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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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Trump says Netanyahu ‘turned his Troops around’ after he asked Israel not to bomb Beirut
(JTA) — U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming credit for another truce between Hezbollah and Israel, nearly two months after surprising both sides by declaring a ceasefire that has teetered ever since.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said nothing has changed in Israel’s approach to battling Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it is based.
“I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday afternoon. “I also had a conversation with Representatives of the Leaders of Hezbollah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel, and its soldiers. Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them. Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY!”
The post followed another similar message published hours earlier in which Trump said “there will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back.”
The posts came after days of heavy fighting in Lebanon, where multiple Israeli soldiers have been killed by Hezbollah drones and Israel spurred an evacuation in the outskirts of Beirut after warning that it would soon launch an operation against Hezbollah outposts there.
In a post of his own on X, Netanyahu confirmed that he had spoken with Trump but did not say that he had agreed to a ceasefire.
“Tonight, I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged,” Netanyahu wrote. “In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
The Lebanese Embassy in Washington, meanwhile, said in a statement that Lebanon had learned that Hezbollah had agreed to a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire.
The hostilities in Lebanon and northern Israel reflect a distinct front in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. When Trump declared a ceasefire in that war in early April, Israel at first maintained that it did not apply to Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. But Trump insisted that Netanyahu cease fighting in Lebanon, too.
Two months later, Trump is still negotiating for a permanent end to the Iran war. On Monday, he said on CNBC that he found the talks to be “very boring” and did not care if the Iranians dropped out of discussions.
The post Trump says Netanyahu ‘turned his Troops around’ after he asked Israel not to bomb Beirut appeared first on The Forward.
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Smotrich’s surprise appearance at Israel Day Parade sparks backlash from NY and Jewish leaders
(New York Jewish Week) — Amid a record crowd at New York’s annual Israel Day parade on Sunday, one participant is standing out.
A growing number of city, state and Jewish leaders are denouncing the participation of Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right Israeli minister who joined the march without having been announced in advance.
“The facts: Smotrich was NOT invited. Crashed at the last minute. Marched in the back of the parade. Not one New York public official joined him,” David Greenfield, the CEO and executive director of the Met Council, which sponsored a pre-parade breakfast for elected officials Sunday, wrote in a post on X.
Greenfield was responding to a groundswell of anger about Smotrich’s presence at the rally, which is typically framed as a broad Jewish communal celebration of Israel. While the inclusion of Israeli government officials has long been a sticking point for some who would prefer the parade to avoid politics, this year Smotrich’s presence in particular has proved galling for several prominent parade participants.
“Bezalel Smotrich is a far-right extremist whose hateful and divisive rhetoric is fundamentally at odds with the values we hold dear in New York,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, who joined the march, wrote in a post on X Monday. “Yesterday’s parade was a celebration of Jewish pride, community, and unity. I strongly condemn his participation.”
Attorney General Letitia James, who attended the parade, and New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores also condemned Smotrich on Monday.
The Israeli government had promised its largest-ever delegation this year, in part a show of strength at a time when New York City’s anti-Israel mayor, Zohran Mamdani, vowed to skip the parade. But it had not said that Smotrich, who recently said he believed he was facing International Criminal Court charges, would be among the group. Smotrich joined the parade after flying in from Israel early Sunday morning.
Mamdani condemned the inclusion of Smotrich and other ministers in the parade, telling MS Now in an interview published Monday that he was “offended” by their presence.
“You can see in the participation of the far-right Israeli minister Smotrich, as well as a number of other ministers, a vision of annihilation, a complicity in genocide, and frankly, a belief that does not have much value for even the sanctity of children in Gaza,” Mamdani said. “I am offended, as I know many New Yorkers are, by their participation.”
Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, has been sanctioned by several countries for inciting settler violence against Palestinians. The head of Israel’s far-right Religious Zionist Party, Smotrich has previously advocated for annexing the majority of the West Bank, called for the “total annihilation” of cities in Gaza, and said that it would be “justified and moral” to block humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, Mark Treyger, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which organizes the parade, said he did not know exactly which Israeli officials would be at the parade.
“We don’t have the full details as far as who is or who is not coming from the Israeli delegation,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time.
