When celebrity chef and Bay Area food ambassador Samin Nosrat appeared this week at San Francisco’s JCC alongside two Israeli chefs, it was nearly three years since she pledged not to buy or promote Israeli food.

The Chez Panisse alum and author of 2017’s smash hit “Salt Fat Acid Heat” joined Israeli chefs Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, the couple behind a beloved London restaurant, to discuss their latest cookbook, “Honey & Co. Daily: Easy Food for Your Everyday Pleasure.” 

In promoting the event, Nosrat urged people to join her in the JCCSF’s sukkah to enjoy bites from Loquat, a Jewish bakery in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco that she calls her favorite. The celebration of Jewish and Israeli food culture came two days shy of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Nosrat was among those who signed the Hospitality for Humanity pledge in 2023, which, in accordance with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, committed signers to “not purchasing, using, or promoting Israeli agricultural or food products … so long as Israel continues its system of apartheid, occupation, settler colonialism, and genocide.” Israel rejects the genocide charge.

The boycott drew signatures from more than 1,100 people across the industry. When the New York Times covered the saga in November 2023, it listed Nosrat as one of its most prominent supporters.

The pledge targets Israeli products, not Israeli people, and Srulovich and Packer are longtime friends of Nosrat’s. 

Nosrat did not return several requests for comment, nor has she publicly disavowed the boycott, which has scrambled Israeli and Jewish food businesses’ relationship with other Middle Eastern cuisines. New York magazine depicted this tension in August in its Habibi City series, which proposed that Israel’s war in Gaza had ushered in a golden era for Southwest Asian and North African restaurants, at the peril of cuisines considered Jewish or Israeli. 

Bay Area restaurants have felt the pressure, too. Guy Eshel, the Israeli owner of Sababa — a popular pita eatery in San Francisco’s Financial District — told J. that he recently sold his shop, citing the dual pressures of a struggling downtown and anti-Israel sentiment. Mica Talmor, an Israeli chef who ran Oakland’s Pomella until last year, said that stress related to Oct. 7 and its aftermath contributed to the restaurant’s closure. 

In the years since signing the boycott pledge, Nosrat, a first-generation Iranian American raised by a Muslim mother and Baha’i father, revealed a family secret: Her paternal ancestors were Jewish. 

She found out by accident. Nosrat had gone looking for her estranged father’s will as he lay on his deathbed. The search returned a hidden YouTube channel with hours of her father “ranting.”

In those recordings, “he revealed we had Jewish ancestry, which had always been kept from us,” she told podcast host Sam Fragoso last year while promoting her new book, “Good Things.” “I was like, this is so cool, this is amazing. Like, there’s just things where I’m like, wow, I wish I had known this about myself.” 

Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, who oversees the Maas Center for Jewish Journeys at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, said she has seen many Iranian students discover they have Jewish roots. 

“It’s not easy being a minority religion in a majority Muslim community,” Rabizadeh said. “So a lot of people either hid their Judaism or converted, and then their great- great-grandkids didn’t find out until someone revealed it on their deathbed.” 

Religion was central to the Nosrat family story. In the mid-1970s, as the pressure in Iran intensified, Nosrat’s parents fled to escape the persecution of Baha’is. 

Her father’s death, combined with her own depression, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic and a growing self-doubt following the success of “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” triggered a personal excavation. 

“So many people at this point in time are deeply searching for a sense of meaning and sort of trying to answer for themselves this question of ‘what is a good life?’” Nosrat told Fragoso. 

She found answers in Jewish teaching, and one 20th-century rabbi in particular. A friend slipped her a copy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s 1951 book “The Sabbath.” Heschel, a Poland-born American rabbi, was one of the foremost Jewish voices of the Civil Rights Era and marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama.

Nosrat was taken by Heschel’s description of “Judaism being a religion not of things, but basically of time.” 

“A huge practice in that is the carving out of this sabbath. I think he calls it a cathedral in time,” Nosrat told Fragoso. “I have tried to figure out what I am doing with my life and why. The answer … has ultimately been about figuring out a way to maximize or value my time the best I possibly can, and to share this message of how important time is for all of us.” 

Whether that search has changed how she views the boycott, Nosrat hasn’t said.

Historian Arash Azizi, a lecturer at Yale University who is writing a book on the relationship between Israel and Iran, said the discovery of Jewish roots tends to have a more profound effect on people than finding out they are, say, from some other region in the world.

“It’s because Jewish belonging is a much more contentious issue than, let’s say, Italian belonging,” Azizi said. “Jews are a small population relatively, but the Jewish identity is central to politics in the U.S. and other places. So, it’s not surprising at all that declaring Jewish identity would be a bigger deal.” 

Azizi said he has been “disturbed” by how the war in Gaza has forced people — particularly those in the public eye — to take a position unlike with any other global event. 

“This is the be all and end all for so many people, and it speaks to the monochromatic nature of culture wars in America,” Azizi said. “Americans think they’re talking about the world, but it’s always about themselves. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used as a cudgel in these parochial culture wars.” 

For Talmor, the event with Nostrat reaffirms her view that food should not be politicized to the point of excluding people. 

“Criticizing a government is one thing. Shutting out its people, its artists, its farmers and its chefs is another,” she said. “I’d rather see chefs sit at the same table and talk than draw lines around who gets a seat.”

Aliza Sokolow, an Emmy-winning food stylist based in Los Angeles, said she supported Nosrat’s effort to “come and learn,” despite her Israel boycott pledge. 

“I’m going to reach out and invite her to Shabbat next time she’s in town,” Sokolow said.

This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

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The race could help determine control of the Senate, with implications for U.S. policy toward Israel.

The incumbent Ossoff, who is Jewish, has long supported Israel’s security, but over the last two years he has criticized its conduct in the Gaza war and voted to block some U.S. arms sales to the country.

A day after the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, Ossoff was asked whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, whether he was concerned about growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party and whether he would support a proposed $2.8 billion U.S. weapons package for Israel.

“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff responded. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family. 

“I also care about innocent Palestinian life,” Ossoff continued, “and make no apology for my votes.”

Collins accused Ossoff of having aligned himself with anti-Israel figures including Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

“Imagine being a U.S. senator, and out there recruiting, endorsing, and supporting these people that want to see Israel wiped off the map,” Collins said. “They would rather be for Iran than for Israel — now that’s who Jon Ossoff is supporting.”

Piker had previously called Ossoff a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He subsequently disavowed Ossoff after the senator condemned antisemitic comments.

During the hourlong debate, Ossoff repeatedly condemned the U.S. war in Iran while highlighting Collins’ support for it. At least three times Ossoff called the war in Iran a “disaster” or “disastrous,” and he blamed the war for rising gas prices in the state of Georgia.

Collins, on the other hand, said he supported the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “The president had every right to go in there and make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” Collins said. “The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], they had already sounded the bells, the alarms that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon. And the thing is, Iran doesn’t only want to decimate and kill Israel, they want us as well.” 

The evening was not without its personal attacks. Collins described Ossoff as “a radical” and a “trust-fund kid who has never had a job in his life,” while Ossoff repeatedly spotlighted the alleged ties between Collins and white nationalists.

“It’s not just that you’ve hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office and that you have promoted neo-Nazi content online,” Ossoff said when making a point of Collins’ backing for data centers. “It’s that you’re robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors.”

A recent report alleged that Collins’ former aides were involved with antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.

Ossoff leads Collins by about nine percentage points in FiftyPlusOne’s polling average as of Oct. 9.

The candidates are scheduled for a second debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club on Oct. 13.

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Each time, he parried.

“That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” said El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

“I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight,” he added, describing both as “kind of dangerous.” Another attempt yielded a similar response, with El-Sayed denouncing “one at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”

El-Sayed, a former county health official, was responding to a question repeatedly posed by WOOD TV8 political reporter Rick Albin, in a debate against his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. The two candidates hurled insults at each other during the hourlong discussion, often returning to issues related to Israel and the Middle East. 

After making criticism of Israel a top issue in his primary campaign, El-Sayed eked out a victory against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in that early August race. Although he has earned the support of many democratic socialists, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed has stated that he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.  

Rogers, on the other hand, has the official endorsement of President Donald Trump. However, the candidate has been distancing himself from the president, including by criticizing the trade war with Canada. 

Results of a CBS News poll published earlier this week showed El-Sayed leading Rogers, by 45.6% to 41.4%, with a 3.8% margin of error. A Quantus Insights poll released on Wednesday, meanwhile, gave El-Sayed a slightly narrower lead, with 47.6% to Rogers’s 46.5%, and a 7.8% margin of error. 

While El-Sayed has been meeting with Jewish voters and leaders, he has not budged on certain issues of concern to many Jewish voters. For example, he has indicated only a willingness to recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state if Israelis and Palestinians jointly agree to it.. 

Liberal Michigan rabbis last month signed a petition from the Zioness Action Fund, a progressive Zionist group, calling upon the Democratic Party to agree to “nonnegotiable” principles related to Jewish safety and Israel. A separate cohort of Michigan Jewish leaders urged community members to reject El-Sayed entirely.  

Rogers and his representatives in August indicated that they would like AIPAC to refrain from spending directly on him in the general election, according to media reports. Asked about this at the Thursday debate, he said he’d welcome “anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country.”

El-Sayed condemned the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, but added that “hurt people hurt people,” which critics interpreted as justifying the attacker’s actions. He later apologized for those remarks.

