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In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — How many times should an alleged synagogue shooter’s name be mentioned in a news story about his trial, now beginning after more than four years?
For the Pittsburgh Union Press last month, the answer was seven. For the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, it was an uneasy five, in a departure from its usual answer of zero — a number chosen out of deference to a community devastated by the shooting.
The slight difference was the only discrepancy between one set of stories published by the two news organizations covering the trial of Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jews in their synagogue here in 2018.
The anomaly offers a window into an unusual partnership between the two publications — the city’s Jewish paper and the news site established by striking staffers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — born in February when it became clear that the trial would last months.
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle editor Toby Tabachnick was dreading the trial coverage, with a staff of just three on the editorial side: herself and two reporters, David Rullo and Adam Reinherz.
“I started getting really nervous. Like, how are we going to do this?” Tabachnick said on the eve of the trial, speaking at the federal courthouse where jury selection would soon begin. “Our regular reporters could have been here. But it would have been extremely taxing, difficult and emotional for us, because we’re so ingrained in the community too.”
Plus, she added, “In addition to this trial, which is going to be every day for three months, we’re covering the synagogues, events and the holidays, the lectures, we still have a regular community newspaper to put out.”
Tabachnick knew Andrew “Goldy” Goldstein, one of the Post-Gazette’s team that picked up a Pulitzer for their coverage of the massacre, from his time as a Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle intern. She also knew he was on strike and wondered whether he could use the extra freelance opportunity.
Instead, Goldstein immediately offered up a better idea: Join with the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strike paper, in a joint reporting project, organized in part through the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, an incubator for local journalism. (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is raising funds for the coverage.)
Working together just made sense, Goldstein said. The Chronicle was deeply resourced and credible in the Jewish community, and the Progress had on board Torsten Ove, a local legend.
From left to right, Bob Batz of the Pittsburgh Union Progress, Toby Tabachnick of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and Andrew Goldstein of the Progress pose in the Joseph Weis Jr. Courthouse in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
“We have the all-star federal courts reporter in Torsten and we have a lot of really great journalists who love Pittsburgh, love this community, and we’ll do our best to cover it,” Goldstein said, noting that the Chronicle would also have access to the Progress’s photographers. “But the Chronicle brings something different entirely to the table, which is, they’re so deeply sourced in the Pittsburgh Jewish community, and they have such an interest in this trial in particular.”
Newsroom collaborations have become more frequent in recent years as publications realize they can expand their impact and audience by working together. But while there are a growing number of relationships between local and national publications and between daily and investigative outlets, ties between mainstream newsrooms and community or ethnic media are less common.
S. Mitra Kalita, the founder and director of URL Media, a network of Black and Brown community news outlets that share content and revenue, said the value in such partnerships was not just in delivering relief as media staffs shrink, but also in sensitizing mainstream media to minority sensibilities.
“Talking about who [the ethnic media outlet is] serving and why we’re doing it this way — the spirit of real collaboration is a bit of that give and take,” she said. “We make mainstream media way better because it starts to infuse mainstream media with aspects of community and thus redefine the mainstream.”
The residual trauma of the massacre in the Pittsburgh collaboration made it all the more important for the mainstream reporters to be sensitive to the nuances that the Jewish media was bringing, she said.
“Especially a story like this one, which was such an attack on a community — a community that was singled out for their sheer existence, the strategy cannot be ‘let’s just work in parallel,” Kalita said. “It’s not going to work. It has to be kind of a cross-pollination and a real collaboration.”
That’s exactly what is happening, according to the reporters and editors involved in the project, with communication easy between each publication’s editor and expertise flowing in both directions.
Ove a denizen of the Joseph F. Weis Jr. Courthouse for so long that he can tell stories about a sizable stretch of the portraits of judges that line its corridor walls; he may be the only court reporter to seek an interview with a judge after his death, to ask him why he was haunting the place. (The judge never showed, but his widow was less than surprised to hear that he was still working.)
He led a passel of Chronicle and Progress staffers through the warren-like courthouse on the Friday before the trial, handily impressing them with his intimacy with the building — he knew the provenance of the paintings in each courtroom — and its staff. Soo Song, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the prosecution team, smiled and nodded as she passed.
