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Jewish schools to colleges: Don’t recruit our students unless you can guarantee their safety

(JTA) — Any college or university that wants to recruit students from two Modern Orthodox schools in New Jersey will now have to prove it can keep Jewish students safe, according to announcements from the schools.

Torah Academy of Bergen County, a boys school in Teaneck, and Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, located just blocks away, each told families on Friday that they were enacting new requirements for colleges that seek to meet with students on campus, a regular component of the college search process.

A third school in the area told families on Monday that it was “reevaluating our relationships with college admissions officers” but had not yet settled on any policy changes.

The announcements offer a concrete indication that antisemitic incidents on U.S. campuses following Hamas’ attack on Israel Oct. 7 and Israel’s military response could affect how some Jewish students decide where to go to college.

The incidents are unfolding at precisely the time that high school seniors must complete their college applications, and they add to a preexisting sense of unease among some U.S. Jews about the status of Jewish students on college campuses.

“We feel strongly that we cannot continue to invite college representatives to speak to our students as they have in the past,” TABC head of school Rabbi Shlomo Stochel and associate principal Rabbi Steven Finkelstein wrote in an email outlining new requirements for on-campus recruitment. “Your son’s physical and emotional welfare is too important to us.”

Going forward, the TABC and Ma’ayanot administrators wrote, recruiters and college representatives must now bring “a statement from their university leadership detailing their plans to protect and maintain the safety and security of our graduates on their campuses as Jews.”

The announcement comes in the wake of multiple antisemitic incidents on college campuses nationwide, including an eruption of violence at a pro-Palestinian rally at Tulane University; a situation where Jewish students were barricaded inside a library at Cooper Union during a pro-Palestinian protest; and most recently, where death threats were made against Jewish students at Cornell Sunday evening, specifically targeting the kosher dining hall.

Colleges and universities have also drawn criticism over their public statements about the violence in Israel, with prominent Jewish donors in a few cases vowing to cut off institutions that they said insufficiently condemned Hamas or allowed antisemitic sentiment to flourish.

The climate has so alarmed the Biden administration that the U.S. Education Department has given itself two weeks to create and present a plan to combat the wartime spike in campus antisemitism.

The goal of high schools’ policy change is to increase pressure on the universities to act, the TABC letter says.

“It is our hope that our collective stance in prioritizing the safety of our students will compel universities to address the severity of the current situation,” it says. “Those who cannot or will not accede to our valid and just request will not be welcome here.”

The moment coincides with when high school seniors must make decisions about where to apply to college. Many universities use Nov. 1 — Wednesday — as an early decision deadline, meaning that students who apply by that date and are accepted are obligated to attend.

The New Jersey schools chose to send the emails ahead of that deadline, according to Rabbi Josh Kahn, the rosh yeshiva of TABC. Almost all of the school’s graduates head to Israel for a year and then to Yeshiva University, the Modern Orthodox flagship in Manhattan, though others enroll at other colleges with large Jewish populations including New York University and the University of Maryland.

Kahn said his school isn’t trying to close its doors to college recruiters.

“Our goal actually really is for our students to be able to go to college. The entire Jewish community’s goal is that our students should be able to go to the university campus and feel safe. That’s all we want,” he said. “We’re not looking to not allow colleges on to recruit from our campus. So we would like to do everything we can to help colleges ensure that our students will be safe.”

Ma’ayanot said that in addition to asking college representatives to provide assurances about students’ safety, it would also work with its own students to factor the campus climate about Israel into their post-graduation plans.

“We are working to educate our students about the Israel climate on various campuses,” said the school’s letter, signed by four administrators including Head of School CB Neugroschl. “Just as a thriving observant Jewish community is a vital factor, it is crucial to make sure that a college is a safe place for Jewish and pro-Israel students. It is our hope that our collective efforts will help students make wise and informed choices about their future.”

Paul Bernstein, the CEO of Prizmah, the North American network for Jewish day schools, said the school’s demands are appropriate.

