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The Passover lesson we need most after devastating years of war
During my family’s Passover seder we will drip wine from our glasses as we recite each plague suffered by the Egyptians, a tradition that partly symbolizes regret at the suffering of innocents.
Perhaps the most fundamental lesson of Passover, as Rabbi Lauren Metzger wrote in 2025, is that “you must have empathy for others because you know what it means to suffer.” This year, Jews and non-Jews alike need that lesson more than ever.
Shortly before the onset of the war with Iran I was in Baka, Jerusalem, visiting my Israeli relatives. Stickers around the neighborhood memorialized soldiers killed in Gaza. Fortunately, none of my nephews who had served in the reserves are represented in these memorials. They survived hostile fire, and attended funerals for fallen comrades.
It struck me that there were no references to the civilians killed in Gaza.
In an August, 2025 poll, 62% of Israelis agreed with the claim that there weren’t any innocents in Gaza. One Israeli peace activist I knew, who was living in Brooklyn for a few months, told me shortly after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 that he had lost sympathy for Gaza’s non-combatants.
Besides some small protests against what former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called “war crimes” in Gaza, and others against the violent rampages by West Bank settlers, Israelis have shown little interest in Palestinian suffering. Such moral blindness will make it difficult for them to internalize the symbolism of dripping wine onto their Seder plates.
Israelis are suffering from a kind of collective PTSD from the savagery of Oct. 7, the war against Hamas, and decades of terrorism. I imagine that the war with Iran will exacerbate their sense of vulnerability, preventing them from seeing beyond their anger and fear.
Their traumas leave little room for the empathy demanded by Passover.
In Baka I spoke to one of my relatives, who had served more than 300 days in the reserves. “At first there was no question about serving,” he said. “The stakes were existential.” Many of his fellow-reservists, he said, were no longer serving because of PTSD, or because their families were falling apart without them.
My brother-in-law showed me the bomb shelter where he had spent nights during last year’s 12-day missile exchange with Iran. This time around, he rides his bicycle to visit his grandchildren, carrying with him a map marking the shelters on his route.
But as much of the world condemns Israelis for insufficient empathy for Palestinians, it also showcases a remarkable lack of empathy for the ordeals experienced by Israelis themselves.
My Park Slope, Brooklyn neighborhood is dotted with “Free Palestine” signs. Just as there were no references in Baka to the slaughter in Gaza, the displays on the houses of my pro-Palestinian neighbors are silent about the atrocities of Oct. 7, an omission that has me doubting the thoughtfulness of their protest.
But while anti-Zionism has attracted its share of hypocrites, the Jewish communal establishment has largely overlooked Israel’s misdeeds.
The prevailing mantra is that anti-Zionism is antisemitism — an overly broad formulation that lumps supporters of Hamas in with advocates for a bi-national state.
In practice, too much of the Jewish community has treated all of Israel’s politically progressive detractors as illegitimate messengers. Approaching the progressive left’s accusations around Israel with wholesale disregard has allowed many of my co-religionists to duck the moral questions that have arisen in these devastating years of war. In this way, we mirror our Israeli counterparts.
Polling shows that more Americans now favor the Palestinians over the Israelis — a radical inversion from even a year ago. Unless the Jewish community fully acknowledges the role Israel’s behavior has played in this shift, we will become isolated from the political mainstream. We will also lose the credibility needed to assume the type of ethical leadership that has marked Jewish-American history.
Israel is also trending towards isolation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for his country to become a militaristic “super Sparta.” Embracing that vision would alienate most of the world community, as well as many younger Jewish Americans, who are already disillusioned by Israel’s illiberalism.
The antidote to isolation is for Jews to do the difficult work of confronting the reality of ongoing suffering in Gaza, as well as the anguish of innocents in Lebanon, Iran and the West Bank — and to find empathy. In 2026, this is the work that Passover demands of us.
In the Passover story God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, leading to his downfall. We must embrace the holiday’s call for empathy, or risk, like Pharaoh, becoming slaves to fear and self-imposed insularity.
The post The Passover lesson we need most after devastating years of war appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
