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Sicily’s Jews have their first rabbi in 500 years. Italy’s Jewish establishment won’t accept them.
CATANIA, Italy (JTA) — Rabbi Gilberto Ventura believes his synagogue has the most beautiful view in the world. Located in the tower of a century-old castle on the slopes of Mt. Etna in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania, the synagogue is wedged between a snow-capped volcano and the sun-kissed Mediterranean sea.
The 49-year-old Brazil-born rabbi also thinks his congregation is one of the most unique in the world. It’s made up mainly of Bnei Anusim — descendants of Jews forced to hide their religious practice and convert to Catholicism after the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. Before that infamous decree, Sicily was home to tens of thousands of Jews.
The synagogue, which was first inaugurated last fall, is the result of decades of grassroots efforts by those descendants in Catania to find each other and forge a sense of community that had been lacking for centuries.
Hiring a full-time rabbi was the last piece of the puzzle, and Ventura, who has a long history of working with communities of Bnei Anusim in Brazil, was a natural candidate. He arrived in Catania in January.
“I really believe that the future Judaism in the world, especially in some places like Italy and, of course, Brazil, is connected to the Bnei Anusim, and the need to embrace the Bnei Anusim,” Ventura said.
But in an ongoing point of frustration, the formal organization representing Italian Jewry, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), does not recognize them as Jews.
“In the case of Catania, this strange Jewish community hasn’t passed all the steps the law requires,” said Giulio Di Segni, the vice president of UCEI.
He was referring to the fact that the community did not seek UCEI’s permission before establishing themselves under the name “Jewish community of Catania.” Per Italian law, UCEI has a monopoly on acknowledging and establishing Jewish communal life in Italy — including authority over who can use the term “Jewish community of” in formal ways.
“UCEI can’t accept this because it is too easy,” he added. “We are not against their synagogue or their way of prayer, but they cannot use the name ‘Jewish community of Catania.’”
The rooftop of the Castello Leucatia, where the community meets, has a large menorah and a view of the Mediterranean. (David I. Klein)
Catania’s Jewish community members told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a variety of stories about their Jewish backgrounds. Some came from families that always outwardly identified as Jewish. Others identified the source of family traditions practiced by parents and grandparents who — as descendants of Jews who faced persecution for practicing Judaism — still felt the need to hide aspects of their Jewishness from the public eye.
In the midst of questions about their ancestry, the majority of the Jewish community members have undergone Orthodox conversions. But that hasn’t led to their acceptance.
Benito Triolo, president of the Catania Jewish community, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he first came to Judaism at the age of 40, thanks to the insight of a Jewish friend in Palermo, Sicily’s capital and most populous city. Working together, they established a Charter of Sicilian Jewry, which aimed to identify and highlight the Jewish heritage of neighborhoods across the island.
While working on that project, Triolo came closer to his own Jewish heritage, and after years of study, he completed an Orthodox conversion through a rabbi in Miami 25 years ago.
Another community member, who was born Alessandro Scuderi but today goes by the name of Yoram Nathan, first felt drawn to Judaism as a child watching news of the Six-Day War in 1967. At first, he was laughed at by other members of his family — except his grandmother, who happened to have a tradition of lighting eight candles in early winter and baking flat unleavened bread around Easter time.
Decades of study later, Scuderi also completed a formal conversion to Judaism before an Orthodox rabbinic court, or beit din.
Others had more straightforward backgrounds.
“I was born in a Jewish family,” said David Scibilia, the community’s secretary. “Frankly speaking, we were not hiding or deep in the shadows in this part of the country.”
Scibilia said that his father explained to him that he was a Jew as early as the age of four. Within their own home, they observed holidays and kept Shabbat — no easy task since Italian schools at the time of his childhood in the 1970s had class on Saturdays. He did not eat meat until he was an adult and was able to acquire kosher meat.
He said that his family had maintained their Jewish identity since the days of the Inquisition and married amongst a small group of other similar families.
“I was a Jew, but not part of any community,” Scibilia said. “Just my family was my community.”
