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Missouri Jewish leaders advocate for trans rights at state legislature

(JTA) — “Hi, my name is Dan. I’m 11 years old and I like doing magic and circus skills, especially unicycling. I’m here today to testify against House Bill 170, 183, and 337,” a young voice said into the microphone.

“I really like to play sports with my friends, although honestly I’m not very good at it,” he added. “I’d really like the chance to play.”

Dan — a transgender boy whose parents asked that his last name not be used — was the youngest person to testify at the Missouri State House last week in opposition to eight bills heard in the chamber that would restrict trans children from participating in sports that align with their gender identity and limit their access to specialized medical care.

He was also part of a delegation of Missouri’s Jewish community members, alongside a few Christian clergy, that has been consistently appearing at the state Capitol to advocate for trans rights in response to a slew of bills that activists say violate their religious freedoms and cause significant harm to the LGBTQ community.

Daniel Bogard, the rabbi at Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis and the parent of a trans child, was at the State House Jan. 24 and again on Feb. 1 to support those testifying against the bills and to lobby lawmakers against them. He is a frequent visitor to Jefferson City as a trans rights activist, saying the possibility of restrictions on medical care are what scare him the most. One piece of legislation would bar physicians and health care professionals from providing gender affirmation procedures to anyone under 18. It would also deny access to medication like puberty blockers, which are administered to delay the onset of puberty.

“What we want to do is we want to protect kids from unnecessary and harmful surgeries and medications,” said Brad Hudson, a Republican representative and one of the sponsors of the bill. “I say harmful because giving kids puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even transgender surgery violates the first duty of medicine, do no harm.” (The Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and other providers say they are generally considered safe to use.)

Hudson also identified himself in his testimony that he is a Christian pastor, and said that his worldview is one in which human beings are created “in the image and likeness of their Creator.”

“Those are the bills that criminalize treating your child as every medical and psychological mainstream organization recommends,” Bogard countered. “And that means parents are left with a choice of not giving these kids the sorts of treatment and care that are best practice according to everything that we know, or fleeing the state, or staying and risking some sort of criminal charge. The one that terrifies me is the idea of DSS [Department of Social Services] agents showing up to my door to take my kid away.”

Bogard, who has been going to the state Capitol for five years now, says the experience of being back at the State Legislature has been simultaneously “awful and affirming.”

With only 25 hours of advance notice, the group going to testify in Jefferson City had to leave St. Louis at 5:30 am in order to make it on time. (Courtesy of Daniel Bogard)

“What’s remarkable is you go in and two-thirds of the people who are sponsoring these bills or testifying in favor of these bills are using overtly Christian theological language when they’re talking about the why,” he explained. “And then you look around and the people who are showing up to protect trans kids are Jews.”

“I’m just so proud of our Jewish community, the way we have shown up around this issue here in Missouri,” Bogard said, remarking on the decades-long history of Jewish-led LGBTQ advocacy in the state. (The founder of the statewide LGBTQ advocacy group PROMO, which is not itself a Jewish group, was founded by Rabbi Susan Talve, one of the founding members of Bogard’s synagogue. Shira Berkowitz, a Jewish summer camp friend of Bogard’s, is the senior director of public policy and advocacy at the organization, and last year, Bogard and Berkowitz launched a summer camp for trans kids.)

The new principal of Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School, Raquel Scharf-Anderson, made the two-hour drive early on Jan. 24 to testify on behalf of her students.

“I make all of my decisions in the best interest of children,” Scharf-Anderson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Anything that would impact the students in my school, I want them to see me standing with them.”

The sports bills in particular, she said, would impact trans students at private schools, like Mirowitz.

Over the course of the Jan. 24 hearing, Rachel Aguirre, a special education teacher who ran unsuccessfully for State Senate in the Republican primary in 2022, argued that the government was “founded upon the word of God,” and therefore athletes should only play on teams whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. Nancy Delcour, another witness testifying in favor of the bill, also cited the biblical principle that humankind was created in God’s image, and an attempt to change that is the work of Satan.

