A federal grand jury indicted Skyler AJ Rose, 22, on Wednesday, the Department of Justice said in a release. 

Rose allegedly made threats on social media, including “I wanna blow up a synagogue,” leading the FBI to join the Ogden City Police Department in a search of his home, where they allegedly discovered six pipe bombs, two rifles and ammunition.

A review of a cellphone seized from the home allegedly showed that Rose had searched online for a nearby synagogue, according to the Department of Justice.

The charges Rose faces include possession of an unregistered destructive device, threats to kill and injure people and to destroy a building, and attempting to commit a hate crime. 

At Friday’s initial hearing, the judge granted a request from Rose’s attorney, a federal public defender, that prosecutors hand over evidence against the defendant, according to court records. 

When prosecutors asked the judge to keep the defendant in jail until the trial, Rose chose not to fight this request, the court records stated. He was handed over to U.S. marshals to be kept in custody until the conclusion of the case.

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The spokesman’s comment followed the publication of a Jewish Telegraphic Agency story about the apparent lack of student voices in the working group’s report.

“Members of the committee very intentionally spoke to/interviewed members of the Pitt community who had experienced antisemitism, with one committee member focusing specifically on people she hadn’t previously met or spoken with,” Pitt spokesperson Jared Stonesifer told JTA following the initial story’s publication.

The document itself does not cite any interviews with, or surveying of, Jews on campus beyond the report’s nine credited authors. One of those authors is a former director of Pittsburgh’s Jewish Community Relations Council and has no formal Pitt relationship. Approximately 1,400 undergraduate students at Pitt are Jewish, or around 7% of the total student body, according to Hillel International estimates.

In interviews for JTA’s initial article, a Pitt spokesperson as well as the working group chair would not divulge whether Jewish students were consulted in the drafting of recommendations for the school to fight antisemitism. But after the article was published, Stonesifer reached out to JTA to say that the working group did conduct some interviews with members of Pitt’s Jewish community, although they were not visibly reflected in the report. 

He declined to provide further details about how many Jewish students were interviewed; the methodology used in those interviews; or how they were incorporated into the report. Stonesifer said making such details public would violate the confidentiality agreement signed by the working group’s members.

But Stonesifer emphasized that the working group included two Jewish students. One of those students, however, graduated prior to the report’s release, and their name does not appear on the finished report. 

Stonesifer additionally noted, “The committee included several members of Pitt faculty, who mentor and interact with students on a daily basis.”

A person familiar with the working group, requesting anonymity because they feared repercussions, disputed the university’s account about engaging with students beyond the committee’s own members. Group members were never presented with evidence that any interviews with Jewish students or other Jewish community members had been conducted prior to the recommendations being drafted, the person told JTA.

Campus antisemitism committees and reports have become a key tool as universities try to address concerns about the campus climate for Jewish students. At a range of other public and private universities, such reports have typically been accompanied by some form of surveying of the campus Jewish population. Pitt’s eight-page antisemitism report did not include such information. 

The university had immediately responded positively to the report’s recommendations, which came after the community weathered off-campus antisemitic attacks on Jewish students in 2024. It has also navigated the aftermath of the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, which took place at the nearby Tree of Life synagogue building in 2018.

Some right-wing Jewish figures have also criticized Pitt’s report for not defining antisemitism.

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Lander, who was participating in an initiative to protect Palestinian olive growers from settler violence, posted about the detention on X, noting that the group was “simply harvesting olives” near the Palestinian village of Nahalin, just outside of Bethlehem in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.

A few hours later, he updated that he was “released from IDF custody with a ‘warning.’” Lander, a former New York City comptroller, attributed his release to his public profile – stressing, however, that he is “just a nominee” and not a current member of Congress.   

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit confirmed that Israeli military and police forces arrived at the scene and detained the participants, saying that “harvesting in that area requires prior coordination with the relevant authorities” in order to maintain security in the area.

While Lander was released relatively quickly, he noted that several dozen people who had been harvesting olives with him remained in detention and called for their immediate release. 

“These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes,” Lander added, describing these actions as “very clearly state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”

Earlier on Wednesday, his second day participating in the harvest, Lander posted an interview with an activist, who detailed stories of a mother and two children who were attacked by settlers earlier this year. He said that “These are the kinds of assaults that Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to constantly.”

Lander first posted about his trip on Monday, explaining that he was joining the “Protect the Harvest” coalition, organized by Israelis for Peace and Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine. The goals of the initiative, he said, are both to protect the harvesters and to “shed a light on the reality of the occupation.” 

He also stressed the importance of providing a sustained, international “commitment to protecting Palestinian communities from settler violence, forced displacement, and the ongoing threats to their right to remain on their land.”

After Monday’s harvest, Lander said that the efforts that day were “peaceful and successful,” while noting that “violence unfortunately is never far away.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who endorsed Lander in the U.S. House race, said that while he’s “thankful that Brad has been released,” there are other New Yorkers who remain in detention.

“Harvesting olives is not illegal. The occupation is,” Mamdani said. In a remark about the impact of the last three years of the Gaza war, he also accused the Israeli government of committing “a horrific genocide against Palestinians, killing more than 74,000 people over the last few years alone.”

Lander’s visit to the West Bank occurred amid an increase in settler violence against Palestinians, including, in recent weeks, those trying to pick their olives. While some Israelis say the uptick is a response to stone-throwing and stabbing incidents, many Palestinians believe that settlers are inciting these confrontations.    

As of mid-October, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that nearly 200 settler attacks related to the olive harvest had resulted in casualties or property damage. 

The Israeli organization Rabbis for Human Rights reported that 90 members of its group, together with American activists, were detained with Lander on Wednesday morning. The volunteers, the group said in a statement, had spent about two hours harvesting when “large forces of the Israeli army, police and Border Police arrived and presented a closed military zone order valid for 24 hours.” 

Although representatives of the volunteers said the group had agreed to leave the area, the IDF still detained the participants, demanded identification and took them to a police station, separating foreign nationals from Israelis, according to the organization.

“We came to accompany farmers to land they have not been able to reach in three years,” Anton Goodman, acting executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, said in a statement. “Instead of protecting people working their own land, the army is removing them from it, and detaining those who came to stand beside them.”

Anna Kislanski, executive director of the Israel Movement for Progressive and Reform Judaism, condemned the detentions, stressing in a statement that the volunteers simply “sought to provide assistance and express solidarity with Palestinian communities that are attacked on a daily basis by Jewish extremists.”

“It is inconceivable that, instead of arresting and prosecuting the Jewish extremists who engage in theft and violence, security forces are arresting rabbi activists who are acting in accordance with Jewish values of love for humanity and the pursuit of justice,” Kislanski added, calling for their immediate release. 

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the New York City-based movement T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, reported on Wednesday that she and 11 other T’ruah-affiliated American rabbis were among those detained. 

“Rather than protecting Palestinian farmers and ensuring their right to work their own land, the Israeli military forcibly removed those who came to provide a protective presence,” Jacobs said, describing this action as “an outrageous abuse of power, and part of a systematic, state-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing.”

“The Israeli government is actively advancing the forced displacement of Palestinian communities across the West Bank,” she continued. “We will not be intimidated into silence. We will continue standing alongside Palestinian farmers and communities fighting to remain on their land.”

Gilad Kariv – a Knesset member running for reelection with the Democrats, a liberal Zionist opposition party – slammed the military’s actions, calling upon the government to “stop this madness.”

A failure to do so, Kariv argued, could “create enormous damage to relations with the Jews of the United States, and justifiably so.”

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said that given the security risks associated with uncoordinated harvests, military forces and officers from both the Israel Border Police and the Israel Police’s Judean and Samaria District detained those involved. 

“Authorized olive harvests have taken place and continue to take place,” the IDF statement said, noting that about 100 coordinated harvests have occurred.

“As in previous years, security forces are working to facilitate a safe and orderly olive harvest season,” the statement added, noting their “firm commitment to enabling harvesting without any unusual incidents or interruptions.”  

Israel’s Foreign Ministry accused Lander of conducting “a calculated provocation,” participating in an “outrageous” political stunt and ignoring instructions requested by his staff prior to the visit.  

The ministry stressed that had any injuries occurred due to “his reckless political theater, Lander would undoubtedly have been among the first to demand that Israeli authorities intervene and provide protection.”

“Brad Lander came looking for a confrontation,” the statement added. “Now he is pretending to be its victim.”

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For many viewers, Amanpour’s legacy is that of a fearless correspondent who brought the human costs of war into American living rooms, from the first Gulf War to Bosnia, Rwanda and Ukraine. 

But her coverage of Israel and the Palestinians has long drawn sharp criticism from some Jewish viewers, who accused her of giving insufficient weight to Israeli security concerns, mischaracterizing events and disproportionately presenting Israeli religious nationalism in an especially unflattering light.

Amanpour, 68, announced Monday that she will wind down her daily CNN International program early next year, conclude its weekly successor in May and leave the network in June 2027. Her PBS program, “Amanpour & Company,” will end at the close of this year. However, she will continue her podcast, “The Ex Files,” with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin, a former State Department official.

Amanpour did not give a specific reason for her departure, which comes as CNN enters a new era under Paramount Skydance ownership.

“Always be truthful, not neutral,” Amanpour wrote in her farewell message, summing up a philosophy that has animated her reporting — and helped make her a polarizing figure.

Amanpour’s admirers would argue that the same qualities that make her coverage uncomfortable for some Jewish viewers — skepticism toward official accounts, attention to civilian suffering and willingness to challenge powerful governments — are essential to journalism. 

When the National Press Foundation honored her in 2025 with its Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, its judges called her “a gold standard for international broadcast journalism” and praised her tough questioning of world leaders. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which honored her in 2016, likewise celebrated her commitment to press freedom.  

Amanpour, who was raised in Iran and England by her Iranian Muslim father and British Roman Catholic mother, joined CNN in 1983 as a desk assistant and rose through the ranks to become one of its most prominent correspondents. Her reporting from the Bosnian war in the 1990s helped establish her reputation for confronting officials and challenging the language governments use to justify military action.

Some of the sharpest criticism of her work came in 2007, when Amanpour hosted “God’s Jewish Warriors,” the opening installment of a three-part CNN documentary series examining the role of religion in politics and conflict.

Andrea Levin, president of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, or CAMERA, condemned the program as a biased portrayal of Jewish religious life and Israeli settlers. A 2010 Jewish Telegraphic Agency commentary revisited the controversy, with Ron Kampeas noting that “the only explicitly religious people she interviewed were ultranationalist settlers,” and that Amanpour ignored religious Jews who opposed the settlements.   

Kampeas also said the program’s treatment of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington exaggerated the power of groups like AIPAC and downplayed the shared strategic and moral imperatives that drove the U.S.-Israel alliance.

“God’s Jewish Warriors” became Exhibit A in the case against Amanpour’s work. Legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, her detractors asserted, was framed in a way that left Jewish viewers feeling that Jewish religious identity, political advocacy or national aspirations were inherently suspect.

Reporting from Lebanon during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Amanpour was part of a CNN team whose work rekindled a longstanding debate over how journalists should cover conflicts in which a state military fights an armed group embedded in civilian areas. 

Even as Amanpour at times acknowledged the difficulty of covering such “asymmetrical warfare,” Israeli officials and supporters argued at the time that images of destruction and civilian suffering in Lebanon obscured Hezbollah’s role in initiating and sustaining the conflict. Those objections anticipated similar complaints, aimed at CNN and other outlets, over coverage of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

Critics have continued to document what they see as a pattern. CAMERA has maintained a collection of complaints about Amanpour’s reporting, while HonestReporting, another pro-Israel media-monitoring organization, has accused her of repeated anti-Israel distortions.

Although both organizations have a clear advocacy perspective, they often provide specific examples of errors, and often extract corrections.

One example came in April 2023, when Amanpour described the killing of Israeli Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina in a Hamas-linked West Bank terrorist attack as a “shootout.” The women were driving on a highway when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on their vehicle. Amanpour subsequently apologized on air for her inaccurate characterization.

In 2024, Amanpour also drew criticism for a social media post about Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned Palestinian political leader convicted by an Israeli court of involvement in deadly attacks. “To many Israelis, he’s a terrorist. To many Palestinians, he’s their Mandela,” she wrote.

The comparison accurately captured Barghouti’s sharply different reputations among Israelis and Palestinians, but critics argued that it risked reducing the gravity of the attacks for which he was convicted.

Complaints about CNN’s Gaza coverage gained a striking new dimension in February 2024, when Amanpour reportedly joined CNN colleagues in accusing the network of a pro-Israel bias in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

According to reporting by The Intercept and The Guardian, journalists at an internal CNN meeting raised concerns that the network’s editorial procedures were favoring  official Israeli narratives and making it harder to convey Palestinian perspectives. CNN’s process required coverage of the conflict to pass through its Jerusalem bureau; Amanpour was heard on tape saying that the process led to “changing copy, double standards, and all the rest.”