An aerial view of the city of Catania shows the Mt. Etna volcano in the background, Jan. 28, 28, 2022. (Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)
Scibilia explained that once he had a child of his own, he realized he did not want her to have the same lonely Jewish experience. But when he reached out to UCEI, he said he found the proverbial door to organized Jewish life shut. Earning membership in Jewish community organizations across Western Europe involves a strict vetting process, and many groups require applicants to prove their mothers’ Jewishness according to varying standards.
Scibilia’s experience was echoed by Jews outside of the community in Catania and across Italy’s south who talked to JTA — a feeling of neglect or rejection by UCEI for those who fall outside of the norms of Italian Judaism.
UCEI currently recognizes 19 Jewish communities across northern Italy and just one in the south, in Naples, which has jurisdiction over the rest of the southern half of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. The organization recognizes around 28,000 Jews in total across the country.
Scibilia noted that despite his Jewish upbringing, he has multiple certificates of conversion from Orthodox rabbis. The first came from a beit din of American rabbis from who traveled to Syracuse, Sicily, to assess Scibilia and others like him in Sicily. His second comes from the conversion court of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, which is known for its exacting Orthodox standards.
Both were rejected by Italy’s own Orthodox rabbinate, and he was forced to stand before another rabbinic court in Italy.
“I have at this moment — don’t start to laugh — three documents that prove that I am a Jew, two Ketubah [marriage contracts] for my wedding, and so on, again and again and again,” Scibilia said.
Others’ experiences in the region have been even more fraught, he said.
“The problem in Italy, that if you try to study with any rabbi here, you can study for 20 years, maybe you can die even before you reach the end of the tunnel,” he said. “From my point of view, they are playing with the spirituality of these people.”
In a statement last year, UCEI called the the Catanians “a phantom ‘Jewish community’” and accused them of “misleading the local institutions and deluding believers and sympathizers into adhering to traditional religious rites, never actually recognized or authorized by the Italian rabbinical authority.”
“Between UCEI and the Italian republic is an agreement signed in ‘87,” Di Segni said. “This law means everything about Jewish communities in Italy is through the Union Jewish community in Italy (UCEI).”
Noemi Di Segni, shown in Rome in 2017, is president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy. (Stefano Montesi/Corbis via Getty Images)
Triolo said he isn’t too concerned about UCEI’s recognition.
“Ours is a process of refounding old communities that existed as early as 200 and up to 1492,” Triolo said. “Our recognition is already in our history. At that time the UCEI did not exist. We were there and we simply returned!”
No one knows when Jews first arrived in Sicily, but the Talmud tells a story that claims Rabbi Akiva, a well-known early rabbinic sage, visited the island in the early second century and told of a small Jewish community in Syracuse. Some historians believe the Roman writer Caecilius Calactinus — who was born in a town near Messina in the first century B.C.E — to have been of Jewish origin.
All agree that over the course of history, Sicily’s Jews watched as the island was traded between Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans and half a dozen other empires. The narrative has also long been that Jewish life there ended five centuries ago, under Spanish rule.
The Spanish empire’s Jews suffered the same fate as Jews from the Iberian peninsula, who would become known to the world as Sephardim when they were expelled in 1492.
The descendents of Spain — and Sicily — spread throughout the world, establishing communities in North Africa, throughout the Ottoman empire, in the Netherlands and ultimately the British Isles and North America, as it was believed that Judaism faded away in their homelands.
Catania’s Jews disagree, arguing that many Jews practiced their religion over the centuries, in secret.
Triolo and others in the community formally inaugurated their synagogue in October. It was furnished with Torah scrolls donated by the Ohev Sholom synagogue in Washington, D.C.
The synagogue is situated in the tower of the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. The building was granted to the community by the city’s municipality.
“So they had the people, they had a synagogue, but they needed somebody to teach,” Ventura said.
The community meets in the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. (David I. Klein)
Ventura, who is Orthodox, may be the island’s first permanent working rabbi in over 500 years, but it’s not his first time working with Bnei Anusim.