Before the nine-hour long hearing was over, another interpretation of the principle of “the image of God” was explored on the hearing room floor.

“As a Jew, this is something that speaks to me quite a bit. We call it ‘b’tzelem Elokim’ — ‘created in the image of God,’ literally,” said Russel Neiss, a Jewish educator and technologist and the parent of a trans child. “But the way we understand this is that God bestows a special honor onto humans that requires that we need to be treated with dignity and we need to treat others with dignity.”

Maharat Rori Picker Neiss, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis, a rabbi, and the wife of Russel Neiss, also testified against the bills and in support of their child.

“Sitting here for the past two hours has been one of the most painful things that I’ve ever had to do as a mother and we’ve been doing this for four years,” she said. Picker-Neiss stayed home from the Jan. 31 Senate hearing for the first time in four years — but was back at the Capitol fighting for her child’s rights by the next day.

Next week, as another bill limiting what can be said about trans identity in schools makes its way through the Missouri chambers, Scharf-Anderson says school leadership will return to the state Capitol.

“We know that children imitate what we do, and we want to make sure that we’re being good role models for them,” she said. “And we will continue to stand by the children that we need to support who are part of our school and in our broader community.”

—
The post Missouri Jewish leaders advocate for trans rights at state legislature appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Will the Release of the Hostages Be the Next Phase of Our Renewal?

Israeli protestors take part in a rally demanding the immediate release of the hostages kidnapped during the deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, and the end of war in Gaza, in Jerusalem September 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

With all the talk of “deals” and “final phases,” it feels a world away from those days — only recently — when Israel felt more vulnerable than at any moment since 1948.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, as the full horror of the Hamas pogrom unfolded, Israel’s invincibility — that almost mythic confidence built over decades of survival against the odds — shattered in a matter of hours. Images of slaughtered families, homes in flames, the kidnapped and the violated, flooded our screens — not scenes from history books, but unfolding in real time, and on Israeli soil. 

The world’s only Jewish state — the nation that had vowed “Never Again” — suddenly felt helpless. Battle-hardened soldiers wept as frightened parents clutched their children in bomb shelters. The idea of safety and deterrence — the IDF and Iron Dome as an impenetrable shield — was shaken to its core.

And even as the shock turned into rage, another kind of pain began to set in — the pain of inexplicable isolation. The world, which very briefly stood with Israel in the days immediately after the massacre, quickly turned. 

Within weeks, university quads and city squares were filled with angry crowds chanting slogans that blurred the line between anti-Zionism and old-fashioned antisemitism. Hostage posters were torn down by ordinary passersby who denied the reality of Jewish suffering and Hamas terror. 

Western governments — even close allies — urged “restraint,” as if Israel’s response to the atrocities required an apology. And the headlines found their favorite refrain: “disproportionate response.”

For Israel and Jews around the world, the vulnerability deepened — not only military but moral. For in the wake of October 7th a jarring truth emerged: the world’s sympathy is as fleeting as a news cycle, and Jewish blood is still cheap in the court of global opinion. 

Then came the grinding months of war — tunnels and booby traps, rockets raining down from near and far, hostage vigils, funerals of young soldiers, sleepless nights without end. Israel’s mission to destroy Hamas — so just and so necessary — was widely portrayed as cruelty and overreach. 

And although the country carried on, bruised and defiant, every Israeli, and every friend of Israel, knew their world would never be the same again.

But out of that national trauma, something remarkable emerged. Instead of despair, there was determination. Israel didn’t collapse; it recalibrated. The chaos of October 7th and its aftermath hardened into resolve — arguments and missteps notwithstanding. The IDF went into Gaza and, slowly and methodically, dismantled an infrastructure of terror once thought untouchable. 

And now — two years since that black day — Israel stands at the brink of what few dared to imagine then: a deal poised to bring home the remaining hostages and which signals the absolute capitulation of Hamas. If only this moment had come sooner.

The dark night that began on Simchat Torah two years ago is, at last, giving way to dawn. And it’s here — at this exact point of transition — that we arrive at Parshat Vezot Habracha, the Torah’s final portion. 

