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Before Oct. 7, a rabbi and imam at Syracuse were building bridges. After the attacks, more students joined them.
At Syracuse University, Adam Baltaxe held an unlikely role: the Muslim Student Association’s lone Jewish member.
Baltaxe, who graduated last spring, was a fixture at the Muslim group’s events — eating at potlucks, attending religious services, even giving a speech at the group’s Eid celebration — while also serving on Hillel’s executive board.
His interest in interfaith dialogue began while studying abroad in Chile, where conversations with his Palestinian host mother after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel left a lasting impression. Back at Syracuse, Baltaxe set out to recreate those exchanges.
“I started off just talking to individual Muslim or Palestinian students on campus, one-on-one. And there were a lot of times it would start pretty hostile,” he said. “And then, through conversations, actually a lot of those people ended up becoming my friends.”
Baltaxe was also a Jewish representative on Syracuse’s Student Assembly of Interfaith Leaders; an interfaith librarian at Hendricks Chapel, where he assisted students in discovering books on various religions; and a founding member of the Jewish-Muslim Dialogue Fellowship, a group of 10 Jewish students and 10 Muslim students that met weekly starting in spring 2024.
In the two years since Oct. 7, headlines have cast colleges as battlegrounds: places where Zionists are excluded from parts of campus, pro-Palestinian encampments are broken up by police, and ideological “safe spaces” shield students from encountering anyone with whom they disagree. It would be easy to assume most students have grown jaded about communicating across divides.
Yet at Syracuse, students like Baltaxe are bucking that narrative, taking part in a campus culture that embraced interfaith dialogue before Oct. 7.
Baltaxe was “one of the bridges between the Muslim students and the Jewish students. It felt really nice to have his company,” said Mian Muhammad Abdul Hamid, who was a member of the Muslim Student Association and Student Assembly of Interfaith Leaders before graduating last spring. “It just goes to show that we can model the world that we want to live in, rather than mirroring what’s going on with the rest of the world.”

That culture, some students say, began with faculty. Rabbi Ethan Bair, Syracuse Hillel’s former rabbi, and Imam Amir Durić, a Muslim chaplain now serving as assistant dean for religious and spiritual life, became fast friends when Bair arrived at Syracuse in 2022. That year, they organized joint events like an Iftar dinner at Hillel, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast for Muslims during the month of Ramadan. By the summer of 2023, the two envisioned hosting dialogue sessions between Muslim and Jewish students, and they received a grant from Interfaith America to make it happen.
But after the attacks of Oct. 7 and Israel’s ensuing military strikes on Gaza, Durić said he questioned whether it was the right time. During such a tense moment, he wondered who would participate, and could constructive dialogue even happen?
They decided to move forward, guided by their motto to “model rather than mirror” — a choice that proved to be the right one, Durić said.
“That friendship was the key,” Durić said of his relationship with Bair. “What helped, regardless of all the challenges, was us still being friends.”
“Imam Durić sent a strong signal, saying that, ‘Well, this is the most important time for dialogue,’” Bair said. “And of course, I agreed.”
The program began as a way to share culture and religion, not to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Durić said. The students discussed their faith practices — from Shabbat to Muslim daily prayer — and bonded over the challenges of keeping kosher and halal. But as students got to know one another, conversations naturally shifted to politics.
One evening, after a dinner during which the group heard presentations from experts about antisemitism and Islamophobia, the students stayed behind for over an hour to talk about the conflict in Gaza, Durić said.
“We built this family of Jews and Muslims who could talk about anything. We disagreed a lot,” Baltaxe said. “But we all came together.”
‘A little more understanding’
Syracuse was not immune from the kinds of clashes causing turmoil at other universities. But when events threatened to deepen campus divides, connections between Muslim and Jewish students offered a path to navigate the tensions.
In October 2023, the University cited “safety concerns” in cancelling an event titled “Teach In: The Occupation of Palestine”; students held the gathering off-campus instead. The next month brought the first in a series of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, with a “Shut it Down for Palestine” rally held on Nov. 9.
