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A new curriculum brings adults with intellectual disabilities into Jewish learning
(JTA) — When he’s not working at the local dog care and boarding center, 24-year-old Raffi Stein-Klotz is usually playing kickball or tending to the garden at his residential facility in Boca Raton.
But once a week, Stein-Klotz can be found in an adult Jewish learning class series created specifically for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, like him and his housemates at JARC, the Jewish Association for Residential Care.
“We learn the book of Genesis,” Stein-Klotz, the son of two rabbis, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And we get to know how everything is in Hebrew and English, and every morning we say ‘boker or,’ ‘boker tov,’” referring to the Hebrew expressions for “good morning.”
Stein-Klotz’s class is possible thanks to a new curriculum from Melton, the adult Jewish education network that offers in-person and online classes. The program, called What’s Mine is Yours, aims to provide Jewish academic resources for adults with disabilities, who advocates say have few if any options for formal Jewish education tailored to their needs.
“There’s really not a lot specifically designed for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to have a continued adult learning experience,” said Carol Morris, Jewish disabilities advocates coordinator at Jewish Family Service of Colorado. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some educational programs that they could attend or be part of, but not really anything designed specifically for them as adults to do higher-level Jewish learning.”
The curriculum was developed in partnership with Matan, an organization that educates Jewish community leaders on how best to include people with disabilities. After a successful precursor curriculum with Melton took off in Atlanta in 2021, What’s Mine is Yours began piloting the Melton and Matan curriculum in 2023. Four cities are offering the curriculum for the first time this year.
The rollout comes as the Jewish world has otherwise made significant strides in some aspects of disability inclusion in recent years. (February is Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month, a global Jewish organizational initiative.)
“One of the things that’s so important here is the Jewish world, to a great extent, has embraced the importance of inclusion, the importance of adding ramps where there are stairs to get into the synagogue, to get up to the bimah in the front, they’ve thought about the ways to include people with disabilities,” said Morey Schwartz, international director of Melton.
But, he added, “Inclusion can’t just be about ramps. It has to be about giving them inspiration, education, engaging, thought-provoking materials that can give them also the ability to participate fully to the extent that they can to the enterprise of Jewish learning. It can’t be like some watered-down version of something else. That’s not what we’re doing.”
What’s Mine is Yours includes units about prayer, holidays, Shabbat and rituals that are structured to be accessible for adults with intellectual disabilities without giving up on the core elements of advanced Jewish learning: open-ended questions, engagement with original texts and group discussions. Lesson plans ask students to relate the ideas they encounter to their own lives, and materials include prominent visual markers to enable students who might have trouble accessing text-based materials to follow along.
The pilot class in Atlanta, in 2021, was supported by a local Jewish disability support network. “Then we got feedback: We should take this over, nationalize it, scale it up,” Schwartz said.
The result is a customizable system that can be used wherever Melton classes are held, such as synagogues, JCCs and Jewish federations — or in residential facilities, day programs, specialty organizations, adult camp programs, community centers and educational networks. It’s in use in nine cities, mostly in the United States but also in Cape Town, South Africa.
Each module in the curriculum is three lessons, but can be stretched over more classes if teachers prefer. The first collection of four adapted modules has been completed, and another 12 are still in process.
Subject matter includes the meaning and purpose of prayer; the Exodus story; the miracles of Hanukkah and Purim; symbols in Judaism; and marriage, divorce, and conversion in Judaism.
“There are suggestions made, and everyone can kind of enter at a different point of where their knowledge is,” said Judy Snowbell Diamond, director of curricular development at Melton. “In addition to the course book, there’s a faculty guide, which gives the faculty some suggestions as to how to modify it depending on the learners.”
At JARC in Boca Raton, teacher Harvey Leven’s class recently completed the “Sacred Cycles” module, where students learned about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During a recent class, which JTA viewed by Zoom, six students, roughly mid-30s and older, sat around a conference table. (The rest of the class was on a field trip to Orlando.)
In his class, Leven reviewed relevant terms with students like “atonement,” “repentance” and “self-denial.”
