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Rabbis, teachers, survivors: 18 Jews whose deaths diminished our communities in 2022
(JTA) — All year long, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports about the deaths of Jewish newsmakers in our community. To close out the year, we wanted to turn our attention to people who may not have been such household names but whose stories deserve to be remembered.
Here, with the help of readers who shared the names of people they are remembering, we recall 18 Jews who shaped their local communities and made a difference in the lives of those close to them. They include rabbis whose impact extended for decades, teachers who inspired generations of students and activists who were working to build a better world. May their memories be a blessing.
Harriet Bograd
A champion of emerging Jewish communities in far-flung places.
Harriet Bograd, center, her husband Ken Klein, left, and daughter Margie on a visit to the Sefwi Wiawso Jewish community in Ghana in an undated photo. (Courtesy Kulanu, Inc)
Harriet Bograd, who as president of the nonprofit Kulanu supported emerging Jewish communities in Africa, Asia and other places far beyond the usual centers of Jewish life, died on Sept. 17 in a Manhattan hospital. She was 79. A Yale-educated lawyer and a stalwart at the West End Synagogue, she was inspired by a visit in 2004 to a remote village in Ghana, where about two dozen families considered themselves Jewish. In the years to come, she and Kulanu would provide support to emerging Jewish communities in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Guatemala, the Philippines and more. She once said of her work at Kulanu, “after the Holocaust and the decimation of Jewish communities in Arab lands, the idea [is] that we’re establishing Jewish communities that have their own richness and variety.”
Henry Berg-Brousseau
Transgender activist from Kentucky
Henry Berg-Brousseau (Courtesy Human Rights Campaign)
Henry Berg-Brousseau grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and studied history, political science and Jewish studies at George Washington University, where he was a founding member of an LGBTQ+ fraternity. He had recently gotten a major promotion at the Human Rights Campaign when he died by suicide in his Arlington, Virginia, home, on Dec. 16 at age 24. “Henry spent his life working to extend grace, compassion and understanding to everyone but especially to the vulnerable and marginalized. This grace, compassion and understanding was not always returned to him,” his mother, the Kentucky state legislator Karen Berg, wrote in a statement that criticized lawmakers who advance anti-LGBTQ views. She added, “He was doing work that was important to him to make the world a more accepting place. At 24 years old. he had finally found a community but that could not undo the brokenness that he already felt.”
Rabbi Simcha Krauss
Orthodox advocate for women’s rights
Rabbi Simcha Krauss speaks at a dinner hosted by Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi in his honor on Feb. 5, 2014. (Courtesy Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi)
Rabbi Simcha Krauss, a leading figure of Modern Orthodox Judaism who was a forceful advocate for women’s rights within Orthodoxy, died Jan. 20 at 85. Krauss’s efforts, which included creating a rabbinical court to support “agunot” — women whose husbands refused to divorce them — frequently earned him scorn from traditionalists within Orthodoxy. But many others saw him as a “gentle giant” who wielded his years of study and experience to fight for women’s rights in Jewish law. Krauss was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1948. Coming from a long line of rabbis, Krauss studied at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, and later studied with the Modern Orthodox luminary Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. Krauss led the Young Israel of Hillcrest for 25 years. During his years in Queens, Krauss taught Talmud at Yeshiva University and began to get more involved in issues related to the role of women in Orthodoxy. He moved to Israel in 2005, and in 2014 came back to New York to found the International Beit Din, or religious court, to work on agunot cases. “Some say it is a modern revolution,” he told the Jerusalem Post. “I say that’s the way you should do it.”
