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‘Stop Cop City’ activists infuse Jewish rituals into their protest against Atlanta’s planned police training center
(JTA) — As the sun set on Feb. 5, signaling the start of Tu Bishvat, a group of Jews carried shovels into the South River Forest southeast of downtown Atlanta.
In the day’s declining light, they planted saplings — seven paw paws, three fig and two peach — to honor the holiday, Judaism’s “new year of the trees.” They recited the Shehechiyanu prayer, and a rabbi led them in singing “Tzadik Katamar”: “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon,” from Psalm 92.
The traditional holiday observance doubled as a protest against “Cop City,” the name that self-described “forest defenders” have given the city of Atlanta’s plan to build a $90 million, 85-acre police and fire training center on 300-plus acres that it owns just over the city line in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Two years into protests against the plans, a “week of action” that began over the weekend swelled the protesters’ ranks and brought an even greater police presence to the site of the planned training center. On Sunday night, a group of activists broke from a nonviolent protest, burning police vehicles and, police said, throwing rocks at officers. Dozens of people were arrested.
The violent turn throws into question other plans for the week, which include a Purim celebration on Monday night and a Shabbat service on Friday, the latest Jewish milestones in nearly two years of controversy and confrontation.
“They’re living Jewish values more legitimately, more sincerely than some of the biggest institutions,” said Rabbi Mike Rothbaum of Atlanta’s Reconstructionist Congregation Bet Haverim, of the Jewish protesters. Rothbaum attended the Tu Bishvat event and is scheduled to lead this week’s Shabbat service; he was speaking before the weekend’s events.
Comparing their worship to a mishkan, the portable sanctuary that the Israelites carried in the desert, Rothbaum said of the protesters, “They go to shul at ‘Cop City.’”
A sukkah constructed in October 2023 at the “Cop City” protest site in the Atlanta forest was destroyed in a police raid in December. (Courtesy of Jewish Bird Watcher Union)
Until about 200 years ago, South River Forest was home to the Muscogee (Creek) tribe, who called it Weelaunee — “brown water,” the name painted on protest banners strung between trees. White settlers drove out the Muscogee, and the land later became a slave plantation, a Civil War battlefield and a city prison farm. Portions have been a police firing range and used for explosives disposal, and it has also been the site of illegal dumping.
In April 2021, Atlanta announced plans to build a police training facility in the forest. Opponents immediately launched a protest. They oppose the redirection of natural resources to the police and want the forest maintained as a natural sanctuary.
After two years as a primarily local issue, national and international attention spiked on Jan. 18, when a protester camped in the woods was killed during what police called a “clearing operation.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Manuel Paez Teran fired a handgun, wounding a Georgia State Police trooper, then was killed by return fire. An independent autopsy reported that the 26-year-old known as “Tortuguita” was struck by at least 13 rounds. An Atlanta police vehicle was torched in a subsequent protest downtown. Charges against more than a dozen of those arrested include violating the state’s domestic terrorism statute.
Across Intrenchment Creek from the city property is a DeKalb County park that bears the waterway’s name and is the subject of an associated protest. Much of the “Stop Cop City” activity has taken place in the 136-acre Intrenchment Creek Park. Legal challenges are pending against a land swap in which the county gave 40 acres to the now-former owner of a film studio, whose crews leveled trees and tore up a paved path until a judge issued a stop work order.
Conservation groups and community organizations in the surrounding majority Black neighborhoods fear that any development will degrade the tree canopy in Atlanta — which calls itself the “city in the forest” — and exacerbate flooding in low-lying areas.
The larger, decentralized protest movement includes a number of Jews, most in their 20s and 30s, who have made their stand by holding Jewish rituals in the forest, some under the banner of the “Jewish Bird Watcher Union.” They have held Shabbat services, performed the Tashlich ritual on Rosh Hashanah, slept in a sukkah during Sukkot, lit Hanukkah candles, and planted trees on Tu Bishvat. Prayer books were adapted for Shabbat and the High Holidays, with illustrations by the Jewish artist Ezra Rose.
Digital fliers advertising Jewish activities during a “week of action” by protesters opposing Atlanta’s planned police training facility. (Shared on social media)
Most of the Jewish events have been held in Intrenchment Creek Park. At the entrance, signs attached to a crumpled gazebo denounce the “film site” property owner. Improvised memorials and slabs of stone bearing spray-painted slogans dot the parking lot. To frustrate machinery drivers, some trails were blocked by barricades formed from downed trees, discarded tires and anything else handy.