At the same time, some pro-Israel viewers saw CNN and Amanpour as too willing to accept Palestinian claims and too quick to foreground Gaza’s devastation.  

In response to the reports, CNN defended its coverage of the conflict. “We remain absolutely committed to reporting all sides of this immensely challenging, complex and emotive story,” it said in a statement. “We absolutely reject the notion that any of our journalists treat Israeli officials differently to other officials.”

Amanpour again apologized on air in October 2025 for having said that surviving Israeli hostages released from Hamas captivity were “probably being treated better than the average Gazan, because they are the pawns and the chips that Hamas had.” Following backlash from political figures and organizations, Amanpour retracted the statement, calling her remarks “insensitive and wrong.” 

Last month, in a rare long-form interview about her career with the podcaster Sam Fragoso, Amanpour discussed CNN’s coverage of the Gaza war. In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, she said, the network was “practically wall to wall with horrendous stories from the victims in Israel. I mean, just horrendous.”

But as Israel’s military response ground on, “the story flipped,” she said. “As the destruction of Gaza took place and the bodies piled up, most particularly the women and the children, the tone of the coverage reflected the reality.” At the February 2024 meeting with CNN executives, she said, her colleagues expressed frustration that the network took too long to cover the Palestinian side. 

In the same interview, Amanpour also walked back an apology she made in 2020 — not about CNN’s Mideast coverage, but for a commentary on the 82nd anniversary of the Kristallnacht attacks. In that segment, she juxtaposed the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogrom with what she called President Donald Trump’s “attacks on history, facts, knowledge and truth.” After Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, complained that she had “instrumentalized” the Holocaust with a faulty comparison, Amanpour said on air that she regretted any pain her statement may have caused. 

Speaking last month with Fragoso, Amanpour said that she stands by her assertion that Kristallnacht demonstrated how quickly “democratic values can slowly slip away.” She also suggested that her employers had bowed to outside pressure and instructed her to apologize.

“There were people, you know, in various communities in regard of this,” she said, referring to her critics, “who decided that I need to be slapped around and pull[ed] down a peg. But I think that’s just because some people are afraid of the truth.” 

Amanpour’s departure comes at a moment of uncertainty about CNN’s future under its new corporate owner. Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, has raised concerns among journalists about political influence and editorial independence, particularly given new owner David Ellison’s ties to Trump and the changes he has overseen at CBS News. 

Amanpour herself expressed concern in May about what she called an “ideological realignment” at CBS News under its new leadership. “So clearly, obviously, I’m concerned,” she said, speaking at an investigative journalism conference in London. “I would like to think that we would have the very basic, which is editorial independence. I’m hoping for that. I know many of us at CNN are incredibly — including leadership — are very, very committed to that, clearly.”

For some Jewish and pro-Israel observers, however, the same changes have raised hopes that CNN’s coverage of Israel might become more favorable. Bari Weiss, who became CBS News editor in chief after Paramount acquired her strongly pro-Israel publication, The Free Press, has long argued that mainstream news organizations have mishandled Israel and antisemitism.

Amanpour didn’t mention the merger in her announcement. But she noted how her background shaped her perspective.

“Because of my upbringing — I’m half-Iranian and half-British — I’ve had the great privilege of being able to see the world from two very distinct perspectives,” she said. “I’ve always spoken out about the need to bridge gaps. I know we can live in a world that’s not 100% tribalized.”

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The comment came during a one-hour candidates’ forum featuring Moskowitz and his Republican challenger, Scott Singer — both Jewish and both wearing kippahs — that largely centered on Israel and got testy at moments.

Moskowitz said he is “proud to have AIPAC’s endorsement,” a comment that comes as Democratic voters have grown more critical of Israel amid its military campaign in Gaza and the war with Iran. 

But the crowd at the Reform synagogue Congregation B’nai Israel in Boca Raton was, like Florida’s 25th Congressional District itself, split across party lines, and staunchly pro-Israel.

“This isn’t New York, this isn’t Boston — this is South Florida,” attendee Edward Kone told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

Moskowitz had soundly defeated democratic socialist challenger Oliver Larkin, a sharp Israel critic, in August. As Democrats look to take control of the House of Representatives, Florida’s recently redrawn 25th Congressional District — which would have favored Trump by 9 percentage points in 2024 but backed Joe Biden in 2020 under its new boundaries — is being closely watched ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Despite some tense moments between Moskowitz and Singer, who was Boca Raton’s mayor until earlier this year, the two politicians have been largely aligned on the issue of Israel.

Both have condemned accusations that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. They each oppose any effort to condition or cut off U.S. military aid to Israel. Both supported Israel’s strikes on Iranian facilities in 2025, though Moskowitz has since called for the U.S. to end its war with Iran.

Moskowitz referenced his and Singer’s shared pro-Israel viewpoints on Tuesday during the forum moderated by South Florida Sun Sentinel journalist Anthony Man.

“This is exactly why nothing gets done in Washington. This is exactly why nothing is functioning: Because literally two people who agree on 99% of this stuff want to take this 1% and try to ram it down people’s throats,” Moskowitz said.

Singer, however, made a point of emphasizing where the two candidates differ on Israel. He criticized Moskowitz for voting for the March 2026 war powers resolution in response to the Trump administration ordering strikes on Iran without congressional authorization. While Moskowitz has called for the administration to end the war, Singer argued that the threat of Iran must be thoroughly dealt with. “We have to ensure victory here,” he said.

For siblings Edward and Susan Kone, both Jewish Republican voters who attended the forum, Moskowitz’s record on Israel does not stack up against Singer’s positions. They, too, criticized Moskowitz for voting to end the Iran war, and for his 2023 vote to keep Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

“I’m America first, but Israel is extremely important to me. And on Israel, Jared Moskowitz just doesn’t add up,” Edward Kone said. Omar is among a number of pro-Palestinian Democrats whom Republicans say are leading the party’s left-wing flank in turning it against Israel.

Singer himself blasted Moskowitz for his vote against removing Omar, and tied Moskowitz to the left flank of the Democratic Party.

“The strategy is adjective, verb, Ilhan Omar, I got it. Let’s move on to the next topic,” Moskowitz responded, drawing some groans from the audience.

Others in the room had voted for Moskowitz in previous elections, and said they were likely to do so again, at least in part because of his Israel stance.

“He has a good track record with Israel, and as an American Jew I appreciate that,” said Peter Davidson, an independent who is a member of Congregation B’nai Israel.

Moskowitz pointed to his endorsement from AIPAC and Singer’s lack of an endorsement from Rep. Randy Fine, a fellow Jewish Republican from Florida, as evidence that he is seen as satisfyingly pro-Israel across parts of the political spectrum. He also pointed to a post on X by Jeff Miller, a Republican Jewish Coalition board member, who wrote that he has “zero interest in tearing down one of the few Democrats left willing to stand unapologetically with America and Israel.” The RJC, as an organization, has endorsed Singer.

“They’re staying out,” Moskowitz said. “They’re specifically saying, ‘We’re not going to oppose Jared Moskowitz because of his record fighting antisemitism and fighting for the State of Israel.’”

In addition to the RJC, Singer has Trump’s endorsement. He said during the forum that he had reached out to Fine for an endorsement and was rejected.

Earlier this year, Singer downplayed anti-Israel trends on the right as “a few fringe commentators” who are out of step with Trump. Moskowitz challenged him to name three of those figures: Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and former Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback.

Singer named all three and said “I gladly, shamelessly condemn” them, but countered that Democrats are voting in anti-Israel voices while Republicans cast theirs aside.

Man also asked Singer about President Donald Trump’s use of the term “Shylock” on Monday, a term that references a character from the play “The Merchant of Venice” which is rooted in an antisemitic trope.

“I think that’s an ill-advised term,” Singer said, before pivoting to praise of Trump and what he says the president has done for Israel.

“‘Merchant of Venice’ happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play. That term has multiple meanings. But let’s look at the real record beyond an offhand comment: No president has been better for the State of Israel than President Trump,” Singer said, drawing applause.

As for the upcoming Israeli elections — which Trump recently weighed in on — Singer told reporters after the event that he was too busy with his own race to make endorsements and does not have a preferred candidate.

“To be candid, I have some awareness of it, but I’m not following it intently,” he said.

Singer’s attacks on Tuesday often focused on Moskowitz’s Democratic Party, which he says will drown out the congressman’s pro-Israel views as it takes its cues from its left-wing flank. He pointed to Moskowitz’s quote from last month, when he said that pro-Israel voices are being “ostracized” in the party. 

“It’s great that he says these things, but he’s also voted to empower Ilhan Omar twice,” Singer said. “He’s tried to go along to get along with the Squad, and it’s not working.”

But for some in the crowd, that attack didn’t quite land.

Davidson, an independent, said he is “not a great fan” of the Democratic Party. But for him, Moskowitz is an exception.

“He’s more of an independent thinker,” Davidson said. “Crosses a lot of party lines.”

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The sold-out Oct. 19 event, conceived of by Sarah Sultman, blended readings, music and storytelling to trace that relationship across generations, from Maimonides and Julius Caesar to Golda Meir, Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein. The evening also featured personal accounts of people whose lives and families have been intertwined with Israel.

All ticket proceeds benefited the Sha’ar HaNegev Resilience Centre, which provides emotional and therapeutic support to individuals and families in southern Israel as they work to recover and rebuild after the  Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.

For Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, the charitable partner of the event, the evening carried particular significance because of its setting.

Less than three years ago, UCLA was the site of a pro-Palestinian encampment where Jewish students reported feeling unsafe. The campus became a flashpoint in the national debate over antisemitism and anti-Israel activism, with buildings and property damaged during the demonstrations.

“This place [Royce Hall] was inundated with protesters during the encampment,” Farkas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It was boarded up. Its windows were broken. There was graffiti everywhere.”

On Monday, the hall had been restored as a gathering place, with UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk and his wife, Felicia Knaul, among those attending and participating in the staged readings.

“The fact that the chancellor himself is here tonight is, I think, really restorative,” Farkas said. “It’s almost like teshuvah for the campus.”

The evening’s celebrity readings offered moments of humor alongside more solemn reflections on Jewish history and the enduring ties to Israel.

Simmons, the KISS co-founder who was born in Israel, introduced himself with a joke that played on the name of the late television personality Richard Simmons.

“Hello, my name is Gene Simmons. I know some of you were expecting Richard Simmons,” he said, before adding, “And I’m a Jew. I was born in Israel, but more importantly, I’m a human being.”

Simmons later sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and read a letter by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the late British chief rabbi.

Jon Lovitz drew laughs with his comic delivery of a letter written by David Ben-Gurion recounting his arrival as a young adult on the shores of Jaffa. Bob Odenkirk, whose wife is Jewish and whose children are being raised Jewish, read a letter by Bernstein, the conductor, about performing in Israel.

The celebrity appearances brought an element of Hollywood spectacle to the production, but the evening’s most emotional moment came when Eliya Cohen, a former hostage who spent 505 days in captivity, appeared alongside his new bride, Ziv Abud, a survivor of the Oct. 7 Nova music festival massacre. The appearance of the two 29-year-olds drew the night’s only standing ovation.

Abud — who traveled the world lobbying for Cohen’s release while he was held in Gaza — highlighted the shared struggle facing Jews in Israel and those living in the Diaspora.

“Our story is different, our challenges are different, but we are not separate stories,” she said at Royce Hall. “The fight for Israel, for the right of a Jewish homeland, is connected to the rights of Jews everywhere to live openly and safely in the countries they call home. A Jew should be able to live safely in Tel Aviv, London, Los Angeles, Paris or Sydney.”

Musical performances reinforced the production’s themes of Jewish identity, resilience and hope. Distant Cousins performed Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully,” a song widely interpreted as addressing the international criticism directed at Israel, before closing the show with Matisyahu’s “One Day.” 

Produced by Sultman and Michal Noé, with Lawrence Bender and County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as co-producers, the Los Angeles presentation followed productions at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2024 and New York’s Carnegie Hall in February.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the role of the Jewish Federation Los Angeles in connection to the event. The federation was the charitable partner, not the organizer.

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El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel who faces former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races, told ABC News on Monday that Israel is “not actually our friend.” 

“An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally,” said El-Sayed, referencing Israel’s reported lobbying of the United States to enter into a war with Iran. 

He compared Israel with a friend who “keeps bumming off [your kid’s] money” and “talks about them behind their back and then gets them into fights with other friends.” 

“What would you tell your kid to do with that friend? You’d probably tell them, maybe it’s not actually your friend,” he said.

El-Sayed made similar remarks in an interview with MS NOW on Thursday, saying that “the government of Israel has done nothing but use us” and “has done terrible things with our money.” 

He added that he would continue to question whether Israel was an ally regardless of the outcome of Israel’s election on Oct. 27, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as Israel’s leader for most of the past 18 years, seeks another term.

“Netanyahu is one part of it, but the Israeli military has done heinous things, like heinous things, full war crimes, genocide,” said El-Sayed. “So I think we got to just get serious about whether or not we as a country should be subsidizing that government.”