Leven also played a three-minute video where a narrator, speaking quickly, recapped the basics of the holiday. Before playing any video, Leven tells his students a few of the things they might see, and a few things to look out for.
“Some people participate a lot, and some never say a word,” said Leven.
Stein-Klotz said he counts himself as one of those quieter students.
“For me, it’s hard, because I have autism, and it takes my brain a little bit to get it,” he said.
Leven has worked in Jewish education for more than 20 years, teaching both children and adults. But teaching the Melton curriculum marks the first time he has adapted his teaching specifically for students with special needs.
“Sometimes, like today, the vocabulary in the material often needs translating for these students,” Leven said. “And so you have to spend some time helping the students to understand what exactly is being said there.”
It can be difficult to measure how much information is getting through to his students, Leven said.
“We don’t do tests,” he said. “Today, one or two barely said anything. So I’m hoping that something sinks in.”
Over the past two years of teaching from the What’s Mine is Yours curriculum, Leven has had a number of returning students. Having worked with them in the past, he is already familiar with their learning styles and with their personalities, which has been helpful in the classroom.
“Every one of those students has particular idiosyncrasies that I had to learn and to be able to work with in order to make this class meaningful and fun for them, enjoyable for them,” Leven said.
But he said he had identified challenges in executing the curriculum. Leven said he avoids the suggested physical activities, for example, because many of his students have limited mobility, and the space and shape of his classroom is not conducive to much movement.
And though the program seeks to be accessible to all, in practice, it doesn’t work for every person’s needs.
Alissa Korn is the mother of two adult daughters, including 27-year-old Jillian, who has intellectual disabilities and mental health challenges. After learning about the success of the adapted curriculum in Atlanta, Korn was inspired to introduce the What’s Mine is Yours curriculum to Jillian’s adult living facility in New Haven, Connecticut.
“My daughter, it wasn’t great for her, because she really learns best in a one-on-one setting,” Korn admitted. “And with adults raising their hands and talking over each other, it was very challenging for her.”
Still, Korn finds value in the program, and her family continues to support it at her daughter’s living facility.
“It doesn’t necessarily need to be the perfect match for my daughter,” Korn said. “It just makes me feel good to be involved in anything in the special needs world, where we can feel like we’re empowering people and making them feel good about themselves.”
Erica Baruch, Jewish disabilities advocates adviser at Jewish Family Service of Colorado, said just offering the program takes the burden off families like Korn’s.
“Oftentimes families don’t ask for things because they make the assumption that it wouldn’t be possible or it would be a burden on the community,” she said. “Learning is such a big piece of Jewish life.”
Stein-Klotz is exactly the kind of student Melton is trying to reach. He fondly recalls marking his bar mitzvah at 13, when his godfather, who is also a rabbi, taught him his Torah portion — the story of Noah and the ark. He recalls having fun, learning about the animals and getting to sing songs.
“It was great, because I had people helping me, and I remembered everything,” he recalled of his bar mitzvah. “Learning it was hard for me, and I didn’t want to do it, but I took my time and learned well, and I still remember it, and I’m still Jewish throughout this day.”
Now, he is able to play a helping role in his Melton course, which he said has been a great way to get to know his neighbors from JARC and from the garden.
“It’s great to see them in the Melton class and learn what their disability is and what their strong skills and what their weaknesses are,” Stein-Klotz said. “So that’s a good thing, so I help them with that, if I can.”
Stein-Klotz said he even helps some of his classmates who are new to Judaism or interested in converting one day.
“They make me feel happy and good and strong,” he added. “Like I’m helping people, or like a good mitzvah.”
The post A new curriculum brings adults with intellectual disabilities into Jewish learning appeared first on The Forward.
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Congress removes deadline for Holocaust-looted art claims, setting stage for more restitution battles
(JTA) — A new U.S. law removing a deadline for laying claim to art looted during the Holocaust has gone into effect after President Donald Trump signed it on Monday.
