out publicly, Davis approached him one-to-one.

True, they weren’t strangers. According to an author’s note, the Davises had purchased Dickens’s former home a few years before this correspondence began. But Eliza Davis didn’t know how Dickens would receive her initial message. And when he scathingly dismissed it, she didn’t give up.

Rudine Sims-Bishop speaks of books as “windows” and “mirrors” for the children who read them. With rising antisemitism in the United States and elsewhere, “Dear Mr. Dickens” is a sadly timely mirror for Jewish children; importantly, it provides a positive, action-oriented message of tikkun olam, or the Jewish value of repairing the world. For others, the book offers a window into Jewish experience, alongside that universal message about confronting injustice with written words.

Moreover, Eliza Davis’s reaction to Dickens’s words — her sense of betrayal by an admired author whose compassion somehow didn’t extend to Jews — mirrors my own increasingly frequent experience. Like so many Jews, I am imbued with a sense of klal Yisrael, “Jewish peoplehood,” linking us with Jews everywhere — including in Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, where nearly half of the world’s Jews now live.

This doesn’t mean that I support all Israeli policies. But criticism of Israel needs to be leavened by facts and context, and a recognition that the situation is far more complex than declarations of an “apartheid” regime and “ethnic cleansing” suggest.

Although I’ve gone the public route from time to time, private communications with writer-friends and acquaintances — especially in the wake of the May 2021 war between Israel and Hamas — have proven far more fruitful, yielding corrections, deletions and other changes.

For which I, like Davis, have expressed thanks.

I don’t expect “great compliments to me and to my people” from authorial idols and colleagues, particularly those of Palestinian descent. All I’m seeking is fairness — and freedom from vile prejudice.

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The three-day, in-person Eradicate Hate Global Summit, which will be held in the city Oct. 18-20, will feature more than 100 speakers and panelists, including former President George W. Bush (in a virtual address); current Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Jewish, and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

Also taking part are media personalities Fareed Zakaria and Major Garrett; former governors of Pennsylvania and Washington State; and Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. 

Other speakers will include members of the Pittsburgh Jewish community, including members of Tree of Life, whose building also housed two other congregations. 

The idea for the summit was conceived shortly after the 2018 mass shooting, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. “When Tree of Life happened, I, like everyone else in the city of Pittsburgh, thought, ‘What do I have to bring to the table to help?’” said summit co-chair Laura Ellsworth, an attorney at the law firm Jones Day.

Ellsworth is not Jewish, but as the first partner-in-charge of the firm’s Global Community Service Initiatives, she leads the firm’s rule of law initiatives in 43 offices on five continents. It includes a hate crime task force that represents victims on a pro bono basis.

“In the context of that work, I had seen fabulous people working on the field in different disciplines who weren’t talking to one another,” Ellsworth said. She reached out to a longtime friend and adviser to co-chair the event with her: Mark Nordenberg, chancellor emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh. Nordenberg was already helping the local federation distribute $6 million in funds donated to the local Jewish community following the attack. 

Ellsworth, who placed third in the Republican primary for the Pennsylvania governor’s race in 2018, says she wanted to find a way to create real-world solutions to battle hate — not just antisemitism, but hatred toward immigrants, the  LGBTQ+ community, Muslims and others.

“Laura called and said, ‘We’ve got to do something to make certain that Pittsburgh becomes better known for the way it responded to the attack, as opposed to simply being the site of the attack,’” Nordenberg said.

Greenblatt’s participation at the summit is notable given that he has sharply criticized Fox News, a high-profile client of Ellsworth’s law firm, Jones Day, for the network’s role spreading what the ADL says are hateful ideologies. The firm also took heavy criticism for representing some legal challenges to the 2020 Presidential election on behalf of groups supporting President Trump, challenges which observers have said helped fuel the fire that led to the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump extremist groups.

Greenblatt did not return a request for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The ADL has worked with Jones Day’s hate crimes task force on other initiatives, according to the firm’s website.

Since the attack, Pittsburgh has played host to many discussions and events built around combating hate and antisemitism. This summit will be different, its organizers say. For one, the sheer scale of the event is unprecedented. 

“The reaction from people who are devoting huge parts of their life to this has been the same: No one has done this. No one has brought us together from disparate geographic locations across disciplinary lines with different strategic approaches to counter the spread of hate,” Nordenberg said.  

For another, almost every speaker will be in-person. The isolation created by COVID-19 has exacerbated online recruitment into hate groups, Ellsworth said, noting that is part of the reason she was adamant the summit not be virtual. 

Ellsworth said it’s important that people experience the seminar in person and have the opportunity to “engage with these people and share their own ideas.” She said there is a livestreaming opportunity, but those participating remotely will miss the chance to experience the summit in person and meet the people, “which is a huge part of what we’re trying to do.”

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who will be speaking at the summit, was instrumental in corralling the lineup’s top dignitaries to appear in person and waive their  speakers’ fees, Ellsworth said.

“You can throw a dart at just about any map and it will land on a region impacted by hate-driven acts of violence,” Ridge said in a statement to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. “That’s how pervasive this challenge is and why the Eradicate Hate Global Summit is so important. I’m pleased to be part of the Summit’s worldwide mission. While we can never truly eradicate hate, I’m confident we can weaken it at its sources and achieve a better, safer future for us all.”

Nordenberg said the expectation is that, in future years, the summit will move to the Collaboratory Against Hate, a joint research and action center created by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University in the wake of the Tree of Life shooting to study and combat extremist hate.

“This is going to be a challenge,” he said. “Part of that challenge will be fundraising but what I think we’re doing is sufficiently distinctive that, while the initiative is physically located in Pittsburgh, there will be people from more distant places who care deeply about stopping the spread of hate.”

Another expected speaker is Kathleen Blee, who serves as co-director of the Collaboratory Against Hate. She is also a member of Congregation Dor Hadash, one of the three congregations attacked in the Tree of Life building.

“Sometimes people talk fatalistically and say things like, ‘people will always hate people,’ and ‘there will always be crazy people who take out their feelings in violent ways,’” Blee said. “What we’re seeing in Pittsburgh and nationally and internationally is something different that we can’t chalk up to human nature. We’re seeing people deliberately and strategically provoked by a set of actors who are trying to damage society.”

Blee has been studying hate for years as an academic. Now, as a member of the congregation that was targeted by hate, she said, “I know more about being in the victim community than I did when I was one step removed.”

Talking about the relationships among all forms of hate will be another major goal of the summit, said participant Heidi Beirich, who co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in 2020 and is a former researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“At the end of the day, most of the people that hate Jews hate a whole bunch of other people,” Beirich said. “These things are really connected. The Tree of Life was emblematic of this. The guy was definitely an antisemite, but he was going to the synagogue because he was angered about immigration, that immigrants were essentially wiping out white power. These things do not exist in isolation.”

This story was originally published as two separate articles in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. Click here to get the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle’s free email newsletter delivered to your inbox. JTA contributed to this report.

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