Back in his native Brazil, Ventura was the leader of the Synagogue Without Borders, an organization through which he served 15 communities in Brazil’s north that were made up of descendants of Jews who came with the first Portuguese colonists to South America and who ultimately had to hide their identity as the Inquisition spread to the New World.
His work there put him in conflict with Brazil’s Jewish establishment, too. But Ventura is unfazed.
In Brazil, he founded synagogues and summer camps and built mikvahs and yeshivas across the country’s north. Since 2015, he has facilitated the conversion of hundreds of Bnei Anusim, bringing them back into the fold of mainstream Orthodox Judaism.
“I am a teacher since I was 21 years old,” he said. “Now I am 49, along with my wife. It’s one of the things we love to do, and know how to do. To teach Jewish philosophy, to teach Torah, to teach Tanakh, to teach the story of the Jews in Brazil, and now we are starting to teach the story of the Jews in Italy, the story of the Inquisition etcetera.”
In Castello Leucatia, he leads Shabbat services with the energy of a gospel preacher, pausing between prayers to explain a verse, teach a new tune, welcome latecomers, or simply to allow the congregation to talk.
Catania community members are shown at a recent gathering. (David I. Klein)
“This is what’s most important,” he remarked during one such lull on a recent Friday night. “That they get to talk and be a community.”
Ventura had organized a Shabbat event for other Jews across Italy — from Naples to Turin — who shared his belief that the future of Judaism was in communities like the one in Catania.
“Our point of view of Judaism is that we have to be a part of society, we don’t have to insulate ourselves, we believe that Judaism has a lot to contribute to society,” Ventura said. “In Brazil, we have a lot of connections with people from the periphery, in the favela and other communities, immigrants, Indians, etcetera. So that is something we want to establish here, to teach the people a Judaism that brings good things to the wider society.”
Ventura isn’t the only one working with such communities in southern Italy. Across the Strait of Messina, Jewish life has also been on the rise in Calabria — the toe of Italy’s boot — thanks to an American-born rabbi named Barbara Aiello.
Aiello, though raised in Pittsburgh, is of Calabrian descent. She returned to the land of her ancestors in the early 2000s and began working with the Bnei Anusim there, ultimately establishing a synagogue called Ner Tamid del Sud, meaning “eternal light of the south.”
“Until now, nobody took care of Judaism in the south of Italy,” Scibilia said while looking out at the Mediterranean from the terrace of Castello Leucatia.
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Years after a boycott fight, Ben & Jerry’s Israel debuts a flavor celebrating Israeli resilience
(JTA) — Ben & Jerry’s Israel operation has come up with a flavor that does not leave much to interpretation. Called “Milk and Honey,” a nod to the biblical description of the Land of Israel, its namesake ingredients are supplied by Israeli cows and bees and its chocolate fudge pieces come shaped like Stars of David.
The company, which split from its American counterpart after a contentious 2021 boycott fight, is billing the new pint as its “most Israeli flavor ever” and, on its website, as a “symbol of hope, rehabilitation, and positive action” after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack.
Its ingredients and production come from southern Israeli communities most affected by the massacre and the war that followed. The company, based in the southern city of Kiryat Malachi, said it “felt a responsibility to take an active part in the region’s recovery process.”
The milk and cream come from the dairy in Kibbutz Alumim, one of the Gaza-border communities infiltrated by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The honey comes from the beehives of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. The chocolate Stars of David are made by hand at the Korint factory in Beersheba, part of the Shkulo Tov social enterprise, which helps integrate people with disabilities into the workforce.
Even the wrapper is local: the pint is adorned with “Fields of Light,” a painting by Rivi Doron-Gerloy, a southern Israeli artist who was killed in a Miami car accident last year.
The flavor was developed in partnership with the Ayalim Association, a nonprofit that works to strengthen Israel’s periphery. The company said royalties from sales of the new flavor will go to Ayalim’s rehabilitation and educational initiatives in the south.
