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Extraordinary lives: 18 notable New York Jews who died in 2022
(New York Jewish Week) — Recalling the lives of what obituary writer Marilyn Johnson has called the “important dead” is one of the honors and pleasures of reading — and writing — daily journalism. Jewish tradition teaches that every life is of infinite value, but many people make their marks in ways that inspire readers to pause and ponder on the sheer variety of human endeavor.
In the case of the New York Jewish Week, we’ve been honored to remember those who died in 2022 and whose lives represent the diversity of Jewish experience and what it means to be a New Yorker. Below, we recall 18 Jewish New Yorkers whose contributions to religion, the arts, communal life, popular entertainment, public affairs or just their loving families were either the subject of an obituary that we had written, or who came to our attention thanks to their friends and relatives. May their memories be for a blessing.
David Henoch
Recent high school graduate who died doing what he loved.
Henoch and his parents, sisters, brothers-in-law and niece the day of his graduation from SAR High School in the Bronx, June 13, 2022. (Courtesy Henoch family)
The tight-knit Modern Orthodox community in the Bronx, where David Henoch grew up and attended the SAR Jewish day schools, remembered him as a curious, sensitive and empathetic leader among his peers, with a deep sense of humor and excitement for many different areas of life. Friends and family described “Divi” as an avid adventurer whose favorite activities — many of which he loved to do with his father Avi — included snowboarding, sailing and basketball. He was a certified scuba diver who died at 18 July 10 in a diving accident in Florida, a month after his graduation from SAR High School. He was buried in Israel, where he had planned to spend a year studying before going to college. “Divi always challenged me to improve. He was open to anyone and everyone’s ways no matter how mild or extreme,” a friend, neighbor and classmate recalled, adding, “He was as fearless as it gets and never once was he afraid to be himself.”
Michael Lang
A promoter behind the 1969 Woodstock festival.
Woodstock Music Festival co-producer Michael Lang attends a celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock at the at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC in New York CIty, Aug. 13, 2009. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Michael Lang, the Jewish co-creator of 1969’s legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair, died on Jan. 8 in Manhattan. He was 77. A concert promoter who was just 24 at the time, he was one of several Jewish collaborators who made the generation-defining festival, billed as “Three Days of Peace and Music,” happen. Other key players included music executive and promoter Artie Kornfeld — another Brooklyn-born Jew — and businessman Joel Rosenman, a Jewish native of Long Island. Lang was born in 1944 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Lang credited his Jewish parents, who were small-business owners, with teaching him the skills he needed to pull off an event of such scale. His father, he said, “gave me a strategy for getting out of tough situations: take charge and keep moving. Step back just enough to think clearly, and trust your instincts.”
Edward Schoenfeld
A Brooklyn-born maven of Chinese cuisine.
Ed Schoenfeld speaks at a Food Network event in New York City, Oct. 18, 2014. (Michael N. Todaro/Getty Images for NYCWFF)
Like a lot of Jews growing up in Brooklyn, Edward Schoenfeld learned to love Chinese food. He made it a career, opening a series of famed restaurants that introduced New Yorkers to the wide variety of Chinese cuisine. In 1973, he got his first restaurant job as assistant to restaurateur David Keh when he opened Uncle Tai’s, one of the first Hunan restaurants in New York. He went on to a career developing and running restaurants over some four decades. Among his well-regarded Chinese restaurants were Auntie Yuan and Pig Heaven, both on the Upper East Side, as well as Red Farm, a farm-to-table restaurant in Greenwich Village, which opened in 2010. “My personal joke is that I learned to speak Yiddish in the Chinese restaurant from my customers,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2013. Schoenfeld died Jan. 14 at 72.
Lori Zabar
A lawyer and activist devoted to landmarks — including her family’s gourmet food emporium.
Lori Zabar, left, with Kate Wood and David Sprouls at the book launch of “Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York,” at The Four Seasons, Oct. 8, 2015. Zabar was the first director of the NYC Historic Properties Fund at the New York Landmarks Conservancy. (New York School of Interior Design)
Lori Zabar, a lawyer, author, antiques dealer and historic preservationist whose grandparents founded Zabar’s, the Upper West Side gourmet food emporium, died Feb. 3 the age of 67. The cause of death was cancer. The first director of the NYC Historic Properties Fund at the New York Landmarks Conservancy, she died shortly before the publication of “Zabar’s: A Family Story, with Recipes” in May. In an excerpt from her book published in the New York Jewish Week, she wrote about the perfectionism of her grandfather Louis when he opened the first reiteration of what became the famed “appy” store and a landmark in its own right: “For this new venture, Louis would sample deli meats and fish from various purveyors before he would commit to doing business with those suppliers. To taste fish, Louis would tour dozens of local smokehouses, large and small, mostly in Brooklyn and Queens. He was notorious among the wholesalers for rejecting more than he accepted. His retail mantra was simple: the highest quality at the lowest price.”
