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A Florida JCC canceled a slavery-focused talk with a Jewish author, citing ‘the current political climate’
(JTA) – A South Florida Jewish community center has landed in the middle of the state’s culture wars after canceling a talk by an author whose novel focuses on race in America.
The Mandel JCC in West Palm Beach had booked Jewish author Rachel Beanland to headline a $100-a-plate luncheon in January 2024. The plan was for Beanland to discuss her latest novel, “The House Is On Fire,” a work of historical fiction concerning a deadly Richmond, Virginia, fire in the early 1800s that the city tried to blame on its enslaved population.
But in August, Beanland received an email from the JCC’s arts and culture coordinator asking for more details about her planned presentation and seeming to imply that it would be best to steer clear of some topics.
“Of course, this is Florida and our politics around the Black community, the history of the Civil War, and education in general are… complicated,” the employee wrote. The ellipsis was present in the original message.
For Beanland, the language was shocking. “I don’t think I was wrong to interpret it in this way: It was asking me not to talk about Black people,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Beanland wrote back with her publicist copied on the email to say that “any presentation I give is likely to address slavery and the rights of women.” A few weeks later, the JCC employee wrote back.
“After much discussion and debate, we have decided that this book is not the right choice” for the scheduled event, the employee wrote, adding, “Also, our decision is very much affected by the current political climate here in Florida.”
Last week, Beanland made the email exchange public by posting it to Instagram. The JCC issued a public apology on Monday. On Tuesday, the Jewish Book Council, a major organization for Jewish author,s issued a statement criticizing limits on free expression and calling for Beanland to be reinvited.
The episode highlights the new ways in which Jewish authors and even institutions have become embroiled in a broad effort, driven by conservatives, to constrain how race and racism are discussed in public. Florida has been an epicenter of that effort, with Gov. Ron DeSantis urging his state education department to deemphasize race in school instruction and inviting parents to challenge books in school libraries. DeSantis barred public schools from using the national Advanced Placement African-American history curriculum, prompting it to be revised, and the state recently approved new guidelines that historians and activists say whitewash topics such as slavery and racism. DeSantis ignited a firestorm in July when he defended the guidelines and said slavery afforded benefits to some people who experienced it.
The state’s guidelines do not apply to non-public schools and institutions, but the emails from the West Palm Beach JCC employee add to a growing body of evidence that a chilling effect can be felt beyond the letter of the law.
“Obviously, we were dismayed to see this happen,” Naomi Firestone-Teeter, executive director of the Jewish Book Council, told JTA.
The council promotes Jewish books and authors and facilitates a virtual author marketplace to give JCCs and other Jewish institutions the chance to book authors for events. The Mandel JCC had booked Beanland through this network, which, Firestone-Teeter said, made the cancellation particularly disappointing to the council and led to its decision to issue a statement criticizing the JCC.
“When our sites make commitments, it’s our hope that they would honor the commitments that they’re making to our authors,” Firestone-Teeter said.
After Beanland posted the exchange with the JCC employee, who has not been named publicly, the center’s CEO Jesse Rosen spoke to her by phone. Beanland insisted that Rosen issue a public apology, which he did Monday, on the JCC’s Instagram page.
“We are deeply sorry for what our JCC communicated with Rachel, as it does not reflect the values we stand for,” Rosen and board chair Joel Yudenfreund wrote.
They added, “We are deeply committed to promoting diverse voices, opinions, and perspectives,” and said that the opinions about Beanland’s talk came from two members of their volunteer-run book committee, whose views “are completely counter to our values.”
Speaking to JTA, Rosen said the employee in question had been terminated, but for a separate issue. He condemned the employee’s emails and said they did not reflect the JCC’s views.
“The wording that she used is just not who we are, and doesn’t represent the work we do,” he said. “We hope that you look at the 40 years of work we’ve done, including many [on] slavery and civil rights and LGBTQ and other topics — that we’ve never been afraid to have hard conversations. That’s what we do.”