The Israeli and American Ben & Jerry’s operations are now completely separate, a split that followed one of the more improbable diplomatic dramas ever to involve ice cream. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying sales there were “inconsistent” with its values.
The move set off an uproar in Israel. President Isaac Herzog called the boycott a “new kind of terrorism,” while Benjamin Netanyahu, then opposition leader, retweeted the company’s announcement that it would stop selling in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” writing, “Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy,” alongside Israeli flag and flexed-bicep emojis.
The original founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who no longer control the company but remain its best-known faces, also came under fire after the decision. In an interview, they were asked why the boycott logic did not extend to places such as Georgia and Texas, despite their opposition to those states’ voting rights and abortion laws.
“Why do you still sell ice cream in Georgia? Texas?” Axios reporter Alexi McCammond asked in a video that went viral on pro-Israel platforms.
Clearly stumped, Cohen shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said, laughing. “You ask a really good question and I think I’d have to sit down and think about it for a bit.”
Unilever’s then-chief executive, Alan Jope, also appeared to suggest that Israel had become an inconveniently sticky scoop of activism. “There is plenty for Ben & Jerry’s to get their teeth into in their social justice mission without straying into geopolitics,” he reportedly said in a quarterly earnings review at the time.
The standoff ended, at least commercially, when Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, sold the Israeli business in 2022 to Avi Zinger, the longtime Israeli licensee and owner of American Quality Products. The sale was accompanied by a legal fight that was inflamed when Zinger told an Israeli news outlet that, once he took control of the company in Israel, he could rename the signature flavor “Chunky Monkey” to “Judea and Samaria,” the Hebrew term for the West Bank.
Under the ultimate deal, Ben & Jerry’s could continue to be sold throughout Israel and in Israeli settlements, under Hebrew and Arabic branding, while the Vermont-based company said it disagreed with the move and would no longer profit from Israeli sales.
The split left the Israeli operation in an unusual position: carrying one of the most recognizable American ice cream names, while openly defying the political stance associated with that name abroad.
But the corporate restructuring has not been enough to cleanse the palate for everyone. On social media, the new flavor drew curiosity and praise, but also lingering resentment from those who said the brand name still carried too much baggage, even under Israeli ownership.
“I really don’t care if it’s owned by someone other than Ben and Jerry in Israel. Those two clowns’ names are still associated with the brand. I wouldn’t spend a penny for this ice cream regardless. That brand is done,” one person wrote on Instagram.
“We’ve been eating Häagen-Dazs since October 7th,” another said.
Last year, Cohen announced that he planned to produce a “flavor for Palestine” independently after Unilever blocked Ben & Jerry’s from creating one, soliciting suggestions about what should accompany watermelon, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, in his concoction.
“Milk and Honey” has come to market faster. So does the new flavor deliver a taste of the Holy Land?
One food influencer, who called the new flavor a “statement,” offered a less scriptural verdict on the taste, shrugging that it “tastes like vanilla with chocolate chips” — a conclusion echoed by others in Israeli food aficionado groups, who lamented that the honey was barely noticeable.
One commented, referring to dairy-free desserts made to comply with kosher laws prohibiting the mixing of milk and meat: “Not the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten, but not as bad as a pareve dessert either.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Mamdani calls AIPAC ‘monsters’ in rally ahead of NY primaries
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday night accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of spending “millions in dark money” to ensure pro-Israel candidates win seats in tthe November midterms.
Mamdani made his remarks at a rally headlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at Kings Theater in Brooklyn ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primaries for progressive congressional candidates. He called on the crowd to help elect Jewish former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, State Assembly member Claire Valdez and former Columbia encampment organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier.
In a fiery 30-minute speech, Mamdani took aim not just at AIPAC but also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his handling of the war in Gaza. He claimed that “The monsters that we are up against, they take many different forms,” and then singled out AIPAC.
He described the major pro-Israel lobby as an organization “for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and Netanyahu’s wars.”
Mamdani continued by alleging that AIPAC moves “millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary.”
AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment about Mamdani’s remarks.