That spring, pro-Palestinian protesters camped out on the quad for two weeks before voluntarily disbanding, while pro-Israel demonstrators rallied in response.
But while tensions flared, students in the fellowship quietly got to work. They helped serve as liaisons between encampment protesters and administration, contributing to a peaceful resolution, Baltaxe said.
Having connections on both sides, he said, made that work possible.
“The core of this is that people don’t have empathy because they don’t know people on the other side,” he said. “It’s much harder to empathize with people who you don’t know.”
Sadie Meyer, student president of Syracuse Hillel, also credited friendships as helping to ease conflict. As part of Hillel’s programming, she had organized a day of volunteer work with the Muslim Student Association in November 2023 and a Passover seder with the Student Assembly of Interfaith Leaders in spring 2024.
“I actually have really good friends who took part in a lot of different protests,” said Meyer, who did not participate in any. “But I respected their opinions. I heard a lot more — because they were my friends — about what they truly were trying to get out of it, and I had a lot of respect for what they did.”
Still, clashes escalated off campus when an individual unaffiliated with the University reportedly made a Nazi salute toward a group of Syracuse students and punched one. The student who was punched declined to press charges. The next day, Syracuse parent and public relations executive Ronn Torossian was arrested after confronting a pro-Palestinian protester and refusing to leave campus, according to University officials.
“There must be an emergency meeting to discuss the safety of Jews at Syracuse University,” Torossian wrote to the Daily Orange, saying it was “reprehensible” that protesters held signs with slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea.”
Most recently, two Syracuse University students were charged with hate crimes after authorities say one of them tossed a bag of pork into a Jewish fraternity house during this year’s Rosh Hashanah celebration.
“We are heartbroken and outraged by this hateful crime committed against our fraternity,” the fraternity posted to Instagram. “This was an attack on our home, our values, and our safety, as well as every Jewish student on campus.”
At times, Baltaxe also felt campus becoming hostile: He recalled being simultaneously called a “fake Jew” by pro-Israel students and a “violent Zionist” by pro-Palestinian students. Still, he said Syracuse stood out for the students who remained committed to reaching across divides.
“I think we were way ahead of the curve when it came to addressing this stuff,” he said. “Obviously, there’s always going to be individual incidents, but I never felt truly unsafe.”
Duncan Green, a Jewish junior and another member of the Jewish-Muslim Dialogue Fellowship, said interfaith engagement offered him a more nuanced lens through which to process the campus unrest.
On a campus with a large Jewish population — roughly 2,500 students, or 16 percent of the student body — and about 200 students who identify as Muslim, the fellowship helped him step outside his bubble, he said.
“We didn’t solve any geopolitical age-old problems,” Green said. “But I do think that we came away with a little more understanding.”
During one of their final meetings, Green noticed the fellowship was meeting while pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests played out just down the block.
“I thought it was sort of symbolic that while that was all going down, we were together just having a nice lunch,” he said. “We were paving the way for a different way of going about all this.”
Durić echoed that not all 22,000 students at Syracuse were ready for dialogue. But for those who were, the fellowship offered a model. “It did serve as an alternative,” he said. “An alternative to how we can approach things that are uncomfortable, where we may disagree.”
Beyond Syracuse
The Jewish-Muslim Dialogue Fellowship continued on campus for two semesters. Its third cohort, in spring 2025, expanded beyond Syracuse University, meeting at Interfaith Works of Central New York and including students from Hamilton College, Le Moyne College, and several Palestinian American young adults who were not enrolled in college.
A few months ago, Rabbi Bair — eager to dedicate more of his time to interfaith work — left Syracuse to help develop a “bridge building” curriculum for Hillel International, which he said has already been used on several dozen college campuses. His departure means the dialogue fellowship won’t continue at Syracuse this semester.