Rabbi David Weiss Halivni
A survivor and scholar who teased out the many voices of the Talmud
Survivor and Talmud scholar Rabbi David Weiss Halivni was associated with Columbia University for 35 years. (Chaim Meyersdorf/Wikimedia Commons)
Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, the Talmud scholar and Columbia University professor, died June 29 at age 94. A Holocaust survivor and refugee raised in Sighet, Romania, he earned his doctorate and taught for many years at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, until leaving the institution in 1983 over its decision to ordain women rabbis. He later became dean of the rabbinical school of the Union for Traditional Judaism, a movement created by rabbis and scholars who similarly broke with the Conservative movement. In works like his multi-volume opus “Mekorot u’Mesorot,” or “Sources and Traditions,” he galvanized the world of Talmud study by treating Jewish text as a living, mutable conversation across generations, as opposed to a static document. Halivni’s approach to learning was the “corollary to loving the text so much that you just had to understand it to its fullest, whatever tools would enable you to do so,” wrote Rabbi Ethan Tucker in an appreciation.
Moris Albahari
A remnant of a Ladino-speaking past
Moris Albahari, shown in a documentary about his story called “Saved by Language,” was a pillar of Sarajevo’s Jewish community. (Courtesy of Brian Kirschen)
Moris Albahari was 11 when the Ustaša, Bosnia’s Nazi collaborator force, came to deport him and his large family to Jasenovac, the country’s equivalent of Auschwitz. A former teacher working as an Ustaša guard in the town of Drvar, where the train stopped, warned Albahari’s father, David, about their destination, and David was able to help his son escape from the train. Because Moris knew Ladino, the Jewish language that is mixture of medieval Spanish, Hebrew, Aramaic, Turkish and other languages, he was able to speak with the Italian soldier who saved him. Ladino would save him several more times before the end of the war, but afterwards, with most of Sarajevo’s Jews dead or forever dispersed, he spoke the language largely at home. At one point the director of Sarajevo’s airport, Albahari was a leader within Bosnia’s Jewish community. “It is a terrible loss, especially for Sarajevok,” said Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew and scholar of Ladino in Israel. “We’re not speaking just in terms of prominent members of the community, we’re speaking in terms of family members.”
Rachel Brodie
A “master Jewish educator” whose influence was vast
Rachel Brodie (Courtesy of J. The Jewish News of Northern California)
Rachel Brodie was unassuming and humble yet through her work as an educator had a vast influence on the Jewish community in the Bay Area of California, where she lived, and beyond. Brodie was the co-founder Jewish Milestones, an educational resource for Jewish lifecycle ceremonies that launched in 2004 as The Ritualist. She also served as “chief Jewish officer” at the Jewish community Center of San Francisco, a position created just for her, from 2011 to 2016. “To be in Rachel’s presence was to be illuminated by her wit, her laughter, and her fierce and tender heart,” wrote the founders of the Jewish Studio Project in Berkeley, where she had been a senior educator. “To learn with her was to be stimulated, delighted, and transformed.” Brodie, 55, died on April 11 after falling at her home in Berkeley.
Rabbi Steven Sager
“Leader, mentor, poet” in North Carolina and beyond
Rabbi Steven Sager at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina, in 2017. (Courtesy Anna Carson DeWitt)
When Rabbi Steven Sager died May 15 at 71 after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer, he was mourned not only by his family and his congregants at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina, from which he retired in 2011 after 32 years, but by a rabbinic and Hebrew poetry community spanning the globe. “Steve was a beautiful and deep human being,” the Israeli poet Rivka Miriam wrote. “I generally do not believe in translation, especially translation of poetry. It seems to me that every language has an inner secret that cannot be transposed into another vessel. Yet, when Steve translated my poems I had a different feeling — I felt he entered an inner layer, one that lies beneath any language, a layer carrying a hidden code.”
Nate Geller
Devoted to building stronger Jewish communities
Nate Geller, at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey. A colleague’s daughter made the “Nate” sign, which he took home and hung on his mantel. (Courtesy)
Nate Geller died on Jan. 24 at age 63, after a struggle with leukemia that he faced with characteristic humility, faith and optimism. His death was a blow to his colleagues at 70 Faces Media (JTA’s parent company); to his synagogue community in Teaneck, New Jersey; and to the Jewish communal world to which he had dedicated his life since graduating from the Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service at Brandeis University in 1983. In the hours after his death, chat rooms and email boxes filled up with loving tributes to Nate, remarkable for their consistency: Friends and colleagues remarked on his gentleness, his passion for Jewish learning, his commitment to Israel, his willingness not just to hear but to listen when a colleague kvelled or kvetched. Most of all, they remembered his devotion to his family: his wife Lyn Light Geller, herself a gentle and passionate force among “Jewish professionals,” his grown children Aliza, Ariana and Koby, Koby’s wife Talia, and their kids, Annaelle and Judah. Said one colleague and fellow congregant, “There is an enormous Nate-shaped void in the world now.”