The lobby, whose endorsement was once heavily sought by politicians on both sides of the aisle, has increasingly come under fire for its campaign tactics. Pro-Israel Democrats are particularly struggling to hold onto seats as voters on the left increasingly turn against the Jewish state.
Sanders, for his part, doubled down on criticism of AIPAC when he took the stage. “The American people understand that a large part of our horrific foreign policy is impacted by AIPAC funding,” he said.
Turning to the local races, Mamdani voiced support for Valdez for her opposition to Israel. “When other Democrats chose to look the other way as Netanyahu committed war crimes, Claire didn’t just name the genocide,” he said. “She organized for a ceasefire.”
In a change of tone, Mamdani emphasized unity, including an appeal to Jewish voters.
“Whether you worship at shul, at a mosque, in a church, a gurdwara, a temple, or you don’t worship at all, we share a belief that our city deserves leaders who lead with hope and not fear,” the mayor said.
He added, “No matter where we live, how old we are, what train we take in the morning, or what bagel we order, we are New Yorkers and we want the same things,” including “a city that belongs to all of us.”
Reaction on social media was swift. One self-described mom from New York City posted on X of the rally and the Democratic Socialists of America there: “It’s pretty transparent and vile how Zohran Mamdani and the DSA are using ‘AIPAC’ as a euphemism for Jews, and how Brad Lander is going right along with it.”
Jewish writer Dovi Safier also criticized the comments, writing, “The mayor of the city with the world’s largest Jewish population is pushing conspiracy theories about ‘money men’ who ‘move millions in dark money’ to ‘turn us against one another’ — and calling them ‘monsters.’ Subtle.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish groups push back against Trump’s Iran deal — but more quietly so far than in 2015
(JTA) — A growing number of Jewish groups are pushing back against the new memorandum of understanding brokered between President Donald Trump and Iran.
At least for now, however, their responses are more muted than when the same groups publicly opposed former President Barack Obama’s own Iran deal in 2015. And at least one major Jewish group that opposed Obama’s deal is backing Trump’s framework.
“Trust President Trump,” the Republican Jewish Coalition told its followers Thursday, becoming the most notable Jewish group to support Trump’s memorandum of understanding.
“President Trump has earned the trust of the Jewish community as he and his team work towards a final agreement,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks and chair Norm Coleman said in a statement. They praised the MOU, saying it “envisions a horizon of economic stability for the United States, the region, and the world,” and that it “provides an opportunity for potential new pathways to greater peace.”
The RJC cautioned that “a final deal must avoid the flaws that doomed Obama’s,” specifying that there should be “no sunset clauses” on Iran’s nuclear program and other proposals. In the days before its own statement, the group had been reposting praise of the MOU from other Trump allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Meanwhile, the American Jewish Committee and the pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC took a different tack. They became the largest Jewish organizations to voice concern with the new Iran deal on Thursday, issuing public objections following requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The MOU “raises significant questions,” AIPAC said in a lengthy statement that urged Congress to intervene ahead of “a final nuclear agreement,” claiming that the terms of the MOU don’t match “President Trump’s stated objectives for the war.”
The AJC outlined what it said were seven “concerns” it had with the MOU. Like most of the other Jewish groups that responded to JTA for this story, the AJC also expressed hope that the terms of the deal could be changed to be stricter on Iran and more favorable to Israel before it is finalized. (In 2015, in response to Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the AJC said it “overwhelmingly” would “oppose this deal.”)
Trump’s MOU is not a final agreement, unlike Obama’s JCPOA. Rather, it marks the start of a 60-day negotiating period that aims to end the Iran war about to enter its fourth month. It does not yet outline any clear commitments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, which had been at the heart of the JCPOA and which is of particular concern to Jewish groups, who are roundly opposed to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon in large part because of the risk to Israel. Many had objected to Obama’s deal in part because of its “sunset clauses” that would have phased out nuclear restrictions starting at the 10-year mark.