El-Sayed previously affirmed that he does not consider Israel an ally to the United States in his first bitter debate with Rogers on Oct. 8. The candidates will meet for a final debate on Wednesday.

He told MS NOW that he was “committed to the safety and security” of Jewish voters, some of whom have pressured him to moderate his views on Israel. “Now, we may have differences when it comes to Israel, but the things that unite us are a lot bigger,” he said.

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Trump announced his support for Netanyahu, who is running for reelection, in a Sunday Truth Social post that described the Israeli leader as “a Great Warrior Prime Minister” and a critical partner in eliminating the Iranian threat. Netanyahu has been trailing former IDF chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenkot in recent surveys.

Tali deGroot, vice president of political and digital strategy for the liberal Zionist group J Street, described Trump’s declaration as “an endorsement of endless war for Israelis,” in a statement sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She warned of “endless occupation and control of Palestinian life and land, and Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage.” 

“The president is once again acting against the wishes of American taxpayers and choosing to uphold a failed, unpopular foreign policy that has brought devastation to Israelis, Palestinians and countless civilians,” deGroot added.

A spokesperson for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, meanwhile, said that the lobby had no comment about the endorsement. 

David Makovsky, director of the Program on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, criticized Trump’s decision, writing on X that “in one fell swoop, Trump has broken with the longstanding U.S. practice of avoiding explicit endorsements in Israeli elections.” The president, Makovsky added, went a step further by threatening to sever a partnership against Iran if Israelis choose a different leader. 

“It is up to the Israeli people to choose their own leader and threatening that the U.S. will walk away from the conflict with Iran is beyond stunning,” Makovksy said. 

Makovsky also pointed out that “a Trump endorsement is no electoral guarantee,” noting that Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s support for Viktor Orbán in Hungary did not end in a victory. 

“The ultimate test is assembling a 61-seat Knesset majority,” Makovsky added. “Yet Netanyahu appears more focused on preventing an Eisenkot-led coalition from reaching that threshold than on demonstrating a viable path to 61 seats himself.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, offered another scathing perspective, observing that “authoritarians of a feather flock together.”

“They started a war together,” Van Hollen stated. “They crack down on press freedom together. They lie about everything together.”

Rep. Analilia Mejia, a New Jersey Democrat running for reelection, said that the endorsement “tells us everything we need to know about both of these men.” She then went on to list Netanyahu, North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that “this guy has a ‘type.’”

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Republican from Florida, reposted a video in which Netanyahu thanked Trump for his support. The congressman then added that “America will always stand with the Jewish State of Israel and our dear friend Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has championed our alliance for decades.”

Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he believes that “President Trump is incredibly popular with the people of Israel,” in a written statement to JTA.

“His support will carry considerable weight as Israelis make their choice for Prime Minister in a pivotal election this month,” Brooks added.

American Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach likewise celebrated the endorsement “by our great President Trump,” writing on X that he has “known and loved BIBI Netanyahu for some 35 years.”

Conservative radio personality Mark Levin described Trump’s Truth Social post as “an extraordinarily strong statement,” while accusing the opposition of “barking about election interference.”

“Trump makes clear it’s also in our national security interest for Netanyahu to remain PM,” Levin stated, calling complaints “unserious and a partisan political whine.”

Conservative influencer Evan Kilgore, on the other hand, fumed at Trump’s decision. Kilgore, whose X profile says “Christ is King,” announced that he is “so done with the GOP,” following Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu. Kilgore described Trump as “TOTALLY fu*king subverted by Jewish and Zionist interests.”

Political analysts are divided as to whether Trump’s official support would have any sway on the results of an election 6,000 miles away. 

Joyce Karam, editor-in-chief of the Washington-based site Al-Monitor, described the endorsement as a signal to both Israel and Iran that renewed escalation and a push for regime collapse could occur after the U.S. midterm elections. She also predicted that Trump’s backing could tip the balance in a tight race where neither side holds a majority. 

However, Dov Waxman, director of the Israel Studies program at the University of California, Los Angeles, expressed doubt that support from Trump, who has become less popular in Israel, could significantly influence Netanyahu’s election chances. 

“For a long time, most polls have shown his bloc falling well short of a parliamentary majority,” Waxman added. 

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Protests against Israel’s operations in Gaza cropped up in Boulder in the months following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Such rallies not only became a fixture on street corners, but they also seeped into the chambers of City Council – transforming public comment periods about local issues into heated clashes about a conflict 7,000 miles away. At the center of these clashes was often Taishya Adams, a council member who had primarily run on climate resilience and affordability issues during her 2023 campaign.

But the Israel-Palestinian conflict hit much closer to home after a June 2025 firebombing on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. The attack killed one person and injured a dozen others who were participating in a Boulder Run for Their Lives walk, aimed at drawing attention to the Israeli hostages who were still being held by Hamas in Gaza at that time. The day after the attack, Adams was the sole council member who refused to sign a collective statement condemning it.

“The Israel genocide has been one of the defining moments of my tenure,” Adams, who is now running for mayor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

Asked whether she believes the state of Israel should exist, she said, “I know that people want to hear this easy yes/no, but I don’t believe that creating false binaries is going to lead to our collective liberation.” 

Adams, who joined the council just two months after the Oct. 7 attacks, added that it doesn’t matter whether she believes Israel should exist.  

“Any state that exists has the responsibility to administer equal rights, whether that’s Israel or the United States or any state,” she said.

Although she shares similar positions on issues such as climate change and affordable housing with many of her fellow council members, Adams has split from her colleagues – including her top opponent, incumbent Mayor Aaron Brockett – on Israel. 

When asked by JTA if he believes Israel should exist, Brockett replied, “I do,” noting that this is his personal belief and not relevant to his role as a city councilor.

Adams earned the endorsement of Boulder County Democratic Socialists of America soon after announcing her candidacy for mayor this summer. But another powerful local faction, Boulder Progressives, chose to back Brockett, listing Adams as a second option in the city’s ranked-choice voting system. 

While internal city council divisions on Israel-Gaza were apparent from the get-go, tensions escalated following the Pearl Street Mall attack. 

The day after the attack, city council members formally denounced it as an “act of violence and terror.” Their statement, issued with the mayor and city manager, recognized “in the strongest possible terms that this was a targeted, antisemitic attack.” The authors stressed that such “dread and insecurity, backed by a history of persecution, are all too familiar” to Jewish residents.  

“We cannot – and will not – allow antisemitism to become normalized here,” their statement added, stressing a need to “refrain from any commentary or speculation about the suspect.” 

Rather than sign the statement, Adams issued her own the next day, explaining that her decision “did not reflect any lack of empathy or support for Jewish community members – or an attempt to somehow justify the horrific act committed by this individual.” 

Instead, she said she withheld her signature because her colleagues wouldn’t link the attack to both antisemitism and “anti-Zionism.” Stating that the attacker had used the latter term in previous remarks, Adams argued that its inclusion would allow them “to be real about the possible motivations for this heinous act.”

“Denying our community the full truth about the attack denies us the ability to fully protect ourselves and each other,” she stated. “I would have been eager to sign the statement if my colleagues could agree to my edit.”

Asked by JTA why this was a dealbreaker, Adams again referenced previous comments made by the attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman. Videos that described God as “greater than Zionists,” allegedly recorded by Soliman before the firebombing, circulated on an Arabic-language Telegram channel named for Hamas’ attacks on Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League. (Channel moderators posted the videos, but the ADL said it had not authenticated them.) Separately, an FBI affidavit said Soliman told investigators “that he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.”

In retrospect, Adams said that she would have preferred if Soliman’s language had focused on “the actions of the Israeli government” rather than on Zionism, thereby “uncoupling the actions of a state from the actions of a people.” She said that at his May 7 plea and sentencing hearing, he apologized to the Jewish people and was specific about his stance against “allowing any state to commit war crimes and to commit a genocide.”

“I was raised that a half truth is a lie,” Adams added. “And the full truth of what he said and what he did was not exclusive to people who identify as Jewish.”

Regardless of his motivation, Adams said she condemned Soliman’s actions and stressed that “an eye for an eye is a no.” But standing with the victims, she explained, means telling them “the potential causes for the harm that was done to them.”

Brockett, who was mayor at the time, disputed his opponent’s approach, recalling how in the difficult aftermath of the attack, he and most of his colleagues wanted to “make a very strong, unequivocal statement” that condemned the incident as antisemitic. 

“We were reeling from the magnitude of that and how incredibly awful it was, and how badly people were injured,” he said, noting that he was unwilling to include the term “anti-Zionist,” because he felt that this would be speculative about the attacker’s motives.

Rabbi Fred Greene, of Congregation Har Hashem, offered a similar perspective, stressing that this “turning point for our community” required moral clarity from elected officials: namely, an “unequivocal statement that antisemitism has no place in Boulder.”

“Most of the council rose to that moment,” Greene said. “But when even one member of the council cannot sign a joint condemnation without attempting to relitigate the definition of antisemitism, that sends a painful message to Jewish residents about where they stand.” 

Conflict-fueled chaos seized City Council

The dispute over the condemnation statement followed about 20 months of council meetings that included contentious public comment sessions about the Gaza war.

Demonstrators began disrupting these sessions in late 2023, protesting the war and urging members to consider a ceasefire resolution. Comments at times included antisemitic hate speech, particularly against Jewish council member Tara Winer, according to Boulder Reporting Lab. Officials suspended some individuals and limited poster sizes, as they struggled to maintain both order and free speech. 

Brockett said that he still could not comprehend “why people have directed so much energy at the Boulder City Council on these topics for so long, given our complete lack of influence or involvement with the Middle East.”

Rabbi Marc Soloway, of Boulder’s Congregation Bonai Shalom, expressed similar bewilderment at this phenomenon, questioning how “a so-called liberal place has become so poisoned.” He balked at the idea that people are “willing to somehow stand behind Hamas as a liberation movement and not acknowledge what’s really happened.” 

Adams was one of just two council members who voted in February 2024 to consider the ceasefire resolution. The proposal did not advance. Opponents, including the mayor, cited a need to focus on local matters, while also referring to a city code that limited action on foreign issues, according to the Boulder Reporting Lab. 

Then in February 2025, Adams was one of three council members who supported revisiting the city’s investment policy to consider excluding more weapons manufacturers. Some opponents viewed the proposal as a veiled attempt to push potential Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policies against Israel. Before the informal vote, Adams cautioned against “investing in weapons,” saying she wanted “a peacemaking community” and not a “war-enabling community.”  

Six months later, Adams was the only council member to support reopening the investment policy discussion. Her new request, she explained in a statement, stemmed from a U.N. Special Rapporteur report that accused certain companies, including Microsoft, of being “directly involved in Israel’s occupation and genocide.” 

The U.N. report had cited findings from The Guardian alleging that Israel used Microsoft’s cloud technology and artificial intelligence during intense bombardments of Gaza. In response, Microsoft at first said internal reviews showed no evidence that its tools were “used to target or harm people.” But several months later, the company launched a formal review of new allegations regarding mass surveillance of civilians. 

The U.N. report, Adams told JTA, showed that Boulder was investing in firms that “have committed war crimes,” when the city should spend its money on bolstering projects like renewable energy initiatives or regenerative agriculture. 

Brockett said Boulder already had investment rules addressing social and environmental concerns, including changes adopted in 2017 while he was a council member. He opposed divesting from Microsoft, citing the ubiquity of its products and the difficulty of excluding every company whose tools might be used in ways residents opposed. 

Asked if there was any further update or response to this issue, a spokesperson for Microsoft directed JTA to a September 2025 communication written by Brad Smith, the company’s vice chair and president. Smith stated that following a review, Microsoft had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense,” including “specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies.”

Smith credited The Guardian for its reporting, noting that the outlet had access to external information that Microsoft did not due to its “customer privacy commitments.” He stressed that Microsoft prohibits the use of its tools for mass surveillance of civilians.

Assessing antisemitism in ‘the court of public opinion’

In the weeks following the Pearl Street attack, tensions over the Israel-Gaza war boiled over, prompting Boulder City Council members to approve new rules for open comment periods at their meetings. 

The new rules, approved by all council members except Adams, included an earlier meeting start time, a shorter open comment window and an audio-only broadcast. Brockett said that just a few meetings after enacting these measures, the chaos calmed down.

“People get the same amount of time to speak as they did before,” he said, referring to a two-minute limit allocated to each speaker. “They still are allowed to say whatever they would like, within the limits of the First Amendment.” 

Adams, on the other hand, expressed concern about the impact of an earlier start time on working families, as well as the lack of video during virtual testimony. Instead, she said she would have preferred the “consistent implementations” of existing rules. 

A few days after the council passed the rules, Adams reportedly published multiple Instagram stories that two colleagues, Matt Benjamin and Mark Wallach, characterized as “offensive and antisemitic social media posts.” Because these posts were “stories,” they ordinarily would have disappeared after 24 hours unless saved as highlights, but Facebook users posted links to screenshots and recordings in the comments of Benjamin and Wallach’s statement. 