Hedi Fried
A voice for Holocaust remembrance in Sweden
Holocaust survivor Hedi Fried stands between Sweden’s culture minister and handball player Linnea Claeson during a counterprotest against a neo-Nazi demonstration in Stockholm, Aug. 25, 2018. (Pontus Lundahl/AFP via Getty Images)
Born in 1924 in Sighet, in what was then Hungary and is now Romania, Hedi Fried survived Auschwitz and settled in Sweden, where she became a psychologist and advocate for Holocaust survivors. She created Cafe 84, a salon for survivors in Stockholm, and spoke widely about her experiences during the Holocaust, gathering some of the most common exchanges in “Questions I Am Asked About the Holocaust,” published in English in 2019. “Your solidarity was boundless and no question too difficult to answer. You were brave, generous, dedicated and extremely wise,” Christina Gamstorp, the director of Stockholm’s Jewish museum, wrote in a remembrance. “Now your voice has fallen silent but not your message. It lives on in everyone who met you, in your texts, books, films and your belief that man is still good — and that it is possible to build a society free from antisemitism and racism, which threaten our entire existence.” Fried, who had three children, died in November at 98.
Rabbi Sy Dresner
The “most arrested rabbi in America”
Rabbi Martin Freedman, right, and Rabbi Israel Dresner,center, are taken to the Tallahassee city building where they were charged with unlawful assembly after they and 10 other “Freedom Riders” were arrested attempting to eat at the Tallahassee airport in June 1961. (Getty Photos)
Rabbi Israel “Sy” Dresner, who demonstrated with Martin Luther King Jr. and was sometimes called the “most arrested rabbi in America,” died Jan. 13. He was 92. A Freedom Rider in the 1960s, Dresner built a career as a social justice-oriented Reform rabbi who was active in the fight against the Vietnam War and was a vocal opponent of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Dresner was born on the Lower East Side in 1929 to an Orthodox family and grew up in Brooklyn, where his father ran a delicatessen. He attended yeshivas as a child but went on to become a Reform rabbi after serving in the Korean War and working on a kibbutz in Israel. “We came as Jews who remember the millions of faceless people who stood quietly, watching the smoke rise from Hitler’s crematoria,” he said after an arrest in 1964 outside a segregated motel in St. Augustine, Florida. “We came because we know that, second only to silence, the greatest danger to man is loss of faith in man’s capacity to act.”
Eli Evans
‘Poet laureate of Southern Jews’
Eli Evans, seen here in a picture from a trip to Israel in the 1970s, was “equally at home in New York.” (Courtesy Josh Evans)
Born in 1936 in Durham, North Carolina, where his father would become the first Jewish mayor and his mother the founder of Hadassah’s first chapter in the South, Eli Evans remained tied to his native home despite spending his adult life in New York City, where he was a prominent grant-maker whose giving fueled the creation of “Sesame Street” in both the United States and Israel. He wrote several memoirs about Southern Jews and also included the South in his philanthropy, which he pursued at multiple foundations according to an activist philosophy that helped launch the Children’s Defense Fund, seeded the South with Black lawyers who became local civil rights leaders and built ties between Israeli and Egyptian scientists after their countries made peace in 1979. “Eli was a Southern gentleman who interacted with the Jewish establishment and strengthened American Jewish life, without losing his Southern Jewish soul,” said Brandeis University professor of American Jewish history Jonathan Sarna. “It was a privilege to have known him.” Evans died July 26 in Manhattan of complications of COVID-19, after a period of declining health.