Torsten Ove, left, of the Pittsburgh Union Progress and Adam Reinherz of the PIttsburgh Jewish Chronicle confer on the first day of jury selection for the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial, April 24, 2023. (Toby Tabachnick)
Ove showed the reporters how to access court records for free, and while they stood around him at one of the computer terminals, the teams’ different emphases emerged: Ove predicted that jury selection, which started last week and is expected to last as long as three weeks, would not be a news generator, because in his experience, it rarely has been.
Reinherz and Tabachnick, attuned to reporting on faith communities, were not so sure: Reinherz wondered whether believing Catholics, who reject the death penalty, would be eliminated, and Tabachnick wondered whether defense attorneys would seek to keep Jews off the jury — and how they would go about doing that.
Reinherz ended up covering the first day of jury selection. “Local and national reporters decided the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle should have one seat during the initial session of day one,” Reinherz explained in a story that appeared on both news sites. He noted that the first member of the public to enter the courtroom was Daniel Leger, one of two survivors of the attack.
Working together across platforms was odd, said Bob Batz Jr., the Progress’s interim editor, but he could get used to it.
“This is uncharted territory for someone like me, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and we don’t, you know, we don’t collaborate,” he said.
“We compete!” Tabachnick interjected.
“What we’re doing is not common, and it’s not going to be easy,” Batz said. “Surely, we’re going to tick each other off about something or somebody is going to put the wrong word in or there’s a million things that can go wrong, but the breaking of ground where you’re actually working together, it just makes sense in so many ways on this story. We’re really trying to serve the community.”
Tabachnick said she saw added value in keeping journalists she admired in the limelight while they are on strike. Journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went on strike back in October over wages and working conditions, in a crescendo of mounting tensions between the paper’s longtime owners and the staff that contributed to a newsroom exodus even in 2018, when the paper won a Pulitzer for its synagogue shooting coverage. The strike is now one of the longest in journalism history, and the staffers contributing to the Pittsburgh Union Progress are doing so despite earning well below than their regular salaries.
“I feel good about getting their names, their publication’s name out,” Tabachnick said.
Each story is running in essentially identical form on both publications’ websites, with a line crediting their collaboration. Tabachnick and Batz had a brief and friendly email exchange before each clicked “publish” on their story about debate among victims’ families about the appropriateness of the death penalty.
The Chronicle is minimizing appearances of the name of the accused killer, out of sensitivity to readers who may want to see their community members centered rather than their aggressor. Some researchers and law enforcement officials have also called on journalists not to print mass shooters’ names and photographs, citing evidence that doing so may contribute to their glorification and even copycat crimes.
Batz says he totally gets the Chronicle’s thinking, despite making a different choice in his newsroom.
“We’re still feeling our way, we’re still figuring this out,” Batz said. “They don’t name the defendant in their story, and they haven’t. And our guy Torsten who’s an all-star courts reporter, he’s going to use the guy’s name. And then in real time going back and forth on email and text we came up with his solution and that story was on both websites in minutes and it was really kind of cool.”
Tabachnick picked up the account of the previous night’s collaboration as if she’d been working across a desk from Batz for decades instead of online since February.
“The solution was that I realized that with the trial starting, it really didn’t make sense not to use his name at all anymore that we really needed to as a news organization,” she said. “But that didn’t mean we had to overuse his name. And I’m not saying Torsten overused his name. He used it as much as he needed to use it in terms of style, but I took out a few of them and replaced it with ‘the defendant’ and we were all happy.”
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Netherlands reverses course, will sit out Eurovision again over Israel’s participation
(JTA) — The Netherlands is withdrawing from the Eurovision Song Contest, reversing an announcement that it would join the event and citing “sensitivity” over Israel’s participation.
The Dutch organization that oversees public broadcasting, the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, or NPO, said on Tuesday that it failed to find sufficient support from broadcasters to ensure a Dutch artist could go to Eurovision.
“We have known for some time that Israel’s participation elicits various reactions in society and causes discussion and division,” said Jurre Bosman, NPO’s media director. “This is also the case among broadcasters and staff, and we understand that sensitivity.”
NPO said last month that the Netherlands would reenter Eurovision in 2027, when the world’s largest music competition will take place in Burgas, Bulgaria. The Netherlands boycotted the contest in May 2026, alongside Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia, because of Israel’s inclusion.