Rogers has repeatedly slammed his opponent for taking funds from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Unity & Justice Fund super PAC and other groups and individuals. 

El-Sayed, on the other hand, accused Rogers on Thursday of accepting corporate PAC money and labeled him the “guy who’s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp.”

The two candidates criticized each other’s policies and interrupted each other so often that Albin, the moderator, needed to step in. 

“We’ve got dozens of questions we want to get to,” Albin said. “You can’t litigate all of these with 14 different rebuttals.”

Even prior to a pause for ads, Albin announced that the station is going “to take a break from this pleasant conversation.” When they returned, he declared that “in 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial, but it did.”

The candidates continued to clash over Iran, with El-Sayed accusing the U.S. government of teaching “the Iranian regime that they had a choke [hold] on the Strait of Hormuz.”

“That’s the kind of policy you’re going to get from a guy who wants to be a sock puppet for the Trump administration,” El-Sayed added. 

Rogers, meanwhile, claimed that the U.S. had set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least 20 years, adding that “this would be the time to wrap it up.” 

As for Israel, Rogers said he supports “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.” The only way Israel could lose his support, Rogers stated, would be if the country talked about using nuclear weapons. 

Israel is widely assessed to possess an arsenal of approximately 90 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.

Albin then turned to El-Sayed, noting the politician’s opposition to direct U.S. military funding for Israel. He asked, however, whether that position could change “if Israel were attacked tomorrow by Iran or another state actor.”

“I want our tax dollars spent here,” El-Sayed responded. “Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran, and of course, my colleague, who thinks there’s a war for everything, went right along with it.”

When Albin pushed again for a yes or no answer, El-Sayed replied that he doesn’t want the U.S. “buying weapons for other countries.” 

Toward the end of the discussion related to the Middle East, Rogers recognized the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. He blasted his opponent for failing “to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders.”

To this accusation, El-Sayed responded, “I’ve condemned that. I didn’t turn it into theater like you did.”

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Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, Minnesota, was charged on Wednesday with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism, according to a federal complaint filed on Wednesday.

Mohamud’s attorney did not respond to JTA’s request for comment. 

Mohamud wanted to attack the Mall of America because he believed its owners to be Jewish, the FBI said in a statement. He planned to kill between 30 and 60 people, according to messages he exchanged with a confidential source, according to the complaint. 

Mall of America is owned and operated by Triple Five Group, controlled by the Ghermezian family, a Canadian family of Iranian Jewish origin. 

Messages sent in September 2026 included a video in which Mohamud pledged allegiance to ISIS, the complaint said. He planned his attack for Oct. 24 because he expected a crowd at the Hmong Arts Celebration scheduled for that day. 

The complaint said an undercover FBI agent sold an AK-47 rendered inoperable, four 30-round magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition to Mohamud for $600 on Oct. 6. During the sale, Mohamud confirmed his plans to commit a mass shooting. Mohamud was arrested shortly after the sale. 

The complaint said Mohamud wanted to commit an attack similar to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in which 49 victims were killed; the Bondi Beach mass-shooting in Sydney last December, during which 15 victims were killed during a Hanukkah celebration; and a New Orleans truck-ramming attack that killed 14 victims in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025. 

The investigation into Mohamud began around December 2024, when he messaged the confidential source on multiple social media platforms, according to the complaint, detailing his desire to travel to Somalia to join a group that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. If travel was not possible due to financial constraints, he said would move forward with an attack in Minnesota. 

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Platt, a social media influencer and the host of “Being Jewish with Jonah Platt,” said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he is frustrated with the steady stream of personal messages and other signs of support from celebrities and thought leaders, both Jews and allies, who appreciate his program showcasing Jewish identity and pride – but then decline to come on it.

When declining, they tell him they are too scared for their safety or careers. They’re “afraid it will attract anti-Israel masses to their social media, afraid it will affect them commercially or afraid they’ll get death threats,” he explained. 

The would-be guests often say they’ll support the Jewish community privately but not publicly. But to Platt that’s an empty offer. “Having private solidarity doesn’t move the needle when public spaces are being entirely surrendered to fear,” he said.

An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey released in July found that 4 in 10 Jews are less likely to wear anything identifying themselves as Jewish than they were before the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in just one sign of concerns about being Jewish publicly. In the three years since, a handful of Jewish influencers have tried to give Jews the support to come out and be proud. 

”I think the more Jews speak about their own story, and the more we share it, the more we own it, the stronger we will be as a people and the more people will react positively,” said another influencer, Israeli activist Hen Mazzig, who interviews celebrities and pushes for Jews to express public pride in their heritage. 

Despite the difficulties Platt and Mazzig encounter when encouraging people to speak out, they have still made a mark. On Instagram alone Hen Mazzig has 459,000 followers and Jonah Platt has 229,000. Mazzig’s show interviewing Jewish people about their identity, art and culture,  “And They’re Jewish,” was just picked up by ChaiFlix, the Jewish and Israeli Netflix. 

Platt’s podcast, meanwhile, is often the No. 1 ranked Jewish podcast on Apple podcasts. Views on YouTube for multiple episodes are above 50,0000, with nearly 1,000 comments on single episodes. And he has succeeded in attracting at least some high-profile guests – including Cindy Crawford, Jason Alexander and Mayim Bialik.

Platt developed his podcast in October 2024 as a safe space for Jewish and allied celebrities and thought leaders to share their stories around Jewish identity to help combat rising antisemitism and Jewish hate.  

“It humanizes the Jewish experience for the audience, “ he said, especially when listeners can think, “Wow, this person whose movies I love is going through such a horrible time and is experiencing all this stuff, too. I had no idea.”

Platt said appearing on his podcast pays dividends. With only a tiny number of exceptions, according to Platt, everyone who’s been on his show has told him, “This has been so amazing. Everybody wherever I go is telling me how much they love this conversation.”

Platt said his guests find that the typical listener feedback is positive. Some of the responses they’ve received include: “It makes me feel seen. It makes me feel less alone. It makes me so proud to support you, and now I’m gonna buy tickets to every movie you’re ever in and have your back all the way!”

A number of Platt’s interviews confirmed that they saw spikes in positive attention after appearing on his show.

“Not only is Jonah a fantastic host with whom I felt so safe, but after my episode aired, I have had so many people commenting online or coming up to me and thanking me for making them feel less alone,” Seth Rudetsky, SiriusXM’s Big Fat Broadway host and Jewish Broadway Alliance founder, wrote to JTA in an email.

Sarah Hurwitz, a former White House speechwriter, said that after her appearance on Platt’s podcast in February 2025, she saw sales of a book she published in 2019, “Here all Along,” go up.  

“The fact that my sales were double, then triple what they were the week before the episode aired really does seem meaningful,” she said.

Platt said he’s heard of minimal negative pushback. “I can really only think of one instance where I heard back from a guest who said there’s some specific clips based on things they said that are getting them some hate online that they’re unhappy about it, but certainly didn’t regret appearing on the show,” said Platt. “They’re just like, I can’t keep promoting these clips anymore.” 

That experience stands in stark contrast to what many other Jewish performers have found in other contexts, however. In recent weeks, Pink lost 100,000 followers overnight for airing her objections to Macklemore’s anti-Israel advocacy when he was opening for Ed Sheeran. (Stadium owners told Sheeran that Macklemore would not be welcome, and he dropped the rapper from his tour.) Jerry Seinfeld is still headlining the MEO Commedia a La Carte Fest in Portugal, but he’s facing boycott calls and several comedians have dropped out because of opposition to Seinfeld’s pro-Israel views. 

But staying silent won’t change that reaction, according to Mazzig, co-founder of the Tel Aviv Institute think tank focusing on antisemitism. 

“When Oct. 7 happened, a lot of people were hoping [increased Jewish hate] would be over in a few months,” Mazzig said. Three years later, it is evident that antisemitism is not diminishing, he said.

Mazzig, who is gay, likened the prescription for Jewish pride to the journey gays have undergone.

“It’s what Harvey Milk said about the gay community,” said Mazzig, referring to the trailblazing Jewish San Francisco city supervisor who was assassinated in 1978. Milk believed it’s important for gay individuals to come out to their friends, neighbors, and community, so they aren’t defined by what misconceptions others perceive about them. “And I think for us as Jews, we have to do the same thing,” said Mazzig. 

Hearing from proud Jews is especially important for college students, according to Andrew Pessin, a philosophy professor at Connecticut College and the founding director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism. As far as he can tell, his is the only classroom on campus where students can learn about Zionism in a positive way and have multi-sided discussions. 

Pessin said that his Jewish students tell him his class is a safe haven. He said he’s heard things like, “Thank G-d for your class, because I am surrounded by hate on this campus,” and that there, “I realize I’m not alone, and this is actually a safe space for me.”

Avital Goldberg-Curran transferred from Connecticut College after experiences at New York University that left her feeling threatened. She was pleased to see Pessin’s name as a faculty member. “My rabbi would talk about him as a hero. A proud Jew,” she said.

“At NYU, there were days that I felt unsafe going to class because there were mass protesters in the lobby screaming death to Israel and Jewish people,” says Goldberg-Curran, an American history graduate of Connecticut College. “There were multiple times that I took a lap around the block and waited for the protests to be broken up by the police before I went inside because I didn’t know if there were weapons.”