Sheryl Grossman
A lifelong advocate for people with disabilities
Sheryl Grossman was a Jewish disability activist. (Screenshot from 2021 JDAIM Interview Series at Towson University)
Sheryl Grossman stood small, at just 4’3″ and 48 pounds, but in the world of Jewish disability advocacy she loomed large, as both the founder of a Facebook group for people living with Bloom’s Syndrome and as a board member of Yad Hachazakah, the Jewish Disability Empowerment Center. She died March 28 at age 46, the result of a Bloom’s Syndrome-linked cancer. “I don’t think anyone will ever know just how much work Sheryl did during the pandemic to help Jewish communities support their most vulnerable neighbors who were in the hospital or isolated at home with COVID,” said Shoshana Finkel, a law student who met Grossman when she was an intern at the American Association of People with Disabilities. “She didn’t feel the need to share her accomplishments; that was never what the work was about for her.”
Dara Goldman
A professor of Spanish and Jewish studies in her prime
Dara Goldman was a professor of Spanish and Jewish studies at the University of Illinois. (Courtesy U of I)
Dara Goldman was preparing for graduation at the University of Illinois, where she was a professor of Spanish and chair of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, and for the American Jewish Historical Society conference, when she died May 13 of a heart attack. She was 51. A graduate of Columbia and Emory universities, Goldman produced scholarship so diverse that she was affiliated with eight units within the University of Illinois; most recently, she was researching Jewish cultural production in Cuba, where she brought resources for the Jewish community during her research trips, and co-edited a volume on 21st-century Jewish writing. “With her characteristic wit, she would often joke that she was a Jewish woman who took a wrong turn at diaspora,” said a remembrance published by the university. “But jokes aside, she could be at the same time a Jewish woman from New Jersey and an adopted daughter of Puerto Rico and Cuba, two cultures that she knew intimately and loved very deeply. … The echoes of her inimitable, hearty laughter will resonate within our halls for a long time.”
Yaakov Shalev
A beloved family man whose story was Israel’s
Yaakov Shalev, seated third from right, helped organize Iraqi Jews’ exodus to Israel. (Courtesy Asaf Shalev)
“When I arrived for a visit with family in Israel in my early twenties, my septum piercing outraged nearly everyone at our Shabbat morning gathering. Even my younger cousins badgered me to remove it. It took my elderly grandfather, Yaakov Shalev, to quiet everyone down and declare that I am his same beloved grandson, with or without the piercing.
“Calm, open-minded, steadfast, Saba Yaakov, as we called him, passed away peacefully in February at age 92 in Holon, with his five children at his side. He spent his last few hours listening to the melodies of his youth in Baghdad, the music of giants such as Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, and Fairuz.
“Saba Yaakov helped organize the exodus of Iraqi Jewry to Israel in 1950 and then enlisted in the Israeli military as an airplane mechanic. He taught himself how to build houses and became a successful contractor in the 1960s. But he soon decided the stress was too much and opened a shop in south Tel Aviv where he fabricated canvases for Israeli artists and framed their paintings. He kept the shop running for more than 40 years, going to work every day until he was in his eighties.” — Asaf Elia-Shalev, JTA reporter
Trude Feldman
A journalist who specialized in Yom Kippur interviews
Trude Feldman interviews Jimmy Carter in the White House in 1978. (Jimmy Carter Presidential Library)
The daughter of a rabbinical family, Trude Feldman launched her career covering the 1961 trial of Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she put her training as a Hebrew teacher to use by teaching the language to the Nazi’s lawyer. (She also taught Hebrew to famed converts Sammy Davis Jr. and Elizabeth Taylor, and to Paul Newman on the set of “Exodus.”) But it was in her coverage of American presidents that Feldman truly made her mark, becoming famous for scoring presidential exit interviews and Yom Kippur interviews, which she would pitch as an opportunity for redemption. That’s what got her the first interview with Bill Clinton after he copped in 1998 to yes, having sex with that woman. The mainstream media mocked her for her softballs — “Saturday Night Live” once did so in a sketch — but those close to her understood their value. “The joke, however, was on everyone else,” her nephew, Rabbi Daniel Feldman, wrote in a remembrance. “Paired with her signature persistence, her style more often elicited not puff but profundity, more sincerity than sugar. The unique access she earned — baffling to some, understood to the astute, acknowledged by all — yielded memorable results.”