NPO’s pledge to rejoin Eurovision overrode a decision by the Dutch network Avrotros, which usually oversees the Dutch entry. Avrotros withdrew from Eurovision in August, saying the event “can no longer be considered neutral” with Israel taking part amid “the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and the ongoing restrictions on press freedom.”
Initially, NPO believed there was “sufficient support” among public broadcasters to allow the Netherlands to return, said Jet de Ranitz, the chair of NPO’s executive board. But the decision sparked backlash. Earlier this month, about 400 public broadcasting employees signed a letter titled “#NotMyEurovision” to NPO’s management and board, urging the organization to reconsider returning to the contest.
“We only want to send an artist or artists and staff to the festival if they can count on the full support of one or more broadcasters,” Bosman said.
The contest will still be broadcast in the Netherlands by the network NOS, as it was this year.
Eurovision director Martin Green said he was “deeply sorry” that the Netherlands would not participate, adding that the organizers understood the decision and “respect the strength of feeling behind it in the Netherlands.”
Ireland will also remain absent from Eurovision next year. The country’s broadcaster RTÉ said in September that “Ireland’s participation cannot be justified given the appalling and ongoing loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there.” In Spain, the head of broadcaster RTVE also said he favored a continued boycott.
Czechia pulled out of the event this month, but its public broadcaster cited budget cuts as the reason.
The controversy over Israel’s inclusion in Eurovision has prompted mass protests. The 2026 contest drew 131 million viewers, down 35 million from the previous year.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netherlands reverses course, will sit out Eurovision again over Israel’s participation appeared first on The Forward.
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This time, some American Jews really do face a choice between ‘American’ and ‘Jewish’
At a United Synagogue Youth program many decades ago, I remember being asked the following question: “Are you an American Jew, or a Jewish American?” Where, in other words, do your primary loyalties lie?
Then and now, American Jews have tried to dodge this question. There is no choice to be made, we insist; our Jewish values (including, for many, our emotional ties to Israel) and our American values are aligned.
But this year, for many Jews, there is a choice.
On the one hand, the United States as we know it is under unprecedented threat from a presidential administration that, aided by a politicized Supreme Court and a rubber-stamp Republican congress, has undermined its basic foundations. This is not a matter of political ideology; it’s not about tax cuts, restrictions on abortion, or environmental regulations, subjects about which reasonable people can disagree. It is about overt efforts to undermine the 2026 election, about blatantly authoritarian actions (ICE, DOGE, the ballroom, the Kennedy Center), and about a level of vulgarity, corruption, and venality never before seen in American history.
And on top of all of that, America’s standing in the world has precipitously declined; we have simply abdicated our role as leaders, and even members, of the international community. We are not only mocked around the world, but mistrusted; we have strengthened Russia and China. Trump’s deranged tariffs and pointless war have devastated the economy, causing millions to wonder how they will pay for fuel this winter.
Again, one may prefer Republican policies to Democratic ones, but all of this is beyond the realm of ideology. America faces an existential crisis.
On the other hand, there are “our” interests — chiefly the safety of American Jews and the security of Israel.
As I have written many times, I see the threats to each of these as primarily coming from the Right. Yes, there is anti-Zionism and antisemitism on the Left, but they pale in comparison to right-wing Christian Nationalism. Numerous Republican candidates have staffers who have knowingly promoted neo-Nazi propaganda. That same genre of propaganda (e.g. “Which way, American man?”) has been used in official statements of the Trump administration. Nothing on the Left compares to this level of institutionalization and power.
Nor do I see a blank check for Israel’s farthest-right extremists as beneficial to Israel’s security. When actions as modest as conditioning military aid or opposing settler violence in the West Bank are condemned as apostasy and antisemitism, Israel is not strengthened; it is weakened.
But, obviously, a large minority of American Jews see these matters differently. Domestically, they equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and feel themselves under personal threat from Muslim politicians like Zohran Mamdani or Abdul El-Sayed. They experience these threats differently from how I do — as worse than the threats from the Right. And they are dismayed by the support of the Palestinian cause among some progressive Democrats.
For these American Jews — again, a minority of the population, but probably a majority among Jewish institutional leaders and donors — there is indeed a choice. Which do we care about more: America’s survival, or Israel’s? Democracy or Jewish safety?
As I have said, I disagree with the premises of this dichotomy. But it is unquestionably one faced by over two million American Jews, according to polls. And so I want to offer three responses.