Sheldon Silver
A powerful politician undone by a corruption scandal.
Then-Speaker of the New York State Assembly Sheldon Silver walks in front of the State Capitol in Albany, New York, March 12, 2008. (Daniel Barry/Getty Images)
Sheldon Silver, who for two decades wielded enormous power as the speaker of the New York State Assembly before being brought down by a corruption scandal, died Jan. 24 at 77 at Otisville Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he had been serving a 6 1/2-year sentence on federal corruption charges. An Orthodox Jew and Democrat who represented New York’s Lower East Side, Silver was one of the most influential political leaders in the state, using the power of his office to guide legislation and stall opposition even when, for 12 years, Republican George Pataki was governor and Republicans held a majority in the state Senate. Silver’s arrest and conviction sent shock waves through New York’s Jewish establishment. “Shelly Silver was one of the strongest forces for progressive issues in the New York State Legislature,” Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, a Jewish Democrat from Manhattan, told the New York Times. “It’s a tragedy that those achievements have been overshadowed by his criminal record.”
Pinchas Stolper
A leader of the Orthodox Union and its powerhouse youth movement.
Rabbi Pinchas Stolper delivers a Passover message to NCSY alumni on April 10, 2014. (YouTube)
Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, a pioneer in making Orthodox Judaism accessible to young people, died on May 25 at 90. Stolper helped turn the National Council of Synagogue Youth into a national powerhouse. He served as the first full-time national director of NCSY and as the longest-serving executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, and wrote a series of books making the holidays and Shabbat more accessible to younger readers. He retired from the leadership of the Orthodox Union in 2000, the same year that a rabbi under his supervision. Baruch Lanner, was accused of years of sexual and physical abuse. In the first report about the scandal, he told the New York Jewish Week that he had heard several complaints from young women about improper behavior by Lanner, but lacking specific allegations, let the youth leader off with a warning.
Miriam Winiarz
A Staten Island widow who was devoted to outreach.
Miriam Winiarz and her husband Rabbi Mendy Winiarz were known for their outreach to Jews on Staten Island. (Courtesy)
Miriam Winiarz lived through the unthinkable: In 2015, her husband Dovid Winiarz died in a Maryland car crash, leaving the Staten Island mother alone to raise their 10 children. And yet, after losing her husband, she remained a pillar in the borough’s Jewish community, Mendy Mirocznik, president of the Council of Jewish Organizations of Staten Island, told silive.com. She continued the kiruv, or outreach work that she and her husband had conducted before his death, bringing other Jews closer to their tradition through social media and through his rabbinate. “This was somebody who, when they got wind of the situation, somebody had a problem, they would interrupt their own lives and make you a priority,” said Mirocznik. Miriam Winiarz died in early December at the age of 56 after what was described as a brief illness. Her funeral at Young Israel of Staten Island in Willowbrook drew more than a thousand people. A fund has been set up to support her children, the youngest of whom is 14.
Philip Pearlstein
Modern realist painter and champion of Jewish art.
Modern realist painter Philip Pearlstein photographed in his New York studio in 1971. (Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)
Philip Pearlstein, an artist whose painting of nudes revived realistic painting after decades of dominance by abstraction, died in Manhattan on Dec. 17 at age 98. Born in Pittsburgh, he moved to Manhattan in 1949 as a sort of chaperone to a young Andy Warhol. He became an instructor at the Pratt Institute, and taught at Brooklyn College from 1963 until his retirement in 1988. Pearlstein served on the board of the Covenant Foundation in the early 2000s, and , according to Judith Ginsberg, former executive director of the foundation, opened the board to funding Jewish art in a bigger way and promoting the artists Debbie Friedman, Liz Lerman and Liz Swados.