Goldberg-Curran follows Platt and Mazzig and said their podcasts and writings remind her of the importance of being a proud Jew in difficult times. 

“They very much inspired me while I was at NYU to lean more into Judaism and being observant,” she said. “I very much sought out observing Shabbos and visiting the Chabad house and surrounding myself with Jewish people.” 

She added, “I think it’s been a very important takeaway that in times of struggle, we should be finding each other and leaning into them.”

Pessin believes being vocal on Jewish hate is important for his own self-worth. “If I don’t speak up, I’ll have changed myself,” he said. “If I see something, I have to speak up and say otherwise. If I don’t, it harms me on the inside.”

That feeling of being at peace with and connected to your inner self is part of what Platt guests get from being on his show. 

“They feel good for having told their story authentically and being truthful to who they are, and in some cases, spoken about things in a setting where they feel comfortable to speak about things they don’t talk about elsewhere,” said Platt. “So for a lot of people, it’s been cathartic or healing to be on the show.”

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Thirty-eight percent of Jewish respondents surveyed by the federation umbrella group in May and June said they had increased their Jewish engagement in some way in the last three years, an increase of 7 percentage points over rates in 2025 yet down from the 43% rate in March 2024, in the months after the attacks. The survey had a margin of error of 1.8 percent.

JFNA researchers say the results demonstrate that this initial spike in engagement — which the organization dubbed “the Surge” — has had a lasting effect, prompting people to deepen their involvement in Jewish life even three years on.

“I think the fact that people are continuing to engage with community during a difficult time is a good thing, and it’s an opportunity for us to meet people’s needs in this moment,” Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact and growth officer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ahead of the release of the findings Thursday morning. 

The number of “Surgers,” she said, includes Jews who were already engaged but have found ways to become more engaged since the attacks.

Many in the Jewish community feared that Jewish engagement “would continue to decline as we got further out from the events of Oct. 7, and that likely people would return to something like their behavior prior to Oct. 7,”  Kravetz said. “That is usually what happens after a major incident.” 

JFNA surveyed more than 2,800 Jews by text message in May and June of this year. Follow-up questions were generated by AI, which Kravetz said allowed researchers to ask open-ended questions about respondents’ relationship to Jewish community and quickly sort the answers by category.

This approach unlocked new insights. A top motivator for Jewish engagement was “social or interpersonal” connections in informal settings, such as Shabbat dinners or personal invitations to Jewish events. And in what seems like an encouraging sign for congregational Jewish life, 65% of Jews who “Surged” were turning to synagogues — though Kravetz noted that not every shul’s membership has grown as a result. 

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, whose adherents place a premium on interpersonal connections and often operate in environments lacking in other Jewish communal infrastructure, was the second-most-popular engagement option. 

Jews who had increased their levels of engagement were also more likely to voice support for Israel, the findings said. Ninety-three percent of “Surging” Jews said they were “emotionally attached to Israel,” compared to 51% of Jews whose level of engagement did not change. Additionally, 75% of Jews who grew their engagement agreed that “in general, Israel makes me proud to be Jewish,” compared to 36% who did not “Surge.” 

Overall, respondents’ most frequently cited barrier to participation in Jewish life was Israeli politics. Large numbers of Jews said they struggled to connect with Jewish community spaces because they felt misaligned on Israel in one direction or another — data that JFNA said it did not quantify because it came out of the open-ended section of the survey. 

The most common complaint, Kravetz said, was that Jews were seeking spaces they thought of as “apolitical.”

Kravetz said that many of those Jews, instead of dropping out of Jewish life, indicated they eventually found communities that aligned better with their values.

“These aren’t people who are walking away,” Kravetz said. “These are people who are leaning into Jewish community and are experiencing this tension. And usually, what we see is people are interested in finding Jewish spaces that meet their needs.”

The challenge for Jewish leaders, Kravetz said, is “to make sure that we have and support that diversity of spaces for people, so that they can find the right space that meets their needs.” 

But that diversity has limits, as many prominent Jewish leaders — including heads of JFNA — have also urged Jewish communal spaces to reaffirm a commitment to Zionism at a moment when more and more Jews feel divided on Israel. Some Jewish leaders have explicitly called to reject anti- and non-Zionist Jews.

Kravetz doesn’t see those values as contradictory or damaging to the “Surge.” She pointed to another recent JFNA survey, released earlier this year, querying Jews about their relationship to Zionism. 

While that survey found that only a third of American Jews identify as Zionist, it also found that 88% of the same population agree with what has historically been a basic tenet of Zionism: that “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic state.”

“I think being supportive of the premise of Zionism, and in how we define Zionism, is very much aligned with engaging the majority of the Jewish community,” she said.

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“I want to recognize the anniversary of the Hamas attacks, where 1,200 innocent people were killed, including 49 Americans,” said Garrity, referring to the third anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. 

“I want to remember the lives that were stolen, the families that were changed forever, and the Americans that didn’t make it home,” she added. 

While Garrity, Pennsylvania’s state treasurer, has the endorsement of President Donald Trump, Shapiro has a 25 percentage point lead in a poll released Wednesday. Both candidates won their primaries uncontested in May, and both have been outspoken against antisemitism. 

Shapiro, who himself is Jewish, likewise recognized “the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre” at the debate. He recalled how “Hamas, a terrorist organization, broke into Israel and murdered 1,200 innocents, took over 250 hostage, including many Americans.”

“This is a moment where my heart stands with the people of Israel,” he said. “My heart stands with the Jewish community, who I know are grieving as a result of this.”

“This is a moment where we need to stand together against terrorism, against hate and against antisemitism,” the governor added.

Although the candidates shared similar perspectives on Israel during Wednesday’s debate, they clashed on numerous other topics, including the death penalty, voter identification, taxes and tariffs.

Asked by the debate moderator about the plunging support for Israel in the Democratic Party, Shapiro replied that he has “been very, very consistent” in both his “love of Israel” and his disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Shapiro then noted that Israelis will head to the polls in just a few weeks to choose their next leader. He expressed hope that they would not elect Netanyahu, whom he said “has led Israel down a very dangerous and isolated path.” 

“I want America to have a strong relationship with Israel and with the Israeli government,” Shapiro added. “That’s not possible right now with the Netanyahu government in charge.”

Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish Democrats nationwide, was among the final candidates considered by Kamala Harris in her vice-presidential search in the 2024 election. He is also seen as a possible 2028 presidential hopeful. 

But Shapiro has also faced the challenges posed by increasing antisemitism in America. During Harris’s search, for example, a website and social media feed labeled him “No Genocide Josh” over his support for Israel. 

In April 2025, an arsonist set fire to Shapiro’s house just hours after his family had conducted a Passover seder. In 2018, while Shapiro was serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, a terrorist killed 11 people and injured six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.. 

Garrity, meanwhile, has more than tripled Pennsylvania’s investment in Israel bonds in her current role. She invested $20 million after the Oct. 7 attack and another $35 million in July 2025. 

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Guangtian Ha, a religion professor at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college, was accused of sending the victim approximately 50 messages between October 2025 and May 2026, according to a federal indictment. He also posted information about the victim’s home address and family.

Haverford President Wendy Raymond said in a message to the college community that Ha was placed on administrative leave and barred from campus during the criminal case. Ha, who taught courses on Islam and religion in Asia, was on sabbatical and not teaching this semester.

Raymond said she was “heartbroken and furious” about the allegations, adding that “any form of harassment or discrimination based on identity is unacceptable, antithetical to our values, and has no place at Haverford.” She said a Haverford representative had contacted people who were targeted by “these heinous online attacks, which were antisemitic in nature.” 

Ha contacted a victim through at least four different X accounts, according to the indictment. In various messages, he called the person a “Jew pig,” urged them to leave the country and the township and said, “If jews are so special then they should also be placed in special camps and receive special treatments.” 

Ha is also accused of posting an image of the victim’s home mailbox, which identified their address. After the victim took security measures, Ha allegedly wrote, “The goyim have woken up, jew. Run. Flee. Leave. Blurring your home on google map and installing a security camera next to your mailbox won’t help.” He also threatened the victim’s family and their son by name, according to the indictment. 

JTA could not reach Ha for comment.

Ha was previously named in a 2024 antisemitism lawsuit against the school, which Haverford settled in August. The group Jews at Haverford said in the lawsuit that students and faculty showed “severe and pervasive hostility toward Jewish students” in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. 

That lawsuit accused Ha of writing posts that attacked Jews “committed to Israel.” In one post, Ha said he “will never forgive” Haverford community members who were “silent on this genocide or even tacitly support it,” referring to Gaza, adding, “I know their names and I know their faces.”

As part of the settlement, Raymond said that discrimination or harassment against students who were Jewish, Israeli or identified with Zionism violated the school’s policy. Haverford declined to clarify whether Ha was penalized as a result of the 2024 lawsuit or any other allegations of antisemitism on campus prior to his arrest.

In 2025, Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik questioned Raymond during a hearing on campus antisemitism. Stefanik, whose grilling of university leaders in 2023 prompted two to step down, appeared to warn Raymond that her job was on the line after Raymond refused to discuss individual cases of alleged antisemitism. 

“Respectfully, president of Haverford, many people have sat in this position who are no longer in the positions as president of universities for their failure to answer straightforward questions,” said Stefanik.

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“I didn’t want any more offensive weapons going to murder people in Palestine,” Jackson explained, in a rebuttal to his opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins.