“That’s usually handled from the consulate office, and I will refer to them as far as handling that,” Treyger added. “But for me personally, it’s really not about politicians. It’s about the people that we are welcoming, as far as families across New York, the state, the region, folks coming in from across the country that are looking forward to this parade.”
For some of them, Smotrich’s participation was a blemish.
“Bezalel Smotrich should be sanctioned by American political and Jewish communal leaders – not marching alongside them in the streets of New York City,” the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street wrote in a post on X. As a political organization, J Street does not officially participate in the parade, but its members typically march as part of liberal delegations.
Other liberal Jewish groups similarly criticized both Smotrich’s presence and New York politicians for participating in the same parade as the Israeli delegation.
“It is shocking to see New York officials march alongside Kahanists like Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit members, whose support for illegal settlements and territorial expansion inspire violence, hatred and the further immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza,” New York Jewish Agenda wrote in a post on X.
“We are grateful to Mayor Mamdani for refusing to march in the Israel Day Parade, which featured some of the Israeli politicians who have not only cheered on the genocide of Palestinians, but are part of the government committing that genocide,” tweeted the left-wing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, adding, “Shame on every elected official who marched yesterday.”
Israel had announced several participants in advance of the parade, including Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli and Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who has said he wants to see Gaza flattened by a nuclear bomb and then resettled by Jews, was also on the list.
Tamar Glezerman, an organizer for Israelis for Peace, which took part in a small demonstration along the parade route to oppose the Israeli government delegation’s presence, told JTA Sunday that she was surprised to see Smotrich in the group.
“They hid that because the Israeli government is, you know, a group of cowards, and they don’t want to get pushback,” she said.
Treyger appeared to respond to the outcry on Monday, writing in a post on X that while “some individuals who attended were neither invited by JCRC-NY nor known to us in advance, participation in the parade is not an endorsement of any political figure or ideology.”
A spokesperson for JCRC declined to clarify whether Treyger was referring to Smotrich specifically.
“We reject rhetoric that dehumanizes others, fuels division, or diminishes the dignity of any human being,” Treyger continued.
The post Smotrich’s surprise appearance at Israel Day Parade sparks backlash from NY and Jewish leaders appeared first on The Forward.
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Scott Wiener, Spencer Pratt and Eric Swalwell’s replacement: 5 primaries Jews are watching in California
(JTA) — Jews in the Golden State head into Tuesday’s primaries grappling with a host of weighty questions.
Can a Jewish progressive who believes Israel committed genocide still earn the support of his local Jewish community? Can an ardent critic of Israel be dethroned in Silicon Valley? And is a trollish Los Angeles mayoral candidate from reality TV preferable to a Mamdani-esque progressive?
For many of these races, the primaries won’t be the end of the story: State law mandates that the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will move on to November’s general election. But the dynamics of several races ensure they will be seen as the latest bellwether for progressive political voters’ views on Israel, and local Jewish groups have compiled a voter guide specifically tailored to their concerns.
Here are five California races of particular interest to Jews.
A tight 3-way Los Angeles mayoral race
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing a tough bid for her reelection, and one of her challengers — L.A. City Council member Nithya Raman — has appeared with left-wing anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker and drawn comparisons to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Raman made a last-minute filing to challenge Bass not long after endorsing her for reelection.
For some Jewish Angelenos, the prospect of a mayor who has vocally criticized Israel is enough of a concern to instead back Spencer Pratt — a reality-TV star with links to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. While Pratt has distanced himself from some of his past beliefs, including that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, he has dodged questions about his friendship with Jones. (The mayoralty is officially a nonpartisan position.)
“A Raman mayorship would make every Jewish Angeleno less safe,” Sam Yebri, a local political activist with the centrist group Thrive LA who is also involved with pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, told JTA. The candidate’s Piker appearance was central to Yebri’s objections, and has also been a target from Pratt: “I would never sit next to somebody who has no problems with Jews getting attacked,” he told a local TV station.
Other Jews pointed to Raman’s absence at a recent City Council meeting marking Jewish American Heritage Month as a reason for their negative feelings toward her.