Barbara Roaman
A grandma with a keen fashion sense and commitment to social justice
Barbara Roaman and her granddaughter, Sandy Fox. (Courtesy)
Barbara “Bobby” Roaman, who died on Nov. 6 at 91, was born in Manhattan and lived on the Upper West Side as a child. After attending Syracuse University and Columbia University, where she majored in Spanish, she moved to Long Island with her husband, Richard. In a eulogy shared with the New York Jewish Week, her granddaughter, Sandy Fox — an editor at In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies — remembered both her sense of fashion and her work in the civil rights movement on Long Island:
“Our conversations as a child instilled in me much more than a love of clothing. She taught me values of social justice and tzedakah, or what she would have called charitable giving, and because she wasn’t at all religious, those were the pillars of her Judaism. She and my grandfather were born in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They were upwardly mobile and privileged. In their class status and whiteness, they had blind spots when it came to race. Nevertheless, their commitments to social justice and civil rights were inspiring to me as a child and teen. They were involved in attempts to desegregate Long Island in the 1950s and 1960s. In more recent years, grandma had become involved in a local group called ERASE Racism, and donated to many non-profits that I also care about: Planned Parenthood, Democratic campaigns of all kinds, American Jewish World Service, and so on. It would have been so easy for them to become Republicans, as many Jews in their generation did. But they didn’t…. My mom died when I was 18, and from then on we tried to bridge that cavernous loss that affected us so differently but both so profoundly. She could not replace my mother and I could not replace her daughter, but we came pretty damn close. I sensed that she poured into me everything she wished she had poured into my mother.”
René Slotkin
A survivor of Mengele’s sadistic experiments on twins.
Ita Guttmann and her twins, René and Irene (then Renate), were photographed for Nazi propaganda while they were imprisoned at Theresienstadt. (Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via Irene Guttmann Slotkin Hizme)
René Slotkin, who with his twin sister Renate (Irene) was subjected to Josef Mengele’s infamous medical experiments on twins, died July 10 at age 84. Born in Teplice-Sanov, a city in northern Bohemia, he and his sister were sent, at 4, with their mother, to Theresienstadt. After a year, the three were shipped to Auschwitz. Then they were split up, the children becoming part of the infamous medical experiments conducted by Mengele, the sadistic “Angel of Death.” Orphaned, Slotkin and his sister survived a death march and arrived in New York in 1950. He was married at a young age and, after serving as a sergeant in the U.S. National Guard, worked for a box manufacturing company as a cost estimator. In 2019, he joined the Speakers Bureau at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, sharing his testimony with students. “I am here because of good people, good people everywhere,” he told the museum in an interview.
Sarah Schlesinger
A force in musical theater education.
At NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts , Sarah Schlesinger was the recipient of the David Payne Carter Award and the University Distinguished Teacher Award. (tisch.nyu.edu)
Sarah Schlesinger was an award-winning lyricist and librettist whose works, with composer Mike Reid, included “The Ballad of Little Jo,” “The Last Day,” “Casanova Returns,” “Prairie Songs,” “A Wind in the Willows Christmas” and “In This House.” But her most lasting legacy may well be the composers and lyricists she mentored as an arts professor and dean at the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She joined the program in 1989, served as associate chair of the department from 1995 to 1997, and was named chair in 1998. “Under her leadership, the program produced a huge, international alumni network of artists who are at the forefront of every facet of musical theatre activity: as creators, teachers, scholars and business leaders,” the program said in a statement. “Her insight, razor-sharp mind and her ability to get things done and to identify and encourage faculty, students and alums was frankly staggering in its longevity and reach. Sarah was a force that could make things happen.” Schlesinger died Dec. 14 following an illness.
Menahem Schmelzer
The ‘go-to’ librarian at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Menahem Schmelzer tended perhaps the greatest collection of Judaica in the Western Hemisphere. (Courtesy Jewish Theological Seminary)
In 1966, after a fire gutted the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, Menahem Schmelzer led what the flagship Conservative seminary said in a statement was “the extraordinary effort to reopen it, restore it to health, and ultimately open a new Library building in 1983.” When he stepped down as its longtime librarian in 1987, he had watched over the resuscitation of perhaps the greatest collection of Judaica in the Western Hemisphere. Schmelzer, who spent four decades at JTS, also served as provost and held the title of Albert B. and Bernice Cohen Professor Emeritus of Medieval Hebrew Literature and Jewish Bibliography. A Holocaust survivor who was born in Hungary, Schmelzer was also a scholar in his own right, specializing in medieval Hebrew literature and the Jewish liturgical poetry known as piyyut. David Kraemer, the Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian at JTS, remembered his colleague as “the ‘go-to’ person on questions of Jewish bibliography for researchers around the world.” He died on Dec. 10 at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.