He also said that the email’s wording, in addition to being inappropriate, wasn’t reflective of “the actual reasons” why the center canceled the talk. Instead, he said, the committee had determined that the event would be too “topically similar” to one the previous year that had also focused on slavery — evidence he also cited for why he believes the JCC has “a long history of taking on hard topics, and we have every intention of continuing to.”
Both Beanland and the Jewish Book Council say it should have been clear from the outset that her book discusses slavery. For Beanland, the bigger issue is that the center’s actions are in line with the state’s larger culture war over Black history — and an abdication of a Jewish responsibility.
“I feel like if there’s any community in the United States outside of the African-American community that should understand how essential it is for us not to erase or obscure history, it should be the Jewish community,” she said. “And in light of everything that’s happening in Florida, and the fact that DeSantis has kind of ushered in this wave of legislation that is really trying to make African-American history, Black history, just disappear — it felt really concerning.”
Beanland’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, supported her in a statement.
“Difficult subjects will not go away by pretending the books that address them don’t exist,” the publisher told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We stand against book banning in all its forms, including preemptive self-censorship.”
Rosen insists, despite the employee’s email, that the JCC’s staff never discussed the political climate when determining their bookings.
“There was just never any conversation that, based on whatever’s happening in the state or the country, that we need to adjust what we do or how we do it,” he said. “It never, ever even entered into the conversation.”
Rosen further insisted that Beanland hadn’t been entirely disinvited from the center, only asked to headline a smaller event instead. But Beanland told JTA she had no interest in doing so. “I was obviously pretty offended” at seeing the event downgraded, she said.
Rosen said he was hoping to have discussions with the Jewish Book Council to determine “her willingness to come to our community still.” He added, “We certainly know we need to apologize, and we’re never trying to not have the conversation.”
In its own statement, the Jewish Book Council criticized the JCC’s initial decision but said it was “heartened by this apology.” It added that it hoped the invitation would be returned. (Jewish Book Council president Elisa Spungen Bildner, who co-signed the statement with Firestone-Teeter and co-president Joy Greenberg, is a board member of JTA parent company 70 Faces Media.)
The prospect of Beanland accepting such an invitation seems unlikely. She told JTA she’s “not interested in ever talking to them again.”
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The post A Florida JCC canceled a slavery-focused talk with a Jewish author, citing ‘the current political climate’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Meta Boots Anti-Zionist Columbia University Group From Instagram
Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march in front of pro-Israel demonstrators on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
Meta Platforms, Inc. has banned the infamous Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) anti-Zionist student group from its platforms, a decision that the company says is irrevocable.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD is responsible for spreading pro-Hamas propaganda, assaulting Jewish students, and disrupting academic study at Columbia with unauthorized demonstrations and property destruction. Its behavior, among other factors, drove the Trump administration’s cancellation in March of $400 million in federal contracts and grants awarded to Columbia.
CUAD first reported that Meta shuttered its Instagram account on Monday, denouncing the measure as being part of “a long and concerted effort from corporations and imperial powers to erase the Palestinian people.” Meta later justified the decision to Jewish Insider, explaining that CUAD had forced the company’s hand by ceaselessly transgressing the platform’s terms of use of agreement. Meta forbids groups which advocate violence to operate on Instagram, and CUAD has used its account to call for toppling the Israeli and US governments. Additionally, its Instagram account has been essential for promoting unlawful demonstrations CUAD continues to hold at Columbia University and for sharing resources that have helped its collaborators avoid punishment.
Meta told Jewish Insider that the group won’t be allowed back.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD’s activities have been described as a threat to the civil rights and security of Jewish Columbia University students.
Last April, CUAD members commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans. When the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrived to disperse the unlawful gathering, hundreds of CUAD members and their affiliates reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order. During ensuing clashes with law enforcement, one student screamed “Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” while others shouted, “Long live Hamas!” and filmed themselves praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the US-designated terrorist group.
In September, during the university’s convocation ceremony, the group distributed a pamphlet which called on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s movement to destroy Israel. Several sections of the document were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose was to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
In February, CUAD committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts.