The 2025 Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, or HEAR Act, expands on a 2016 law, signed by President Barack Obama, that permits victims and descendants of victims of the Holocaust to lay legal claim to works of art looted by the Nazis or sold to the Nazis under false pretenses.
That law included a controversial “sunset clause” that required all claims of artwork looted by the Nazis to be filed by the end of this year. That clause has been removed, and the revised act permits families to file a lawsuit within six years of the discovery of looted artwork.
The law also further protects those seeking to retrieve their family’s looted property by preventing the current holders from using certain legal tactics unrelated to the subject matter — such as requesting to switch courts — during proceedings.
“For years, the sunset clause cast a shadow over every survivor and family whose stolen art is still missing,” Joel Greenberg, president of Art Ashes, a nonprofit that helps families recover their looted art, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Now they can seek due process without the pressure of time and deadlines.”
Hundreds of thousands of pieces of fine art were looted from their Jewish owners by the Nazis, often by forced sales in the early years of the Nazi regime. Efforts to reunite the works with their owners or their descendants have been guided by an array of laws governed by an international compact including nearly two dozen countries. Restitution claims frequently ignite extensive legal battles.
The family of the cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum, who was murdered in the Holocaust, for example, was able to recover works by Viennese Expressionist artist Egon Schiele that were in Grünbaum’s vast personal collection in 2018 after decades of efforts. The family has since continued to file legal action to reclaim Grünbaum’s works under the HEAR Act.
Watchdogs say the sunset clause may have caused those owning looted works to obscure them from public view.
“It was extremely important that Congress eliminated the sunset clause because it incentivized museums and others holding looted art to keep those works under wraps until the sunset period ended,” Greenberg said. “Now, that change and the other provisions ensure claims will be heard and decided on the merits and means that the commitment Congress made to survivors ten years ago when they first passed the HEAR Act is finally being honored.”
Both the original law and the new revision received bipartisan support. But the Republican Jewish Coalition credited Trump with its enactment, saying in a statement, “President Trump has consistently proven to be the best friend of the Jewish people ever to occupy the Oval Office, and his signature today ratifies the truth: the passage of time can never diminish the injustice of crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.”
The revision goes into effect just days after one of the most significant recent rulings in the restitution space. Last week, a judge ruled after a decade-long legal battle that a painting by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, once valued at around $25 million, must be returned to the descendants of its original owner, who was forced to sell the painting to the Nazis. The painting had been in the possession of a prominent New York-based real estate and art dealer family since 1996.
The post Congress removes deadline for Holocaust-looted art claims, setting stage for more restitution battles appeared first on The Forward.
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Holocaust Remembrance Day Marked in Poland, Germany Amid Nazi Displays, Rising Antisemitism
Participants with Israeli flags look at the landmark Birkenau extermination camp gate in Auschwitz Museum – former Nazi German Concentration Camp during the International March of the Living (MOTL) in Oswiencim, Poland on April 14, 2026. Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Eighty-one years after the Holocaust, antisemitism remains rampant in the heart of the former Third Reich, with incidents in both Poland and Germany underscoring a disturbing resurgence of Nazi-linked provocation and hatred across Europe — even as Jews and Israelis around the world marked Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.
Polish far-right lawmaker Konrad Berkowicz sparked outrage in Warsaw after displaying a modified Israeli flag during a parliamentary debate, replacing the Star of David with a Nazi swastika.
Berkowicz’s act was widely condemned as a deeply troubling distortion of Holocaust memory and a provocative example of “Holocaust inversion,” weaponizing Nazi imagery to target Israel in a manner that promotes hateful rhetoric.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the incident, calling on government officials to take swift and decisive action to address the matter, deter similar acts, and uphold public accountability.
“This act constitutes a clear example of Holocaust inversion, distorting the memory of the Shoah, and trivializing its victims,” EJC wrote in a post on X, using the Hebrew word for referring to the Holocaust.
“The use of Nazi symbols in this context is not only offensive, but represents a serious form of antisemitic provocation, particularly on a day dedicated to remembrance,” the statement read. “Preserving the integrity of Holocaust remembrance and ensuring that antisemitism is not tolerated in public institutions is essential.”