Steven Salen
Holocaust survivor who dressed presidents
Steve Salen in an undated photo in his Manhattan atelier. (Family)
Born Zoltan Salomon in Czechoslovakia in 1919, Steven Salen first learned tailoring at a trade school run there by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Then the Nazis arrived and they deported Salen. He never saw his parents or seven of his 11 siblings again. But he stuck with his trade, establishing himself after arriving in New York City as a tailor to the elite, making garments for the likes of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Martin Scorsese (and keeping mementoes of their business at his Bayside home). Salen was an old-school, word-of-mouth tailor who started working at FL Dunn on Fifth Avenue in New York, and eventually had his own full-floor atelier on Madison Avenue and 53rd Street, at the heart of the city’s high-fashion district. In 2011, when Salen already topped 90, a New York style blog profiled his shop, noting that it was one of fewer than 30 bespoke tailors in a city that had once been home to more than 300. Salen would work until 95 before retiring; he died Nov. 23 at 103.
Maximilian Lerner
A World War II “Ritchie Boy” who went undercover behind German lines.
Maximilian Lerner served as a translator and interrogated prisoners on behalf of U.S. intelligence during World War II. (Via Museum of Jewish Heritage)
Maximilian Lerner, an Austrian Jewish immigrant, served as a translator and interrogated prisoners on behalf of U.S. intelligence during World War II as a member of the “Ritchie Boys,” a special unit trained in espionage and frontline interrogation. He died Sept. 10 at his home in Manhattan at age 98. Lerner left Austria with his family two months after Germany’s March 1938 annexation of his homeland and, after layovers in Paris and Nice, came to the U.S., via Lisbon, in 1941. After volunteering for the draft, he became one of the 2,000 to 3,000 European-born Jews who learned to interrogate prisoners of war and civilians, interpret and translate for foreign officials, and read codes. “I wore civilian clothes”— posing as German behind enemy lines – “a number of times,” he told the New York Jewish Week in 2004. “This was my war. I would do whatever it took.” After the war, her worked for a horticultural products business and later started his own business in the same field. He also earned a master’s degree in business education from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1952, and wrote two spy novels and an autobiography. In recent years Lerner volunteered at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, talking to groups about his experiences.
Chave Hecht
A camp director devoted to Jewish outreach.
Rebbetzin Chave Hecht and Rabbi J. J. Hecht receive a dollar and a blessing from the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, before a trip to South Africa in 1989. (Hecht Family/JEM van Chabad.org)
Rebbetzin Chave Hecht, the founder of Camp Emunah Bnos Yaakov Yehudah — an overnight camp for observant Jewish girls — and a host of other educational initiatives originating in the Chabad-Lubavitch community, died Feb. 8 at the age of 95. Born in the East New York section of Brooklyn and educated at public schools, she, along with her husband, the late Rabbi J.J. Hecht, also directed a Jewish summer day camp on Coney Island for public school children, pioneering Chabad’s outreach to non-observant Jewish families. Rebbetzin Hecht ran the day-to-day operations of Camp Emunah for decades, when her husband was back in Brooklyn running his synagogue. “She slept in her office,” her son, Rabbi Sholem Ber Hecht, a Chabad emissary in Queens, told Chabad.org. “She had no secretary; if you called the camp at 7 a.m. or 10 p.m., she answered the phone.”
Frederick Terna
Survivor, Brooklyn artist and “someone to watch” late into his 90s.
Artist Fred Terna, a Holocaust survivor, continued painting well into his late 90s. (Courtesy of Terna)
Holocaust survivor and painter Frederick Terna, who remained active at his Brooklyn studio into his late 90s, died on Dec. 8 at 99. Born in Vienna and raised in Prague, he was imprisoned in four Nazi concentration camps, including Terezin, where he began to make art. Terna moved to New York in 1952; his work was collected by a variety of museums and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Albertina Collection in Vienna and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Earlier this year he was named to the New York Jewish Week’s “36 to Watch” list of notable Jewish New Yorkers.
Saida Somekh
Immigrant, entrepreneur and loving grandmother.
Saida Somekh demonstrates her cooking skills for her family. (via Instagram)
Saida Somekh, who owned Dora Hosiery, a go-to lingerie shop in Midtown Manhattan for decades, died Nov. 5. She was 94. Her granddaughter, Erin Dana Lichy, a real estate agent and a new cast member on “The Real Housewives of New York,” remembered her in an Instagram post:
“She came from a different world, married very young and was expected to raise a family as a stay-at-home mom with little choice in her major life decisions. Well, that didn’t work for her, so she forged her own path. As a young immigrant with little practice in English, she became a female homeowner, businesswoman and successful entrepreneur…. As a grandmother, she was simply always there, like one’s backbone. She was a pillar of strength. Her presence made me feel safe and warm. She loved purely, deeply and didn’t pass judgment. She was patient. If I ever needed to fix a garment or didn’t have something to wear, she’d sew me something from scratch, however long it took. She was warm to my friends and anyone close to me. She would send us home with bags of food and cook with me for hours if I wanted to learn new a new dish. All I had to do was ask. My kids adored her and she them. They brought her so much joy and watching how prideful she was of them was heartwarming. She had pictures of us all around her house just so she could look at ‘her babies’ every morning when she woke up.”