Harlene Winnick Appelman
A revolutionary leader in Jewish education
Harlene Winnick Appelman in an undated photo provided by the Covenant Foundation.
Born in upstate New York, Harlene Appelman’s career in Jewish education took off in 1982 when she became the director of family life education at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. There, she pioneered interactive Jewish learning, bringing children out of dry frontal settings into a more tactile experience of Judaism. After joining the board of the Covenant Foundation, which funds and promotes Jewish education, in 1994, she became its director in 2005 and held that role until 2021, allowing her to influence a generation of Jewish educators. Many of them mourned her death at 75 on Aug. 18; the cause was cancer. “I am one of an entire congregation of Jewish educational leaders who Harlene mentored, supported, prodded and constructively critiqued, promoted, and made feel special,” wrote Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, in an online remembrance. “I hope that in her memory, I will find ever new ways to help more Jewish rabbis and educators feel seen, heard, capable, and motivated.” This month, the Covenant Foundation initiated a new prize, in Jewish family education, in Appelman’s honor.
Tom Tugend
An indefatigable journalist
Tom Tugend in his Los Angeles home, Aug. 3, 2021. (Jacob Gurvis)
Tom Tugend was 13 when he and his family left their home in Berlin in 1939. He was 97 when he died Dec. 7 in Los Angeles, where he had lived for most of his life. In the intervening decades, he fought in the U.S. Army and the Israel Defense Forces; covered Jewish news for a wide array of publications, including JTA; and enjoyed 66 years of marriage during which he and his wife raised three daughters. “His authenticity came through to anyone who knew him,” said one of them, the journalist Alina Tugend. “He was a hero to many people.”
Judah Samet
A two-time survivor of antisemitic terror
Judah Samet stands next to his portrait, part of Luigi Toscano’s “Lest We Forget” project at the University of Pittsburgh in 2019. (Photo by Hector Corante, courtesy of Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh)
Judah Samet became a national face of Pittsburgh’s 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting because he survived: He had been running late that day, so was not inside the building when 11 of his fellow congregants were murdered. Months later, he was President Donald Trump’s guest to the State of the Union address. The experience was both very different Samet’s childhood in Hungary, where he was born in February 1938, and in some ways similar. As a young child, Samet was forced by the Nazis from his home and shipped with his family first to a labor camp in Austria and then to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After a stop in Israel, he moved to Pittsburgh in the 1950s, ultimately joining his father-in-law’s jewelry business there and remaining a committed community member until his death at 84 on Sept. 27.
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Netanyahu to meet Trump with Iran, Gaza and Saudi Arabia on the line
(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump Tuesday, as the American leader is weighing whether to expand his bombing campaign against Iran or to find a diplomatic resolution regarding the Straits of Hormouz and the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
Israel fears that Trump is going to negotiate a premature end to the war without eliminating Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons in the future. Trump has persistently insisted that Iran can’t possess nuclear weapons, but the war and the economic upheaval it has spurred has contributed to Trump’s approval rating hitting record lows in his second term. The poor marks are ringing alarm bells for Republicans ahead of midterm elections that could return Democrats to leadership in at least one chamber of Congress.
Netanyahu and Trump are also at odds over other issues, however, including the recent U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal, the pending sale of F-35 advance fighter jets to Turkey and the extent of Israel’s troop presence in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Netanyahu is coming to the United States to attend the funeral for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who remained one of Israel’s most unyielding advocates even as its popularity plummeted and was one of the most important Trump associates in pressing for the Iran war. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, now the opposition leader, will also be at the service at Washington’s National Cathedral on Tuesday.
But while in Washington, Netanyahu will seek to close the widening gaps between himself and Trump over Middle East strategy. In a video statement he released before Monday‘s departure, Netanyahu said, “I am embarking on this mission with one clear goal – to ensure the security, strength and future of our dear State of Israel.”