The two candidates were participating in their first general election debate, aired on CBS13 and moderated by news anchor Gregg Lagerquist, without a live audience. Jackson, who holds a narrow lead over Collins, has rattled many members of the Jewish community in recent weeks, as he has intensified anti-Israel rhetoric and made controversial comments to Maine Jews.

The Maine U.S. Senate race is a key battleground in Democrats’ effort to regain control of the chamber, which requires a net gain of four seats. A Jackson victory would replace Collins, a longtime supporter of military aid to Israel, with a Democrat who has called for ending that assistance.

A former state lawmaker and union advocate, Jackson secured the Democratic nomination at the end of July in a landslide victory. He won the nomination after the former Democratic nominee, staunch Israel critic Graham Platner, left the race amid a sexual assault allegation, which Platner denies. 

Jackson had previously said little publicly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but during the contest to replace Platner, he accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.

Collins, a five-term senator, has been a staunch supporter of Israel over the past three decades.

Asked by Lagerquist during a lightning round whether the U.S. should increase, decrease or keep military funding for Israel the same, Collins responded that “the current level is good,” adding that she is “a strong supporter.”

Jackson, meanwhile, argued that “it’s kind of unfair to ask that like this,” while also noting that he has the endorsement of J Street, the liberal pro-Israel organization. 

After Jackson then declared that the U.S. should not be “giving a blank check” to Israel, Collins accused him of making comments that were “very different” from his past remarks. Jackson denied this claim, while arguing against the supply of more offensive weapons to “murder people.” Calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal,” he noted that “Senator Collins likes him.” 

Jackson’s remarks came just a week after he apologized to members of the Jewish community for controversial comments he had made in a News Center Maine television interview. 

During the interview, he had described the war in Gaza as “a genocide,” adding that “there are people here in Maine that don’t like to use that term only because, you know, they’re Jewish and, you know, what that means to them with the Holocaust.” 

Although he did not retract his views on the conflict, he acknowledged that the word genocide “carries particular weight for many Jewish families given the Holocaust – the genocide of six million Jews.”

“In trying to acknowledge that, I misspoke and made a generalization about Jewish Mainers’ views that doesn’t reflect what I meant to say. I apologize for the pain that caused,” he added.

Just before the Democratic nominating convention this past summer, Jackson vowed that he would “never vote in favor of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel.”

The Pine Tree State Poll, released by the University of New Hampshire two weeks ago, found that the two candidates were in a statistical tie, with 51% of voters polled favoring Jackson and 47% opting for Collins.

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But Jason Holtzman, director of Philadelphia’s Jewish Community Relations Council, first heard Gann’s name long before that: in December 2023.

At that time, he recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, she “made some pretty strident remarks” at a local rally called “Flood Philly For Palestine,” an apparent reference to the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’s name for its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

In video from the event shared with JTA, Gann said in reference to children in Gaza, “We owe them to take it to the streets and f–k the police until Palestine is free.”

Gann would appear on the JCRC’s radar several more times before her name hit the news for being “the Palestinian Rachel Dolezal,” when her story — accompanied by Philadelphia Inquirer reporting that she has Jewish family living in Israel — ricocheted across the internet to gain her instant notoriety. (The real-life Dolezal, a white woman who posed as Black for years and held a NAACP leadership role while teaching Africana Education at a Pacific Northwest college, has meanwhile expressed interest in meeting Gann.)

Gann’s revelations have led to the dissolution of the local pro-Palestinian educators group she had helped to lead since 2024. After leaving her Instagram confessions public for more than a week, Gann’s account was deactivated in the last few days.

Yet now that Gann’s background has grabbed headlines, Jewish groups alarmed by her behavior said the real story is being missed.  

“It’s just being reported as if she simply is guilty of fraud, that she’s the new Rachel Dolezal,” Holtzman told JTA. “It’s missing part of the story, which is that she’s also an extremist who has spread antisemitic tropes and has brought inflammatory content into the classroom.”

A catalog of troubling incidents

In the JCRC’s monitoring of the School District of Philadelphia, Gann’s name pops up often. In 2024 she helped organize a pro-Palestinian “teach-in” project, an unofficial event staged for teachers in the district that the JCRC says “directed educators to materials that erased Israel from maps” and “characterized October 7 as ‘resistance.’” 

That year she also posted an Instagram image of a fist rising from the ground holding a firearm, with paragliders — a symbol of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 — visible in the background, one of many social media posts of hers that employed extreme language or imagery around Israel. 

A key part of Jewish critics’ charges, that Gann brought her activism into the classroom or into her lesson plans, is harder to pinpoint. But in one screenshot of her whiteboard that she posted to social media, Gann appeared to have planned a lesson on “Black Power & Palestine.” In addition, district personnel who had visited her class in 2024 found that it “contained a ‘Palestine will be free’ poster, a Palestinian flag, a keffiyeh, and a map of Israel filled with a keffiyeh design,” Holtzman claimed. 

Gann did not respond to multiple JTA requests for comment. 

JCRC officials and a local Jewish activist group had pushed the district to discipline Gann over her conduct before the scandal over her identity broke — including, they said, presenting the superintendent with a full record of Jewish parent concerns this March. But such efforts, they say, fell largely on deaf ears. 

“We’ve pointed this out to the school district many times over the years,” Holtzman told JTA. He added that, in the JCRC’s view, Gann’s rally appearances and social media activity were in violation of district codes of conduct governing staff activity that could damage the district’s reputation — with her recent admission of falsifying her ethnic identity potentially violating an ethics code requiring employees to avoid falsification in their personal records.

“And they’ve basically done nothing about it,” he said.

It wasn’t only Holtzman and the JCRC urging the School District of Philadelphia to take some kind of action against Gann. Local Jewish activists filed a federal civil rights complaint against her and fellow activists in the district with whom she had formed a coalition, even entering into mediation with the district in an effort to establish new guidelines around personnel behavior. 

The complaint argued, among other points, that Gann’s social media — where she has posted many controversial messages about Israel — should be considered an extension of her classroom.

Yet Gann continued to teach 10th grade at The Workshop School, a public high school in West Philadelphia with a focus on project-based learning. Under pressure from her fellow activists, she recently came clean about her identity. 

A surprising confession

“I lied about my family and have been lying for years,” she wrote on Instagram on Yom Kippur. “I have no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage. I am a white woman of significant privilege and wealth. Anyone who supported me was manipulated.”

Gann’s confession took even the Philadelphia Jewish groups who had been tracking her behavior by surprise. They told JTA they had not realized she had been identifying herself as Palestinian, nor that she was actually Jewish. Some of her fellow activists, in their own social media posts, said she had confided to them in the past that she was Jewish — while also continuing to insist she was Palestinian. 

While the Philadelphia Inquirer has quoted activists accusing her of having “Israeli settler family,” it was unclear to the Jews who spoke to JTA whether Gann’s Israeli family actually lived in settlements in the occupied West Bank or whether the activists simply refer to all Israelis as settlers. Giving public comment at prior school board meetings, Gann had proclaimed, “I can’t visit my family in Palestine,” and “I have pushed myself to teach through the agony of my family living in a warzone, and only taken one day off this entire school year.”

To some Jews, such parsing is almost besides the point; they see the entire conversation around Gann’s identity as a distraction. 

The bigger story, they said, is that she was using her position as a public school educator to push anti-Israel advocacy that included falsehoods about Israel without fear of punishment: a microcosm of what they see as a larger trend of growing pro-Palestinian sentiment among K-12 educators in many school districts and teachers’ unions that has raised alarm among Jewish groups.

A spokesperson for an ad hoc group of Jewish educators and families in the Philadelphia area, who asked to remain anonymous owing to what they viewed as death threats from a member of Gann’s former coalition, told JTA in a statement that the district failed to express interest in Gann until the scandal.

“Harm to the Jewish community is never addressed or rectified” by the district, the representative for the School District of Philadelphia Jewish Family Association (SDP JFA) said in an email.

A spokesperson for the School District of Philadelphia declined to comment on whether the district would be disciplining Gann or if it had communicated with Jewish groups about her behavior prior to last week.

“The District is making support available to the Workshop School staff and students, as needed,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to JTA.

Meanwhile, one of the pro-Palestinian activist groups formerly associated with Gann, Philly Educators for Palestine, announced last week that “after much reflection,” it would dissolve, though “The work continues.” Its parent group, the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, said it would be going on hiatus.

Prior to its announcement, Philly Educators for Palestine had publicly disassociated from Gann and had called for the district to discipline her. 

“It’s one of the first times where I think that I really have common ground with the Philadelphia Educators for Palestine,” Holtzman quipped. 

Civil rights complaint filed

In 2024, SDP JFA filed a Title VI civil rights investigation with the U.S. Department of Education against a group of pro-Palestinian teachers in the district, alleging, among other things, that students had been targeted on the basis of their Jewish identity. Joining the complaint were the JCRC, the Anti-Defamation League and StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy group. 

The groups eventually proceeded to mediation with the district, which agreed to institute changes such as drafting a district-wide anti-harassment statement; undergoing an anti-discrimination policy review; and instituting new training for staff, according to a copy of the resolution agreement viewed by JTA. Jewish groups, however, charge that the recommendations were never fully implemented.

The names of the teachers in the federal investigation were redacted in official filings. But according to emails shared with JTA, Gann was one of the named parties in the ADL’s amended complaint. 