Even so, Durić, who was promoted to assistant dean, said he expects the new imam and new rabbi to continue fostering connections between Jewish and Muslim students. This fall, they kicked off the semester with a program called “Salaam Shalom,” exploring Arabic and Hebrew words that share similar roots.
Bair also sees the fellowship as an example to be replicated. His long-term vision is an off-campus residential house shared by Muslim and Jewish students — modeled after Moishe House — where student leaders commit to hosting interfaith programming in exchange for subsidized rent.
“Jewish-Muslim bridge dialogue was not the norm in the wake of October 7 on campus,” he said. “My prayer is that this kind of work will continue more and more on college campuses — so that what we did is not an outlier, but is maybe the beginning of a culture shift.”
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Man charged in a Jewish journalist’s death vandalized a Jewish business days before
The unsolved murder of a Jewish man in a public park, a synagogue desecrated with motor oil and feces, a bagel shop splattered with dirt, and the sudden and tragic death of a Jewish journalist.
Those incidents within a few miles of each other in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Queens have put the Jewish community in that borough on alert since May. Ronnie Perry, who works at Benny’s Brick Oven Kosher Pizza in the neighborhood, said he can’t help but see a pattern.
“You know what the common denominator is, right?” Perry said.
Though investigators have not determined the motives in each case, prosecutors on Monday charged the same man who allegedly caused the death of the journalist with a hate crime for allegedly vandalizing the bagel shop.
“I was beyond horrified,” said Rachel Sales, daughter of the killed journalist, Cara Trager. “The fact that this guy did a hate crime … days before means that he could have been apprehended before my mom was killed.”
Perry, whose pizzeria is just a block from the vandalized bagel shop, told the Forward that the string of troubling incidents have rattled the community, and there’s not a lot visibly Jewish businesses like his can do to bolster security.
Nily Rozic, the Jewish state Assembly member who represents the Queens district where many of those attacks took place, said the incidents are more than just property damage or isolated violence.
“It really makes people feel like they’re being targeted as a community,” she said.
Last week, prosecutors charged Dawood Faisal, 22, with a hate crime for destroying property at Bagels & Co, a bagel shop on the corner of a major thoroughfare in Fresh Meadows that advertises itself as kosher in neon lights and displays Israeli flags. On two separate occasions in May, Faisal allegedly knocked over multiple plant stands outside the shop and, in one instance, hurled dirt at the outside wall of the store.
In May, Faisal was arraigned on charges of manslaughter for the death of Trager, a Queens-based journalist who was also active in her Jewish community. Faisal allegedly sped over 75 mph through two red lights and collided with two cars, propelling one into a crosswalk where it struck Trager and her husband, Michael, who survived.
Prosecutors have not presented any evidence that Trager was specifically targeted by Faisal, and authorities are not investigating the crash as a hate crime, according to a spokesperson for District Attorney Melinda Katz.
But even before the vandalism charge, Michael Trager told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believed that Faisal had been “looking to do damage in a heavily Jewish area.”
Sales told the Forward her mom was passionate about fighting antisemitism, and the two often discussed the uptick in anti-Jewish hate crimes — including the bagel shop’s vandalism days before Cara Trager’s death on May 29.
“This is a tragedy for the entire Jewish community to understand, and beyond the Jewish community, this is a tragedy for New Yorkers, for Americans, to see that hate crimes don’t end at vandalism. People could die,” Sales said. “My mom died.”
Just a week before the car crash, Albert Itzkowitz, a local rabbi and former kosher bakery owner, was shot and killed while visiting Kissena Park in Queens. Police are investigating the incident as a murder but have not identified any suspects.
His family is calling for the killing to be investigated as a hate crime.
“Daddy was visibly Jewish. He was targeted in broad daylight. He was killed in a public park where he should have been safe,” his daughter, Leah Livshitz, said at a press conference in June. “His family deserves answers. The Jewish community deserves answers.”
Then in July, two Orthodox congregations in Queens were desecrated with feces and motor oil. Police are also investigating that vandalism as a hate crime.