Moshe stands within sight of the Promised Land. He knows he won’t cross the Jordan, and he knows the nation will. His mission — with all its triumphs and heartbreaks — is complete. And before he departs, Moshe does something extraordinary: he blesses the people.

He doesn’t bless them because everything and everyone was perfect. Far from it. The wilderness years were marked by rebellion, doubt, and tragedy — this was a nation that often fell short of God’s lofty expectations. And a journey that should have taken months took forty years. 

But Moshe looks at the broken and scarred nation before him and sees beyond the pain. He sees the promise. He understands that blessings don’t land when life is smooth – they come into focus when we can see the rough edges of our journey and still believe in our purpose. That’s why he blesses them: to mark the passage from survival to meaning, and from suffering to renewal.

Vezot Habracha — together with Simchat Torah, the festival on which it is always read — has never felt more resonant. For two years, Israel wandered a wilderness of fear and grief. Every headline, every hostage — living or lost — and every fallen soldier, reminded us that the price of Jewish existence is still unbearably high. 

And yet, perhaps this moment — this stunning deal put together by President Trump and his determined team — is our Vezot Habracha. Like Moshe’s farewell, it arrives at the close of trials and tribulations. The enemies have been fought, the losses mourned, and the next chapter — rebuilding, redefining, renewing — stands ready to begin.

Moshe’s blessing ends with a vision for Israel’s future in its land (Deut. 33:28): “Israel shall dwell in safety, alone.” Those words have always felt poetic but unrealistic — aspirational dreaming rather than a reality we can experience.  Today they sound prophetic, as intended. 

For the first time in years — perhaps since its inception — Israel stands secure, unthreatened by the terror that has shadowed it from the start. The very movement that sought its destruction and the killing of all Jews wherever they are — Hamas — has been broken, and its former patrons have been knocked out or forced to abandon it. 

There’s a divine symmetry here: what began when we read Vezot Habracha now finds its conclusion as we read Vezot Habracha again.

It’s truly fitting that Vezot Habracha is always read on Simchat Torah — the day we dance, sing, and celebrate the Torah’s completion. You’d think we’d pause to reflect, maybe catch our breath after the long journey from Bereishit to Devarim. 

But no — the moment we finish the final words, we roll the scroll right back to the beginning and start again. That’s the Jewish way. There’s no such thing as “The End,” because every ending is the start of something new.

After all, Moshe’s death isn’t an ending — it’s the prelude to Yehoshua’s story and the Jewish nation’s metamorphosis into one of history’s most influential forces. The Jewish people don’t stop, nor are they paralyzed by the past. They move forward. 

And in our own time, as Israel stands at the end of one of the darkest chapters in its history, the same truth applies. As we close the chapter of pain that has been the past two years, we immediately stand on the threshold of renewal, raring to go.

On Simchat Torah, as the scroll rolls from the end back to the beginning, we will all remember the horrors of October 7th. Even so — through our tears — as we lift the Torah and dance with it again, we’ll be declaring something profoundly Jewish: that light follows darkness, that faith outlasts fear, and that life never stops. 

So when the hostages come home, when the guns fall silent, and when Israel can finally breathe again, let’s not linger in the horrors of the past. Let’s celebrate. We are turning the scroll from tragedy to triumph, from mourning to blessing — from October 7th to Vezot Habracha — and beginning anew. 

Like our ancestors before us, we will start again — stronger, wiser, and with our faith renewed — ready to write the next chapter of the Jewish story.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California. 

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Two Years Since Oct. 7: A World That Lost Its Moral Compass

People react near the scene, after an attack in which a car was driven at pedestrians and stabbings were reported at a synagogue in north Manchester, Britain, on Yom Kippur, Oct. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Phil Noble

Two years have passed since October 7, 2023 — a day of unspeakable horror for Israel and the Jewish people.

Across Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, this weekend was marked by somber commemorations, filled with dignity and tears. Candles were lit, names were recited, and prayers rose for the 1,200 victims, for the hostages still held in Gaza, and for the survivors who carry the trauma of that day.