One such story declared that “the biggest genocide in human history didn’t occur in Nazi Germany, but on American soil,” set to music from Schindler’s List. She was referring to tribal nations, stressing that “unlike Jewish people who received repatriation,” they “lost generations.” Another story accused Boulder of funding genocide.

Benjamin and Wallach said that her stories “crossed a serious line into antisemitism,” adding that “language in these posts reflects a more insidious, modern form of antisemitism, one that avoids explicit slurs but relies instead on double standards, dog whistles and coded messages.”

Adams responded to her colleagues by accusing them of releasing “misinformation” in what she described as “an attempt to distract from the real work and conversations our council has ahead of us.” She stressed that “injustice to any individual or group of people is wrong and must be followed by repair and restitution.”

“If the shoe was on the other foot and I thought they were being antisemitic, I would have put proper paperwork together and launched an investigation,” Adams told JTA, criticizing their reliance on “the court of public opinion.” 

Reflecting on this dispute, Greene, the rabbi from Har Hashem, said it’s not “particularly useful to declare whether someone is or isn’t antisemitic.” He noted, however, that some of the “posts have traded in antisemitic tropes: drawing false equivalencies with the Holocaust, implying that Jewish people have received undue reparations and framing Jewish concerns as obstacles to collective liberation.”

“Whether intentional or not, those tropes cause real harm,” Greene said. “When someone in a position of public trust continues to deploy them after being told – repeatedly and directly – how hurtful they are, that matters.”

A few weeks following the social media showdown, police arrested anti-Israel activist Laura Gonzalez for shouting profanities at a Jewish resident and confronting Benjamin. She was charged with felony retaliation against an elected official, as well as verbal and physical harassment misdemeanors. While the first two charges were dropped in May, Gonzalez is expected to face trial for the physical harassment misdemeanor, to which she has pleaded non guilty. 

Asked for her opinion on the Gonzalez case, Adams acknowledged a spike in aggressive incidents, but she focused on the increase in such behaviors against participants at pro-Palestine events, where she said someone was recently pushed. 

“It’s important that we investigate any situation where there’s allegations of physical harm,” Adams added. “Those investigations should be equal in strength and integrity.”

‘A very toxic environment for Jewish people’

The disagreements on Israel reflect a broader dispute over just how much the city council should be involving itself in foreign affairs. 

Already in February 2024, Adams told fellow council members that the city has “skin in the game,” urging them to consider the ceasefire resolution. Citing the footprint of global technology, medical and defense firms in Boulder, she warned against behaving “like we do not have implications internationally.”

Adams criticized those who support “the actions of an ethno-state,” explaining that during a May 2025 trip to the West Bank – as part of the Boulder-Nablus Sister City Project – she “saw firsthand different roads for different people.” That trip, she said, resulted in a creative project called Uprooting Qahr, an Arabic word she defined as “anger that’s caused by oppression and displacement and dispossession.”

Asked if she also visited Israel, she said that she “landed in Israel, in Tel Aviv.” She said that she had intended to spend more time in Israel after her West Bank tour, but that her plans changed after the Yemen-based Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Ben Gurion Airport. After speaking with a few Israeli Jews in the West Bank, she credited them for “some solidarity and understanding that we are one human species on one planet.”

Brockett said that he, too, has visited Nablus as part of the Sister Cities project, but that on his trip, he also visited Boulder’s Israeli sister city, Ramat HaNegev. He has long argued the council should focus on local issues rather than take up a ceasefire resolution or devote formal meeting time to foreign policy matters. 

“City councils exist to serve their residents — housing, transportation, public safety, local services,” Greene, of Har Hashem, told JTA. “Those are the responsibilities Boulder voters entrust their council with.”

Greene acknowledged “that elected officials are human beings with moral convictions” who might make value statements. But he noted that the war has “consumed meeting after meeting, month after month, at the expense of local needs.” That fixation, he added, became “a vehicle for rhetoric that made Jewish residents feel targeted and unsafe.” 

Soloway, from Bonai Shalom, likewise described “a very toxic environment for Jewish people,” recognizing that this feeling is “not coming directly from City Council.” 

“But I would say that some of the rhetoric and the posts of Taishya Adams [have] definitely fostered that,” Soloway said.

‘Jewish identity, love for Israel, grief over Gaza’

Discussing the “compromises made for the establishment of nation states” – including the U.S. and Israel – Adams emphasized that she isn’t asking anything of others that she isn’t willing to do herself, explaining that she has been working on right-of-return policies for Indigenous people whose land was stolen in Boulder. 

“I know what segregation looks like as a descendant of enslaved Africans,” she said. “I understand what apartheid looks like.”

Soloway expressed concern about such comparisons. He said that Adams “presents herself as a real student of history” but then equates the U.S. to Israel, whose “history is so utterly different.”

“The original colonizers of America were not indigenous in any way, and no one would ever claim they are,” he added. “But Jews have been indigenous to the Middle East.”

Adams discussed her recent attempts to engage with Boulder’s Jewish community, noting that over the past year, she “made a stronger effort to reach out directly and really left the ball in their court.” She said she met with some local rabbis one-on-one and also made connections through the Denver/Boulder Jewish Voice for Peace. 

The JVP chapter did not respond to a request from JTA for comment. 

As for her opponent, Brockett said that if he wins another term, he would “offer full support” to Jewish residents and “speak out if anything antisemitic occurs.” 

“We don’t have the ability to prevent some speech like that from occurring, but we can show that it’s unacceptable and that the leadership of the city stands in solidarity with the Jewish community in Boulder,” Brockett said.  

Addressing the current morale, Greene said that his congregants “feel less safe, more on edge, more vulnerable.” For example, he observed that those who have devoted their lives to “tikkun olam” – repairing the world – now “find themselves cast as complicit in something they abhor.” 

Soloway, meanwhile, noted that “Jews were integral in a lot of movements that have stopped fascism, and now we’ve become the fascists in the eyes of so many.”

“It’s extraordinary how so many examples of Jewish involvement in civil rights have just somehow been conveniently erased,” he said. “We’ve just become the demons because of our connection to Israel and Zionism.”

Such unease has affected other institutions in Boulder, including parts of the school system. The Boulder Valley School District this summer settled a federal civil rights lawsuit with the Anti-Defamation League, after the parents of a Jewish middle schooler alleged that their child had endured years of bullying and antisemitic harassment. 

In its settlement, the district announced plans to address antisemitic discrimination and harassment in schools, conduct training for staff, provide educational programming for students and create an advisory council to address antisemitism.   

Other young Jews in Boulder, including those who attend the University of Colorado, are also struggling with a palpable uptick in hostile rhetoric. At the beginning of the school year, Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine released their “2026 Statement of Commitment,” demanding one state “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” And on Oct. 7, as CU Boulder Hillel hosted a memorial event, Boulder SJP held a “vigil for the martyrs of Palestine” on campus as well.

Elyana Funk, the Hillel chapter’s executive director, said she has increasingly needed to advocate for the students, but she also noted some positives amid the pain. Hillel, she explained, has “been bursting at the seams and growing,” with a 30% participation surge in the past couple years and an 80% jump in Shabbat attendance. 

Funk estimated that about 2,500 to 3,000 Jewish students – out of about 32,600 total undergraduates – are enrolled at the university, but she had no records of how many students are registered to vote in this city, as opposed to in their hometowns.

But when Boulder’s Jewish voters do head to the polls in November, they will do so with the possibility of electing a mayor who won’t confirm if Israel should exist. 

When considering that prospect, Greene declared that “Israel’s right to exist is not a partisan position.” People can raise concerns about Israel’s government, humanitarian issues in Gaza and rights of Palestinians while also maintaining “that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state,” Greene argued. An unwillingness to do so, he said, should be “disqualifying for someone seeking to lead a city with a substantial and deeply connected Jewish community.”

“Jewish identity, love for Israel, grief over Gaza, fear of antisemitism — these things can coexist in a single Jewish heart,” Greene added. “When the public discourse flattens all of that into a binary, it erases us.”

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With polls showing that Netanyahu and his governing coalition are slipping in their struggle to retain power in the upcoming Oct. 27 election and lag behind the opposition bloc, an endorsement from the president of the United States is a powerful statement.

But is it enough to tip the scales?

“I don’t think it will change anything,” said Ilana Shpaizman, a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

Of course, she said, “Netanyahu will say this is the proof that I’m a leader and all that, and I can speak to Trump … But so what? His followers already know that and they believe in him. They don’t need the endorsement.”

Those who oppose him, Shpaizman continued, “know that Trump forced him (Netanyahu) to accept the ceasefire in Gaza and accept the hostage deal, and that Trump runs the show around Iran. So they also don’t need the endorsement either,” Shpaizman said.

Some pundits speaking on Israeli news outlets criticized Trump for “interfering” in Israel’s election, while others put it down to the fact that Trump does not want America to return to fighting Iran alone if Netanyahu, who is hawkish on Iran, is replaced by someone less willing to act militarily. If Netanyahu loses, that is a scenario that could play out.

“This is the first time ever that the president, at least publicly, endorses a candidate in Israel’s election,” Aviv Bushinsky, a political commentator and former adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Bushinsky said he remembered Netanyahu complaining about U.S. intervention in previous elections in 1999 and 2001, when presidents less enamored of him were in office. He even pushed for an initiative that would block foreign funding for election campaigns.

Now, Bushinsky said, “I guess he is not complaining,” adding that the endorsement serves Netanyahu in two ways.

First, it signals that Trump thinks that Netanyahu is the most suitable guy for the job. Second, it puts Netanyahu’s election campaign back on track, refocusing attention on an issue where Netanyahu is strong – Iran.

“It lets him say ‘I can now finish a job, and I can finish a job with Trump,’ and ‘without Trump or without me, the job will not be finished,’” said Bushinsky.

He said that in the last few days, the political debate had pivoted to other issues such as Ashkenazim vs Sephardim, the draft law and the contentious efforts by the outgoing government to overhaul the judiciary.

“This [endorsement] is the ultimate campaign boost for Netanyahu,” Bushinsky said.

But that boost might not be enough.

Most of the polls taken in recent days show the opposition bloc led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot pulling ahead of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, but give neither bloc enough seats to gain the necessary 61 of 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to form the next government.

“I think this might give Netanyahu one more seat, one more mandate, but not more than that,” said Bushinsky.

Prof. Tamar Hermann, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, said that the timing of Trump’s support for Netanyahu in this election race had come both “too late and too early.”

“It’s too late because people have already decided electoral preferences. They may shift within each bloc, but will not move between the blocs because of this,” she said. “And it’s too early because there are nine days to go to the elections, and we can already see other American leaders spilling some cold water over what he said, even on the Republican side of the aisle.”

This criticism, Hermann continued, will be transmitted to Israeli voters, and they will see that Trump is facing a huge battle in the upcoming midterm elections.

“The image of President Trump has deteriorated significantly since April 26, when he started the negotiations with Iran,” she said, pointing to one of the IDI’s recent public opinion surveys that found the president’s popularity had plummeted after he stopped the war with Iran without totally removing the threats against the State of Israel.

According to that poll, the Israeli public’s confidence in Trump as someone dedicated to Israel’s security fell from around 70% to just 42%.

“In my view, the endorsement will not make a big change,” Hermann added. “It will just strengthen Netanyahu’s political supporters, who will see it as a sign that he is still the internationally known figure that even the president of the United States is endorsing.”

She concluded, “The meaning of endorsement in Israel is totally different than in the United States … we are not that used to this kind of move, and it will not make people change their minds.”

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In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Netanyahu has been a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its 51 year old chant, “Death to Israel, Death to America!”

Iran will be able to make good on its threat unless it is destroyed militarily and financially, Trump wrote.

Alluding to a possible resumption of the two-month war that was paused in April, Trump said that unless Iran changes its ways, “we will soon finish the job,” but only if Netanyahu is in charge.

“If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so. Bibi Netanyahu has been Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself,” Trump wrote.

The president published his post with nine days to go until Israelis head to the polls on Oct. 27 to elect a prime minister and parliament. Netanyahu has been trailing former IDF Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eisenkot in recent surveys.

Eisenkot told Israel’s Channel 12 that while Trump was a great friend of Israel, the country’s elections were an internal matter. “Those who will decide who will be the next prime minister and who will be in the next coalition are only the citizens of Israel, and I will stand by that,” Eisenkot said.

When asked if his campaign had been in touch with the Trump administration, Eisenkot said that there had been a number of meetings that he did not want to elaborate on. He had asked, he said, that there not be interference in Israel’s elections.

Brian Romick, President and CEO of the Washington-based Democratic Majority for Israel, took a harder line against Trump’s statement. He called on the president to retract his endorsement, saying that it was “irresponsible and reckless.” The U.S.-Israel relationship, he wrote on X, has endured for 78 years based on shared interests and values, and not on any specific prime minister.

“Rhetoric like that is how a bipartisan, ironclad commitment becomes a political football and sends a message to our allies around the world that America’s support is unreliable.”