Rozic, the first and only Israeli-born New York state Assembly member, said even as investigations are ongoing, she understands the incidents as “interconnected” and has heard from Jewish constituents who feel afraid.
“Context is important,” Rozic said. “When incidents like this are followed by additional violence, it compounds the fear and the trauma of the community.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes have increased by 8.5% in New York City this year — with 205 reported versus 189 for the same period last year, according to data from the NYPD.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who previously represented a Queens district in the statehouse, has noted his administration’s 800% increased investment in the office of hate crime prevention. But in recent weeks, he has faced backlash from some Jewish New Yorkers after he released a video referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal” and calling on New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader’s planned visit to the United Nations in September. Mamdani has defended his comments on Netanyahu as “critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith.”
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He stumbled upon Leonard Bernstein’s stubble on his way to finding a ‘Lost Mozart’
David Israel needed an electric razor, so he borrowed Leonard Bernstein’s.
It was the early ‘90s and Israel was about to make his first trip overseas as a representative of the Bernstein estate at the London Symphony Orchestra. He knew that European outlets had a different voltage and so he phoned up the maestro’s daughter Jamie to ask if he could use the one at the Dakota, where Israel worked as an editor, preparing the definitive scores for Mass, West Side Story and On the Town after Bernstein’s death in 1990.
“I took a red eye, so I’m there in the morning, and I was going to shave,” Israel told me in a video call from his home in Malibu. “All of Lenny’s gray stubble comes falling out into the sink. And I thought, ‘Well, if I get a piece of Scotch tape, I could save this, and we could clone him at some point.’ And so I did.”
Israel, who has composed music for Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, knew he had a story to tell about his picaresque early days in the world of classical music. His second novel, The Lost Mozart is a kunstleroman that borrows quite a bit from life and, like the stubbly attempt to revive Leonard Bernstein, is about an effort to bring genius back to life.
The story follows Noah Wideman, like Israel a graduate of the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, who stumbles on a fragment of an unfinished Mozart string quartet. An unprecedented 627th composition from a life that lasted only 35 years.
Together with a crew of older men — a legendary classical music radio announcer, his partner and their collector friend in possession of the titular sketch — Noah works to finish what Amadeus started.
Noah, a gifted pasticheur, is primed for the task and, due to an early job at ASCAP, where he surreptitiously recorded the music playing at strip clubs that failed to pay their annual licensing fee, his skills as a detective.
Completing the work of one of the greatest musical geniuses is an act of chutzpah, something Israel knows something about. His own lost Mozart moment came shortly after college, when he made a play for the legacy of another great.
He knew Bernstein socially through the dean of the Hartt School, and chose the college in part because he knew the maestro often came to visit. Israel was scheduled to have dinner with him in 1990, but Bernstein died a month earlier. Israel produced a memorial concert and, on March 13, 1991, was at a party where he ran into Bernstein’s former assistant, who ran the publishing arm of his estate.
“We were just chit-chatting in the kitchen after this concert at this party, and he said, ‘What are you going to do when you graduate?’” Israel recalled. “And I said, ‘ I’m going to work for you,’ and that’s how the job came to be.”
Israel immersed himself in Bernstein’s scores and correspondence, in much the same way Noah dives into the Mozart archive. Bernstein was an idol, but Israel reveres Mozart, and picked him as a subject over Bach or Beethoven in part because of how prolific he was.
“The reason why I felt like this was good material for a novel is because by 2023, which is when I was writing the book, it seemed like the only way you could experience new Mozart was through fiction,” Israel said.
Not anymore. In June, just a couple of months before Israel’s pub date, a curator at France’s National Library found a notebook with sketches from the 22-year-old Mozart, who was in Paris to audition as a court musician at Versailles.
There’s more to the story, Israel said, including Wolfgang’s oft-overlooked older sister Maria Anna, a composer and musician in her own right who got top billing in the siblings’ early tours through the courts of Europe.