“Safety for Jewish college students is paramount, and colleges should be able to demonstrate how they would enable students to live a full and active Jewish life on their campus, without fear or threat,” Bernstein said. “Jewish day school alumni are proud leaders in Hillel and other programs on campus, in support of positive Jewish living and Israel. We expect college administrations to ensure that is true not only at a time of war, but in years to come for future students.”

Other Orthodox high schools in a broader network are still discussing how to approach the college admissions process, according to Kahn, who said a meeting is planned on the topic.

Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School, Modern Orthodox schools also in Bergen County, told families on Monday that they were rethinking admissions practices as application deadlines neared.

Head of School Eliezer Rubin said in a letter to families he believed that “universities have allowed a toxic ideology to fester, and that ideology manifests as raging, aggressive and overt anti-Semitism.” He named four schools — Cornell, Cooper Union, Tulane and Columbia — where recent incidents had induced fear for students’ safety.

“They believe that they could take our families for granted. … We need to dissuade them from the notion that they are entitled to our children by mere virtue of the fact that they are prestigious institutions,” Eliezer Rubin wrote. “The privilege is for these universities to educate our students, not the other way around. It is just that: a privilege. Not a right.”

Rubin concluded, “Put simply: If a university cannot keep our students safe, we cannot in good conscience send them there.”

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The post Jewish schools to colleges: Don’t recruit our students unless you can guarantee their safety appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Zohran Mamdani Warned ‘Third Intifada Looms’ During 2015 Wave of Palestinian Violence

Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS

New York City Democratic mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani predicted a “looming third intifada” in a recently resurfaced X/Twitter post from 2015. 

Mamdani’s social media post was a response to a 2015 opinion article in the New York Times which characterized the US approach to Israel as “hypocritical” and described the Jewish state as “discriminatory.”

In October 2015, Israel faced a surge of violent attacks from Palestinian youths, mostly consisting of stabbings, shootings, and car-rammings which left dozens of innocent Israelis dead and many more injured. The period of violence, known as the “Knife Intifada,” was largely driven by controversies surrounding Jerusalem’s holy sites.  Israeli security forces promptly subdued the violent attacks amid escalating regional tensions.

“Interesting piece from Anat Biletzki in @nytopinion, especially as the third #Intifada looms. #israel #palestine,” Mamdani wrote on X/Twitter in 2015.

The First and Second Intifadas were violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza, marked by rampant terrorist attacks against Israelis. The First Intifada, which took place from 1987 to 1990, often portrayed as a grassroots movement, quickly escalated beyond civil disobedience into widespread riots, Molotov cocktail attacks, and coordinated assaults on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The Second Intifada, which took place from 2000 to 2005, was deadlier, with over 1,000 Israelis killed in suicide bombings targeting buses, restaurants, and public areas. Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces launched major counterterrorism operations to dismantle terrorist networks.

Critics argue the intifadas were legitimate expressions of resistance to what they describe as Israeli occupation.

The resurfaced tweet comes as Mamdani faces backlash over his recent defense of the controversial phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been regularly chanted at anti-Israel demonstrations around the world during the ongoing Gaza war.

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Bulwark Podcast,” host Tim Miller asked Mamdani whether he would be willing to condemn the chant “globalize the intifada,” arguing that the phrase — which references the two previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels — calls for violence against Jewish people. Mamdani refused to condemn the chant, claiming that it has been misinterpreted and represents a “desperate desire for equality and equal rights.”

“I am someone who, I would say am, is less comfortable with the banning of certain words, and that I think is more evocative of a Trump-style approach of how to lead a country,” Mamdani said in comments first reported by Jewish Insider. 

“I think what’s difficult also, is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means ‘struggle,’” he continued. “And, as a Muslim man who grew up post-9/11, I’m all too familiar in the way in which that Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted.”

Jewish organizations and watchdog groups have condemned the slogan as a form of hate speech that blurs the line between criticism of Israeli policy and incitement against Jewish communities, especially amid a rise in antisemitic incidents globally.