Polish MP Konrad Berkowicz displayed an Israeli flag bearing a swastika during a parliamentary debate in Warsaw on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This act constitutes a clear example of Holocaust inversion, distorting the memory of the Shoah and trivialising its victims.
The use of… pic.twitter.com/zeyRN5yG6T
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) April 14, 2026
The latest antisemitic incident came as Holocaust survivors from around the world joined thousands of participants in the 38th March of the Living, held at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in remembrance of the 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II. The annual march goes from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were killed.
During a ceremony, Revital Yakin Krakovsky, deputy chief executive of the International March of the Living organization, warned that antisemitism continues to endure today despite the lessons of the Holocaust, stressing that its warning signs are once again becoming impossible to ignore.
“Since Oct. 7, antisemitism has surged and is spreading everywhere,” Krakovsky said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “The scale and normalization of this hatred echoes the dark times we have seen before and, today of all days, we know how it ended.”
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Poland has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Germany has also experienced a marked surge in antisemitism, with Jewish communities and Israelis facing an increasingly hostile climate and a growing number of disturbing public provocations.
On Tuesday, workers at the Eggenfelden tax office in Bavaria, southern Germany, discovered a structure over a meter high on the premises, allegedly designed to resemble a crematorium and adorned with a swastika and SS runes. The structure also had the inscription “Zyklon B,” the pesticide used by the Nazis to carry out the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz.
This latest incident coame just three weeks after a replica of the Auschwitz concentration camp gate, also covered in swastikas, was placed in front of the same tax office.
Eggenfelden’s mayor, Martin Biber, strongly condemned the incident, calling it a deeply disturbing provocation that has shocked the community.
“This shocks me. It’s also a huge disappointment that someone here is so cowardly. Quite apart from the fact that an object that is presumably meant to resemble a crematorium represents a horrific act,” Biber told the German newspaper BILD.
Local law enforcement has launched an investigation into the incident, treating it as a serious suspected extremist provocation.
The incident coincided with a commemoration held by the Israeli Embassy in Germany for the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis at the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, in eastern Germany.
During the ceremony, Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor called for the resolute protection of Jewish life, warning that “antisemitism is not a relic of the past but remains visible and on the rise.”
He also emphasized that confronting the spread of terror by Iran is not solely Israel’s responsibility, warning of its expanding global reach and ideological influence.
“The mullahs are already part of the war in Europe. Their drones are falling in Ukraine. Their networks operate across continents – and their deadly ideology is spreading faster than any missile,” the Israeli diplomat said.
“Once again, Israel is on the front line. But the free world, especially Germany and Europe, has not only the responsibility, but the duty to confront this deadly ideology that threatens Europe from within,” he continued.
Andreas Büttner, the Brandenburg commissioner against Antisemitism, was also in attendance at the ceremony, where he reaffirmed the urgent need to confront and counter rising antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is not a shadow of the past. It is an open fire burning among us. And this fire is being stoked from various sides – by the extreme right, by the extreme left, and by those who disguise their hatred of Israel as moral concern,” the German official said.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
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Mossad Chief Says Iran Campaign ‘Will Only Be Complete When This Extremist Regime Is Replaced’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Mossad chief David Barnea in July 2025. Photo: Israeli Government Press Office (GPO)
The head of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad declared on Tuesday that the Israeli military campaign against Iran will end only with the collapse of the Islamist regime in Tehran.
David Barnea’s comments during a speech at a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony came as a fragile ceasefire teetered on the brink of collapse and prospects for renewed negotiations remained uncertain.
Israel secured “significant achievements” after 40 days of intense fighting against “those who have made the destruction of the Jewish state their guiding principle,” said Barnea, who noted that the campaign had reshaped the regional security landscape.
“The Iranian threat grew stronger before our eyes, before the eyes of the world, almost without interruption,” he continued. “We repeatedly warned of the nuclear danger as an existential threat, and time and again we warned about the quantities of ballistic missiles that threaten Israeli citizens across the country, as well as the danger posed to us by the Iranian regime.”