“We will discuss all the issues on the agenda, first and foremost, Iran,” he said. “Naturally, our goal is to safeguard our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us.”
During the trip, Netanyahu said he would also pay his final respect to Graham, “one of the greatest friends the State of Israel has ever known.”
Israelis are acutely aware of the emerging differences between the allies. “It will not be an easy visit,” former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told Israel Radio on Monday morning. “There is no doubt that Netanyahu wants the United States to return to war.”
Trump himself spoke on Monday of the discord between himself and Netanyahu, even as he lauded Netanyahu, while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, stating that Netanahu had been “great” and that “we did very well together.”
On the plane Trump was quizzed about U.S. plans to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which Netanyahu has publicly opposed. “Turkey has been a great ally for me,” Trump told reporters, stressing, “No one tells me what we should be selling or not.” He acknowledged that Turkey “is not a big fan” of Israel and Netanyahu.
When it comes to the Saudi civilian nuclear power program that the Trump administration recently completed, Israel has been more circumspect. But it has deep concerns about an agreement that allows for plants with the capacity to enrich uranium. Assisting in the building of those plants had been one of the key incentives former President Joe Biden had used as a means to sway Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel and join the Abraham Accords between Israel and several other Muslim countries.
Trump has since said that U.S. support for a Saudi civilian nuclear program would be contingent on normalization with Israel and that the plants would not be allowed to enrich uranium. But on Monday, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he hadn’t spoken with Saudi Arabia about the Abraham Accords. Tuesday’s meeting is the first face-to-face encounter between Trump and Netanyahu since the announcement.
The closer Netanyahu appears to Trump and the center of U.S. decision making, the better it is for him domestically ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Trump has in his second term met with Netanyahu more than any other leader. This will be their eighth such conversation, and the fifth time he has hosted the Israeli leader in the White House.
Tight ties with Netanyahu also plays well for Trump with his evangelical base ahead of the U.S. mid-terms in November, but they run the risk of further alienating the larger American public that opposes the conflict.
Netanyahu’s influence in America had diminished, in part because of how unpopular the war has become in the United States and the role he played spurring it on.
“This is not the same Netanyahu of 2025 or even of February 2026. He is greeted with suspicion,” Yadlin said of the reception he expects for the prime minister in the United States.
Netanyahu last visited Washington in February, where he successfully advocated for the joint Israeli-U.S. military aerial bombing campaign against Iran launched on the 28th of that month.
Tehran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil supply is shipped. That step caused crude oil prices to spike in the first quarter of 2026 from $61 a barrel to $118, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Iran allowed the strait to reopen in a limited way after an April ceasefire that was followed by a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. in June. The agreement fell apart in early July, with the parties resuming attacks – but without any Israeli military involvement. The United States bombed Iran for 13 consecutive nights, ending on Thursday, even as talks with the Islamic Republic continued.
The United States and Israel in February were initially aligned around their joint goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, with Netanyahu also focused on the collapse of the Islamic Republic.
Over the weekend, Trump stressed that the war was still about eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Last week he spoke about specifically hitting the nuclear facility at Pickaxe mountain.
In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said the United States was “keeping all options on the table,” but was giving space for talks.
He dismissed media reports that lack of military supplies was part of Trump’s motivation to pause its bombing campaign, stating that the United States had everything it needed militarily.
Waltz warned Iran not to ignore American military threats. Early Monday morning, Trump published a short AI video in which his likeness planted an American flag on an Iranian oil tanker, with a slogan that stated, “it’s our oil tanker now.”
Later in the day, the president told reporters on Air Force One that he was having “good talks” with the Iranians, “so we will see what happens. I think there is a good chance something could happen. If it does, good. If it doesn’t, we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago.”
Yadlin told Israel Radio that at the end of the day, “What interests President Trump is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.”
The war might have begun in February with a focus on the Iranian regime and its nuclear program, but it will end, Yadlin predicted, with the reopening of the strait and some kind of diplomatic achievement with regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Israel has watched the U.S.-Iran reengagement warily from the sidelines.