Freddie Roman
Catskills comedian and keeper of the flame.
Freddie Roman, left and fellow comedian Shecky Greene attend “The Friars Club Salute to Freddie Roman and Stewie Stone” at New Tork’s Pierre Hotel, April 21, 2014. (John Lamparski/WireImage)
Comedian Freddie Roman, who died Nov. at 85, was never a crossover star in the mold of Alan King, Jackie Mason or Joan Rivers — three other Jewish comics with roots in the Catskills. And yet in a capstone to a long and steady career he resurrected the spirit of the Borscht Belt with the 1991 show “Catskills on Broadway” and, as the long-serving dean of the Friars Club, he injected new life into the fading Manhattan showbiz venue by inviting younger comics to join. Born Fred Kirschenbaum in Newark, New Jersey, and raised in Jamaica, Queens, Roman started emceeing at age 15 at the the Crystal Spring Hotel in the Catskills, which was owned by his uncle and grandfather. He soon was performing at hotels and resorts in the region for the largely Jewish crowd. “Catskills on Broadway,” starring him and fellow tummlers Dick Capri, Marilyn Michaels and Mal Z. Lawrence, was a bona fide hit, running for 453 performances. “I’m like the Fidel Castro of comedians,” he once said of his tenure at the Friar’s Club. “I’m president for life.”
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The post Extraordinary lives: 18 notable New York Jews who died in 2022 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How a Trump attack on Jon Ossoff could fuel the first Jewish presidency
(JTA) — Jon Ossoff, the Jewish senator from Georgia and the focus of speculation about a 2028 run for the presidency, is prepared to be the target of an address Thursday night by President Donald Trump.
Ossoff told reporters that if Trump, as expected, questions his and Sen. Raphael Warnock’s 2021 election wins, then the president would be “calling Georgia voters illegitimate.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed without basis that his 2020 presidential election defeat in Georgia, and wins by Democrats Ossoff and Warnock in runoffs the following January, were rigged. He has deployed federal law enforcement to Georgia to search for evidence of fraud, even though repeated probes have uncovered nothing.
The speech comes as Ossoff has gained national attention for his repeated attacks on the president in his reelection bid against Trump-endorsed Rep. Mike Collins.
Ossoff’s battle with Trump could fuel buzz for his vying for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
Ossoff has repeatedly denied interest in running for president this cycle. But Democratic pollster Adam Carlson imagined an excerpt from a “Former President Ossoff’s memoir in 2060.”
“I wasn’t planning on running for president. It was never an ambition of mine,” Carlson wrote on X, following initial reports that Trump’s address could come as soon as Monday. “Then Trump did that super weird address on July 13, 2026 and here we are.”
Ossoff, 39, were he to run and win, would be the first Jewish president of the United States, and his Jewish identity has crept into discussions about his potential candidacy.
He has drawn comparisons to Barack Obama, who said in 2006 that he “will not” run for president, two years before he did so successfully.
The buzz around Ossoff has largely focused on his sharp criticism of Trump, attracting some prominent left-wing figures. Progressives such as Gen Z commentator Jack Cocchiarella and Zohran Mamdani adviser Morris Katz have lauded Ossoff’s messaging.
Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker — a harsh Israel critic who has drawn allegations of antisemitism — said Ossoff “will be my dark horse pick, depending on how he presents himself if he has ambitions for higher office.”
One subject that Ossoff has largely steered clear of during his reelection campaign is Israel, a growing wedge issue among Democrats and a litmus test for democratic socialists like Piker. While multiple possible presidential candidates have sworn off the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, Ossoff has not weighed in on the group.
Ossoff has positioned himself as an Israel supporter who opposes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Just over a month after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, he referred to himself as a “pro-Israel Jewish American” in an address. He said he was praying for the Israeli hostages’ freedom and urges “mercy for the innocent civilians in Gaza.”
He has since voted to block some weapons sales to the country — along with an increasing number of Senate Democrats who have questioned military assistance to Israel as the war has devastated Gaza — while voting to allow the sale of defensive weapons. He wrote in July 2025 that “the United States must continue to support the Israeli people, who face the persistent threat of rocket and missile attack and have been subjected to intense aerial bombardment from Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen.”
Ossoff’s first vote against weapons in November 2024 spurred a critical open letter from several Georgia Jewish organizations including synagogues, Jewish schools, the local Anti-Defamation League chapter and other groups. His vote also drew the attention of AIPAC, which released 30-second ads attacking U.S. senators — including Ossoff — who had voted to block weapons sales.