There are some key differences between Raman and her East Coast counterpart when it comes to Israel and Jews.
While Mamdani is an anti-Zionist aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, Raman says she supports Israel’s right to exist and opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
The local DSA chapter, after endorsing Raman for council in 2024, has since condemned her for her more moderate stances on Israel. Her constituents include large Jewish and Israeli neighborhoods; and Jewish leaders in the area have told the Forward they trust her and have had good conversations with her. She has attended services at local synagogues. (A local pro-Israel group also endorsed Raman in 2024.)
Yebri is instead encouraging voters to vote either for Bass or Pratt. Both of them, he said, “have made significant efforts to listen to the concerns of the Jewish community and have committed to protecting houses of worship and supporting LAPD funding.”
Pratt, a former star of “The Hills,” has focused much of his campaign on the city’s response to the 2025 Pacific Palisades fire (he lost his own house in the blaze). He has not made Jewish issues a centerpiece of his campaign, though he told CNBC last week that “all of my best friends since kindergarten are Jewish” and that he opposes antisemitism. “I want Jewish moms to feel safe for their kids to go to the temple or … to class at UCLA,” he said.
Yebri is not the only Jew backing Pratt. According to a report in the Jewish magazine Tablet, Ashley Underwood, a producer for Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and wife of Jewish comedian Larry David, hosted a fundraiser for the candidate that was attended by producer Hilary Shor and philanthropist Irene Medavoy. Shor then wrote on social media that she and others were “transfixed by the power of his message, which hopefully will help save our town.”
In the event no candidate secures above 50% of the vote (a likely outcome), the election will head to a November runoff.
Will Pelosi’s replacement be a ‘lefty Jew,’ or a Piker-backed leftist?
Perhaps no congressional race is being watched more closely than the bid in San Francisco to succeed retiring former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Jewish progressive with a growing national profile, is mounting a spirited bid for the 11th District seat and leading in the polls. But Wiener, who did not return a JTA request for comment, alienated many in the local Jewish community when he said he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
San Francisco Jewish groups condemned his comments, and the blowback caused him to step down from his role as the head of the state’s Jewish Democratic caucus.
“It is a hard year to be a lefty Jew running for Congress,” he told Politico, suggesting he believes, on the one hand, that “Israel’s existence is critically important, it is home to half of the Jews on Earth,” and on the other hand that “the Israeli government is an abomination, the Israeli government is engaged in an effort to destroy Palestinian communities.”
Complicating matters further for Wiener is the fact that one of his opponents, Saikat Chakrabarti, is running further to his left on Israel. A former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who also worked on one of Jewish progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, Chakrabarti backs a full stop of weapons sales to Israel and has campaigned with Piker.
Chakrabarti has also opposed a local measure intended to combat antisemitism in public schools, which Wiener spearheaded. The law creates new enforcement mechanisms to address antisemitism in schools, which critics have argued would amount to surveilling teachers. Wiener spearheaded the bill; Chakrabarti has called it “a censorship bill,” while a top aide of his has called it “harmful.”
Yet Ocasio-Cortez herself has not endorsed Chakrabarti, which has become a sore spot in his campaign. Meanwhile, Pelosi’s endorsement went to a third candidate, San Francisco supervisor Connie Chan — who also said she believes Israel committed genocide, and has proposed pairing U.S. funding for Israeli defensive systems with aid packages for Gaza.
In a last-minute shakeup to the race, some pro-Palestinian sites and accounts claimed over the weekend that AIPAC-aligned donors had funneled money to Chan’s campaign via a series of other PACs. The allegations, which JTA has not verified, prompted Chan’s campaign to issue a statement urging “any organization supporting Connie to respect the very clear values she has laid out not to accept donations from AIPAC.”
A spokesperson for AIPAC did not immediately respond to a JTA request for comment on the claims, which if true would mark an almost unheard-of instance of AIPAC funding a candidate who has accused Israel of genocide. Chakrabarti, a centimillionaire who has self-funded much of his campaign, mused that “AIPAC wants to keep me out of the top two.”
Local Jewish voters, who have contended many times with area activism targeting Israel on a range of fronts, have agonized over whether to back Wiener. Some communal leaders are now arguing that they should — even if they disagree with his “genocide” comments.