Sima Shine, an Iran expert at the Tel Aviv-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, said that until now, neither Washington nor Tehran had wanted Israel’s involvement in the resumed fighting, fearing that such a step would “widen the scope of the war.”
Maintaining its status as a bilateral conflict makes it easier to return to negotiations, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The United States can better control the battlefield without Israel, which would have its own military agenda and objectives, Shine said. Israel can only enter the war if it is attacked by Iran or invited to do so by the United States, she added.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu warned of a forceful response should Iran attack Israel.
Iran has to end its nuclear program, he stressed, saying that the military strikes so far have set the program back but have not eliminated it.
A nuclear-armed Iran is a danger to Israel, the region, the United States and the world, he said, adding, “President Trump and I are both committed to prevent this danger.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu to meet Trump with Iran, Gaza and Saudi Arabia on the line appeared first on The Forward.
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In Detroit, pro-Israel Senate candidate Haley Stevens meets a pro-Palestinan El-Sayed supporter
(JTA) — DETROIT — Hours before a big debate showdown with her primary rival, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens began a routine campaign stop Monday seemingly comfortably in her element.
The Michigan candidate for U.S. Senate walked into The Roost, a cafe and wine shop in the Woodbridge neighborhood, chatting up her record on small businesses with the owner, Jeff Tatum. She gamely made herself a cappuccino, exclaiming with glee that the store used Dial soap like her father’s business had.
She also made a play for party unity. Asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about Jewish Democratic donors who have indicated they would fundraise for Republican candidate Mike Rogers if Stevens lost the primary, she responded, “I’m on the Democratic team. I’m on the Beat Mike Rogers team.”
But things went off-script for Stevens when she sat down with Jai Singletary, director of a local neighborhood improvement association — who revealed, midway through their conversation, that he had already cast his early voting primary ballot for her opponent, former county health director Abdul El-Sayed.
What’s more, Singletary made it clear to Stevens that the candidates’ respective stances on aid to Israel were the deciding factor for him.
“Genocide isn’t a Palestinian issue. We’ve all got to care about this,” Singletary told Stevens, a pro-Israel centrist who has received nearly $30 million in outside spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to date in her primary — the organization’s largest-ever investment in a single race, according to CBS News. He believes, he said, that “our country is directly responsible for peace not being achieved.”
The director of Woodbridge Neighborhood Development and local soccer coach added, “We’ve got to have the money stay here. I don’t think we should be giving any more aid to the State of Israel while they’re committing the atrocities they’re committing in widespread collective punishment.”
The interaction spotlighted two of the biggest questions hanging over Michigan’s closely watched and hard-fought Democratic Senate primary: To what degree are the state’s voters factoring Israel into their decisions, and does the pro-Palestinian sentiment driving El-Sayed’s campaign cross racial lines — including in the Black communities where Stevens has long maintained strong relationships?
Many of the Jews in Michigan who form a major base of support for Stevens have made clear their distrust of El-Sayed, who has questioned whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Meanwhile, the state has a large Arab and Muslim voting bloc, and voters here helped propel a 2024 Democratic revolt over Israel’s war in Gaza that helped lead to the party’s current civil war. But the situation is less clear with voters from other groups.
El-Sayed and the insurgent progressive movement he represents have sought to make Israel central to the race and have tried to turn Stevens’ AIPAC support into her biggest liability. But the Stevens campaign has made the calculation that most of the state’s voters — including Detroit’s majority-Black population, with whom she has enjoyed good relations in the past — would rather talk about other things.
Not so, according to Singletary, who is Black. In his own Detroit community, he told JTA, Israel was an important issue.
“It’s connected,” he said, comparing the Israeli-Palestinian state of affairs to Apartheid-era South Africa, adding, “$3.3 billion to the state of Israel, and that’s money that could be helping out here. I think people are now seeing the links.” He told reporters that, though he does not have Palestinian family himself, his own vote was “100% exclusive” based on Israel.