The day before Tu Bishvat, three of the young Jewish activists met with a reporter, in an unheated community center a short drive from the forest. Expressing concern about their personal security, given the heated atmosphere around the issue, they spoke on condition that they be identified only by their first names and that their photographs not appear.
Cam, 24, is a labor union activist who grew up in Atlanta, attending Conservative and Reform congregations. Ray, 24, is a software engineer and Georgia Tech graduate, who grew up attending a Reform synagogue in Maryland. Ruth, in her late 20s, works in “regenerative landscaping” and moved to Atlanta with her Israeli family as a child. All said they feel disconnected from the mainstream Jewish community in Atlanta, religiously, politically and ideologically.
“Mainstream Judaism has completely lost touch with the radical history and radical tradition of the Jews,” Ruth said. “The things I like about Judaism, I want to live them in real life.”
She added, “When Sukkot came around and we built a sukkah in the forest, this is the closest I’ve been to relating to the story of traveling, of being in the desert and sleeping under the canopy.”
A makeshift memorial for environmental activist Manuel Paez Teran, who was allegedly killed by law enforcement during a raid to clear the construction site of a police training facility that activists have nicknamed “Cop City” near Atlanta, Georgia, as seen Feb. 6, 2023. (Cheney Orr/AFP via Getty Images)
Upwards of 50 to 60 Jews have participated in the forest-based worship, and hundreds of people have streamed into the “living room” section of the woods. “I don’t know if they’re all gathering for Shabbat or not but they all gathered around with us and listened to us sing prayers and light candles,” Ray said.
Rothbaum said he admired what he saw the Jewish protesters doing. “Whatever your opinion of the activists at ‘Cop City,’ you have to admire their commitment,” he said, adding, “These kids are reacting to the assimilation of a great heritage of meaning and justice.”
The sukkah survived for two months past the end of Sukkot, until a Dec. 13 police raid against encampments on both sides of Intrenchment Creek. A photo posted on Twitter showed the dismantled poles and torn sheets. The disappearance of the large menorah from the Intrenchment Creek parking lot after Hanukkah was blamed on crews working for the film site owner.
May the candle lights of Khanukah ignite the flames of rebellion. @defendATLforest pic.twitter.com/kdh6mqhMHY
— Fayer – פֿײַער (@FayerAtlanta) December 22, 2022
The morning after Tu Bishvat, city and county SWAT teams, along with state police, were deployed as construction equipment was brought into the police training center site. Two weeks later, at a Shabbat dinner in the forest following the Jan. 18 raid, attendees recited a Mourner’s Kaddish for Manuel Paez Teran and sang the traditional prayer “Oseh Shalom Bimromav” — “They who make peace in their high places.”
The Jewish activists see parallels between their activism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what’s happening in their local forest.
“Anti-Zionism was a major part of what brought us together in the first place, even before the forest movement,” said Cam, who said he saw the two issues as “related struggles.” Opposing Israel is “a big part of what leads us to feel alienated from most mainstream Jewish communities and the inability to be accepted there, and the necessity of forming our own.”
Ruth participated in activism on behalf of Palestinians while visiting family in Israel last summer. “I was hearing and seeing old ancient olive orchards that were destroyed, burned or cut by settlers in order to disempower Palestinians from living there,” she said. “It made me really feel, like, defend the forest everywhere.”
Atlanta officials say they do not plan to defile the forest and argue that the city’s police training facilities are inadequate. The planned complex would serve the police and fire departments, the 911 call center and K-9 units. It would include a shooting range, a “mock city” (with a gas station, motel, home and nightclub) and a “burn building.” The remainder of the land will be developed for recreational use, officials say.
“This is Atlanta and we know forests. This facility will not be built over a forest,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said at a January news conference. “The training center will sit on land that has long been cleared of hardwood trees through previous uses of this site decades ago.”
Activists accuse the city and county of a lack of transparency throughout the process. In a February interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dickens conceded that the city could have done a better job selling the project. “We didn’t do that. And because we didn’t do that it started getting painted by anybody that had a brush,” he told the newspaper.
The mayor’s words have not deterred activists, whose goal is nothing less than cancellation of the project.
