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A conveniently timed conference offers Israel educators a safe space to explore complex feelings
CHICAGO (JTA) – At one point ahead of an international conference on Israel education, as raucous anti-government protests filled the streets of Israeli cities, conference organizers considered leaning into the tension created by the news: What if they focused one day of the gathering on conflict, and the next day on hope?
Ultimately, they decided “you can’t divorce the two,” in the words of Aliza Goodman, one of the organizers.
“If you separate them, then it means one is devoid of the other and vice versa,” said Goodman, director of strategy and research and development for the iCenter, the Israel education organization that hosted the conference in Chicago in March.
Israel educators, Goodman said, need to hold “the complexities together with the hopes for us to be able to move forward as human beings.”
That emotional challenge lay at the center of the conference, the iCenter’s fifth, called iCON 2023. The conference covered standard topics in Israel education, ranging from Hebrew literature and language to representations of Jews and Israel in popular culture to a bevy of subtopics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But the turmoil that has rocked Israel this year felt no less prominent. In sessions and on the sidelines, the more than 500 participants discussed the Israeli government’s proposed judicial overhaul, its far-right cabinet ministers and the preservation of Israel’s democratic character.
Conference attendees said they faced dual challenges: understanding the political issues at play and reckoning with what they mean for teaching about Israel. Their thoughts on the current historical moment suggested that those challenges would persist even though Israel’s government announced a pause on the judicial overhaul shortly after the conference concluded.
“We are responsible for doing something, don’t get me wrong, but my immediate responsibility is trying to really get a handle on understanding it for myself and for my students,” said Rebecca Good, the assistant director of education at The Temple, a Reform synagogue in Atlanta.
Good has found herself fielding new questions about Israel, mostly from adult congregants, “but we know that the questions and the feelings that are coming from the adults naturally play out in the home,” she said. In response to the perceived need she has recognized from her students, her synagogue planned a town hall-style meeting that took place in late March.
“It’s almost like you do triage, right? When things like this happen, it’s like, ‘OK, how are you?’” Good said. “You have to address that first and then you figure out what is needed and try to make that happen for people.”
Conference attendees included Hebrew school and day school teachers, executives from communal organizations, summer camp professionals, campus activists, young adult Israeli emissaries and more. iCON Program Director Ari Berkowicz estimated that 75% of the conference participants came from North America and 24% from Israel. Others joined from places like Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Educator Noam Weissman addresses the audience at a session of ICON 2023 at the Marriott Marquis in Chicago, Illinois, March 15, 2023. (Rachel Kohn)
“One of The iCenter’s approaches to education is to make all that we teach and all that we learn about both timely and timeless, but the current moment obviously has an impact on who we are as educators and who we are as learners,” said Berkowicz. While the sessions scheduled for iCON 2023 remained mostly unchanged, the facilitators, speakers, and educators were “different people” from what they had been three or six months ago due to the upheaval in Israel, he said.
“They aren’t the same people that they were even yesterday or two days ago,” Goodman added in an interview at the conference. “All of this is impacting them at the core.”
Questions and anguish about the judicial overhaul — and other Israeli government policies – filtered into the conference programming. A campus professional, who asked not to be identified because she wasn’t authorized by her employer to speak to the press, shared a practical concern during a breakout group: If the government follows through on its call to limit the Law of Return, which currently affords automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with one Jewish grandparent, what should she say to a student who wants to go to Israel but no longer falls under the government’s revised definition of who is a Jew?
In a nearby group, an Israeli expat from Dallas named Meirav said she likes that Israel doesn’t separate between religion and state. But she fears for women’s rights under a religiously conservative regime.
Another group endeavored to understand the specifics of the proposed judicial overhaul, comparing newspaper articles with Wikipedia text as they struggled to confirm how judges are appointed in Israel.
“It’s not only in America or everywhere else – I’m not sure everyone in Israel understands exactly what’s going on and the ramifications,” said Etty Dolgin, the Israeli-American principal of a Chicago-area Hebrew-immersion preschool and after-school program, in a different session. “I don’t know that anybody really knows what the ramifications are going to be.”
Former Jewish day school principal Noam Weissman, whose lecture at the conference drew a standing-room-only crowd of some 150 people, said in an interview that the current moment is an important one for Israel educators to be able to contextualize.
“Part of why cultural literacy is important is because history informs the present,” Weissman said. “People like to jump to judicial reforms, but if people don’t know about Israel’s lack of a constitution, it’s hard to be conversant in that.”
Weissman, the former head of Los Angeles’ Shalhevet High School who is now executive vice president of OpenDor Media, where he develops educational content on Judaism and Israel, said in his session that the goal of Israel educators shouldn’t be defending the country but “understanding and connecting.” He’s grateful, he said, that “the Israel education world has really, from a professional perspective, moved on from hasbara,” a Hebrew term for public relations or advocacy on Israel’s behalf.