Following the release of the podcast, Mamdani was excoriated by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which wrote, “Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors.”

Fellow New York City Democratic mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo and Whitney Tilson also issued statements condemning Mamdani for attempting to use the history of the Holocaust to justify use of the controversial slogan.

Mamdani has also come under criticism for repeatedly refusing to affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, instead suggesting that Israel does not offer “equal rights” to all of its citizens. He has also promised to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as mayor and has vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with New York Police Department (NYPD) forces.

The post Zohran Mamdani Warned ‘Third Intifada Looms’ During 2015 Wave of Palestinian Violence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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New Fellowship Connects Jewish Students Across the World

George Washington University students assembled at the campus’ Kogan Plaza on Oct. 9, 2023, to mourn those who died during Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner

With antisemitism surging on college campuses across the Western world, Hillel International and the Matanel Foundation have selected 15 Jewish students for a spot in the inaugural year of the Matanel Fellowship for Global Jewish Leadership, a 12-month program which aims to foster their “sense of responsibility” for the worldwide Jewish community.

The program is at its half-life, having started in January. For the past six months, the students have participated in online lectures, solidarity building exercises, and a “Shabbat Retreat” to Budapest for the purpose of experiencing the Hungarian city’s rich Jewish life and culture, which has been sustained there for over a millennium.

They have already created memories that will last a lifetime, Matanel Fellow and Barnard College student Yakira Galler told The Algemeiner during an interview.

“So far, it’s been amazing. We’ve had three or four Zoom sessions and then we had our midway trip to Budapest,” Galler said. “In our first day in Budapest, we explored both the history of the community, before the war and also under communism, and that was really interesting both because there is a specific type of Jewish sect in Hungary — the Neolog sect — which I had never heard of before. It was also really interesting because Theodor Herzl was born and raised in Budapest, which prompted me to reflect on what that means for this community and the immensity of the intellectual life within it.”

The Matanel Fellows are convening amid a moment of rampant antisemitism not seen in the world since World War II. Following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, colleges across the US and the world erupted with effusions of antisemitic activity, which included calling for the destruction of Israel, cheering Hamas’s sexual assaulting of women as an instrument of war, and several incidents of assault and harassment targeting Jews on campus.

In 2025, the American Jewish community continues to be battered by antisemitic hate incidents, forcing law enforcement to stay hot on the trails of those who perpetrate them amid a wave of recent outrages. Earlier this month, for example in the Highland Park suburb of Chicago, an antisemitic letter threatening violence was mailed to a resident’s home. So severe were its contents that the FBI and the Illinois Terrorism and Intelligence Center were called to the scene to establish that there was no imminent danger, according to local news outlets. Later, the local government shuttered all religious institutions as a precautionary measure.

Another recent antisemitic incident occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—ck the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.

“The group then came after them, and one of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”

Now, the world’s only Jewish state is fighting an existential conflict against Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, that will determine its viability as a refuge for the Jewish people, as well as the regional order of the Middle East.

Last week, the Israel Defense Forces carried out preemptive strikes on Iran’s military installations and nuclear facilities to neutralize top military leaders and quell the country’s efforts to enrich weapons-grade uranium, the key ingredient of their nuclear program. The move prompted retaliatory ballistic missile assaults, placing all of the country on high alert.

Forging ties between Jews around the globe has never been more important, said another Matanel Fellow, Avihu Sela of Tel-Hai College, located in northern Israel.

“For me, connecting Jewish people around the world is something we need right now. I’m so happy that they did it, and now I have connections with Jewish people from an array of countries and cultures,” Sela said. “When we all flew out Budapest, it allowed us to have the really deep talk, and to be honest I went in with some deep concerns because I did not know how it would be there. When I arrived, and we did all the tours, exploring everything and seeing Jewish culture and learning about historic events, I felt deep inside that I am part of something so much bigger than myself.”