“There is a version of Jewish political engagement that seeks to punish anyone who uses the word genocide, regardless of their record, regardless of their opponents,” Jewish organizers Arthur Slepian and Jan Reicher wrote in the Jewish News of Northern California. This position, they argued, is “self-defeating.”
“Wiener made a statement that many in the community found painful,” they continued. “But he did not abandon his commitment to Jewish security, Jewish education or the physical safety of Jewish institutions. He did not endorse the groups that chant for the elimination of the Jewish state. He did not cast Israel’s existence as a ‘colonial project’ that needs dismantling.”
Some Silicon Valley Jews hope to take down Ro Khanna
If Jews in San Francisco are largely conflicted on Wiener, their counterparts in Silicon Valley are much more unified — against their district’s outspoken pro-Palestinian incumbent.
Rep. Ro Khanna is one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress and has even made common cause with far-right Republicans, including Rep. Thomas Massie, over the issue. Khanna has also made no secret of his 2028 ambitions for higher office. Disaffected Jews and Israeli Americans in the 17th District are hoping to use this primary to send a message to Khanna by backing tech entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal, who has positioned himself as the congressman’s pro-Israel challenger.
“We have lost trust in his ability to represent us, and will not accept empty condemnations of antisemitism while he amplifies radical antisemitic messages at every possible turn,” Tali Klima of Bay Area Jewish Coalition-Action recently said about Khanna.
Of particular concern was Khanna’s appearance in a documentary about Israel also featuring YouTuber Ian Carroll, who has claimed that a “modern Jewish mafia” controls the United States. (Khanna distanced himself from Carroll after criticism.) The congressman has also appeared multiple times on Hasan Piker’s stream.
A PLO member’s grandson runs for Congress, again
Democrats are hoping to flip a San Diego-area district held by retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa. But to do that, they may have to back a candidate with an unusual pedigree.
Ammar Campa-Najjar, a former Obama staffer and U.S. Navy Reserve officer of Mexican and Palestinian descent, is putting his Palestinian identity front and center in his pitch for the seat. Campa-Najjar spent part of his childhood in Gaza, where his family moved after the Oslo Accords “to help build a secular Palestinian government and foster economic cooperation with Israel,” his campaign biography says.
Another part of his family story: His grandfather, Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, was a top figure in the Palestine Liberation Organization who was targeted by the Mossad for what they alleged was his role in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes.
This became a sticking point for Campa-Najjar during a failed 2018 congressional run in a different district, when his Republican opponent said his background made him “a national security risk.” At the time, local Jewish leaders came to Campa-Najjar’s defense.
Also at the time, Campa-Najjar had condemned what he believed to be his grandfather’s role in planning Munich. But after an Israeli investigative journalist in 2019 questioned al-Najjar’s role, his grandson said he had “renewed skepticism” about the allegations that he was descended from a terrorist.
Last month, in response to a claim from far-right Jewish activist Laura Loomer that he was “Palestinian terrorist spawn,” Campa-Najjar wrote, “My grandmother was a Palestinian mother raising children, she was unjustly killed in her home. I never met my grandfather, I knew him as much as you do. What happened is a matter of disputed history.”
Campa-Najjar has also met with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was part of the commando unit that killed his grandfather.
This is Campa-Najjar’s third congressional run, but the aftermath of Oct. 7 and the Gaza war puts his background in a new context — as does the recent mass shooting at a San Diego mosque (the candidate himself is a Christian convert from Islam). At the same time, some progressives have cooled on him, accusing him of having moderated his stances on a range of issues across his different campaigns.
One Jew in his corner: Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs, who represents a neighboring district and is Campa-Najjar’s longtime girlfriend. A super PAC backed by Jacobs’ grandfather Irwin Jacobs, a billionaire and business entrepreneur, has spent heavily for Campa-Najjar. (Neither Campa-Najjar nor Jacobs returned JTA requests for comment.)
J Street is also backing his candidacy, while Democratic Majority for Israel is spending heavily on his primary opponent, San Diego city council member Marni von Wilpert. A Republican also running in the district means that only one Democrat is likely to advance to the general election.