“When someone recently said to me, ‘I don’t envy Israel educators at this moment’ … I actually said I feel zero pressure,” Weissman told his audience. “You feel pressure when you’re trying to defend everything Israel does. That’s the world of Israel advocacy, where you train young people to defend Israel. … If my job is to defend something that I have no interest in defending, this doesn’t work.”
Good said she appreciated the “brain trust” of fellow Israel educators she gets to interact with at the conference. At the same time, she likened the sense of uncertainty she is feeling these days to the concerns many Americans have felt in recent years when looking at their own fraught political landscape.
“That kind of feeling we all get, like, ‘Where could this go?’” she said. “That’s as best as I can put it.”
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AIPAC-backed Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri Democratic primary
(JTA) — Missouri incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell registered a resounding victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary against Cori Bush, a prominent Democratic socialist and ardent critic of Israel.
The Associated Press called the race just an hour after polls closed, at 8:02pm local time. By the time 99% of the vote was counted, Bell had garnered 59.2% to Bush’s 36.9%.
The primary is a déjà vu moment for St. Louis. The same pair of candidates vied just two years ago to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District.
Bell prevailed in 2024 to oust Bush in a clash that was largely defined by a $9 million influx of AIPAC cash in support of Bell. In this rematch, Bush made the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a central issue in her campaign, similar to other Democratic Socialists of America candidates.
“AIPAC has become yet another way for MAGA-donors to divide the Democratic base by meddling in primaries,” Bush told JTA in a written statement prior to the primary. “In St. Louis and across the country, people know that our fight against antisemitism means fighting against the far-right’s effort to divide us.”
Federal Election Commission records show that this time around, AIPAC has invested far less in the race. Through its United Democracy Project super PAC, the pro-Israel lobby has spent in the neighborhood of $3 million on the rematch, with the vast majority targeted at opposing Bush.
In response to Bell’s decisive win on Tuesday, AIPAC posted its congratulations on X: “Our community was proud to support a strong, principled Democratic leader,” the lobby stated.
The Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Democratic Council of America, which had mobilized networks of voters to make phone calls in support of Bell, added their congratulations to the congressman following his victory.
“Rep. Bell is a leader in taking on Trump’s corruption,” the group posted on X. “We look forward to seeing him continue to fight for our Jewish and Democratic values.”
Aside from their conflicting perspectives on Israel, Bell and Bush have much in common. Born in Missouri in the mid-1970s, they are both Black progressive Democrats who entered politics after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in the city of Ferguson.
Amid protests across Ferguson for police reforms, Bell won a seat on the city council and focused on passing such changes. He went on to become St. Louis County prosecutor in 2018, defeating a 27-year incumbent who had failed to prosecute the officer who had killed Brown.
Bush, meanwhile, became involved in politics by participating in the Ferguson protests. She lost Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate and House in 2016 and 2018, but then won congressional races in 2020 and 2022. In 2024, however, she lost to Bell by more than 5 percentage points.
The candidates have similar stances on most political issues, prioritizing concerns like reproductive rights, gun violence prevention and the dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as lowering costs of housing, utilities, healthcare and prescriptions. But they have sharp differences when it comes to Israel, with Bush’s campaign pledging to “stand for justice in Palestine.” Bell, in contrast, has stood steadfast in his support of Israel.
The post AIPAC-backed Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri Democratic primary appeared first on The Forward.
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William Lawrence, El-Sayed-aligned progressive, takes Democratic House nomination in Michigan battleground race
(JTA) — An outspoken pro-Palestinian progressive who campaigned with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed bested two establishment-backed picks in a Democratic House primary for a battleground district in the state on Tuesday.
William Lawrence, a co-founder of the climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, took the Democratic nomination in the state’s 7th District, with the Associated Press calling the race for him Tuesday night. With 58% of the vote in, Lawrence had around 43% of the tally in the three-way race.
His opponents Bridget Brink, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam, two centrist candidates who boasted military and foreign policy backgrounds, effectively split the establishment vote and opened a lane for the progressive.
“I couldn’t be prouder of the movement we’ve built in mid-Michigan,” Lawrence wrote on social media after the race was called. “We’re building a movement made up of real Michiganders across political divides, not DC consultants.”
At the time the AP called the race for Lawrence, another House candidate backed by El-Sayed, state Rep. Donavan McKinney, was awaiting results in his challenge to the incumbent in Michigan’s 13th District.
As with several other victorious Democratic House candidates this primary cycle, Lawrence made pro-Palestinian advocacy a central plank of his campaign. He was the only Democrat in his race to accuse Israel of genocide, and at his rally with El-Sayed in Lansing, the candidate had called for America to “stop arming Israel.”
Lawrence, whose campaign also tapped into growing public anger over data centers, will face Republican incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett in November.
Lawrence’s victory marked one area where party leadership will be pressured to support pro-Palestinian progressives if it hopes to retake Congress in November. Democrats have eyed the district, which was held by centrist Jewish Democrat Sen. Elissa Slotkin before Barrett, as a top target for flipping. Slotkin had endorsed Maasdam in the race’s homestretch while staying out of the Senate race.