Netanyahu’s tight alliance with Trump has often been a cornerstone of his campaigns. Netanyahu has argued that his diplomatic leadership is vital to retaining the support of the U.S. government.

Trump, until Sunday, had held off on offering his clear backing. But in his Truth Social post, Trump wrote that Netanyahu was the kind of “Partner that the United States of America is demanding of Israel, a Country for which it has done so much.”

He ended by stressing, “Please let this Letter serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu in his upcoming Race for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Israel. BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” 

Netanyahu has campaigned heavily on the elimination of the Islamic Republic and its nuclear threat to Israel, particularly in the final weeks before the election. 

During an interview with Israel’s i24News on Saturday night, Netanyahu warned that if Eisenkot won, he would allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. As the head of the right-wing political bloc, Netanyahu used the slogan, “It’s right or nuclear.”

The elections come three years after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and triggered a war in Gaza. The conflict widened to include fighting between Israel and Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. 

Israel has made major military gains but has not eliminated the threats from the proxy groups or Iran. Israel and Iran exchanged direct attacks in April and October 2024. The United States joined Israel’s military campaign against Iran in June 2025, and the two countries launched a new round of strikes on Feb. 28, 2026.

Trump declared Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities “obliterated” after the June 2025 U.S. strikes. The U.S. and Israel, however, remain concerned that Tehran is rebuilding its nuclear program. 

Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich, a key part of Netanyahu’s coalition, said after Trump’s endorsement that the elections were a domestic Israeli affair, but stressed, “we would do well to listen to the president of the world’s greatest power, simply because he is right.” The right-wing bloc must continue to lead Israel and sustain Israeli-American cooperation to strengthen Israel’s security and future, Smotrich said in a post on X.

Trump’s endorsement came hours after Netanyahu appeared on another program, the Fox News show “Life, Liberty & Levin” hosted by commentator Mark Levin. Netanyahu spoke glowingly of Trump and the importance of his battle to destroy the Iranian threat, as the American public prepares to head to the polls for their own midterm elections on Nov. 3. In that race, Republicans are fighting to maintain control of the House and Senate.

The U.S. war with Iran, which has slowed the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, causing gasoline prices to rise, has been unpopular with American voters and is often cited as one of the reasons Republican politicians could lose their races to Democrats.

Netanyahu made the case on Fox News that the defeat of the Islamic Republic and the elimination of its nuclear program was critical to ensuring a safe American future. In the U.S., some lawmakers have argued that the war was unwise, particularly given the apparent absence of an exit strategy. 

If Iran can destroy Israel, it will conquer the Middle East, control world waterways and oil supplies and proceed to Europe and then “to the next target, which is you,” Netanyahu said, addressing a U.S. audience in his Fox News appearance.

The Islamic Republic wants to put nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles so it can target the U.S., Netanyahu claimed. “Every single city will be held hostage to the blackmail of these fanatics,” he warned. “So the only way you can deal with it is to, basically, to get rid of this regime.”

This will happen, he said, if he can work together with Trump during the next two years, which are the last two years of Trump’s term in office.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi wrote on X that war had not worked out so well for Israel and the U.S.

“Last time you wanted to ‘finish the job,’ Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too.”

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A report by the University of Pittsburgh’s working group on campus antisemitism has divided the campus, drawing criticism from the left for what they perceive as recommendations that would limit speech and from within the campus Jewish community for not adequately consulting with Jewish students and faculty. 

Pitt’s nine-member antisemitism working group is made up of many Jewish members, one of whom said her home was targeted after she was named to join the working group. But beyond those participants, the July report did not make any reference to soliciting the perspectives of the school’s estimated 1,400 Jewish students, nor any other members of the campus Jewish community beyond the group itself.

The report has resurfaced questions about the most effective methods for universities to address antisemitism for Jewish students three years on from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that prompted so much uproar across campuses. 

The school immediately agreed to take action on the group’s recommendations, which include strengthening its Title VI civil rights law compliance; giving “clear guidance” on free speech and protest policies; reviewing its bias training; and committing to new “Dialogue and Discourse” programming to facilitate constructive conversations around Jews and Israel. 

The issue of antisemitism at Pitt became particularly urgent after two Jewish students wearing kippahs were wounded in a violent off-campus attack in 2024 in an incident that preceded the announcement of the working group. The perpetrator, who wore a keffiyeh and had no apparent university affiliation, attacked the students with a bottle as they were on their way to a Hillel Shabbat dinner.

“We recognize that members of our Jewish community have experienced harm, and we take that seriously,” the university said in its press release following the report. The school’s statement went on to quote the Mishnah-era rabbinic sage Rabbi Tarfon: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.”

This was a heartening development for some of the committee members. But the finished report, as well as a strict confidentiality agreement agreed upon by its authors, have sparked local controversy. 

The university’s Jewish Studies program director, initially a member of the working group, didn’t sign the final document. 

And some non-Jewish campus faculty have criticized the report’s recommendations for, they claim, potentially threatening shared governance principles at the university. The university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the national faculty union that in 2024 ended its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts to allow members to boycott Israel, called for the report to be withdrawn. 

Blowback among a more progressive contingent of Jewish personnel at Pitt has led to the proposal of an alternative set of recommendations for tackling antisemitism, including creating a joint Kosher/Halal dining area and emphasizing teshuvah, or the Jewish tradition of repentance, “when a member of the university community does harm.” 

“We refuse to let anyone use the pain of antisemitism to dismantle academic freedom, free speech, and open engagement within our university community,” an open letter proposing the new plan reads.

Proponents of the second plan stressed the importance of soliciting perspectives from the broader Jewish community.

“If you’re going to really talk about this, you need to be really thinking more broadly about what does the rest of the community think,” Harry Hochheiser, a Jewish biomedical professor at Pitt and critic of the report who has helped push the alternative set of recommendations to the university, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The working group’s chair recently told JTA that the university had not explicitly instructed them to poll the campus Jewish community. 

“Our charge from the chancellor and provost was not to provide data as part of our report,” Kathleen Blee, a sociologist and the faculty chair of the Pitt working group, said in an interview. 

Instead, she said, the recommendations came out of discussions between the group members, whom she characterized as “a very diverse group with a very diverse set of opinions, which is representative of the university.”

Following this story’s initial publication, a Pitt spokesperson told JTA that some members of the working group had, in fact, “very intentionally” interviewed Jewish students as well as “members of the Pitt community who had experienced antisemitism” — information that the university’s representatives had not provided to JTA when asked prior to publication. One group member, the spokesperson said, was “focusing specifically on people she hadn’t previously met or spoken with.”

The spokesperson declined to provide details of how many students were interviewed, or on the interview methods, citing a strict confidentiality agreement governing the report’s authors.

Pitt’s report, and the response to it, comes as the question of how to respond to campus antisemitism feels less settled than ever. Some campuses are continuing to see fresh threats to Jewish safety: Recent flyers at the University of Oregon targeted that school’s Hillel director, by name, as an “enemy of the people.”

At the same time, the Trump administration’s aggressive response to the issue is starting to see pushback. A recent bipartisan report from the federally mandated U.S. Commission on Civil Rights criticizes the administration’s handling of campus antisemitism cases, as well as its withholding of documents related to the investigations. 

In response to a series of emailed questions from JTA, a Pitt spokesperson said the working group “drew on perspectives from across the University community rather than establishing a faculty-only process,” and that the school is “taking next steps on a number of the Working Group’s recommendations.”

The working group’s members include administrators, a student Hillel president — the lone student whose name appears on the final report — and a former director of Pittsburgh’s Jewish Community Relations Council. A second student who was initially appointed to the working group graduated prior to the report’s release. After this story’s publication, Pitt’s spokesperson told JTA that the second student’s perspectives also informed the report.

The Pitt spokesperson, Jared Stonesifer, also said the school “is in frequent and ongoing discussions with Jewish students about their experiences and their views on the campus environment, and student input was included on the Working Group that produced the report.”

Both Blee and Stonesifer framed the report as the first of many future steps to help Pitt confront campus antisemitism, and expressed hope that future steps would involve talking to Jewish students. One of the report’s recommendations is to “survey antisemitism in the campus environment regularly.”

Pitt’s undergraduate student body is home to around 1,400 Jews, just under 7% of the 21,000 total students, according to Hillel International estimates. The school is served by Hillel Jewish University Center, a local Hillel that also tends to Jewish students at other Pittsburgh colleges, as well as a dedicated Chabad house and a Jewish Studies program that grants an undergraduate certificate. 

Julia Jassey, co-founder and CEO of the national Jewish student advocacy group Jewish on Campus, offered a mixed assessment of the Pitt report and of the school’s promise to include students in future decisionmaking.

“Students should be a part of the process in the implementation, not looking at it as a postmortem,” Jassey told JTA, noting that student input is valuable because “no two campuses are exactly the same.”

Yet, Jassey added, “That doesn’t mean that the report itself is inherently not helpful.” 

A sensitive climate

That Pitt would commission a campus antisemitism report was, on its own, not unusual. 

In addition to the attack on the two Jewish students in 2024, Pitt’s Jewish community also continues to live in the shadow of the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life worship center, two miles from campus. Many of the university’s Jewish students and faculty have personal connections to it; Pitt has also hosted exhibits about the attack. A local memorial and museum commemorating the attack, now under construction, is scheduled to open to the public in 2028.

Both the 2024 attack and the Tree of Life massacre were part of “the context in which we were writing,” Blee said.

Blee is a longtime member and past president of Congregation Dor Hadash, the Reconstructionist synagogue located inside the Tree of Life building. One Dor Hadash congregant was among the 11 killed in the attack.

In addition, her research specialty is white nationalism and far-right antisemitism: When the perpetrators of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, were charged with violations of federal law, Blee was called to the stand as an expert witness.

So when her synagogue became the site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, Blee recalled, “my work and my Jewish life intersected in a really terrible way.” 

Blee’s 2025 appointment to chair the antisemitism working group, the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle reported, marked the moment the working group “begins to take shape.” 

The final report recommends the university form an “advisory group” on Jewish issues, and suggests that the local Hillel and Chabad-Lubavitch house, as well as the Pittsburgh Jewish federation, should be represented — a recommendation that spurred criticism from pro-Palestinian groups on campus who objected to the federation’s presence.

Additional members of the working group contacted by JTA for this story, including the former JCRC staffer, directed requests for comment to Blee or declined to comment. The director of the Hillel serving Pitt’s campus, after requesting questions from JTA by email, did not respond by press time.

In a statement accompanying the report’s publication, the working group’s vice chair, Jennifer Murshatashvili, wrote, “My goal was to contribute to outcomes that would improve life for everyone at Pitt, not only Jewish and Israeli members of our community.” 

Murshatashvili, a professor of Eurasian studies at Pitt, also told the university community that after she was named to the working group, “my home was targeted, and I was subjected to extensive online hatred and harassment.”

Even though the working group was not charged with gathering data, Blee told JTA, one of its instructions was to investigate “how effective” the university’s existing policies on antisemitism were after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel strained relationships on the campus. There was disagreement among the group about how seriously to take the encampments mounted by pro-Palestinian groups at Pitt, she said.

“Some people were more concerned about the encampments than others,” she told JTA. Drawing on her own research into the far right, she explained, “Everybody would agree that a Nazi rally is antisemitic. Not everyone on the committee, and not everyone at the university, and not everyone in the United States Jewish community, would agree that the totality of the protests after October 7 were antisemitic.” 

Blee declined to elaborate on how the working group determined policy effectiveness without gathering data. The confidentiality agreement brokered by the group members also prevented her from sharing more detail on their internal deliberations, she said.

“I can tell you that the committee gathered information that was needed,” she said. “But under that confidentiality agreement, I don’t want to go into exactly how that was done.”

Rachel Kranson, the director of Pitt’s Jewish Studies program, was announced as a member of the working group in 2025 but does not appear on its final report. Kranson declined to comment to JTA.

A flood of reports

Internal reports chaired by Jewish university faculty, officials and students have become part and parcel of the standard university response to campus antisemitism since Oct. 7. 

At public and elite private schools alike, the formation and release of an internal antisemitism report has been greeted with considerable fanfare — and no small amount of controversy, directed at everything from the political makeup of committee members to the data-gathering process and final recommendations.

Yet one consistency among such reports has been the presence of at least some polling of the experiences of that school’s Jewish students — which many Jewish groups and Jewish leaders have agreed is a crucial component of any successful campus antisemitism response. 

Committees at Harvard and Columbia, two schools figuring prominently into the national conversation on campus antisemitism, each conducted reports with more than 500 Jews on campus to inform their findings. Harvard’s final report runs 311 pages, while Columbia released multiple reports on the subject. 

Stanford’s antisemitism committee report, released in 2024, runs nearly 150 pages and was informed by listening sessions with more than 300 people, as well as additional one-on-one interviews with students, administrators, and representatives of national Jewish groups. 