Radio host Eric Messersmith said last month that, in an effort to win over a party that is divided on Israel, Ossoff “might be the Democrat that can thread the needle because even though he’s Jewish, he’s very critical of the Israeli government, very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu.”
“He has credibility on that issue, so it’s possible that I think he could fill that lane in between the two extremes of the Democratic party,” Messersmith said in a widely circulated conversation on CNN.
CNN’s Elex Michaelson drew criticism online when he added, “As a Jew, some people read a little more Jewish than other people, and Jon Ossoff may not read as Jewish as [Pennsylvania Gov.] Josh Shapiro does, for whatever’s that worth.” Michaelson later apologized.
Ossoff has deep ties to the local Jewish community, and has spoken about the impact of growing up around his uncle who was a Holocaust survivor.
Living among survivors “has a profound impact on how I view the State of Israel, recognizing that the State of Israel was established 75 years ago as Jews rebuilt in the ashes of the Holocaust, and sought to establish a secure homeland for the Jewish people,” Ossoff told the American Jewish Committee in May 2023.
The Georgia Democrat’s team reported that Ossoff raised an $20 million in the year’s second quarter, ending it with $42 million in cash on hand.
Jewish Insider reported that some Jewish Georgians are torn. Collins has faced accusations of antisemitism and having ties to the far right. Collins’ son-in-law is a white nationalist social media influencer who has shared antisemitic material and Nazi imagery, CNN reported on Thursday. Collins has said some of his own statements were misunderstood, and has defended himself by citing his support for Israel.
“Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate Mike Collins is a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist,” Ossoff posted on social media last month.
Ahead of Trump’s address, Ossoff said he expects the president “to use whatever he puts out there on Thursday as a pretext” to interfere in the November election, or “to lay the groundwork for challenging the result.”
The post How a Trump attack on Jon Ossoff could fuel the first Jewish presidency appeared first on The Forward.
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In the wake of Graham Platner’s success (and fall), a candidate to replace him changes his mind about ‘genocide’
(JTA) — When Jordan Wood vied last fall for the Democratic nomination for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat, he avoided accusing Israel of genocide, citing a link between rising antisemitism and “the language” that people use.
Graham Platner, who went on to overwhelmingly win the nomination, did not stint on using the term. Platner is out after accusations of sexual assault, and Wood is once again running in the abbreviated primary to replace him. (Platner has denied the accusations.)
And now the former congressional staffer is changing his tune.
“I believe we can’t continue to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Wood wrote on social media last week. “It’s a moral atrocity. We should be using our taxpayer dollars to fund schools, healthcare, and childcare here at home, not on bombing innocent civilians.”
Last November, Wood said he was concerned the word was so loaded as to be dangerous. He told Democratic commentator Kaivan Shroff that he believed Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, but stopped short of using the term genocide.
“I’ve hesitated on it because I’m also seeing a real rise in antisemitism in the United States,” Wood said then. “My husband is Jewish, and the acts of violence toward Jewish Americans is very much connected to the language that we use.”
It would be “a huge deal for the United States Congress to designate what’s going on in Gaza as a genocide officially,” Wood said
“There could be consequences to that of U.S. citizens that have served in the IDF,” he said. “Do they get prosecuted?”
Wood’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on what prompted him to adopt the term.
The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to nominate a replacement for Platner, an anti-Israel progressive, in hopes of unseating GOP Sen. Susan Collins.
Wood, along with major candidates Troy Jackson, Nirav Shah and Shenna Bellows have all accused Israel of having committed genocide since launching their campaigns, underscoring the shrinking popularity of Israel among Democratic voters and their representatives in the wake of its war in Gaza – and perhaps noting Platner’s success in making Israel an issue in the race.
In an interview this week with The Advocate, Wood criticized the embattled Platner, while saying that he would “carry on that platform” that had energized Maine voters.
“I separate Graham, the movement, from the person,” Wood said. He pointed to issues like conditioning aid to Israel and rejecting corporate PAC and AIPAC money, as priorities that he shared with Platner.
Wood told Shroff in November that he would not take money from AIPAC, and added that there is a “huge amount of distrust” of the pro-Israel lobbying organization among Democratic voters.
“I believe the only way to truly prove to a voter that you are voting and prioritizing policies in their best interest, and for our country’s best interest, is to remove any perception of corruption or misdealing,” Wood said.
He has also been consistent in saying that he would vote in support of Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel, while maintaining that that shouldn’t mean halting the U.S.-Israel relationship altogether.