Will Swalwell’s replacement make noise about Israel?
Rep. Eric Swalwell was among the most resolutely pro-Israel Democrats in Congress. He was also accused of sexual misconduct by multiple former staffers. Swalwell has called the allegations “false,” but resigned from his seat — and bowed out of the governors’ race — opening a vacancy in the state’s 14th District.
Hoping to step into his shoes is state Sen. Aisha Wahab, who is leading in a poll commissioned by the left-wing Working Families Party PAC. A child of Afghan refugees, Wahab has collaborated with local Jewish leaders before on refugee-related issues, including on a 2021 fundraiser for Afghan refugee resettlement in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from the country. That fundraiser was held at Manny’s, a San Francisco deli owned by an Afghani Jew that has been targeted multiple times — both before and after Oct. 7 — by anti-Zionist vandals.
But East Bay Jews hoping that Swalwell’s replacement might match his pro-Israel record will likely be disappointed. Wahab, like most of her Democratic opponents in the primary, has said that Israel committed genocide in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks.
At the same time, she has shown a willingness to work with Jews on Israel-related matters. In the California state Senate in fall 2025, Wahab coauthored a resolution to “call for the end to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages.” Notably, her coauthor was Wiener, the self-proclaimed “lefty Jew” state senator who is also running for Congress in the nearby 11th District.
One prominent local Jewish leader has endorsed a different Democrat. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, whose court-ordered removal from a case involving Stanford pro-Palestinian protesters has triggered allegations of antisemitism, is backing entrepreneur Rakhi Israni.
In 2024, Israni also appeared alongside local Jewish leaders on a panel discussing links between antisemitism and “Hinduphobia.” Some of Israni’s associations with more conservative Jewish and pro-Israel causes, including reported past personal donations to political campaigns for far-right Jewish pundit Laura Loomer and Christians United For Israel director David Brog, have further raised eyebrows among progressives. Israni is so far the leader in fundraising among the candidates.
“In a few instances, I financially contributed to candidates who later took positions that I strongly oppose, including one whose views I find abhorrent and incompatible with my own,” Israni, who did not immediately respond to a JTA request for comment, said in a statement last month in response to a report on her spending by the San Jose Mercury News. “But highlighting a handful of past donations without acknowledging years of overwhelmingly supporting Democratic candidates creates a misleading picture.” Israni did not name specific candidates in her statement.
Due to the circumstances of Swalwell’s resignation, the district is facing several different rounds of voting. Tuesday’s primary is for November’s general election, while a subsequent primary on June 16 will determine the top two contenders to fill the remainder of the current term, which will be voted on in August.
Other Jewish stories to watch on the ballot
- In the crowded 16-person field for lieutenant governor, two of the candidates are Jewish, and both have been endorsed by a range of leading state Jewish groups. Whoever wins will sit on the boards of the state’s public university systems, including the University of California, whose campuses have been wracked by tensions over Israel and antisemitism since Oct. 7.
- Campus Israel politics have also rocked a district attorney race. Santa Clara County DA Jeff Rosen, who is Jewish, has sought to prosecute a group of pro-Palestinian vandals at Stanford University who destroyed campus property, and had used the case in his campaign literature to claim that he was fighting antisemitism. That led a judge to recently remove Rosen from his effort to retry the case. Another Jewish DA in the state has since accused the judge of antisemitism. All this could upend Rosen’s bid for reelection as he faces a challenger, Daniel Chung, who used to be his subordinate. Chung has led protests against Rosen tied to the Stanford case.
- In a repeat of primary dynamics in other states, a pro-Israel group is spending heavily in a U.S. House race in a district without a large Jewish constituency. Democratic Majority For Israel is pouring $500,000 into TV ads in the Bakersfield-area 22nd District, which is conservative-leaning and majority Latino. The ads target progressive school board member Randy Villegas, who is backed by Bernie Sanders and other left-wing figureheads. Villegas has opposed continued U.S. military aid to Israel — though his opponent, moderate state Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, also previously said Israel had committed genocide in Gaza (she has since walked it back). National Democratic groups are also backing Bains as the party hopes to flip the district.
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