He added, “I’m so proud that I’m Jewish because of this trip. It really opened my heart.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post New Fellowship Connects Jewish Students Across the World first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli Gov’t Slams EU Critics as Belgium, Spain, Ireland Push Anti-Israel Measures Amid Iran War

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a joint press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (not pictured), in Rome, Italy, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

As Israel wages a high-stakes campaign to stop Iran — long identified by the US as the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism — from obtaining nuclear weapons, some of its harshest critics in Europe are intensifying their condemnation of the Jewish state.

On Thursday, Belgium and eight other EU member states — Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden — urged the European Commission to examine how trade “linked to illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” can be aligned with international law, the latest effort by the countries to block trading with Israeli communities in the West Bank.

In a post on X, Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said the decision came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that third countries must avoid trade or investment that supports “the illegal situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

“Upholding international law is a shared responsibility. In a rules-based international order, legal clarity must guide political choices,” Prevot said in a statement. “A united European approach can help ensure that our policies reflect our values.”

Foreign ministers of the nine European countries also sent a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas calling for the bloc to come up with proposals on how to discontinue trade with Israeli communities in the West Bank.

The letter came ahead of a meeting in Brussels on Monday when EU foreign ministers are set to discuss the bloc’s relationship with Israel.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the latest move by European countries, calling it “shameful” and a misguided attempt to undermine Israel while it faces “existential” threats from Iran.

“It is regrettable that even when Israel is fighting an existential threat which is in Europe’s vital interest — there are those who can’t resist their anti-Israeli obsession,” the top Israeli diplomat said in a post on X.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares called on the EU to impose an arms embargo on Israel in a bid to end the ongoing war in Gaza — another attempt by one of Jerusalem’s fiercest critics to undermine its defensive campaign against Hamas following the Palestinian terrorist group’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

In the wake of Hamas’s onslaught, Albares has intensified his push for anti-Israel measures on the international stage, while positioning himself as a staunch advocate for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The top Spanish diplomat also called for de-escalation in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran, urging both sides to refrain from further provocations and to pursue diplomatic channels to address Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Right now, we need to de-escalate this exchange of missiles and bombs between Israel and Iran, and ensure that everything related to Iran’s nuclear program is properly resolved and that Iran moves away from having nuclear weapons through diplomatic negotiations,” Albares said in a statement.

Separately, Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris said he was “deeply concerned” by Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, warning of a “very real risk of regional spillover.”

The Irish leader said he believed a “negotiated solution” was needed to address Israeli concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.

Responding to the government’s comments, Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich said in an interview on “The Pat Kenny Show” that those who equate Iran’s actions with those of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza don’t “understand international law, the rules of war and what is going on.”

“They [the Islamic regime] are deliberately, indiscriminately targeting civilians, while we target their nuclear program, their ballistic program,” the Israeli diplomat said.

“I didn’t hear any Irish condemnation when Iran violated the UN Charter and called repeatedly for the destruction of another UN member state — Israel,” Erlich continued. “So, it’s not that a threat that has come up just now … It has been going on for decades.”

She also cautioned that Iran’s ballistic missile program could eventually be used against European nations, emphasizing that the threat posed by Tehran extends far beyond Israel and endangers global security.

“Europe is concerned about it [and] so should Ireland,” Erlich said.

Spain and Ireland have been among the world’s leading critics of Israel during the Gaza war.

Other European leaders have expressed more support, however, especially following Israel’s preemptive strikes last week targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday endorsed Israel’s airstrikes on Iran, saying the Jewish state was doing the “dirty work” for other countries.

“This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us,” Merz told the ZDF broadcaster during an interview on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Alberta, Canada. “We are also affected by this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.”

After conflict erupted between Iran and Israel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed support in a statement for “Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people.”

According to Euronews, however, some EU officials opposed that choice of language.

“There was no consensus on saying Israel has a right to defend itself but Von der Leyen said it anyway,” one diplomatic source told the outlet.

The post Israeli Gov’t Slams EU Critics as Belgium, Spain, Ireland Push Anti-Israel Measures Amid Iran War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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