“Evidence suggests that Ms. Gann is utilizing her actual classroom and social media platforms as a digital extension of her classroom to disseminate antisemitic rhetoric, engage in prohibited political campaigning, and promote extremist ideologies to her students,” a letter sent by SDP JFA this May reads. 

Following that email, Gann on Instagram made oblique references to the allegations, calling her unnamed critics “genocide enthusiasts who love to call the School District about what I’m teaching.” She also posted a fake lesson plan from her classroom whiteboard with scheduled “lessons” including “Jesus Was Palestinian.”

The Jewish parents and teachers in SDP JFA say their frustrations with Gann are also informed by an even more antagonistic encounter with Keziah Ridgeway, a fellow teacher and former ally of Gann’s who at one point had joined Gann in holding signs reading “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a school board meeting. 

In 2024, following a controversy around one of Ridgeway’s lesson plans and an SDP JFA campaign against her, Ridgeway, believing herself targeted by Jewish online harassers, posted several of the group members’ names to Instagram. 

In posts viewed by JTA, she accompanied this list with another post referencing the phrase, “Ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun,” which refers to a sudden reversal in power dynamics. In a third post, Ridgeway asked followers for recommendations for “Black owned [gun emoji] shops in or near Philly.” 

The Jewish parents interpreted the series of posts as a threat directed at them, and reported Ridgeway to the district, ultimately leading to her suspension for a year; she has sued the district, alleging anti-Islamic bias. Gann forcefully advocated for Ridgeway’s reinstatement at board meetings. 

Following Gann’s recent revelations, Ridgeway, too, disowned her in an Instagram video. “I can no longer be in community with someone who caused so much harm,” Ridgeway wrote on social media.

Ridgeway declined to comment to JTA, citing ongoing litigation.

Even if they feel it’s for the wrong reasons, the members of SDP JFA still want to see action taken against Gann. They are seeking to capitalize on her newfound infamy by renewing their calls to district officials to discipline her and “ameliorate the damage done to the Jewish community.” 

Such demands echo communications Jewish parents have already been sending to the district for the better part of two years. In an email to administrators last year, they sought to sum up their complaints: “Allowing Ms. Gann to remain in a teaching position sends the message that Jewish students’ safety and dignity are not valued — that their teacher can publicly call for their eradication without consequence.”

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The venue was at the center of the dispute between stadium owner Robert Kraft and rapper Macklemore, who was blocked from performing there after Kraft objected to statements and imagery from an earlier stop on the tour and a “broader history” that Kraft characterized as antisemitic.

Representatives for Bryan and Kraft did not respond to requests for comment.

Bryan, whose biggest hits include “Something in the Orange” and his Kacey Musgraves duet, “I Remember Everything,” broke a stadium attendance record on Saturday with 73,538 people on hand, the stadium said in an X post.

Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, helped lead an effort by stadium owners to block Macklemore from performing at their venues as Ed Sheeran’s opening act. Sheeran tried to distance himself from the venue owners’ actions, but his backup band and other acts subsequently withdrew from the tour.

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District Judge Jeth Jones ruled on Thursday that the Galveston Independent School District must comply within 10 days, while also scheduling a non-jury trial to resolve the case next June. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had sued the school district last November after the school board voted against exhibiting the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments. Paxton’s petition argued that the board violated a June 2025 state law, SB10, which required the “conspicuous” display of Ten Commandment posters in all public school classrooms.   

That law is at the heart of multiple lawsuits across the state, including one effort led by two rabbis who are seeking to bring a case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with non-Jewish clergy and parents, they are arguing that the mandatory inclusion of these texts in classrooms is unconstitutional and infringes upon religious freedom. Their case is separate from the Galveston case.

“These are religious documents,” Mara Nathan, the lead petitioner and senior rabbi at Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

“They do not belong in a secular public school space,” she continued. “If people want to be in a school space where religious instruction is part of that, then they can choose to send their kids to parochial school.”

In their case, Nathan and more than two dozen parties are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the controversial Ten Commandments law. Their petition, filed in August, asks the court to protect the religious freedom of students by ensuring that families, rather than politicians, are able to determine what role religion plays in their children’s lives.

Joining Nathan in the case is Joshua Fixler, associate rabbi at Congregation Emanu El in Houston, as well as Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Baha’i, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious families statewide. The defendants include a long list of school districts, such as the Alamo Heights Independent School District and the Houston Independent School District, where Nathan and Fixler send their children, respectively. 

Their decision to petition the Supreme Court is the culmination of a lengthy legal process that began after Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the SB10 bill into law in June 2025. 

“When I heard about this law, I was really uncomfortable and outraged,” Nathan said. “When I found out there was an opportunity to speak up and be part of litigation to oppose it, I was like, ‘Please sign me up.’” 

Fixler echoed these sentiments, with hopes of protecting children from “seeing this Protestant Christian text every day in every classroom, and having it shape their understanding of what religious freedom should look like in America.” 

The Jewish and Protestant versions of the commandments differ in wording, order and emphasis, with the Jewish commandments beginning with God’s declaration that he brought the Israelites out of Egypt.

Nathan, Fixler and the other plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit in July 2025 seeking to block the display at their children’s schools. The next month, they secured a brief victory in district court, when they won a preliminary injunction to block the displays.  

Last October, Paxton issued a formal legal advisory to all Texas school districts, reiterating their obligation to exhibit the display. He warned that Texas would vigorously enforce the law, while acknowledging temporary exceptions for 11 school districts that were party to the litigation at the time.

The attorney general described the commandments as “a cornerstone of America’s moral and legal heritage,” stressing a need for “these timeless principles” in schools “now more than ever.”

The pendulum swung in Paxton’s favor in April 2026, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th District reversed the district court’s ruling. The judges, who sit on one of the most conservative federal appellate courts nationwide, determined that the law does not violate the First Amendment’s free exercise clause, which prohibits government from regulating religious beliefs. 

They maintained that the SB 10 law “looks nothing like a historical religious establishment,” a bar that the judges said was set in a 2022 lawsuit. The Texas legislation, they wrote in the ruling, doesn’t “tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams.” 

“It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason,” they added.

Unwilling to concede defeat, Nathan and her colleagues in August asked the high court to review the case. Whether the Supreme Court will decide to take on the case is still uncertain, as four of its nine justices must agree to do so. 

Fixler noted that the law requires posters of the commandments to be big enough to be read anywhere in the classroom and contain no other texts or context.

“I’m hearing from parents all over the state that their kids know that the state is elevating literally one religious tradition over all others,” he said, relating that although he prepared his kids for the displays, they “expressed a lot of anxiety” about needing “to see these words posted on the wall of their classroom.”

Fixler also expressed concern that the prominence of these posters could lead kids to ask “questions that some teachers aren’t going to want to answer,” such as, “What is adultery, and what does it mean to covet your neighbor’s wife?”

The families are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the national ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with pro bono counsel from the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm.

In their Supreme Court petition, the families accused the appeals court of defying a 1980 Supreme Court decision, Stone v. Graham, which they said “struck down a nearly identical Kentucky statute almost 50 years ago.” While the Texas appellate court had claimed that precedents set in a later case had superseded the Stone ruling, the families argued that the core principles of the Stone judgment were untouched by that later suit. 

The forced display of the Protestant Ten Commandments in public school classrooms is not unique to Texas, although the Lone Star State case has emerged as one of the most prominent battlefields for the issue in recent months. 

Other states that have required public schools to exhibit the Ten Commandments include Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama, while Tennessee and North Dakota allow optional displays. 

A group of complainants in Arkansas, including one Jewish family, is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to block school districts from implementing a state law on the subject. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the ACLU and other groups have sent letters seeking records relating to school district plans to begin displaying the Ten Commandments. 

In Galveston, the school board president told local media on Thursday that the school district would comply with the order, as demanded in the November lawsuit. Alongside the filing, Paxton had declared that “there is no valid legal basis” to prevent schools from complying with the law, claiming that their refusal was rooted in “the misconception that a ‘separation of church and state’ phrase appears in the Constitution.” 

“It does not,”  Paxton stated.

While Galveston is not party to Fixler and Nathan’s Supreme Court petition, the plaintiffs cited the year-long saga as evidence. The situation in Galveston, the petition argues, demonstrates that “injuries” to families who oppose the Ten Commandments displays “are actual or imminent,” a requirement to hear a case in federal courts.

The attorney general accused Galveston’s school board of voting “to flout SB 10” in its refusal “to display the Ten Commandments in accordance with State law.” At the time, he alleged that Galveston decided to “blatantly ignore the legislature,” while emphasizing that “America is a Christian nation.”

Notably, Fixler and Nathan’s Supreme Court petition flags the Galveston case in its appendix, even though the district is not party to the case. The situation in Galveston, the petition argues, shows that “injuries” to families “are actual or imminent.” 

“I hope that the Supreme Court will take our case and rule in our favor,” Nathan said, affirming that any decision made here could set a precedent for similar cases nationwide. 

“It would be really exciting to be written into history in a positive way, as part of a movement to really protect our religious freedom and separation between public school spaces and the private religious lives of people,” she added. 

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Ynon Kreiz, the Israeli-American former CEO of Mattel, is joining the company as Ellison’s co-CEO. The merged entity will be known simply as Skydance – the name of Ellison’s production company – which previously merged with Paramount, Ellison announced Friday.