But even as Jews mourn, the streets of Europe and particularly in the Netherlands, have been filled with anger and hatred. More than a quarter of a million protesters recently marched, not to demand the release of hostages or condemn terrorism, but to denounce Israel. Some waved Hamas flags, others shouted calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, and openly echoed antisemitic slogans. Among them were politicians, cultural figures, and so-called “human rights activists” who have chosen ideology over morality.

The renewed peace initiative led by former President Trump receives little attention, as does the suffering of Israeli hostages or the trauma of their families. The same protesters who speak the language of “human rights” fall silent in the face of atrocities that do not involve Israel.

Ignored Tragedies Around the World

While the global media fixates on Israel, genuine humanitarian catastrophes unfold elsewhere, largely unnoticed:

  • In Sudan, a brutal civil war since April 2023 has displaced over 12 million people and claimed tens of thousands of lives.
  • In Ukraine, the war continues to devastate both sides, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.
  • In Myanmar, entire villages have been destroyed amid ongoing conflict.
  • Across the Congo and the Sahel, armed groups massacre civilians daily.
  • In Yemen, famine and war push entire families to starvation.
  • In Somalia and the Horn of Africa, drought and fighting threaten tens of millions with hunger.

Even more overlooked are the massacres of Christians in Africa. Since 2023, over 22,000 Christians have been murdered by Islamist extremists across the continent.

  • In Nigeria, the Yelwata massacre (2025) left 200 dead and entire Christian communities destroyed.
  • In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Komanda and Kasanga attacks killed more than 100 worshippers, many inside their churches.
  • In 2023 alone, 4,761 Christians were killed for their faith.

There are no mass demonstrations, no “solidarity weeks,” no campus rallies for these victims. Their suffering does not fit the fashionable narrative.

The Moral Epidemic of Selective Outrage

This is the defining moral crisis of our time: selective outrage. The global community claims to champion justice and peace, yet its attention and anger are rationed, directed almost exclusively at the world’s only Jewish state.

In Paris, Amsterdam, London, and New York, chants of “intifada” echo through the streets. At leading universities, students glorify Hamas as a “resistance movement.” At the United Nations, Israel is condemned more often than all other nations combined.

The evidence is clear: this is not about human rights. It is about hatred, the oldest and most adaptable hatred in history, repackaged as activism.

When the World Turns Upside Down

Today, we live in an age where terrorists are celebrated, and their victims are blamed for defending themselves. Where Jewish blood is once again cheap, and the world remains silent. And yet, Israel endures. The Jewish State mourns, rebuilds, and defends itself because it has learned, time and again, that Jewish survival cannot depend on global approval.

Two Years Later: The Truth Remains

On this October 7, 2025, we remember the murdered, we pray for the hostages, and we reaffirm an unshakable truth: “Israel is not the cause of the world’s chaos. It is the moral measure of it, a nation that proves, even after centuries of hate, that the Jewish people still choose life.”

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel

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Pro-Palestinian LA Times Heiress Seizes Left-Wing Outlet to Push Agenda

May 1, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; A flag is waved during a sit-in outside of a pro-Palestinian encampment at the campus of UCLA. Violence broke out early in the morning at the encampment, hours after the university declared that the camp “is unlawful and violates university policy.” Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

The pro-Palestinian daughter of the Los Angeles Times owner has recently been appointed publisher of the left-leaning outlet Drop Site News— a new platform for her to espouse her hateful views about Israel.

Nika Soon-Shiong, 32, daughter of billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, is no stranger to newsrooms. She has allegedly interfered behind the scenes at her father’s newspaper to influence coverage, meddling with headlines and clashing with editors who didn’t align with her activist agenda.

Soon-Shiong’s own public statements reveal a consistent hostility toward Israel and Zionism. On social media, she has displayed a Palestinian flag in her bio, dismissed the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, described Israel as an “apartheid state” that is engaged in “genocide” — and even alleged that the Los Angeles City Council was funding a “Zionist militia.”