The University of Washington and the University of California, Los Angeles, both public universities like Pitt, also surveyed and interviewed Jewish students to inform their own reports. The data itself can sometimes lead to controversy: A contingent of progressive Jews at UW criticized that school’s report for conducting focus groups with only a few dozen Jewish students, among other objections.

Pitt’s report — published two years after the administration committed to forming the working group — runs eight pages and includes no references to interviews or focus groups. It largely praised the university for, its authors said, already taking meaningful steps to combat antisemitism.

“I was surprised at the brevity of the report as the culmination of 1.5 years of work,” Andrea Goldschmidt, a psychiatry professor at Pitt and member of the Pitt Jewish Community affinity group, wrote in an open letter. “This stands in sharp contrast to the very lengthy and thorough reports I have seen come out of other universities.”

Goldschmidt also criticized the lack of “listening sessions or focus groups with the Jewish community during the course of the task force’s work.” She suggested that the lack of such conversations “reflects either that there was so much internal disagreement on the task force that the short report reflects the only areas of confluence among its members, or that the task force was somehow hobbled in its work before it even began.”

The Pitt Jewish Community affinity group’s president, Vicky Davide, echoed those concerns in comments to the student newspaper, telling the Pitt News that she and her colleagues had trouble accessing information about the group’s inner deliberations. They were “really disappointed” by the finished report, Davide, who leads engagement programs at Pitt, said.

Some suggested that, despite the criticism, the recommendations themselves could still be useful. Jassey claimed that Pitt’s recommendations generally enjoy a “consensus” among Jewish students more broadly, and expressed hope that students would be included in the implementation step. 

“I guess the question now is, what’s next,” she said.

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The new ad, which is running on Meta platforms, warns of “thousands of messages shared in a group chat,” in which “members muse about using gas chambers against political opponents.” Readouts play over images of text messages such as “I love Hitler,” uncovered in a Politico investigation last year of exchanges between leaders of Young Republican groups across the country on the Telegram app.

The ad also includes footage of Vice President JD Vance responding to the revelations by saying that “we’re not canceling kids because they do something stupid in a group chat.” 

A PBS News anchor then warns that “this is the speech of Republicans today who are going to be the leaders of the party tomorrow.”

“They’re voting. Are you?” the ad concludes. 

The JDCA ad blitz comes as each party is trying to paint the other as extreme – with Democrats accusing Republicans of associations with far-right racists and Republicans linking Democrats to anti-Israel candidates and officials, including Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Haile Soifer, CEO of the JDCA, said in a statement that the ad aims to remind “younger Jewish voters across the country of the GOP’s dangerous extremism ahead of the midterms.” 

“If young Republican leaders feel emboldened to praise Hitler in group chats, we shouldn’t be surprised Republicans under Trump echo, espouse, and amplify extreme rhetoric and antisemitic tropes,” Soifer added. 

The ads, which the JDCA says cost close to $300,000, are targeting Jewish voters in six key states – Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Iowa – and in every House district that the Cook Political Report deems a “toss-up,” a JDCA spokesperson said.

The JDCA has not endorsed El-Sayed. 

The ads are aimed at “reaching younger Jewish voters,” a JDCA spokesperson said. 

The text messages in the ads have been circulating since last October, when Politico unearthed a slew of chats from a Telegram channel. 

The Kansas Young Republican club and New York’s statewide Young Republicans organization were disbanded shortly after the exposé’s publication, but a New York City counterpart, the New York Young Republicans Club, remained operational. The club hosted a gala in December that welcomed white nationalists and antisemitic conspiracy theorists. 

Other cohorts that have since come under fire for similar such chats, including the University of Florida’s College Republicans chapter and the Florida International University College Republicans club. 

Meanwhile, a Young Republican whose “I love Hitler” text was featured in the exposé is now defending his actions. Denying that he is antisemitic, he wrote that he’s “a guy with a dark sense of humor who sometimes finds himself funnier than he actually is.”

He accused fellow Republicans of becoming “the party of pearl-clutching,” using a term describing theatrical reactions to a situation that isn’t truly scandalous. 

The vice president also denounced the phenomenon of pearl clutching, as noted in the soundbites of the JDCA ad. Vance, instead, described the text messages as “edgy, offensive jokes.”

The Young Republicans did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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But this week in Michigan, at the first-ever U.S.-Israel Innovation Exchange Summit, they all united with the common goal of promoting broader American business ties with Israel, in a political climate in which scaling back support for Israel is moving into the mainstream. 

By conference’s end, the attendees had signed a memorandum of understanding pledging “to establish a framework for cooperation, information sharing, relationship development, and coordinated activities designed to strengthen economic, innovation, investment, and commercial relationships between the United States and Israel.”

The collaboration made sense to the Israeli officials on hand.

“So many states want Israeli businesses to come to their territory, because they understand that will lead economic growth in their state,” Elad Strohmayer, consul general of Israel to the Midwest, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the summit on Wednesday. “That’s the win-win that we’re trying to promote.”

The U.S. is also a dream destination for many Israeli businesses, he said. “If you’re an Israeli entrepreneur and you want to expand, the market in Israel is limited. Where do you want to expand? Of course, it’s the United States.”

After decades of largely unfettered growth in the U.S.-Israel business relationship, cracks are forming in several places. As the Michigan conference was unfolding, New York City’s Jewish and pro-Israel comptroller, Mark Levine, announced he would stop buying Israel bonds, citing the country’s declining credit ratings following the war in Gaza. Anti-Zionist groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace, trumpeted the move as a victory for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, though Levine has denied that politics played a role.

Around 50 people had gathered from across the country and Israel for the summit, which organizers hope to become an annual event. In so doing, they seek to turn the tide on a trend that concerns many in the pro-Israel community: increased scrutiny, and protest, of American business ties to the country. 

“This is, I think, a long time in coming,” Mark Davidoff, CEO of the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator, told JTA at the summit.

Overlooking sweeping views of the city’s skyline, presenter Zineb Riboua, a research fellow with the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, boasted that “Israeli companies sustain tens of thousands of jobs on U.S. soil.” Other speakers were particularly bullish on Israeli involvement in data centers, which have attracted immense controversy in the United States over environmental concerns as well as a brewing backlash to the technology companies they sustain. Many in the room, though, saw data center investments as a prime business opportunity.

Davidoff said that the Paul E. Singer Foundation, run by the pro-Israel hedge fund manager, approached MIBA to spearhead a collaborative effort “to share best practices” on attracting Israeli business. 

The summit also has the backing of prominent Jewish and business leaders in Michigan and beyond. Gary Torgow, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, welcomed attendees to the conference held at the downtown Detroit headquarters of Huntington Bank, which he also chairs. 

Detroit’s federation was another sponsor, along with several local economic development groups, Israeli universities and Israel’s Midwest consulate general. Chaim Martin, Israel’s economic attaché to the U.S. and an appointee of far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, was also in attendance.

Mounting a stand for pro-Israel business interests took on an especially defiant character in Michigan. Here, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and other figures have activated a sizeable pro-Palestinian movement on multiple fronts — including the state’s economic interests. In the weeks leading up to the summit, MIBA itself had been the target of local protests. 

A campaign called “MI Money Out Of MIBA,” whose member organizations include the Detroit chapter of JVP, has objected to the more than $5 million in public funds the group has received since 2018 to help bring business to the state. The protesters have particularly objected to MIBA’s connections to the defense industry.

“Our state should not be using any public funds to subsidize business with a country carrying out a genocide, apartheid, and occupation,” a petition backed by the anti-MIBA campaign and signed by more than 2,400 people to date reads. The effort was amplified by Palestinian-American U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, a strident Israel critic, who posted to social media earlier this month that the group “should not be receiving a dime of public funds.”

“When small businesses, many of them Black- and women-owned, are struggling in our state, there never seems to be money for them, but Governor [Gretchen] Whitmer has funding for bombs that kill children,” Tlaib wrote. “These weapons have been used to commit genocide and murder the family members and loved ones of so many of our neighbors.”

Davidoff fought back against Tlaib’s accusation. He told the Detroit News this week that the accelerator-connected Israeli company in question doesn’t deal in weaponry. Instead, he said, the business works in “counter-drone technology designed to protect critical infrastructure, first responders, and U.S. service members against hostile drone threats.”

That strategy, to directly respond to critics and misinformation, proved controversial among the rest of the pro-Israel business crowd at the summit. During one session, panelists sang the virtues of flying “under the radar.” Asked by a moderator how many members of the summit publicize the location of their events ahead of time, only two hands in the room went up. 

In contrast, Davidoff hopes that, by being clearer about their investments and aims, pro-Israel business accelerators can set the record straight. MIBA does not invest directly in the Israeli government, he said, adding that it was important that others understand that.

“I think at some point, you don’t have a choice but to move a chess piece,” he told JTA. “Being silent too long is misinterpreted.” He declined to comment on the prospects for Michigan’s pro-Israel business community should El-Sayed win his Senate race.

Strohmayer, for his part, claimed during his session that “Israel is much stronger economically than it was before the war.” Partnerships with American interests are more about “fostering the relationship” than boosting Israel’s economy, he told the room — though his pitch wasn’t without a different kind of existential urgency. 

“We need, with the rise of antisemitism, to remind people that Israel is a valuable partner to the United States,” he said.

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Talarico, a Texas state representative, is running neck and neck against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a race whose results could affect which party controls the Senate this November. Israel has been one of many sources of disagreement among the candidates, who have sparred on issues ranging from affordability to immigration to reproductive rights.

“I believe that Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend its people,” the candidate said while fielding questions on Wednesday at a CNN town hall. “But I don’t believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has a right to wage war against civilians or use collective punishment or restrict aid to civilians.”

A Texas Politics Project poll, issued by the University of Texas this week, showed Paxton trailing Talarico by 3 percentage points, with 47% to the Democrat’s 50% and a margin of error of 3.34 percentage points. 

Talarico said in August that he supported stopping arms sales to the Netanyahu government and conditioning military aid “on ending the death and the destruction in Gaza and the West Bank.” He declined to call the crisis “genocide,” noting that the term is being litigated in the International Court of Justice. But he said he’d “use every bit of our nation’s diplomatic and financial leverage to protect the lives of Palestinians.”

When he was pressed further by Rabbi Holly Levin Cohn of Congregation Beth El Binah in Dallas during the town hall, Talarico stressed the importance of directing his criticisms “toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the Israeli people.” 

Addressing Israelis’ trauma, Talarico acknowledged that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel “was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.” 

Cohn pushed back on his comments regarding aid restrictions, noting Israeli support of humanitarian efforts and arguing that there’s much more going on in the country than the media may be projecting. 

Talarico told the rabbi he recognized that his “words carry weight” and gave her his word that he’s “going to continue to listen to all sides of this conflict.” He also expressed hope that “we can all come together to fight for a two-state solution where we have security for Israel and we have freedom and self-determination for Palestinians.” 

Talarico also gave a “shoutout” to a local rabbi, Neil Blumofe at Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin. “I spent my first year of my seminary studies learning the Hebrew scriptures from a local rabbi,” he said. “Shout out Rabbi Neil Blumofe!” Cohn grinned.

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Located in a Boston suburb, Brandeis opened in 1948 at a time when Jews and other minorities faced open discrimination at many American universities. Named for Justice Louis Brandeis — the first Jewish member of the U.S. Supreme Court — the university’s founders pioneered a nonsectarian, research-oriented institution focused on undergraduate education and grounded in Jewish values.  

Nearly 80 years later, Brandeis is building on its founding ideals with a bold new vision to help prepare its students for our increasingly global and digitally connected world. Last year, the university launched the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts, an initiative to combine the university’s renowned academic rigor with an unprecedented emphasis on career readiness.

“The liberal arts have historically been most effective when connected to the world beyond the classroom,” said Arthur Levine, the president of Brandeis. They “were only successful when they had one foot in the library, the accumulated knowledge of humanity and one foot in the street, the real world.”

Brandeis is focusing on the connection between academic learning and post-graduation achievement, emphasizing internships, job shadowing and “micro-credentials” — skills such as computer program mastery or project management proficiency that can be learned in a short time. These credentials will be part of a secondary transcript that Brandeis students will receive. 

Brandeis has also opened a Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts that focuses on the connections between academic learning and career preparation.

At the same time, Brandeis has joined a growing number of colleges and universities that are offering increased financial aid, offering free tuition for children of families making $75,000 or less and half scholarships for children of families making between $75,000 and $200,000. They’re also emphasizing cost transparency: In May, Brandeis launched Faye, an interactive cost calculator that provides prospective students a personalized net price based on their financial and academic information. 

“Today’s students need more than knowledge — they need the skills, experiences, and confidence to lead in a world we cannot yet predict,” Levine said. “We are advancing a new model. We need reinvention. And that’s exactly what Brandeis is establishing.”

As these three profiles of current students show, Brandeis undergraduates are taking advantage of the myriad opportunities on campus to challenge themselves academically, engage with Jewish ideas and prepare for career success. 

The Israel advocate and future lawyer

For Matthew Pfeffer, Brandeis turned out to be a case of mother knows best. When Pfeffer’s older sister and their mom visited the school when she was looking at colleges, his mother thought Brandeis would be a great choice for Matthew. 