“We have big goals for Skydance, and we intend to pursue them with passion, imagination and a willingness to take smart risks,” Ellison announced Friday in his inaugural post on the social network X.

The mogul’s entertainment and media ambitions have attracted considerable negative attention over the last few years — attention that, in some instances, has been directed at his pro-Israel beliefs and connections as the entertainment industry writ large has also weathered growing accusations of anti-Jewish bias.

Most recently, the actor Mark Ruffalo has drawn accusations of antisemitism – and some support – for suggesting that Ellison’s planned $110 billion merger would be a boon to Israel’s “apartheid system of oppression” via Oracle, the tech surveillance company owned by Ellison’s father Larry that does business in Israel.

Paramount under Ellison’s leadership has long shown signs of pro-Israel leanings. Last year the company was the only major American studio to issue a public rebuke of a petition to boycott Israeli film institutions, circulated by many big-name actors, while distributing multiple documentaries about Israelis in the shadow of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Ellison also attracted scrutiny for appointing Bari Weiss, the Jewish and pro-Israel media innovator and pundit, as editor in chief of CBS News.

Weiss’s tenure at CBS has been marked by controversy, with mass walkouts of top talent and a ratings nosedive. Initial industry speculation that Ellison would ask her to also take the reins at Warner-owned CNN has been tamped down in recent days, with the Wall Street Journal and other outlets now reporting that Ellison has asked the news network’s CEO Mark Thompson to stay put for at least the next year.

Kreiz, the former Mattel CEO behind the smash-hit “Barbie” movie, has been known to support pro-Israel causes as well. In 2023, he attended a screening of footage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks organized by Israeli actress Gal Gadot at Los Angeles’s Museum of Tolerance. Outside, brawls broke out between pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators.

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At just 7 acres, the etrog grove at Lindcove Ranch in Exeter is a speck in Tulare County, where about 40% of California’s citrus crops are grown. But by another measure, the grove is giant: Lindcove Ranch is the only major commercial grower of kosher etrogs in the United States. 

“This is my life — I really feel a calling to do this,” said Greg Kirkpatrick, 65, whose family has owned and operated Lindcove Ranch for more than 60 years. 

The fruit looks like a strange lemon, with a knobby exterior, thick rind and oblong shape. It exudes a sweet, fresh, lemony fragrance. It’s not a fruit that shows up in grocery stores. But for Jews, the etrog is crucial for fulfilling the commandments of Sukkot. During the holiday ritual, which includes a blessing, an etrog is held in the left hand while a bundle of palm, myrtle and willow, called a lulav, is held in the right. Brought together, they are shaken in the four directions as well as upward and downward.

The Kirkpatrick family, who are not Jewish, began growing etrogs 46 years ago, when an Orthodox distributor from the East Coast reached out looking for a domestic grower. He wanted to avoid the costly import process of bringing in etrogs from any of the three major growing regions around the world: Israel, Italy and Morocco. 

Greg’s father, John, who was already a successful citrus farmer, decided to give the specialty crop a chance, and soon citrons became an important part of the ranch’s annual income. Its citron orchard is part of a larger specialty-citrus operation, which includes yuzu, finger limes, makrut limes and sour oranges on about 30 acres. The citron, however, has been the ranch’s top-earning crop.

The citron business is a difficult one that Kirkpatrick likens to the diamond industry, with single pieces of fruit selling for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. 

“It’s not so much how many we can grow. It’s the quality of the fruit,” he said.

An etrog must meet stringent requirements to be considered kosher for ritual use. It must be largely unblemished, retain its natural stem, called a pitom, and come from a documented lineage of trees that have never been grafted or crossed with another variety.

The requirements make growing them different from growing ordinary citrus, according to David Karp, a pomologist, citron expert and citrus researcher at UC Riverside. 

“Many people have tried to grow citron in California,” Karp said, noting the financial allure of an etrog’s price tag. “But just because you can grow a lemon well doesn’t mean you can grow an etrog that’s right for Jewish ritual use. You can grow them, but you’ll end up selling them for $5 each, or feeding them to the cows.”

Karp said little in horticulture can compare to the scrutiny that etrogs undergo for physical appearance, all for the sake of religious ritual.

“There’s nothing remotely like this,” Karp said. “In Japan and perhaps other countries in Asia … there’s a cultural predilection for perfect, extremely expensive fruit that would be given as a gift. But there’s nothing quite like the citron for Jewish ritual use.”

A typical crop may begin with 10,000 to 15,000 pieces of fruit, but perhaps only half will be suitable to bring to market, according to Kirkpatrick. His harvesters are trained to pick citrons carefully after inspecting them on the tree.

“Being able to judge on the tree if the fruit’s good enough to bring into the packing house or not is important, so we don’t have to spend hours wading through and washing and dealing with fruit that’s not going to make it to the market,” Kirkpatrick said.

Once picked, each fruit is placed in its own spot in a foam tray. The citrons do not touch one another through the picking or packing process because even minor bruising or scratches can reduce their value.

There are multiple grades of etrog, ranging from cheaper, wholesale stock sold in mail-order sets to exceptionally large and blemish-free fruit sought by elite buyers.

For decades, Kirkpatrick mostly sold his etrogs through a specialized marketing network to Orthodox Jewish customers on the East Coast, who seek citrons that are not only kosher but exceptional in size, shape and color.

“My partner sells to a very select group of Orthodox Jews in Lakewood, New Jersey, by appointment only,” Kirkpatrick said. “And if you don’t have appointment-grade fruit, they won’t come to buy your fruit.”

In 2023, the ranch received about 22 inches of rain and failed to get much of a crop. That same year, John died, leaving the grieving Kirkpatrick family to navigate the business without him. Then, in 2025, the ranch produced what Kirkpatrick thought was a successful crop, but his marketing partner was unable to sell enough of the fruit to recoup the $250,000 it cost to produce. Those years were the two worst for etrogs in the ranch’s history.

Distributors simply want more top-grade etrogs than the Kirkpatrick operation is able to supply. 

Rabbi Menachem Sirota, a longtime etrog distributor based in Lakewood, New Jersey, who has purchased Lindcove Ranch citrons in the past, said he has opted to buy from larger growers who can supply more of the highest grade of the fruit. 

“Personally, as a wholesaler, I need a very large quantity of nice ones,” Sirota said. “For a while I was getting them from California, but in recent years I was not so satisfied with the quality.”

As a result of the huge financial loss from this shift, one of the family’s homes on the ranch ended up in foreclosure earlier this year, Kirkpatrick said. With labor being one of the ranch’s biggest expenses, Kirkpatrick has had to cut back from eight full-time employees to five part-time workers. 

The family is even thinking of selling the ranch. 

But for now, Kirkpatrick is trying to save his business by becoming more of his own wholesaler.

“We’re reinventing ourselves,” he said.

The ranch is focused on selling bulk orders directly to congregations. Just before Sukkot began on Sept. 25, for example, Kirkpatrick delivered a shipment to Congregation Beth Emek in Pleasanton and Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley, California. 

Kirkpatrick is also courting a new customer base with a pitch built on a genuine difference between his etrogs and those grown abroad. His etrogs are grown without pesticides or other chemical treatments, so after Sukkot they can be eaten or made into jam, candied peel or liqueur. 

That sets them apart from etrogs grown overseas, according to Karp. 

“Because a citron is of little worth unless it’s cosmetically perfect, they spray the heck out of these trees and fruit,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t advise eating etrogs grown outside the United States. “It wouldn’t be my first choice for a marmalade, let’s put it that way.” 

Whatever Kirkpatrick’s hopes, the fate of Lindcove Ranch, and of California-grown etrogs, will depend on several factors, including the weather and how the next growing season plays out.

“I’m a farmer, I’m always optimistic,” he said. “You have to be in the farming business.”

This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

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Steve Leder, the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, served as a consultant on depictions of Judaism for Season 1 of “Nobody Wants This,” a rom-com in which Brody plays a rabbi who falls for an agnostic non-Jewish podcaster. 

Leder denounced Brody on Wednesday over recent comments in which the Jewish actor for the first time publicly expressed his views on Israel’s actions in Gaza. Brody told GQ, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”

Leder said in an Instagram video that Brody’s statements were “truly shocking,” “flippant” and “disgusting,” asserting his own view that “there is no genocide in Gaza.” 

“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” said Leder. “If you’re going to use a word like genocide, you ought to know what it means.” 

Leder appeared to be referring to Brody’s previous descriptions of his limited Jewish education. Brody has said he is an atheist who “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it,” adding that he prepared for the role of rabbi Noah Roklov in “Nobody Wants This” by attending a Shabbat service and working through books, podcasts and documentaries about Judaism.

Brody played high-profile Jewish characters including Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” and Seth Morris in “Fleishman Is in Trouble” before “Nobody Wants This,” which returns for a third season on Oct. 22. 

The show itself has conspicuously avoided the subject of Israel. “Nobody Wants This” creator Erin Foster — who converted to Judaism in Leder’s synagogue — told The Free Press last year that she made a deliberate choice not to deal with the issue.

“We never say Israel or Palestine in the show, and that’s intentional because I think it would be a distraction and that this is just not the show to tell that story,” said Foster. 

Brody told GQ that the Gaza war, alongside other national and global crises in recent years, revealed that he and his Hollywood peers were not as “like-minded” as he previously believed. 

“Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by,” he said. 

Israel’s actions in Gaza have divided the entertainment industry — and Jewish stars. While celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer have voiced support for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, other Jewish actors have said that Israel subsequently committed genocide, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn. 