The first is to remind my community of how fortunate we are to be Americans. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as patriotic as I have in the last two years; the more Trump and MAGA attack the American Dream, the more I find myself appreciating it. The America I believe in is one with its best days ahead, not behind; it is a vision of a pluralistic, multicultural democracy where everyone ought to have a fair shake, regardless of class, religion, race, sex, gender, or ethnicity. That vision has never been fully realized. But it is one worth fighting for, and working to bring into reality.
And it is one that enabled my family — and probably yours — to thrive here. Like many American Jews, my grandparents fled violence (and, in part of my family, poverty) in Eastern Europe to the goldene medineh, the golden country. Of course, they faced antisemitism and exclusion here too, but nothing like what they left behind. My parents went to great universities, enjoyed the post-war economic boom, and gave me opportunities that no one in my family had a century ago.
Do we not see how all this is worth fighting for? And how endangered it currently is? Do we really think that the MAGA nationalists even want us here? Do we not see how attacks on immigrants and minorities are wrong, categorically, based on our own lived experience?
American Jews have prospered not by being an insular minority focused on our special interests, but by being engaged, patriotic Americans, fighting for the values in which we believe. That has been our ethical and political superpower. Yes, we take care of our own, but we are also part of the American experiment, motivated by Jewish values and the Jewish experience of marginalization. Let’s not abandon that now.
Second, I beg my fellow Jews to practice discernment rather than hysteria.
Ironically, I found an example of this where I did not expect to: in the “Non-Negotiable” campaign in Michigan, which sets out five non-negotiable positions for political leaders regarding Jewish safety and support for a Jewish state. Obviously, the subtext of the campaign is the senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, of whom I have written positively in these pages, and I do not agree with everything in its platform. That’s fine. The point is that by articulating positions, rather engaging in fear-mongering, hyperbole, and, let’s face it, Islamophobia, Nonnegotiable Michigan is doing something useful. They’re distinguishing between heated emotions and clear political positions.
And, by my reckoning, El-Sayed himself is on board with all five — actively supportive of three, and, he says, not opposed to two. (Many others on the Left are clearly not.) But whether he is or isn’t, the platform offers light rather than heat, in contrast with a lot of what I see on Jewish social media channels these days, which often traffics in hysteria. I would only quibble with the name; we can disagree with our politicians on some issues while supporting them on others.
Finally, and relatedly, I want to remind us all of some core political truths. Purity tests are political suicide; the perfect is the enemy of the good. The matzav (“Situation”) regarding Israelis and Palestinians is complicated; even if you think one side has acted worse than the other, both sides have done very bad things. (That is true if you’re on the Left or the Right.) Statements can feel hurtful without actually being hurtful; they may just be attacking something we care about.And when it comes to politics, emotional reactions often lead to bad results; it is far wiser to evaluate, consider, critique and reflect.
All of these facts point to the same conclusion: that oversimplifications and emotional reactivity are not our best allies when it comes to making political decisions. The Jewish tradition has bequeathed us two thousand years of legalistic parsing and multiple perspectives on even the most mundane of issues (I once spent three months learning about what makes an etrog permissible for use on Sukkot.). Let’s put those skills to use on something non-mundane: the survival of our country and our people. Consider all of what is at stake this year, yes, for our community, but also for the vibrant, flawed, but unprecedented nation that has allowed us to prosper. Both deserve better than this.
The post This time, some American Jews really do face a choice between ‘American’ and ‘Jewish’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s election deadlock: 3 scenarios for what comes next
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – As election results from Israel’s parliamentary vote on Tuesday continue to trickle in, what seems clearest is that no side in this political race will have enough votes to form a majority government, meaning the question of who Israel’s next prime minister will be remains uncertain.
According to the vote count so far, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party could have as many as 28 seats, yet his bloc of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties will fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority government.
Yashar, the party led by Netanyahu’s main rival, former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot, looks set to be the second-largest party, with around 22 seats. The so-called “change” bloc that Eisenkot leads will likely have around 47 seats, also far short of what is needed to form a government on its own.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Arab parties, which both blocs have said they wouldn’t include in a coalition, are on pace to get at least 17 seats collectively and could become key to helping the opposition oust Netanyahu.