At the time, Pfeffer was in eighth grade. But just a few years later, it turned out his mother was right: As a university that offers a warm Jewish community, rigorous but not cutthroat academics and solid preparation for the job market, Brandeis checked all of Pfeffer’s boxes.

After visiting campus three times, he applied early decision to the school and was overjoyed when he was accepted.

Now a senior, Pfeffer is just as happy with his decision. Indeed, if Brandeis had an official school cheerleader, Pfeffer might be that person. 

“The amount of support here is incredible, from professors to administrators,” he said. “I love it here.” 

Pfeffer is double-majoring in economics and art history, with minors in French and Judaic studies. A Long Island native, he’s also been involved in Brandeis’ Hillel, working as the organization’s Israel engagement coordinator, spearheading Israel advocacy as well as cultural and dialogue-building events. He also helped plan last year’s Israel Fest, which was held on campus for Israel Independence Day.

In addition to spending a semester in Paris, Pfeffer has done three summer internships in the New York City area while at Brandeis. At one of them, he interned at UJA-Federation of New York, where he worked in development and fundraising, learning about planned giving, as well as endowment trusts and estates. He also worked at a law firm in New York City, where he was supervised by a Brandeis alum.

These experiences have helped lay the foundation for his career path: He plans to work for two years — in the client services, legal or Jewish nonprofit industries — before going to law school.

“I wanted to be set up for career success,” Pfeffer said. “Brandeis wants you to succeed.”

The Southerner who’s exploring her Jewish identity

After growing up in a small Jewish community in Jackson, Miss., Lauren Balfour found the smorgasbord of Jewish experiences available at Brandeis to be eye-opening. 

“I was like a kid in a candy store,” Balfour said.

She dove right into Jewish life on campus. As a first-year student, she was involved in the Reform Jewish group, where she served on the board and planned social events. 

Today, as a junior, Balfour is the vice president of Masorti, the Conservative egalitarian group on campus. She is also a lifeguard at a local JCC and works at a local Sunday school teaching third-graders.

To prepare for her role as a Sunday school teacher, participated in the Mandel Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship Program, a Brandeis program that offers professional learning, mentorship and a stipend to undergraduates working in supplemental Jewish education.  

The program “helped me catch up on my Jewish education and fill in the gaps,” she said. 

And despite moving hundreds of miles away, studying at Brandeis helped Balfour connect with her Southern roots. The summer before her sophomore year, she interned at the Institute for Southern Jewish Life, headquartered in her hometown. During the internship — for which she received a stipend from Brandeis’ World of Work fellowship — she did archival research on Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement to help create a curriculum for Hebrew schools.

Balfour’s classes had an impact on her identity, too. One of her favorite classes she took at Brandeis is called “Religious Education in America.” Taught by Professor Ziva Hassenfeld, the course helped her understand her Jewish upbringing in the South and the historic complexities and pain of the Jewish experience there.

Involvement in Jewish life and learning isn’t the only thing keeping Balfour busy on campus. A biology major, she’s a teaching assistant for a biology lab course. She’s also on Brandeis’ swimming and diving team, which means she’s at the pool early in the morning six days a week. 

As for the future, Balfour is considering medical school or another medicine-related career. She’s gained experience in the medical field while at Brandeis — she shadowed doctors at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is getting certified to be an EMT. 

“Brandeis creates an environment where I’m able to do it all,” Balfour said.

The entrepreneur who’s also a film major

Allison Fuller is the epitome of an undergraduate student focused on career readiness, even if she’s not yet sure what path she wants to take. When she graduates, she hopes to move to New York to work in the film and TV industry, either in production management or marketing.  

Even before enrolling at Brandeis, the Long Island native did a gap year studying at a yeshiva in Jerusalem. While there, Fuller, now a junior, also did some freelance work for FEED, a video production company based in New Jersey. 

The summer after her first year at Brandeis, Fuller worked in digital marketing for the ROC Nation management company. This past summer, she worked as a management intern for Zero Gravity Media, an emerging film and TV production company, and she’s also been a social media manager for Here I Am, Israeli activist Shai Davidai’s podcast.

For Fuller, who is double-majoring in business (with a concentration in marketing) and film/TV/media, part of Brandeis’ attraction was being able to study “what I love while also doing a practical thing,” she said. 

“If you only do one major here, you’re out of the ordinary,” Fuller added. “Brandeis makes it easy to do that.”

In addition to her work experiences, Fuller is a teaching assistant for a financial accounting class, and she said that her classes are giving her practical skills, too. For example, a marketing class taught her how to pitch ideas to potential clients and how to design a marketing plan.

“I’ve used those skills in real life,” she said.

Fuller also has an entrepreneurial streak — she and a friend are working on an app called Bento that is focused on helping students who eat at college dining halls make the best choices for their nutrition goals. They launched the app at Brandeis and hope to expand to other schools soon.

A Long Island native, Fuller is also part of Brandeis’ Orthodox minyan, which is just one of many options at a university with a large Jewish student population. “You don’t have to be friends with the only five Jews on campus,” Fuller said.

Brandeis provided Fuller and other university students with a career-related experience last winter, when, over the February break, they visited Bloomingdale’s and Horizon Media in New York City as part of a Brandeis-sponsored networking event.

“That’s something out of the box that they thought of,” she said. 

These kinds of ideas make her feel happy about her college choice.“Brandeis cares about my future,” Fuller said. “It’s nice to feel that my school is supporting that.”

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Trump’s greeting, which was prerecorded, was met with applause from the estimated 500 Jews who had come to Congregation Shaarey Zedek in the Detroit suburbs amid a pivotal Senate election in the state that has prompted deep anxieties among its Jewish population.

The president told the crowd that Terrell “speaks for our country” and “speaks for a lot of people, a lot of people that love Israel but really, more than anything else, they don’t want to see false and inaccurate statements made about this horrible subject of antisemitism.” 

The event was billed as the first stop on Terrell’s “American Tour Against Hate” and was staged by the U.S. Justice Department, while also serving as a fundraiser and booster for ZOA. Attendees were handed donation forms for ZOA’s Michigan chapter. The organization’s national director, Mort Klein, is close with Terrell and said he intends to participate in all future stops on the tour.

Several other Trump officials, including Terrell and U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, would address the crowd over the course of the night to emphasize the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism. 

A group of progressive-leaning Michigan Jewish leaders denounced the event Wednesday, saying in a statement that it “risks fueling antisemitism and dividing the Jewish community.” 

The statement accused the administration of trying to “distract” from its own “authoritarian policies,” called ZOA “a far-right radical group” and criticized the Trump administration for its campus antisemitism policies, including freezing university funding and “kidnap[ping] university students.” 

The Trump administration has been criticized for its handling of some anti-Israel campus protesters, including Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was grabbed and detained by masked federal agents last year after co-authoring an op-ed calling to boycott Israel. A judge later ordered Ozturk’s release.

“Trump’s cynical use of antisemitism as a tool for stifling his opponents puts all Jews in danger, ” Rabbi Josh Whinston, of Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor, said in the statement. “We should all be uniting to fight the real issues of antisemitism rather than using it to score political points and stifle dissent.”

Michigan Democratic state Rep. Samantha Steckloff, who represents Shaarey Zedek’s district, said in the same release that the administration was taking advantage of “an extremely challenging time for the Metro Detroit Jewish community.” 

“We must continue building bridges with our neighbors to create safer communities, not put up walls,” Steckloff said. “This administration has continued to espouse divisive rhetoric that pits communities against one another and deepens the challenges we face. All of us deserve to feel safe.”

Kobi Erez, director of ZOA’s Michigan chapter, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the event that the evening was designed to be “nonpartisan.” 

“It’s a tour against hate, and we can’t choose one side,” Erez said. “We have to fight antisemitism and hate for all.”

He argued that the event was not a ZOA fundraiser in his view, saying that it was free to attend and that the organization was asking for donations mainly to cover security costs. 

He also said that the organization had been in touch with the head rabbi of Shaarey Zedek, Aaron Star, to address any concerns about the nature of the event so close to Election Day. “We had to promise Rabbi Starr that we were going to make a disclaimer that Shaarey Zedek doesn’t necessarily represent all the views of the speakers.” 

Terrell did make that disclaimer, midway through the two-hour event.

Starr told JTA that there had been a back-and-forth with ZOA over the Trump video due to “a string of miscommunications and some last minute changes over the course of the day.”

Polls have shown that a majority of Jews nationwide have opposed Trump and his policies since his entry on the political scene. Yet recent fears about growing antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on the left have also alienated many Jews from the Democratic Party. 

Some Michigan Jews are preparing to vote for a Republican for the first time over their objections to the Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, a harsh critic of Israel whose prior remarks on Jewish safety have also upset many in the community.

Starr and Whinston, the rabbi who signed the letter denouncing the entire Trump event, are the co-organizers of Nonnegotiable Michigan, a petition urging El-Sayed to agree with a series of statements affirming Jews and Israel.

El-Sayed’s name was not uttered from the stage Wednesday, but the Trump officials on hand took many opportunities to praise their boss’s work on Jewish issues.

“This administration, unlike any other administration, is committed 24/7 to fighting antisemitism,” Terrell told the crowd.

The Conservative synagogue was billed online as a “co-sponsor” of the event along with Frankel Jewish Academy, a local Jewish day school. But Starr told JTA, “It wasn’t our event.” 

Midway through the program, Terrell stated that Shaarey Zedek “is not sponsoring this event,” adding, “The words of the speakers, mine and others, are theirs alone and are not a representation of this great religious institution.” 

Terrell stated that DOJ and ZOA were the sponsors — itself an unusual arrangement between a federal agency and an activist group. Klein told JTA following the event that Terrell had contacted his organization to help organize the tour, and that ZOA “really did all the work.” 

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been criticized for appearing at campaign events and who recently penned a memo loosening restrictions on political activism for senior federal officials, also addressed the crowd in a prerecorded video. 

“In recent years, we have seen a disturbing rise in antisemitic rhetoric and acts of hatred against fellow citizens,” Blanche said. “Hate has no place in America, and this Department of Justice remains committed to confronting it wherever it appears.”

Initially billed as a conversation between Terrell and Klein, the event functioned more as an informational session for Jews to learn how their government is responding to antisemitism. 

Flyers from the FBI instructed attendees on how to respond to various categories of threat. A roundtable of local and federal law enforcement officials, led by the FBI Detroit office field director who had responded to the terror attack on Temple Israel in the state in March, sought to assure the Jews in attendance that they had their backs. 

Terrell also unveiled a just-launched “American Tour Against Hate” app that, he said, would enable its users to take a pledge to fight antisemitism and “report” antisemitic incidents. It wasn’t immediately clear where the reports would be filed to. The Combat Antisemitism Movement, another activist group, was credited for the app on its download page.

Still, politics seeped in, and much of the crowd seemed happy about it. Klein attacked another anti-Zionist politician, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, by name in his remarks. He also drew enthusiastic cheers for calling to “fight the open-border policies that we had in the past, which allows unvetted people from countries whose governments and populations overwhelmingly hate Jews.” 

Other Jewish speakers alluded to El-Sayed — particularly his initial reaction to the Temple Israel attack, which many Jews believed was equating the attack with Israel’s war in Lebanon. The candidate has since apologized for his initial remarks. 

“No conflict overseas can ever justify trying to murder innocent people here at home, and no political candidate should ever excuse terror and hate,” Erez told the crowd. 

Later, during an interfaith roundtable, Rabbi Shneur Silberberg of the Bais Chabad Torah Center in West Bloomfield leveled a more direct accusation. 

“If you respond differently to a terror attack against a group of Jewish schoolchildren, and your response is any different than it would be to any other group of children, then that’s antisemitism,” Silberberg told the crowd.

During the program, Terrell inveighed against antisemitism with a showman’s flair, often to the delight of the audience, some of whom shouted his name. “News flash: I’m not Jewish. Who cares?” Terrell asked the crowd early on, to laughter and applause. He donned a red hat in the style of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” merchandise, with the lettering instead spelling, “American Tour Against Hate.”

He went after college campuses and K-12 teachers he said were “indoctrinated,” and repeatedly denounced what he called “the Jewish tax,” which he defined as the high security costs the community bears in order to safeguard its houses of worship and other institutions. 

“For you to enjoy your right to walk down the street, to enjoy your synagogue, to go to a Jewish community center, to have your kids walk through their school, you have to pay extra security, millions of dollars,” Terrell said. “That’s going to stop.”

Terrell and Klein plan to meet with the head of Detroit’s Jewish federation as well as with rabbis at Temple Israel during their stay in town, Klein told JTA.

Erez said that Terrell’s visit to Michigan also included meetings with the mother of a Temple Israel preschooler who had been in the building during the March attack, as well as with Jewish college students who had experienced antisemitism. Terrell also met with leaders of Frankel Jewish Academy, one of the event’s co-sponsors, as well as the local Jewish Community Center, he said.