The genocide accusation is heavily disputed. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, along with international and Israeli human rights groups, has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit that description. However, the International Court of Justice has not yet issued a final judgment on allegations of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel. Israel rejects the accusation.

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The reports, which the ADL calls its “State of the Arts” initiative, were shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in advance of their publication and come as Jews have expressed alarm about their treatment in a post-Oct. 7 cultural landscape. They include: 

• Grades for 40 museums on Jewish and Israeli representation that the ADL says “reveal a pattern of erasure by omission,” including comparatively few recognitions of Jewish American Heritage Month.
  
• A “trend report” based on interviews with more than 30 Jewish authors and publishing professionals alleging boycotts and exclusions from the publishing industry based on their identities.
  
• A survey of 65 incidents of “Jewish, Israeli and openly Zionist artists fac[ing] growing scrutiny, protest, disruption and cancellation” from performance venues or pressure from pro-Palestinian groups since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel.
  
• ADL-approved guidelines for how venues should host and engage with Jewish artists.

The reports will be accompanied by a launch event Thursday evening at the Jewish Museum in New York, to be attended by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt as well as Jewish entertainers including actor Selma Blair and author and influencer Alyssa Rosenheck.

“We started to hear from patrons of the arts and artists and other people connected to museums that there was a real problem,” Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of public affairs and special initiatives, told JTA in an interview about the genesis of the project.

As a result, the ADL started tracking Jewish and Israeli artists who had been targeted by protests. The group also heard from Jewish authors about the publishing industry, leading to an expansion of the project. Goodman said the team was motivated by the chance to leverage “boards of trustees and boards of directors, and donors, who might be able to have influence.”

“By shining a light on some of this, we might be able to have an effect and an impact,” she said.

The project follows the ADL’s campus antisemitism report cards, which launched in 2024 and assign letter grades to dozens of universities based on how well the group feels they have combated anti-Jewish sentiments. Criticized by many in higher education, and by some major Jewish groups including Hillel International, the report cards have nonetheless prompted several campuses to change or update their policies around Jewish issues.

That success led to the formation of a new ADL unit focused on ratings and assessments. Now, the watchdog’s attention is turning to the art world — at a moment when many eyes are trained on Jews and Israelis in those spaces.

Over the summer, a report from the literary free-speech group PEN America reached similar conclusions to the ADL on the exclusion felt by some Jewish and Israeli authors. The report led to deep internal divisions within PEN and the resignation of its president, who argued that the organization was not standing up for the free-speech rights of boycotters. New Jewish publishing initiatives aim to counteract what they say is the exclusion of Jewish voices in mainstream publishing.

Since Oct. 7, several pro-Israel Jewish artists, ranging from Jerry Seinfeld and Mayim Bialik to Matisyahu, have seen their events targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ADL’s report catalogs all these incidents and more, including demonstrations staged by neo-Nazis against Jewish-themed theatrical shows, which the ADL’s staff said they see as equivalent to pro-Palestinian protests.

“They’re equally disruptive and exclusionary of Jewish voices,” Luda Isakharov, associate director of the ADL’s Ratings and Assessments Institute, told JTA. “We treat them the same in our grading.”

In recent weeks, two Israel-related arts controversies have further complicated the picture of how Jews in the cultural landscape orient themselves around the issue. Jewish mogul Robert Kraft pressured Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from his tour over the latter’s onstage rhetoric about Israel. And the Israeli documentary “NAZA” is being targeted by right-wing Israelis over the film’s detailing of the conduct of war in Gaza.

ADL researchers had no involvement in PEN’s publishing report, Goodman said; their own report argues that PEN didn’t go far enough. And while Greenblatt himself posted approvingly of Kraft’s role in the Macklemore dust-up, Goodman said the ADL has not yet thought through how it would record incidents like the Kraft controversy or the “NAZA” disputes, in which Jews or Israelis are the ones leading the protesting. 

“We’re encouraging people to let speech go forward, to let concerts go forward,” she said. “Typically we have not been supportive of boycotts.” The report’s incident catalog, the ADL said, instead focuses on Jewish or Israeli artists targeted on the basis of their identities.

Goodman added, “We do speak out because we want celebrities to know how painful their language is, and the examples that they can set and what the impacts are.”

Both the Kraft and “NAZA” incidents occurred after the ADL had finalized its report. An earlier example of attempted cancellation directed at the “NAZA” filmmakers, when the mayor of Miami Beach briefly threatened to evict a theater showing the directors’ previous movie in 2025, failed to make the ADL’s catalog, although the directors are Jewish and Israeli.

One conclusion to draw from entertainment spaces’ relationship to Jews and Israelis, the ADL told JTA, is that many often cite heightened security concerns as a reason not to engage with the topic.

The museum report, similar to the campus report cards, assigns ratings to each of the 40 surveyed institutions, including major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. Grades range from “Gold Standard,” which the ADL assigned only to the Berkeley Art Museum, to “Critically Deficient,” which it gave to 12 museums, including the Whitney and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The criteria include the number of Jewish and Israeli artists in each museum’s collection and whether or not they are presented with “Jewish framing.” Among those approvingly cited as representative of Jewish or Israeli art are left-wing Jewish artists such as Nan Goldin, as well as Arab-Israelis whose “art was very critical of Israel,” according to Isakharov. Goldin’s name does not appear in the early copy of the report shared with JTA, though other Israel-critical Jewish artists do.

The ADL also recorded whether a museum had been the site of a pro-Palestinian protest, and whether it had a process in place for identifying art that had been stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families.

Museum ratings also factor in an institution’s policies around anti-discrimination for Jews and Jewish programming — including for Jewish American Heritage Month, which ADL researchers said only one of the surveyed museums currently observes. Meanwhile, according to the ADL, 60% of the same museums observe other ethnic heritage months.

Some museums have already reached out to the ADL to say they would be sharing more of their policies related to anti-Jewish discrimination, Isakharov said.

Meanwhile, the ADL’s publishing report, similar to PEN’s, relies largely on anecdotal evidence about Jewish authors and subjects reportedly being passed over by agents, publishers or literary venues after Oct. 7. 

“Much of what’s going on is happening below the surface,” Isakharov told JTA. “It’s oftentimes a last-minute drop, a gut feeling that authors have, and that makes it so hard to prove.”

One of the authors the ADL plans to spotlight prominently is Rosenheck, a photographer, influencer and author of the memoir “White. Blond. Jew.” She will be speaking at the ADL’s launch event Thursday. Rosenheck has a previous relationship with the ADL, having appeared at its “Never Is Now” summit last year, and has also spoken at the Republican Jewish Coalition. 

Rosenheck’s book launch event in Nashville was canceled by an independent bookseller earlier this year citing security concerns, an incident condemned by the local federation.

“This is what literary antisemitism looks like,” Rosenheck is quoted as saying in the ADL report, referring to her experience with the bookstore as well as negative posts about her book online. 

Some Jewish scholars of publishing trends are critical of reports that suggest Jewish authors and subjects are facing discrimination. Such conclusions, they say, fail to make the case that Jews have been treated unfairly outside of industry norms.

Wellesley College professor Josh Lambert and Emory University professor Dan Sinykin, in a joint report also published Thursday, accuse the ADL’s study of being promoted by “political motivations.”

“The ADL’s report features quotes by a handful of right-wing activists (without acknowledging them as such), conflates Jews and Zionists, and opposes boycotts — all familiar strategies to suppress leftist Jewish and pro-Palestinian expression,” Lambert and Sinykin write in the left-wing magazine Jewish Currents. 

The two present their own data suggesting that Jewish- and Israeli-themed fiction, after declining in 2024, actually entered an upswing in 2025. They also challenge some of the claims made by the PEN report’s key interview subjects, including the number of Jewish books one Jewish agent claimed to have signed since Oct. 7. Their story has prompted a correction on the PEN report.

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The sugar-coated gummies will be on shelves in early 2027 following an outpouring of “overwhelming support and enthusiasm shown by Sunkist Fruit Gems fans in recent days,” Sunkist confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

The company said it will collaborate with CandyRific, a Kentucky-based confectionery company, to continue the legacy of Sunkist Fruit Gems days after reports of the gummies’ demise. 

The fruit gems tick crucial boxes for being hurled at bar and bat mitzvahs, wedding celebrations and other happy occasions: They are kosher, soft enough to avoid injuring celebrants and individually wrapped so they don’t get stuck on the floor. 

Those attributes will be preserved in their relaunch. “Consumers can expect the same key product characteristics they know and love, including individually wrapped pieces, a soft texture, fruit flavors, and kosher certification,” Sunkist said. 

EJewishPhilanthropy first reported Thursday that the fruit gems were being discontinued by Ferrara, a Chicago-based candy company, prompting memorial tributes in Jewish communities throughout the United States. 

Ferrara told JTA that Sunkist Fruit Gems were cut from their Jelly Belly brand to “focus resources on future growth and innovation,” saying the company appreciated “the enthusiasm many consumers have shown for Sunkist Fruit Gems.”  

The fruit gems have been a staple at synagogues for generations. They were born from an overabundance of citrus in the 1930s, when the citrus harvester Sunkist began transforming surplus fruit into byproducts. The candies evolved from Christopher’s Fruit Gems to take the Sunkist name in the 1960s. 