The formal process whereby each party holds consultations with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog to recommend a candidate for prime minister will likely begin next week. Political analysts are already speculating on possible scenarios.
Their tentative takeaway: Reality may force political leaders to break their solemn promises to not work with certain other parties.
So what are the possible scenarios if the final results leave the political arena so starkly divided? Here are the three most likely outcomes.
1. The “change” bloc plus the Arab parties
All the parties in the change bloc bar the Democrats, led by Yair Golan, stated throughout their campaigns that they would not form a government with either of the Arab parties, even though Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, an Islamist faction, joined a centrist coalition from 2021-2022, breaking what had once been a taboo. Abbas is again offering to join forces with the change bloc.
“Clearly this is emerging as an option mathematically and politically,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday. But he added, “It’s obviously not only a violation of campaign promises, but I think the Israeli public opinion is deeply unprepared for such an option.” Tolerance for working with an Islamist party has diminished since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led raids.
Another variation on this option is for the change bloc — Eisenkot’s Yashar party, B’Yachad, led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, as well as the Democrats — to form a minority government.
While 61 seats are needed to form a majority government, there is nothing to prevent a government with fewer than 61 seats from being formed if it can gain support on key legislative decisions.
This could happen if Arab factions support the change bloc on key votes but otherwise don’t play a role in the government. This would give the change bloc up to 65 seats when Arab parties’ support from the sidelines is added in.
Even this step has been rejected by Lieberman, yet Professor Jonathan Rynhold, of the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said it was possible that Eisenkot could put pressure on him to accept.
“Even though Lieberman has said no to such an option, he might say yes if he’s the prime minister,” Rynhold said.
On the other hand, the Arab parties, especially the Joint List, might demand concessions for such an agreement that Eisenkot himself finds hard to stomach.
2. Formation of a unity government
A quick look at the political map following Tuesday’s vote shows that center-right parties ranging from Eisenkot’s Yashar party to Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, with Likud and B’Yachad in between, gained a substantial share of the seats. One possible scenario is that some of these parties, even though they are avowed political foes, could join forces.
“I think it is perhaps more likely that there will be serious negotiations around a unity government,” Plesner said. “I would imagine that Netanyahu would prefer unity based on him forming a coalition with all of his bloc members, and then luring one of the ‘change bloc’ parties to his government.” That would mean including ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism and far-right parties led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
However, Plesner said the change bloc parties would most likely push for a “real unity government,” whereby Netanyahu “gives up on one of the far-right parties that has caused a lot of challenges for Israel’s international image, or perhaps an ultra-Orthodox party that has refused to pass a military draft bill.” He was referring to a law that would force more haredi men to serve in the military, from which they’ve traditionally been exempted. This, he said, would create a “Zionist, more centrist-leaning option.”
“I think this is something that Israeli public opinion would be able to live with and perhaps even prefer, but I can’t say anything about the political viability of it,” Plesner said.
The change bloc ran on replacing Netanyahu, and no doubt many of its voters would feel betrayed by such an outcome.
3. Another round of elections
In his election night speech, Eisenkot declared that “after an election with such high voter turnout, it would be a mistake to hold another election.” Some 77.7% of voters cast ballots, the highest since 1999, according to election officials.
However, with no bloc reaching a majority and serious ideological disagreements among the parties, another round of elections might be the most likely possibility. For Netanyahu in particular, allowing the process to play out while he retains his position as interim prime minister until another election is held could well be the most favorable outcome for the long-serving leader, according to Plesner.
A similar scenario played out beginning in 2019, when Netanyahu’s bloc of supporters failed to achieve a majority. Israel then held a series of elections, culminating in the March 2021 vote, when Netanyahu’s bloc was ousted by a center-left alliance led by Bennett and Lapid. The November 2022 election returned Netanyahu to power.
“I don’t really know what the path forward is now,” said Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“If we were talking 10 years ago, I would say that something else might happen – a unity government or a different solution perhaps,” he said. But given the entrenched political camps at this point, another round of elections might be where the country is headed.
On the other hand, given the unpredictable nature of Israel’s political scene, Plesner noted that it could be a “time for politicians to get creative.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if all sorts of ideas that we haven’t thought of before come up in the upcoming few weeks,” he said, adding that he believed that, with so much uncertainty, it could “take weeks and perhaps months” before the next prime minister is determined.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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