“They have destroyed a lot of the beauty already,” Cam said. “They have created this place of desolation and death and destruction, and that is in opposition to our task as Jews to create a world of beauty and joy and holiness. By coming to this place and planting trees, we are reclaiming it, making a place of peace and joy.”
Rabbi Mike Rothbaum, seen here in Massachusetts in 2017, is an Atlanta rabbi who has participated in “Cop City” protests. (Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The local Jewish protesters have lately gotten a boost from a progressive Jewish organization based in Philadelphia. The Shalom Center launched in the 1980s to oppose nuclear proliferation and now focused largely on climate justice.
“Our sacred text is called ‘The Tree of Life,’” wrote the center’s founder, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and national organizer Rabbi Nate DeGroot in a Feb. 28 letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that noted Jewish law’s prohibition on uprooting trees. “We pray that the trees of the Weelaunee Forest remain trees that support the flourishing of sacred life for generations to come.”
Rothbaum said he was inspired by the young Jewish activists. “They are reminding us of the Jewish values that come to us through Torah, through the rabbinic writings, that are timeless,” he said. “They are reminding us of what we’re supposed to be. And we owe them a debt of gratitude.”
Ruth had a message for Atlanta’s Jewish congregations and communal organizations, most of which have not engaged publicly on the issue: “I would invite them to join us, to put their Jewish values into action,” she said. “Everything we’re doing here is really Jewish.”
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Jewish freelance journalist Emily Wilder is detained as Israeli military intercepts Gaza aid flotilla
(JTA) — Jewish freelance journalist Emily Wilder, reporting for Jewish Currents, a progressive Jewish publication, was detained by the Israeli military on Monday while covering an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.
Wilder set sail from Italy last week aboard The Conscious, one of dozens of boats that aimed to reach Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave.
But that effort was cut short when Wilder, along with the other journalists and aid workers on her voyage, was intercepted by the Israeli military and detained. The military has intercepted, detained and deported activists sailing to Gaza multiple times in recent weeks.
Jewish Currents has been staunchly against the war in Gaza, calling Israel’s campaign there a genocide and advocating for the Palestinian cause. In an email to subscribers, publisher Daniel May said the publication sent Wilder on a flotilla because of the value of the reporting she could produce.
“Jewish Currents commissioned Emily’s reporting because we know that Israel’s unprecedented restrictions on journalists have facilitated the war crimes perpetrated in Gaza,” May wrote. “We also know that the flotillas are an important story in themselves.”
Wilder was a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, both anti-Zionist groups, as a student at Stanford University, from which she graduated in 2020. The next year, she was fired from the Associated Press in 2021 due to her social media posts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since then, according to her LinkedIn, she has worked as a freelancer and a human rights researcher.
Wilder was also documenting the voyage on her Instagram account, which has not posted an update since she and her crew were detained.
“Today, the @gazafreedomflotilla’s Conscience sets sail from the boot of Italy, with hopes of bringing ~70 media and medical workers across the Mediterranean to Gaza’s shores amid Israel’s blockade on international press and killing of doctors and journalists,” wrote Wilder last week in a post.
Israel’s foreign ministry blasted the flotilla participants in a post on X Tuesday.
“Another futile attempt to breach the legal naval blockade and enter a combat zone ended in nothing,” the post read. “The vessels and the passengers are transferred to an Israeli port. All the passengers are safe and in good health. The passengers are expected to be deported promptly.’
In the email, May directed readers to sign a Change.org petition calling for her release and to urge the California native’s representatives, including Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, to advocate for her.
Last week, dozens of other boats that were part of the Global Sumud Flotilla were also intercepted, and hundreds of participants were detained and later deported, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg who alleged that she had been “kidnapped and tortured” by the Israeli military. (Another flotilla effort including Thunberg was intercepted by the Israeli military in June.)
“My office has now confirmed that a second flotilla carrying vital humanitarian aid … has been intercepted, and nearly 145 passengers and crew detained,” wrote California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Comez in a statement. “Among the detained is my constituent Emily Wilder, a member of the press, who was reporting on the flotilla’s attempt to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.”
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Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square is transformed by cautious optimism — and gratitude for Trump
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The mood at Tel Aviv’s upscale Gindi Fashion Mall was divided between anticipation and disbelief on Thursday afternoon, in the wake of news of a hostage deal that could end the Gaza war and bring the remaining hostages home.