Barnea said that Israel and its close ally the US took matters into their own hands for the good of the entire world and warned that, at least for Jerusalem, the mission isn’t done until the Iranian regime collapses.
“Finally, we took our fate into our own hands and entered two wars out of necessity. Alongside us, in firm alliance and historic cooperation with the world’s most powerful nation, we fought together for the values of justice and freedom,” the Israeli official continued. “Our commitment will only be complete when this extremist regime is replaced.”
Since Feb. 28, when the US and Israel launched joint strikes, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that, in addition to degrading Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, they aim to “create the conditions” for the regime in Iran to collapse, weakening the government to the point that the Iranian people can revolt.
US officials have not publicly adopted regime change as a declared war goal. However, President Donald Trump has at times suggested that Iranians should rise up once the airstrike campaign ends.
During Tuesday’s ceremony, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also delivered a speech, saying that the US and Israel had “defined the removal of enriched material from Iran as a threshold condition for ending the campaign.”
“Iran’s regional proxies — from the collapsed Syrian regime to Hezbollah and Hamas — have been dealt heavy blows and have lost their capacity to pose a strategic threat to Israel,” Katz said. “There remains the task of confronting the rest of their power, and we are doing so — and will continue to do so — with full commitment and full force.”
On Monday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir approved plans to escalate the military campaign against Iran and advance expanded operational planning across multiple arenas in the region if the ceasefire ends, signaling continued pressure on Tehran’s military and strategic infrastructure.
“We are facing a multi-theater campaign unprecedented in the history of our people and of nations — against both immediate enemies on our borders and distant adversaries seeking our destruction,” Zamir said. “We are striking Iran and its proxies, inflicting heavy blows and significantly degrading their military capabilities.”
With the ceasefire deadline approaching in a week and regional tensions escalating, Trump said the White House has received a request from “the appropriate parties” to resume talks, adding that the Iranian regime is seeking to renew negotiations and reach an agreement.
“Iran will not have nuclear weapons. We agreed on a lot of things, but they did not agree to that. And I think they will agree to that. I am sure of it. If they do not agree – there will be no agreement,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
According to The New York Times, US officials have proposed a 20-year halt to Iranian uranium enrichment, which Iranian negotiators countered with a five-year suspension that Washington rejected, while also reportedly insisting that Iran dismantle major enrichment sites and surrender more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has offered to host another round of US–Iran negotiations in Islamabad in the coming days before the ceasefire expires, as diplomatic efforts intensify to prevent a renewed escalation.
The Trump administration has also stepped up pressure on Tehran to accept its demands by imposing a naval blockade on vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping chokepoint for energy supplies.
Since the start of the war, Iran has used control over the Strait of Hormuz as a major source of leverage, militarizing the waterway and sharply restricting maritime traffic through one of the world’s most critical shipping corridors.
Iranian officials warned they would retaliate against any US naval blockade targeting their ports, calling the move illegal and warning that Gulf shipping routes would no longer remain secure if Iranian access were restricted.
Responding to Iranian threats in a post on Truth Social, Trump said, “If one of these boats approaches the blockade, it will be eliminated immediately, using the same elimination method that we use against drug smugglers at sea. It will be fast and brutal.”
Iran has also signaled it intends to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz even after the war ends, potentially imposing transit fees framed as compensation for wartime damage.
Following the latest escalation at sea, Israel had instructed its forces to maintain a high level of alert and prepare for the possibility of an immediate collapse of the ceasefire agreement, remaining on heightened readiness in case the truce breaks down and talks do not resume.
Israeli officials have said they do not rule out that Iran may be using the ceasefire to rebuild damaged air defense systems and restore military capabilities, while also attempting to bring weapons and sensitive technologies back into the country through overland smuggling routes.
Meanwhile, Iran appears to still be targeting Gulf states despite the ceasefire, with Bahrain intercepting seven Iranian drones in the past 24 hours in what officials described as a clear breach of the agreement.