A longtime supporter of Trump, Klein said he believed the event demonstrated that more Jews were warming to the president as concerns about antisemitism have grown.

“I think more Jews certainly are more supportive of Trump than they were before, because they see what he’s done,” he said.

Sharon Matlen, a resident of nearby Farmington Hills who grew up in Skokie, Illinois, during the infamous neo-Nazi march of the 1970s, told JTA she had come to the event because “I’m very interested in antisemitism.”

“I really got a lot out of it,” Matlen said, of the talk. She spoke highly of Terrell: “I think he has our back. I’m glad that he’s there for us.”

Of El-Sayed, she said, “I pray he does not get in.”

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Somerville’s Legislative Matters Committee debated the issue on Tuesday night after its City Council voted in November 2025 to find a way within a year to implement ballot Question 3 on Israel divestment approved earlier that month by 55.7% of ballots.

Councilor Lance Davis spent much of the meeting questioning Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen, who is Jewish, on the criteria he is developing by which to evaluate the companies that would be included in the procurement and investment ban. 

That criteria is listed in a draft ordinance that deals only with companies the municipality directly invests in or does business with. It does not include subcontractors nor sole proprietors, defined as a “natural person conducting business in their own name or under a trade name,” without forming a legal entity (like a corporation) for the purpose of their business. 

Ewen-Campen told the legislative committee his intention for the restricted entities would be those that demonstrated “direct, ongoing and knowing activity” in international humanitarian crimes, including in Israel and Palestine. “The intent is companies that play a role in the ongoing violations of international humanitarian law, apartheid, genocide, et cetera,” Ewen-Campen explained.

At present, the ordinance bases the criteria for implicated entities on those set out by the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry and its data base of Israeli businesses, as well as the UNHRC’s database maintained by the Quaker organization the American Friends Service Committee’s Investigate Project.

Ewen-Campen explained that the criteria would encompass companies that make weaponry, components of weaponry, components of militarized demolition equipment and “components of the surveillance state in illegal occupied territory.” 

Councilor Kristen Strezo, who is also Jewish, pointed out that some of the companies offered products to civilians and were not connected to any military use, such as the skincare brand Ahava, and Airbnb, which is a global rental service. Strezo expressed concern regarding the financial impact on the city if they are barred from contracting with similar companies. 

City Solicitor Cindy Amara also expressed hesitation over the legal implications of the lists, wondering how the committee planned to finalize the criteria. 

The committee also discussed the potential financial impact should the ordinance pass, including potential legal action against the city should the measure be found illegal.  

Ewen-Campen said that he was willing to accept the potential harm of the ordinance given the moral weight it held. “My personal convictions around illegal military occupations is that we should not be contracting with companies that facilitate them, support them, give them legitimacy in the eyes of the world,” he said. “I’m not saying there will be no cost to the city in any way, shape or form. I’m saying I personally believe it’s worth it.”

Strezo stressed several times that she believed the ordinance was irresponsible and discriminatory. “I wish to remind our colleagues and everyone here that many Jews in this community feel that they do not feel safe,” she said, arguing that the ordinance “does not align with the values of everyone feeling welcome here.”

Ewen-Campen, who, with Councilor Ben Wheeler, originally drafted the language for the ordinance, agreed to make further amendments to the ordinance before it will return to the committee on Oct. 27, when it will likely come to a vote. 

For an ordinance to be adopted, it must pass in the full City Council and be approved by the mayor, who also has the option to veto and return the ordinance to council. The veto can be overridden if 8 members of the council vote on the action.

During his campaign, Mayor Jake Wilson did not endorse Question 3, the ballot measure which prompted the writing of the ordinance. He could not be reached for comment, but Deputy Director of Communications Grace Munns wrote in an email that the mayor “is closely following the City Council process, and as with any proposed ordinance, would do a thorough review with staff of the legislation.” 

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Hoaxers called in threats two minutes apart on Oct. 9 to two Brooklyn yeshivas, the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School and the United Talmudical Academy of Williamsburg, News 12 reported. Police later determined the threats were hoaxes.

On Oct. 12, the Donna Klein Jewish Academy preschool in Boca Raton, Florida, was evacuated following a bomb threat. The Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County said in a Facebook post that the threat call was fraudulent.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Jewish Democrat, expressed relief that his constituents were safe. “Let’s be clear: there is no cause in the world that’s served by scaring children. If your grievance leads you to a K–12 school, you’re the problem,” he said on X.

On the same day, the Milken Community School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles – a private Jewish middle and high school – also went into lockdown after police reported receiving a call about an active shooter, but later clarified the security concern was a bomb threat. 

“My son was in math class when the bomb threat was called in,” said a parent of a Milken student, who asked not to be named. 

“They had to pull down the shades on the classroom door and windows, lock the door, turn off the lights, and sit under their desks,” the parent said.  . “It sounds pretty intense to have to prepare the classroom like that. He was scared and nervous.”

The Los Angeles Police Department has since confirmed the threat to Milken was a hoax, according to the local ABC affiliate, and an investigation into the call is ongoing. 

A series of bomb hoaxes called into Jewish institutions in 2017 terrorized the Jewish communities in the United States and elsewhere. Police in Israel arrested an Israeli-American youth. He was later sentenced to prison.

Experts who consult on security with Jewish organizations said that hoaxes are potent disruptions and should not be downplayed, even once the targets learn that the threat was not real.

“We should not look at these incidents in isolation and base our assessment on that,” Richard Priem, CEO of Community Security Service, said in an interview. “We’re living in an era where, over the last 18 months, we’ve had a number of serious attacks on the Jewish community in the United States and abroad. That should warrant all of us working and thinking about this to take the threats against our community seriously.” 

The fear that bomb threats generate constitutes an act of intimidation, Priem said. “It’s very easy to make a bomb threat, and they don’t necessarily indicate advance preparation,” he said. “We have seen a lot of bomb threats over the years that were meant to intimidate, harm and dissuade Jewish community members from participating in Jewish life.”

Michael Masters, the national director and CEO of Secure Community Network, said training was key, even when the bomb threats turn out to be false.

“We tend to see these bomb threats come in waves,” he said in an interview. “The difference in how these threats are responded to usually comes down to the training, the preparation and the plan that the institution puts in place. It’s so important for institutions to have a plan, to review it, and to implement it prior to these calls coming in,” added Masters.

Preemptive training and security measures are critical to ensuring Jewish schools remain safe, said Masters. “It’s absolutely vital that we work to be prepared,” he said. “This week, we read the parsha of the story of Noah. When did Noah build the ark? Before it began to rain.”

The Milken parent was not concerned about their child’s safety at school, even in the wake of the bomb threat. “Jewish schools tend to have higher-caliber security than at non-Jewish schools, so I’m not worried,” the parent said. “I don’t feel like it’s unsafe for my son to go there. He had no problem going to school yesterday or today.”

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Valdez, who uses they/them pronouns, has Mexican roots on both sides of the family and has been “physically brown since birth,” but latinidad and Chicano identity weren’t an active part of family life. Their father worked in the Navy, which according to Valdez’ was the biggest barrier between them and the Jewish world. They grew up with Ashkenazi traditions, even when it meant driving an hour from the base where they were stationed at the time to the synagogue. 

Valdez went to 10 different schools between preschool and senior year of high school. In many, they often felt excluded.

“The kids at school who were also from Mexican families were not Jewish, and at some points in my adolescence, told me I wasn’t actually Mexican because I was Jewish and not Catholic,” Valdez told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “At times, my identity as Mexican felt like a source of shame for my family, Valdez said.” 

The family would occasionally spend Christmas Day in Bakersfield, California with Valdez’s abuelo, or grandfather, where he would “cook the best mole ever made, including fresh tortillas.” But other than that they did not participate in Mexican culture. 

Valdez heard about Jewtina y Co, a national community of Latin Jews. After moving to Los Angeles two years ago, they joined the educators’ cohort of Jewtina’s Puentes national leadership fellowship, which has alumni across six cohorts, according to Violeta Stolpen, Jewtina y Co’s Director of Operations.

“We were given the time and space to sit with that miracle of an experience, to be in a room with each other talking about the loneliness of growing up a Latin Jew, and being grateful that, thanks to the Jewtina, we weren’t alone anymore,” Valdez told JTA. 

Jewtina y Co. was founded during Latin Heritage month in 2019 by Analucía Lopezrevoredo, a Peruvian Jew who moved to California with her family when she was five years old. A sociologist by training, she grew up surrounded by vibrant Latin and Jewish communities and began calling herself a Jewtina early on. 

The idea of Jewtina crystallized in 2018, when she applied for a fellowship focused on global Jewry. “It started with a question I had carried on since childhood: Where do people like me get to be whole?” she told JTA. It is a way for Jewish immigrants from Latin America in the U.S. to express their conflicting and overlapping Jewish and Latinos identities publicly. Its members are mixed-couple children of Latin American descent, Latin immigrants who converted to Judaism, Latin Americans who were adopted into an American family and many more shades of Jewish Latinhood. 

Lopezrevoredo calls Jewtina part of a Jewish and Latin diaspora, which comes with its own identity challenges. Latino communities in the U.S. are heavily Catholic, so there is little space in these immigrant enclaves for members of other faiths. Latino Jews feel excluded from Mexican, Peruvian and other communities.  But there is also discrimination of Jewtina members from Latin American Jewish communities.  U.S.-based demographic categories, such as Latinos and Jews, can create exclusionary identities that do not fit neatly with complex migration paths.

“There is no single Latin Jewish experience” Loperevoredo said, “just as there is no single Jewish one. But one experience we hear again and again is the feeling of having to explain oneself.” 

No national study has measured the size or demographic makeup of the Latin Jewish community in the U.S., according to Jewtina y Co.’s Director of Research and Evaluation David McCarty-Caplan, who holds a Ph.D. in social work. The closest estimate comes from “American Jewish Population Estimates 2020: Summary & Highlights,” a 2021 report by Brandeis University’s American Jewish Population Project. It found that about 6% of Jewish adults in the U.S. identify as Hispanic out of 7.6 million. 

To make Latin Jews more visible and better understood, McCarty-Caplan is developing a national study of Latin Jewish community and identity in the U.S. The partners are Brandeis University’s Initiative on the Jews of the Americas and its Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, along with Universidad Hebraica in Mexico. He said it will be the first study of its kind.

McCarty-Caplan says he has felt deeply disconnected from his Latino origins and out of place in predominantly white Jewish spaces. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and adopted at 3 months old by a white American Jewish family. In 2019, he met founder Lopezrevoredo in a Jews of Color cohort of Bend the Arc’s Selah Leadership Fellowship. That’s where he learned about her work with Jewtina y Co.

“It felt like meeting her, and finding Jewtina was the first time I felt fully seen and valued as a Latino, a Jew, and an adoptee all at once,” he said.

Members of Jewtina y Co. are often a mixture of identities. Founding member and Director of Education Kimberly Dueñas’ mother is an Ashkenazi Jew born and raised in Los Angeles, with family roots in Ukraine and Poland. Her father was born and raised in El Salvador, in a rural farming community. Through his side, she has converso Sephardic Jewish — a convert to Christianity or a descendant thereof — and Indigenous Mesoamerican ancestry. He met Dueñas’ mother at a Passover seder in Orange County,  California where Dueñas grew up.

“I know personally what it’s like to feel like I have to choose which identity to lead with,” said Dueñas who facilitates Puentes.. 

According to director of operations Stolpen, the organization ran 58 programs in 2025, 43 in person and 15 virtual, with 2367 participants. So far in 2026, it has held 47 programs and events with more than 1,200 participants, according to McCarty-Caplan. 

The organization faces a harder climate than the one it was born into. When Jewtina y Co. emerged in 2019 and 2020, director of research McCarty-Caplan said there was a surge of support for groups working with multiracial Jewish communities. That support has since receded since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. Since “the events in Israel-Palestine on Oct. 7th, significant attention and resources have moved away from supporting organizations like Jewtina,” he added, referring to the war launched in 2023 after Hamas raided communities inside Israel.

Oct. 7 also changed things for Jewtina y Co.’s members. “Many Latin Jews have encountered antisemitism in spaces where they once felt cultural or political kinship,” Lopezrevoredo said, “while also entering Jewish spaces where conversations about race, immigration, Latin America or the diversity of Jewish experience can feel constrained.”

Dueñas said one of the organization’s biggest challenges is responding in real time to what its community needs. “We are navigating fear around immigration, ICE raids and deportation within our Latino communities, while also experiencing the rise of antisemitism and the ripple effects of the war in Israel and Palestine within our Jewish communities,” she told JTA. 

Jewtina y Co. has responded with spaces for processing, healing and spiritual support, along with mental health resources, rabbinic wisdom and Know Your Rights programming. 

“A Jewish family can carry memories of Poland, Syria, Turkey, or Morocco, become deeply Argentine, Mexican, Brazilian, or Cuban over generations, and later become Latino in the United States.” Lopezrevoredo said ”None of those layers cancels the others.”

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