Protests against their disappearance included an appeal in eJewishPhilanthropy by Sara Fredman Aeder, the executive vice president of programming at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, headlined “Save the Fruit Gems.” 

Sunkist’s announcement on Instagram that the fruit gems were “not going anywhere” was met with grateful replies.

“I panic-bought in bulk for my wedding next year,” said one commenter. “Now I feel foolish lol. But enjoying a bunch of very yummy gummies.” 

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What did the only Jew serving in the Texas state house do to earn this distinction? It’s more what he didn’t do: run for statewide office with a track record of spewing racially charged and antisemitic comments.

Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad commissioner, has a history of rhetoric targeting people of color, Muslims and Jews, including a social media poll last year asking whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.” 

He also faced bipartisan blowback for a recent post targeting college students of color, and this week a CNN investigation revealed that French, in since-deleted posts, had called for public executions for former President Barack Obama, Jewish California Sen. Adam Schiff and government workers targeted by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency last year.

The controversy has elevated the race for an obscure statewide office – albeit one that regulates the state’s all-important energy industry – into a larger referendum on the GOP’s tolerance for bigotry, including antisemitism, among its nominees. 

Rove, for one, has made it clear where he thinks the party should stand.

“The GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches — and not only in Texas,” Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month in explaining his decision to back Rosenthal. 

Rove singled out growing antisemitism in the party: “There are ‘just asking questions’ Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.”

Rove isn’t the only GOP stalwart to turn on French. 

“Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized,” outgoing Texas Sen. John Cornyn wrote in condemning French’s social media musings. “This is how great political parties self-destruct.” 

Cornyn has stopped short of backing Rosenthal, instead saying he might leave the ballot blank.

Rosenthal and French have agreed to a debate on Oct. 22. French leads the race in polling released last week from Texas Southern University, but by a much slimmer margin than GOP candidates are accustomed to in Texas. Rosenthal’s campaign could also see a boost from fellow statewide Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is polling neck-and-neck with his opponent in the U.S. Senate race.

On social media, Rosenthal celebrated Rove’s endorsement, writing, “When GOP architect Karl Rove breaks a 30-year voting streak to endorse our campaign, it proves this race isn’t about party lines, it’s about competence vs. chaos.”

A former county Republican Party chair who defeated the incumbent GOP state railroad commissioner in a runoff primary, French spurred widespread backlash earlier this month after posting a photo of students of color at the University of Texas celebrating a football win to the social network X. 

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it,” French had captioned the photo on Sept. 13. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” He has since doubled down on the sentiment, replying, “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans,” and using the backlash to solicit donations. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state House Speaker Dustin Burrows were among the other Republicans who criticized French for the post, though neither formally rescinded their support, and French continues to list Abbott’s endorsement on his site.

It was not French’s first brush with bigotry. In 2025, during his stint as Tarrant County GOP Chair, French posted an online “poll” asking his followers whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.” In a follow-up post, he argued, “You may not like Jews, but to suggest they are a bigger threat to Americans is Jew Derangement Syndrome.”

French later deleted both posts, and has few visible tweets about Jews today. In later posts, he claimed, of himself, “There has never been any evidence of antisemitism. It would certainly be surprising to my Jewish partners.” 

Jewish Republicans in the state and beyond are largely keeping their distance from French, with one exception. His campaign site currently touts an endorsement from American Jewish Conservatives, whose only listed chapter is in Dallas. 

Neither French nor the group, formerly Dallas Jewish Conservatives, responded to JTA requests for comment on the endorsement. A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition also did not return a request for comment on French.

Last month French cited a desire to combat antisemitism when arguing that Texas should not use mosques as polling places. In other posts, he accused a university in the state of “harboring radical left/antisemitic professors,” identified himself as both pro-Israel and pro-Tucker Carlson, the talk show host who has platformed antisemites and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, and told one follower, “I have never served Israel. Don’t be a retard.”

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was among the GOP officials who condemned French’s tweet about Jews last year, calling on him to resign as county chair. “Antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas,” Patrick said then. French ultimately resigned months later in order to run for railroad commissioner.

Today, French lists Patrick as one of his endorsements. A spokesperson for Patrick, who recently told JTA he supported Texas schools assigning books on the Holocaust after public remarks apparently to the contrary, did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.

French’s other listed endorsements include Texas congressional candidate Brandon Herrera, who has made jokes about Hitler and the Holocaust in YouTube videos. 

Rove’s essay led to President Donald Trump wading into the controversy, calling Rove “so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” in a post on his social network Truth Social. Trump’s post did not mention French, nor address his past post about Jews.

The Texas railroad commission, composed of three members, oversees the state’s large and powerful oil and gas industry. It has no oversight into immigration or religion. Even so, French’s campaign has drifted far afield from energy issues: One of his pledges is “Stop the Islamic Invasion of Texas.”

French’s controversies have elevated the profile of Rosenthal, who was raised a Reform Jew in an interfaith household and whose Houston-area district is home to large Muslim communities. This year Rosenthal marked Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur by sharing links to Chabad-Lubavitch webpages about the holidays.

Rosenthal’s campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment, but he told the Forward last year that he identifies as agnostic and “multireligious,” and attends synagogues as well as mosques and churches. 

Rosenthal is also a trained mechanical engineer, a background he has drawn on in his bid for railroad commissioner: one campaign ad, quoting a conservative radio host, approvingly calls him “a ‘drill, baby, drill’ Democrat.” He has accused French of “overt racism,” while French has dubbed his opponent “Radical Rosenthal” and posted images, generated using artificial intelligence, of cross-shaped Texas oil wells to promote his blending of energy policy with Christian iconography.

Last year, Rosenthal cited his Judaism in response to legislation that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. Rosenthal introduced an amendment that would have required a “Jewish” version of the commandments to be displayed alongside the “Protestant” one. The amendment failed, and the bill passed.

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“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine,” Brody said in a new interview with GQ. “It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago.” 

Brody said he has spoken about his opinions on Israel privately, but until now had not “spoken much about it publicly.” He added that he hoped for another presidential administration to “correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”

The Jewish actor plays Los Angeles-based rabbi Noah Roklov in the hit Netflix show, which returns for a third season on Oct. 22. It’s the latest in a string of Jewish roles that made him famous, including Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” and Seth Morris in “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” In real life, Brody has said he is an atheist who “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it.” 

Brody told GQ that the Gaza war, alongside other national and global crises, has revealed “more conservative” views among his Hollywood peers in recent years. 

“Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by,” he said. 

Israel’s actions in Gaza have divided the entertainment industry. While celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer have voiced support for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, other Jewish actors have said that Israel is guilty of genocide in the retaliation that followed, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn. Einbinder was among about 100 people arrested during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

The genocide accusation is heavily disputed. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, along with international and Israeli human rights groups, has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit that description. However, the International Court of Justice has not yet issued a final judgment on allegations of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel.

Israel has strongly rejected the accusation. Netanyahu in his U.N. address last week called it “the greatest lie of the 21st century,” saying that Israel “prevented genocide” by protecting Palestinians in Gaza while Hamas “used Palestinian civilians as human shields.”

Brody, Netflix and representatives from “Nobody Wants This” did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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In response to a J. inquiry, a university spokesperson said the delay was caused by “internal miscommunication.” The university now promises that the scholar, Yael Nativ, will receive the job offer she was guaranteed in the December 2025 settlement “no later than the week of Sept. 28.”

“We deeply regret this unfortunate delay and look forward to welcoming Dr. Nativ back to our campus,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement. 

Nativ said she received an apology for the delay and the promise of an imminent job offer in a Sept. 21 email from a university administrator. 

“It’s always a surprise when I get emails from them because the correspondence was so little to none,” Nativ said. “I’m so tired of this case.”

Nativ, a sociologist specializing in Israeli dance, taught in UC Berkeley’s dance department during spring 2022 as a visiting professor through the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Her course focused on contemporary dance in Israel through social, political and cultural perspectives.

The institute invited Nativ to reapply for another year of teaching. But after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, SanSan Kwan, chair of the dance department, informed Nativ that she would not be rehired. In November 2023, Kwan told Nativ in a WhatsApp message: “My dept cannot host you for a class next fall. Things are very hot right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”

The university’s civil rights office investigated the matter and concluded that Nativ was discriminated against based on her Israeli identity. 

Nativ sued the university, with representation from the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, in August 2025. When the two sides settled the lawsuit in December 2025, the university acknowledged its wrongdoing and committed to apologizing to Nativ and inviting her back to campus. 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons apologized to Nativ over Zoom on Feb. 3, but no job offer arrived. 

The lapse was publicized by Malcolm Feeley, a retired UC Berkeley Law professor, who wrote about Nativ’s case in a Sept. 16 article in the Jewish Review of Books.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. This is justice delayed in the extreme,” Feeley said in an interview. “It takes a concerted effort of badgering to get [the university] to move an inch.”

In a statement to J. following the publication of Feeley’s article, Mogulof said the university hadn’t sent Nativ a job offer due to a misunderstanding among administrators about who was responsible for doing so. 

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin will personally ensure the offer will come within the next two weeks, according to Mogulof. 

Nativ went on to work as a research fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Israel after she left Berkeley. She said her main goal since the lawsuit has been to hold UC Berkeley accountable, not to land a job. 

“It wasn’t urgent for me to go [back to campus]. It’s more about making a point, getting my justice,” she said. “But if they invite, I will consider.”

This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

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