It won’t be easy to line the party up behind Lawrence. He had been condemned by the Congressional Black Caucus during his campaign over resurfaced podcast comments in which he said Black Democratic leaders “defang the white left” — comments he later explained as having been prompted by his anger over Israel’s war in Gaza. Centrist House Democrats have questioned his ability to win in November.
But his campaign told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement ahead of primary day that they were confident his focus on “ending military support to human rights abusers and bringing that money home to fund good jobs, housing, and healthcare here at home” would play well across party lines.
The post William Lawrence, El-Sayed-aligned progressive, takes Democratic House nomination in Michigan battleground race appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats await Senate winner in party’s biggest test yet on Israel
The Democratic primary for the open Senate seat in Michigan appeared too close to call Tuesday night, with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens locked in a tight race that had become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and a referendum on Israel supporters’ influence in Democratic politics.
According to unofficial results, El-Sayed, a physician and the son of Egyptian immigrants, held a narrow lead over opponent Rep. Haley Stevens, the establishment favorite — 49.9% vs. 46.3% — with 65% of the vote counted for the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters.
The Michigan contest is AIPAC’s largest investment this election cycle. Its super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $30 million on ads attacking El-Sayed and promoting Stevens, according to recent FEC filings. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens’ own campaign through its donors’ portal.
If El-Sayed prevails, it would deliver a blow to the establishment and to the U.S.-Israel fundraising group, AIPAC, its biggest setback since it started its direct political spending in 2021 and after years of helping defeat progressive critics of Israel who challenged congressional incumbents. The brand has become increasingly controversial among Democratic voters in the wake of the Gaza war. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC.
Supporters of El-Sayed remained optimistic that the candidate’s upset victory would be proof positive that the future of the Democratic Party lies in candidates who support cutting off U.S. aid to Israel and characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the progressive insurgent’s most prominent backer, said on CNN the race reflected a broader shift in Democratic politics. “What we are seeing, no matter what happens tonight in Michigan — and I hope very much that El-Sayed wins — is: you’re seeing the transformation of the Democratic Party, and what the debate within the Democratic Party is about,” he said. Sanders added that the campaign showed that progressive candidates are challenging the party establishment not only on ideology, but also on how campaigns are run.
Winning the primary may be the easier test. Michigan remains one of the nation’s top battleground states, and a close finish would suggest ongoing divisions within the Democratic coalition. El-Sayed will have to carry moderate Democrats who backed Stevens, while taking on former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in a race that could help determine control of the Senate. Recent polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
How we got here
The Michigan race became a culmination of several political currents that have been building for years.
It reflected lingering anger among Americans over the Gaza war, Democratic criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, frustration among progressives over AIPAC’s support for some Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results, and the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America, accelerated by the political rise of Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race last year.
Michigan, home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities and the birthplace of the “uncommitted” movement to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war in the 2024 presidential primary, made it a natural testing ground for progressive forces.
El-Sayed highlighted the Gaza war and AIPAC’s involvement in Democratic primaries when he launched his campaign in April 2025 — months before AIPAC spent a dollar. He advocated for ending unconditional military aid to Israel and framed his candidacy as a fight against outside influence. Notably, El-Sayed supported the “uncommitted” movement, though he later endorsed Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out.
According to data compiled by Milan Singh, a fellow at The Argument, a liberal opinion-focused media publication, insurgent progressive candidates for Congress mentioned Israel in 48% of their fundraising emails.
With most major primaries already decided, this race became the biggest Democratic showdown yet over Israel.
Jewish divide
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan. But the community had become deeply invested in the race — with Jews both in fierce opposition to El-Sayed and fiery support.
For many Jews, El-Sayed’s questioning of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state and his decision to campaign alongside controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric, were cause for alarm. El-Sayed also came under fire for calling the Israeli government “evil” like Hamas.
Rep. Hillary Scholten, a second-term Michigan Democrat, said on CNN Tuesday night that El-Sayed reinforced concerns some voters had about him by campaigning again with Piker in the final days before the primary. “Elections are about choices,” she said. “What is the message that you want to send to your voters?”
At the same time, El-Sayed courted Jewish voters. He attended a Passover seder at Congregation T’chiyah, a progressive Reconstructionist synagogue outside Detroit. Many of its congregants volunteered for El-Sayed’s campaign with a group dubbed “Jews for Abdul.”
Jewish former Michigan congressman Andy Levin — who lost his House election against Stevens in 2022 after AIPAC poured millions into defeating him — endorsed El-Sayed.
In the final days of the campaign, Stevens had sharpened her concerns about El-Sayed, accusing him of blaming “all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”
El-Sayed rejected accusations of antisemitism and argued that his critics conflate the Israeli government with the Jewish people.
“I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said.
The post Michigan Democrats await Senate winner in party’s biggest test yet on Israel appeared first on The Forward.