At a kiosk across from a Chanel boutique, fruit vendor Amit Bonen said she had learned not to trust good news too quickly. “I have optimism, but it’s filled to the brim with pessimism,” she said. “I won’t believe anything until I see it with my own eyes.”
Her colleague, Rinat, nodded in agreement. “You can’t trust those terrorists,” she said. “Who knows what trick they have up their sleeve?”
But Or, en route to a cosplay event, dismissed the caution. “Why not celebrate?” he said. “The hostages will come home. They’ll leave people in Gaza alone. What’s not to love?”
A few blocks away, Hostages Square looked transformed. For nearly two years it had been a gathering place for families of hostages and their supporters and for vigils marked by grief. On Thursday it was filled with songs that had become the soundtrack of wartime resilience — “Am Yisrael Chai,” “Machshavot Tovot,” “Ve’od Yoter Tov.” Impromptu circles of dance formed. American flags fluttered beside effigies of Donald Trump and handmade posters thanking the American president, who helped broker the agreement. Children leaned over folding tables, coloring “welcome home” notes for returning hostages.
Ariel Vinter, from Jerusalem, led the crowd in singing. The past two years had strengthened her faith, she said, which she leaned on to cope with the loss of her cousins, Ofir Tzarfati check sp and Tchelet Fishbein, who were killed on Oct. 7 at the Nova festival and Be’eri, respectively.
“I haven’t digested what happened to them. I don’t think I ever will,” she said. “But I know the families will only be able to heal when Eviatar and Guy are back,” referring to Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal, who were with Tzarfati when he was killed and who were taken hostage to Gaza.
Michel Illouz, whose son Guy was abducted from the Nova festival and later confirmed killed in Gaza, harbored no doubts about the news.
“I 100% know we are ending this war,” he said. “Everyone must understand that the only option is by peace and not war. For the Israeli side and Palestinian side.”
He would only find peace, he said, once he saw his son’s body. “I want to touch him. I want to make this closure.”
He added: “From this trauma, from this holocaust, we will have a great future for all our nation,” he added.
“We would never be here right now without him,” referring to Trump.
Nearby, well-wishers lined up to embrace relatives of the hostages. A woman who asked to hug Meirav Gonen, mother of freed hostage Romi Gonen, told her, “All along you were the source of strength for all of us to fight for you.”
Afterward, she told JTA: “They’re so strong. Why shouldn’t we be? It’s a matter of hours now. Nothing else matters. We can finally return to life.”
Gonen said the families were united by a shared determination. “Of course we’re holding our breath,” she said. “But this time it’s different. Everyone is together on this. You can feel it. Everything is aligned for this to happen.”
Her daughter’s release during a January ceasefire had not ended her own sense of obligation for the hostages.
“It’s a hole that hasn’t been filled,” she said. Like others, she credited Trump: “We couldn’t have done this without him.”
Among those taking part in the celebrations was Anat, a founding member of Bo’u, a volunteer movement formed in late 2024 to push for a hostage-release deal.
“For the first time, I feel I can breathe,” she said. “But it was all down to us — the Israeli people. We made Trump understand that most Israelis wanted the war to end — that our values, unlike the government’s, are about responsibility to one another. We were all partners in bringing them home.”
Some people came to the square for the first time. Doron Katz, who was freed from captivity with her daughters in the first hostage deal in November 2023, said she had stayed away until now. “It was too hard before,” she said. “But now, seeing people smiling and dancing — it’s very moving.”
Nechamit, who traveled from Netanya with nine friends, called it “a historic day.” Her friend, Ariella, described the atmosphere simply as “celebratory.”
“We’re ready to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for this,” she said.
Nearby, Tova Gohar waved a giant American flag. She said she came to “thank Trump for forcing Israel and the Arab countries into signing the deal. He’s a businessman, he knows how to do deals.”
Activists planned to sustain activities in the square in the coming days, as Israeli lawmakers sign off on the deal and the public awaits the hostages’ return. Prayers will be held in the square on Shabbat, and the public is invited to bring their Friday night dinners to create a communal experience.
Fourteen-year-old Noam Salame, from Karnei Shomron, said he was thinking about what the hostages would experience when they returned.
“I’m just imagining Bar Kupershtein seeing his father speak for the first time,” he said. Bar’s father, Tal, was left unable to speak after a stroke five years ago and has since regained his voice — a recovery he said came from determination to bring his son home, after Bar was abducted from the Nova festival.