The sequel, Israel tells me, will feature her as another “lost Mozart,” and draw from Israel’s own time working on Bernstein’s archive, including his impromptu jam session with Yo-Yo Ma.
“It’s one of the funniest scenes in the first few chapters,” Israel promises. He can’t yet say more about what happens at the Dakota. Readers will have to discover those lost movements for themselves.
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Michigan’s Senate race has become a referendum on Israel — and the future of the Democratic Party
Tuesday’s primary contest for an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan has become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and a referendum on Israel supporters’ influence in Democratic politics. Democratic voters will decide whether to nominate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is leading in the polls after assailing his opponent as beholden to the campaign fundraising group AIPAC, or Rep. Haley Stevens, a reliable supporter of Israel who has condemned what she called “inflammatory rhetoric” from El-Sayed.
Following a string of primary victories by insurgent Democrats who made condemning Israel central to their campaigns — from New York to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado — the outcome will become the clearest test yet of whether the vocally anti-Israel progressive movement may come to define the Democratic Party.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with growing momentum, leading Stevens by as much as 16 points.
Michigan, home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities, was already a national hot spot for voter pushback on pro-Israel politics as the birthplace of the 2024 “uncommitted” movement that protested President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza by submitting blank ballots in the presidential primary.
It also has an influential Jewish community that has become deeply invested in the race — and with some El-Sayed supporters among them.
Tuesday’s winner will have to prevail in the November general election, and success is not guaranteed: While Democrats are a majority of registered voters in Michigan, Republican President Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024.
With Democrats counting on winning Michigan as they aim to retake the Senate, the questions looming over Tuesday’s primary aren’t just about the party’s direction on Israel — they’re also about whether running against Israel is a winning message in a swing state.
Democrats are facing a difficult path to winning Senate control even as polls show growing dissatisfaction with the Republican agenda.
A look at three possible scenarios shows the high stakes of the race for the Democratic Party and the place of Israel in U.S. politics:
An El-Sayed victory

An Emerson College survey of 700 voters shows El-Sayed leading Stevens by 16 points, despite more than $60 million of outside spending attacking him. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent $30.6 million backing Stevens, according to recent FEC filings. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens by directing its donors to online portals that funnel money directly to the candidate’s campaign. All in all, the Michigan contest is AIPAC’s largest investment this election cycle.
If El-Sayed wins, he would become the first Muslim nominated by a major party for the U.S. Senate and would immediately become one of the most prominent figures on the Democratic left. It would echo the victory of Zohran Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race as the city’s first Muslim mayor and the most prominent democratic socialist in office, with Jews divided between fierce opposition and fiery support.
But the immediate political meaning would be about AIPAC.
The progressive frontrunner has transformed AIPAC’s investment in the race into a centerpiece of his campaign message. Backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, El-Sayed used AIPAC as a political foil and a symbol of everything he says is wrong with Democratic politics: super PAC money, billionaire influence and demands for unconditional support for Israel. A poll of Michigan voters conducted by Data for Progress in April found that 64% of likely Democratic primary voters would be less inclined to support a candidate backed by AIPAC.
At a recent virtual town hall hosted by Progressive Democrats of America, El-Sayed compared his possible victory to David defeating Goliath. “AIPAC, if you’re listening, burn your money, come back and burn it again in the general,” he said. “I’m happy to burn your money for you, and then we can get onto the business of governing and asking whether or not our foreign policy ought to be dictated to us by the interests of a foreign government.”
An El-Sayed win would mark a reversal from AIPAC’s last confrontation with Stevens’ opponents in Michigan. In 2022, Stevens defeated Jewish Rep. Andy Levin by 20 points in a rare incumbent-versus-incumbent House primary after redistricting. Levin argued that the group was trying to punish him for criticizing Israeli policy and supporting Palestinian rights. AIPAC celebrated Levin’s defeat as proof that even a Jewish incumbent could not survive after crossing the organization. (Levin is supporting El-Sayed.)