“The United States should absolutely have a cooperative relationship with Israel, and I want that relationship to work. But a real partnership is not a blank check,” Wood told Jewish Insider last week. “It comes with honesty and accountability. The United States has enormous leverage with the Israeli government, and we’ve been refusing to use it.”
Wood and a number of other candidates will participate in a televised debate on CNN on Thursday night, ahead of the July 27 nominating convention.
The post In the wake of Graham Platner’s success (and fall), a candidate to replace him changes his mind about ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Francesca Hong is dishing up a Wisconsin campaign that is about the working class and Israel
(JTA) — Meet Wisconsin’s Mamdani.
Francesca Hong is running for governor of Wisconsin emphasizing affordability and opposition to U.S. support for Israel.
Her message is one the Republican Governor’s Association hopes to boost ahead of the Democratic primary next month: It unveiled an ad on Thursday dubbing her “too liberal” for Wisconsin – set to run in liberal parts of the state.
The calculus appears to be to make her appear appealing to a restive Democratic base that in a number of races countrywide has turned against the party establishment, in hopes of elevating to the nomination an unabashed left-winger who likely would lose in a crucial swing state. Zohran Mamdani may take Manhattan, the thinking goes, but his policies would curdle cheese in Wisconsin.
Hong is a single mom and a former chef whose political recipe for appealing to voters has vaulted her in front of the state’s crowded Democratic primary, bringing another democratic socialist within striking distance of victory.
“I’m State Representative Francesca Hong. I’m a service worker, community organizer, and a mom. I work for a living, always have, still do,” Hong said in a video announcing her candidacy as she wore an apron and strolled through a kitchen she had previously worked in. “Five years ago, my community sent me to the Capitol. The system is rigged. I’m running for governor to fix it.”
Hong’s campaign has centered affordability issues, including housing, education and childcare. It highlights her personal story as the child of South Korean immigrants.
It is her record on Israel and antisemitism that has drawn scrutiny from some Wisconsin Jews. During her campaign, Hong has taken a more sharply critical stance towards Israel while maintaining that support for Palestinian rights should not be conflated with antisemitism. She has also called Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.
Jeremy Tunis, the co-chair of the community relations committee of the Jewish Federation of Madison, said Hong has aligned herself with an ascendant wave of democratic socialist candidates that have gained ground in races across the country, including in New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado.
“In my view she is trying to leverage the current far-left progressive zeitgeist that has swept in certain areas, namely in New York with Zohran Mamdani,” Tunis, who explained that his personal views do not represent those of the federation.
For other Jews in the state, Hong’s bid for the Democratic nomination sparked concern about how she might fare in the November general election against presumptive Republican nominee Tom Tiffany.
“She’s probably the least electable of the candidates running,” Marc Herstand, a 74-year-old Jewish Madison resident, said. “Wisconsin is a purple state, very purple, and democratic socialism is not going to go over well outside of the liberal communities of Madison, Milwaukee, and … in some of the other cities.”
Tunis said Hong’s broader political record, including previous calls to defund the police, could make her a difficult Democratic nominee in a divided state.
“There’s probably an appetite for it in a lot of places, but … I feel strongly that she would be among the weakest general election candidates for a variety of reasons, not just her stances on issues surrounding antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Tunis said. “She’s taken a lot of fairly controversial positions that for a 50-50 state, I think, would not serve well in the general election.”
The numbers appear to tell a different story. The race’s most recent polling, conducted earlier this month, had Hong leading with 30% of the votes ahead of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, at 28%. Another poll in March had Hong with 14% of votes and Barnes with 11%.
The July poll, conducted by Wedgewood polls, also found that Hong led with 47% of the vote against Tiffany with 44% when tested for the November general election.
Herstand, who is a member of the Jewish Democrats caucus at the Wisconsin Democratic State Convention, said that while he believed Tiffany was “tremendously worse” than Hong, he was concerned how her potential nomination would play out amongst the state’s Jews.
“It’s going to chill Jewish support if she gets the nomination,” Herstand said. “Will they hold their nose and vote for her? Yeah. Will they work actively for her? Probably not. Will she need every Democrat to work actively for her to win? Yep.”
Speaking to fellow progressives at a virtual rally Monday night, Hong framed her campaign as a test of the left’s growing political power.
“Workers are reclaiming our power, and this is an opportunity to ensure that the rest of politics across our country, I believe, can change when we win here in Wisconsin,” Hong said. “Because they say, as goes Wisconsin, as goes the country.” She did not speak about Israel or antisemitism during the rally.