After the campaign left, Singletary told JTA that he had no affiliation with the El-Sayed campaign and had stopped by on an invitation from the store’s owner. He said he would not vote for Rogers in the general election even if Stevens wins and came because he hoped to develop a connection with her in the event she became the nominee.
The issue of whether backers of either candidate across the yawning policy divide would continue to vote for a Democrat in the general if their preferred choice loses has become an emerging question. Last week, Democratic U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten of Michigan, a Stevens backer, refused to commit to voting for El-Sayed if he wins the primary. Scholten cited the candidate’s campaigning with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who has repeatedly said he would “vote” for Hamas over Israel. Her objection, she said, was to his comment that “America deserved 9/11.”
“Abdul El-Sayed is taking us in a direction we don’t want to go as a party,” Scholten told CNN host Jake Tapper.
Stevens’ campaign is also touting her backing from a growing number of establishment Democrats, including, on Friday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She and El-Sayed face off Monday evening in their final televised debate before the Aug. 4 primary.
Speaking to Singletary, Stevens smiled and nodded. She name-dropped a Palestinian supporter of hers, and mentioned legislation targeting China that she’s worked on with “my colleague Ro Khanna” — the staunchly pro-Palestinian Democratic congressman from California, who has endorsed El-Sayed. She added that she believes in a two-state solution and has been attacked “by name” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
She also turned to her staff and excitedly indicated to Singletary: “He voted for Abdul in the primary, and he came here to talk to me.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In Detroit, pro-Israel Senate candidate Haley Stevens meets a pro-Palestinan El-Sayed supporter appeared first on The Forward.
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‘If you’re ever confused: I stand with the Jews’ Boy George sings in new pro-Israel song
(JTA) — The British pop icon Boy George has gone to bat for Israel and its supporters multiple times in recent months, rejecting boycott calls and expressing solidarity after antisemitic violence. Now, he has released a single in the same key.
“We Will Dance Again” defends Israel’s military response in Gaza, criticizes musicians and activists who have publicly supported the Palestinian cause and declares, “If you’re ever confused: I stand with the Jews.”
The song borrows its title from the slogan of survivors of the Nova music festival, where Hamas terrorists killed 378 young people and kidnapped dozens more as part of the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel. The slogan has become a symbol of resilience in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
The singer released the reggae-inspired track, titled “Od Nirkod” in Hebrew, on his social media accounts on Monday with a single hashtag: #Shalom.
“You say genocide, I say war / When you’re attacked, that’s what the army’s for,” the song opens. Later, Boy George sings, “You never mention Oct. 7,” in a criticism of those he sings have “selective memory” about atrocities deserving their reprobation. The song ends by repeating the opening lyrics in Hebrew.
Although Boy George is not Jewish, he has become increasingly vocal when it comes to supporting Jewish communities in the wake of Oct. 7.
#Shalom pic.twitter.com/0BfHIrThzO
— Boy George (@BoyGeorge) July 26, 2026
He rejected calls to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation, saying he would not “turn my back” on his Jewish friends. The singer participated this year representing San Marino, in a counterpoint to artists and countries that pulled out rather than compete alongside Israel.
Boy George had a long relationship with Jon Moss, the Jewish drummer who with him launched Culture Club, the New Wave band that dominated much of the 1980s with its melodic soul infused music and its outlandish styles. Boy George then often wore a tunic with “Culture Club” in Hebrew translation.
Following an antisemitic stabbing in London’s heavily Orthodox Golders Green neighborhood earlier this year, where the singer happened to be at the time, he said Jewish people should know “we support them.”
Boy George’s new song has drawn appreciation from pro-Israel voices. Stop the Hate UK, a British Jewish anti-antisemitism campaign, called Boy George a supporter of “Jewish joy” and thanked him publicly for standing with the Jewish community.
And the official Nova Music Festival account on Instagram responded to Boy George’s post announcing the song with a simple comment: “We will dance again.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘If you’re ever confused: I stand with the Jews’ Boy George sings in new pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