It would also create immediate questions about how El-Sayed would operate in Washington.
Would he support Sen. Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history and one of Stevens’ most powerful allies, as Democratic leader if Democrats win the majority? And would he give Senate progressives new leverage over key votes on Israel?
What if El-Sayed loses the general election?

For Democrats worried about electability, the primary is only the first test.
The winner will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost Michigan’s 2024 Senate election and is now running with a largely unified Republican Party behind him.
Michigan remains one of the country’s key battlegrounds. President Donald Trump carried it in 2016, lost it in 2020 and won it again in 2024. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat who was an intelligence analyst in the CIA and served three tours in Iraq, won her race even as Trump carried the state.
Recent polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
Some Michigan Jewish Democrats are already considering whether they could support El-Sayed, vote for the Republican, or leave their ballot blank in November. Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in the state.
Stevens has sharpened those concerns in the final days of the campaign. She accused El-Sayed of blaming “all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” warning that his rhetoric would lead to defeat in the face-off with Rogers. El-Sayed, who has courted Jewish voters without moderating his views on Israel, rejected accusations of antisemitism.
“I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said.
A November loss would have consequences far beyond Michigan.
Democrats are already facing an uphill battle for Senate control after the collapse of Graham Platner in the competitive Maine Senate race.
Losing the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters would further divide Democrats. Party leaders would almost certainly blame El-Sayed’s ideology, his vocal opposition to Israel and the progressive groups that elevated him for losing a swing state. AIPAC, meanwhile, would claim vindication despite losing the primary.
Speaking with reporters on Sunday, El-Sayed said he’s confident Democratic voters will rally behind his candidacy as they reckon with what is at stake.
What if Stevens survives?

A Stevens victory would offer a very different lesson.
It would show that experience, establishment support and a strong general-election argument can still overcome anger about AIPAC, even in the state where the uncommitted movement began. Even a narrow victory would preserve AIPAC’s reputation as one of the most effective forces in Democratic primaries.
But it would say more about Stevens and her personality. She first entered Congress in the 2018 Democratic wave, capturing a Republican-held suburban district. She then survived redistricting and defeated Levin in the bruising 2022 primary.
Stevens has the backing of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Schumer and much of Michigan’s Democratic establishment. And she leads Rogers in a November matchup.
By Wednesday morning, Democrats will know who won Michigan. It may take until November or even longer to know whether Tuesday’s vote marked the beginning of a new era in Democratic politics or another chapter in the party’s divide over Israel. Nonetheless, Democratic leaders still have to reunite a coalition fractured over Gaza and manage a growing progressive wing in the House.
The fight extends down the ballot
The Senate contest is not the only Michigan race testing the strength of the progressive left.
In Detroit’s 13th Congressional District, state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is challenging incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar with the support of Justice Democrats. The group, which helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad, made McKinney its first congressional endorsement in four years.
In Michigan’s 7th District, former climate activist William Lawrence is running against two centrist Democrats in the primary, making an end to all U.S. military aid to Israel a key part of his campaign. The seat was previously held by Slotkin.
On a state level, Abbas Alawieh, one of the leaders of the uncommitted movement in Michigan, is running for a seat in the state legislature in a Dearborn-area district with a large Arab and Muslim population. In a sign of his growing profile, Alawieh recently met with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
AIPAC and the debate over Israel is also spilling into a neighboring state Senate race. Pro-Israel donors are spending heavily to back Justin Onwenu against former State Rep. Abraham Aiyash, an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.
It has also reached the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. Michigan Democrats nominated Amir Makled, an attorney who represented pro-Palestinian protesters, after he defeated incumbent Regent Jordan Acker at the party convention. Makled faces scrutiny for past Hezbollah praise and antisemitic posts. Republican regent candidates Lena Epstein and Michael Schostak, both Jewish, have campaigned on antisemitism and campus safety. That race will be decided in November.
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