“And of Ziv and Gali Berman watching Maccabi Tel Aviv’s ascent in the [Euroleague],” he added, referring to the 27-year-old twins, both avid soccer fans, who were kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
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Jewish groups welcome ceasefire plan as a step toward a ‘lasting regional peace’
(JTA) — Jewish organizations across the ideological spectrum offered cautious optimism following the announcement of the first phase of a Gaza peace agreement, expressing profound relief at the planned return of hostages living and dead and tentative hopes that the plan might lead toward lasting regional peace.
As for what such a last peace might look like, only groups that have consistently advocated for a two-state solution offered a specific vision, putting their hopes in a solution that is implicit in the Trump administration’s 20-point peace plan, but which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects adamantly.
Nearly all the organizations noted that the war began with Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and urged “vigilance” that Hamas would uphold its side of any agreement.
“This development represents a hopeful step toward resolving the conflict, securing the release of all hostages, and establishing the conditions for lasting peace and security in the region,” read a statement by Betsy Berns Korn and William C. Daroff, the chair and CEO, respectively, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “This moment demands unity, resolve, and the moral clarity to ensure that peace and security endure and every hostage returns home.”
Federations similarly welcomed the deal for its humanitarian implications, with the Jewish Federations of North America saying “our prayers are answered — not completely, for the pain of loss remains — but with the long-awaited promise of healing, renewal, and hope.”
Groups also thanked the Trump administration for brokering the deal. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in its statement that it “applauds President Trump and his negotiating team for this tremendous achievement and for working together with Israel to broker this peace plan.”
AIPAC also framed the last two years as an affirmation of the “enduring partnership between the United States and our ally Israel,” despite cracks that showed during the Biden administration and to a lesser extent under Trump.
A lobbying group that tends to reflect the policies of the sitting Israeli government, AIPAC also spoke in brief of what some are calling “the day after,” saying that the peace deal “creates a tremendous opportunity to forge a better future for Israelis, Palestinians, and people across the Middle East.”
J Street — the advocacy group often described as the progressive counterpart to AIPAC — did not mention the two-state solution in a statement by its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami. But Ben-Ami did urge the parties to take steps toward realizing the “full US-backed 20-point plan — one that ensures Israel’s security, ends Hamas’s reign of terror, delivers a massive surge of humanitarian aid and sets the region on a path toward a comprehensive and permanent peace.”
In the 19th point of its 20-point plan, the White House suggested without making any pledges that “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” And while a number of key European allies recently recognized a Palestinian state, the idea has been effectively stalled and faces formidable obstacles on the ground, including strong opposition by both the current Israeli government and key segments of the Israeli and Palestinian publics.
Other groups were more explicit in reiterating the two-state solution. The Israel Policy Forum, founded to advance the idea of two states, said it hoped the agreement might pave the way for “rekindled Israel-Arab diplomacy, a reformed Palestinian Authority with new, empowered, and legitimate leadership, an eventual expansion of the Abraham Accords that advances Israel’s integration in the Middle East, and the pursuit of a viable political horizon to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on two states.”
The Reform movement, in a statement signed by the leaders of its rabbinical, congregational and seminary arms, also hoped the ceasefire would create the conditions for renewing a solution which the statement acknowledged “feels remote at this point.” Nevertheless, according to the statement, “a two-state solution in some configuration must remain the worthy, long-term goal for Israelis and Palestinians as they contemplate a future with safety, dignity, and hope for all.”
Further to the left, Jewish groups welcomed the return of the hostages but also reiterated their criticism of Israel’s prosecution of a war whose death toll, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, surpassed 67,000.
Partners for Progressive Israel called the agreement “a victory for the hostage families in Israel and their supporters” as well as “the many international bodies who have sought to hold Hamas and this Israeli government accountable for the war crimes perpetrated in the last two years.”
While few right-leaning groups commented on the deal in the hours after its announcement, which also coincided with the end of the first two days of Sukkot, Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi welcomed the news, calling it “a potentially hopeful step toward restoring calm and securing the release of Israeli hostages.”
RZA-Mizrachi’s president, Steven M. Flatow, whose daughter Alisa Flatow was killed in a suicide bombing near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip in 1995, also warned that “Hamas’s word is worth little.” He cautioned that any plan’s success “depends entirely on whether Hamas and its supporters can be trusted to abide by their commitments—a lesson history teaches us to approach with clear eyes.”
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