Other candidates took shots at the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, and some attendees at the online rally sent messages in the chat questioning her pro-Palestinian bonafides in light of her silence on the issue. “Is she really a Zionist?,” asked one attendee, while another wrote, “She owns AIPAC.”
Hong has spurned AIPAC support, though the group largely spends in federal elections.
Earlier this month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Hong was now apologizing for a December 2023 call to the Madison police to report a vandalized Israeli flag, out of concern that the incident was “highly antisemitic” and urging that it be investigated as a hate crime.
Earlier this month, asked to explain her calls to police, she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it was an action “I regret deeply.”
“Three years ago, there was a piece of protest art at the encampments in Madison, which was photographed and posted to social media,” Hong said in a statement. “My constituents reported they felt threatened and alerted me to the social post, but the image was cropped and incomplete to misrepresent anti-Zionism as antisemitism – a distinction I take seriously.”
A week after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Hong posted on social media a plea to “prevent further devastation in Gaza; we can not answer war crimes with war crimes.”
“To the Jewish community here and around the world, I love you with my whole being and am praying for your safety,” Hong wrote. “Please know my heart continues to be with the Israeli & Palestinian people through this harrowing time.”
Since then, Hong has introduced legislation that would repeal a 2018 law banning state contracts with businesses that boycott Israel, and criticized outgoing outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. She has highlighted both efforts on her campaign website.
Hong has received endorsements from Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ro Khanna of California, both staunch Israel critics, as well as three Democratic Socialists of America chapters in Wisconsin.
Hong’s campaign drew further scrutiny after she appeared on both Hasan Piker’s show and on a stream hosted by Michael Beyer, an influencer known as “Mike from PA” who came under fire after saying that Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented.”
“If Wisconsin is going to be a state that actually values human rights, then we have to ensure that we’re supporting, we’re fighting for the pro-Palestine movement,” Hong said on Beyer’s show in October.
She also encouraged constituents to fundraise for people on the “front lines in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Hong appeared a second time on Beyer’s show last month, telling the host that “The people deserve leaders who lead with moral courage and moral clarity, and the litmus test is to say explicitly that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.”
Hong raised roughly $35,000 from Beyer’s livestream and $57,000 from Piker’s.
Herstand said that he was “absolutely appalled” by Hong’s decision to sit down with the influencers.
“It’s unconscionable for her to do and fundraise with them,” Herstand said. “She should return the money she made with these antisemitic influencers, and she should denounce the hate that they spread against Jews.”
Hong’s appearances on the podcasts also sparked condemnation from Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“When you decide these are the sort of people you want to hang out with in order to raise $, you have made clear that you either (1) agree with them or (2) can be bought or (3) both. Fran Hong appears to be all 3,” Jacobs, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X. “She is willing to sell out the Jews of Wisconsin for a few bucks.”
Hong’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about her appearance on the podcasts, but in an interview with MS Now earlier this month, Hong defended her engagement.
“It’s important that we get our message out in places where campaigns struggle to reach voters,” Hong said. “Just because I am on a platform certainly does not mean that I endorse everything that has been said by either the hosts or other people who have gone on.”
Hong told MS Now, “I condemn hatred, discrimination, antisemitism and islamophobia, any sort of dehumanizing of communities.”
For Tunis, the community relations co-chair, Hong’s response to criticism of those appearances fell short.
“I think that there’s a lot of questions that she has not provided sufficient answers on, particularly her recent appearance and friendliness with Hassan Piker and Mike from PA,” Tunis said. “I think people are waiting and watching.”
Miryam Rosenzweig, the president and CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, told JTA in a statement that the federation’s “concern extends well beyond any one candidate.”
“Many in Wisconsin’s Jewish community are increasingly concerned by a political environment in which antisemitic rhetoric is too often minimized or excused, where the choices public leaders make about the voices they elevate and the platforms they share shape that environment, and where too few are willing to confront antisemitism consistently, regardless of its source,” Rosenzweig said.
Looking ahead to the crowded Aug. 11 Democratic primary, Tunis and Herstand said many Wisconsin Jews he had spoken with were supportive of Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who was endorsed by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley earlier this month after he exited the race. Rodriguez came in third place in the primary’s latest polling, receiving 19% of the votes.
“I hope that Francesca Hong can tone down her rhetoric, because I do not think that it promotes Jewish community safety, and it can make life difficult,” Tunis said. “I hope that she keeps an open mind as her campaign progresses. I’m not super confident that’s going to be the case.”
If Hong does prevail next month, Herstand said he hoped that she would foster communication with Jewish communities in the state.
“I hope she doesn’t get the nomination, but if she were to do that, I would hope that she would reach out to the Jewish community and actually learn a few things that she’s probably not aware of,” he said.
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