Despite this pattern of rhetoric aligning with fringe, hardline narratives rather than journalistic neutrality, Soon-Shiong has, since 2021, sat on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — an organization that redefines international law to designate terrorists as journalists.

How much influence has Soon-Shiong exerted on the CPJ? Even before the October 7 massacre and the resulting war, the CPJ published a report accusing the Israeli military of acting with “impunity” and severely undermining freedom of the press. This, even while according to the organization’s own data, Israel did not even feature in its so-called “Global Impunity Index,” which charts the countries in which press freedom is curtailed and where there is a lack of accountability when journalists are killed.

The double standards were glaring.

The CPJ has also been at the forefront of eulogizing so-called “journalists” who were killed in Gaza while working for outlets like Al-Aqsa TV and Quds News Network, which are affiliated with Hamas.

As we will see below, Soon-Shiong isn’t overly concerned when it comes to distinguishing between journalists and terrorists. One can only assume that this has played an active role in the CPJ’s willful blindness on this issue.

A New Platform for Anti-Israel Hate

So what happens if someone who brings both money and an extreme pro-Palestinian agenda is given her own media outlet?

We’re about to find out. Soon-Shiong has been appointed publisher of Drop Site News, a proudly left-wing outlet positioning itself as a corrective to what it calls mainstream media’s failure to cover “genocide” and “apartheid.”

It’s a media outlet devoted to delegitimizing Israel and promoting terrorist agendas. Alarmingly, its audience keeps growing.

The move provides Soon-Shiong’s ideological agenda a direct platform with more than 400,000 followers, which is most likely now set to receive a significant injection of cash.

Funding Gaza Journalists or Terrorists?

For starters, just before Soon-Shiong’s new role was announced, she launched a fund to support an undisclosed list of Gaza “journalists” whose vetting process raises questions about possible terror ties.

The fundraising initiative is run in partnership with Unmute Humanity, which describes itself as “a grassroots collective to disrupt media complicity and call for accurate reporting of the U.S.-funded genocide by Israel against Palestinians.”

The so-called “Gaza Journalist Fund” has already raised more than $200,000, but no list of beneficiaries has been published. Instead, the group says it supports “journalists who have appeared on Unmute Humanity’s Voices of Palestine webcast or weekly TikTok Lives, or individuals with whom Unmute Humanity maintains ongoing direct communication.”

That vague “vetting process” has already spotlighted troubling figures. One is Bisan Owda, an Al Jazeera reporter exposed as a longtime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a terror group responsible for suicide bombings, shootings, rocket fire, and the 2014 massacre of five Jewish worshipers in a Jerusalem synagogue. Unmute Humanity repeatedly promoted Owda across its platforms throughout 2024.

Another example is Anas al-Sharif, a Hamas operative who masqueraded as an Al Jazeera journalist until being killed by the IDF. Unmute Humanity openly eulogized him in posts and collaborations with other pro-Palestinian groups. Had he survived, it appears he would have been eligible for Soon-Shiong’s Gaza Journalist Fund.

Another “journalist” whose material was promoted is Mohammed Salama, a Hamas terrorist who posed as an Al Jazeera journalist and was targeted by the IDF together with al-Sharif.

If these examples are the norm rather than the exception, Soon-Shiong may effectively be financing terrorists under the guise of supporting Gaza reporting, through partnerships with groups that present them as journalists.

And she does not even try to hide her agenda.

Soon-Shiong also proudly announced her plans to turn her new media toy into an instrument of propaganda, for the sake of “the verdict of history”:

And Drop Site News’ Middle East editor recently explained — in an agenda-driven panel with CPJ’s CEO and former head of Human Rights Watch — that journalists should join the Gaza-bound flotilla (and thus take part in a blatant breach of international maritime law) because avoiding it is a “political” decision.

Many questions arise: How much cash is Soon-Shiong funnelling into Drop Site News? Is she planning to tighten her grip on her father’s newsroom, too? And who are the so-called “journalists” in Gaza now poised to receive US dollars?

The American public is owed absolute transparency — because when media power and US money are funneled into agendas that imperil Jewish lives — silence is complicity.

HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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