Regardless, many analysts across the political spectrum are concluding that Trump’s framework is a worse deal than Obama’s, in part because it provides a pathway for Iran to stage an economic recovery.
The Israeli government, which sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to personally lobby Congress in 2015 to oppose Obama’s deal, is also strongly opposed to Trump’s — in part because it would require Israel to withdraw from fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. A new poll by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 71% of Israelis don’t trust Trump to look out for their country’s interests in negotiations with Iran.
Hawkish pro-Israel think tanks, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, issued papers knocking Trump’s deal.
“In some ways, the MOU is even weaker than President Barack Obama’s,” JINSA said. “This new deal authorizes the transfer of far more money and lifts many more sanctions on Iran than the JCPOA ever did.”
Trump and his top surrogates, including Vice President JD Vance, are increasingly signaling a lack of patience with Israel and a willingness to prioritize ending the war over stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
Some groups are waiting before weighing in. Nathan Diament, head of the Orthodox Union, declared Obama’s deal “not kosher” in 2015. On Thursday, he told JTA that the question of how to respond to Trump’s deal “will be a central topic of discussion” at the group’s leadership advocacy mission in Washington, D.C., taking place early next week. O.U. representatives are scheduled to meet with members of the Trump administration, as well as members of Congress.
JTA reached out Thursday to a wide range of Jewish groups that publicly opposed Obama’s Iran deal in 2015 to ask them their views on Trump’s. Many others, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, did not respond by press time.
Of those who did, only Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, castigated the MOU outright. Klein told JTA he was “extremely upset with this deal” — and with Trump.
“I find this deal just astonishing,” Klein said. “Helping out a country that Trump himself said, if they’d gotten nukes, they’d have used them on Israel and killed millions of Jews? So that mentality, now you’re helping them rebuild?”
He added, “Trump has done many wonderful things for Israel, so we’ve praised Trump for that. But now he’s doing something very bad for Israel and America.”
Such level of forceful public opposition to the deal, though, is rare in Jewish circles at present — especially in contrast with the extent of Jewish mobilization against Obama’s deal in 2015.
Back then, in addition to the usual Jewish advocacy groups, dozens of local Jewish federations across the country pushed their communities and representatives to fight it, in a sweeping and sustained show of opposition.
“This Iran deal threatens the mission of our Federation as we exist to assure the continuity of the Jewish people, support a secure State of Israel, care for Jews in need here and abroad and mobilize on issues of concern,” one typical statement, from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, read at the time.
Three years later, during Trump’s first term, he tore up the JCPOA, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.”
The lack of similar opposition today for Trump’s deal, Klein said, was glaring: “Nobody is taking issue with this agreement in the Jewish world.”
Among local Jewish groups, the initial reaction to Trump’s MOU has struck a measured tone. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, one of dozens of local Jewish communal groups that publicly opposed the 2015 JCPOA, told JTA it was “concerned” that Trump’s deal “has granted Iran a new leverage point to use in the future to inflict pain on the world’s economy.”
Ron Halber, the JCRC’s head, blasted the MOU for being crafted without Israel’s input, and for requiring Israel to withdraw from its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Similar to AIPAC, Halber said his organization would continue to push for “a final U.S.-Iran agreement” that is more favorable to Israel and takes harsher measures against Iran.
In its statement, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, which also opposed the JCPOA, did not directly weigh in on the new MOU. Instead, the federation said, “Any agreement involving the Iranian regime should be judged by its ability to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” among other factors.
JTA reached out to six other major Jewish federations that opposed the 2015 JCPOA, including Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which was the first federation to oppose that deal and whose leader wrote, in 2021, “We were right.”
CJP of Boston did not respond to a request for comment. The Jewish United Fund of Chicago declined to comment, while several other federations that opposed the JCPOA — including Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix and Detroit — did not respond by press time.
In its own statement opposing the MOU, AIPAC did not outline an advocacy plan to combat it, in contrast to its full-court press against the JCPOA. An AIPAC spokesperson did not return a JTA request for comment on whether, or how, it planned to advocate against Trump’s MOU.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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