Following two occupations of administrative buildings at Barnard College, Laura Rosenbury, the school’s president, denounced the group as a paranoid hate-organization.
“They [CUAD] operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote in an op-ed published by The Chronicle of Higher Education. “They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve.”
Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Meta Boots Anti-Zionist Columbia University Group From Instagram first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tlaib Set to Headline Terrorist-Connected Palestinian Event in New Jersey
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 11, 2025. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is set to headline a conference that is also hosting a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization, according to documents obtained by The Algemeiner.
The Palestinian American Community Center (PACC) in New Jersey will hold its annual conference, titled “Grounded in Action: Exploring the Power of the Palestinian Diaspora,” from Thursday through Sunday. Wisam Rafeedie, a self-admitted member of the PFLP, will address the conference virtually on the 4th day of the event.
According to PACC’s website, the conference “is a call to recommit ourselves to amplifying and supporting the Palestinian voices and advocates who have long been at the forefront of our struggle.” PACC also calls on members of the Palestinian diaspora “to leverage our unique positions and power” to “push for meaningful action.””
Tlaib is scheduled to headline the event’s “Youth Day,” in which she will host a reading and signing for her new children’s book, Mama in Congress, alongside her son Adam Tlaib. According to Harper Collins, the book’s publisher, Mama in Congress will chronicle Tlaib’s journey from Detroit to the halls of the federal government. The book will also detail Tlaib’s supposed efforts in working toward “justice for all” in Congress.
The conference will include several workshops educating attendees on “resistance,” “solidarity,” and “collective struggle.” The event will also feature a session stressing the importance of “centering Palestinian prisoners.”
This is not the first time that Tlaib has come under scrutiny for attending a pro-Palestinian conference tied to terrorists. Last May, Tlaib came under fire for speaking at the “The People’s Conference for Palestine,” which also hosted Rafeedie among other individuals connected to terrorist groups. During that event, Rafeedie praised Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza and murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, as a “resistance” against Israel. He defended and downplayed Hamas’s atrocities, saying that “Zionists lie like they breathe.”
“This is not a struggle between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is part of the resistance of the Palestinian people. The core issue is between the Palestinian people and the project of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing,” Rafeedie said.
Rafeedie also called for the complete destruction of Israel and the replacement of the Jewish state with a “democratic” Palestine.
“There is no longer a place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian. The only solution is one democratic Palestinian state on all Palestinian land, which will end the Zionist project in Palestine,” Rafeedie continued.
Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman elected to the US Congress, has positioned herself as a fierce and outspoken critic of Israel. Since entering office, Tlaib has repeatedly accused the Jewish state of implementing an “apartheid” regime in the West Bank and turning Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Tlaib has sharpened her condemnations of the Jewish state. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, she hesitated to release an official statement acknowledging the mass slaughter, abductions, and rapes perpetrated by Hamas. Less than two weeks after the invasion, Tlaib introduced a “ceasefire” resolution between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group. In November 2023, the House of Representatives voted to censure Tlaib over her anti-Israel rhetoric.
The progressive firebrand has also condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza, accusing the Jewish state of committing a full-scale “genocide” against the civilians of the enclave. She has also peddled the unsubstantiated claim that Israel has purposefully inflicted mass starvation against Palestinian civilians and urged the Biden administration when it was in power to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Simmering with anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel, she refused to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential bid.
Tlaib’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The post Tlaib Set to Headline Terrorist-Connected Palestinian Event in New Jersey first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Driver Charged for Brooklyn Car Crash Killing Jewish Family Has History of Claiming CIA Follows Her
An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman who was charged for a car crash on Saturday that killed a Jewish woman and her two young daughters has alleged in the past on social media that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is following her, a claim she also made to first responders after the fatal accident.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, is facing multiple charges, including three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault. Yarimi — a Brooklyn resident and wigmaker who is also a Jewish mother herself – was transported to NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn in stable condition. She was then moved to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital, according to reports.
The car crash killed Natasha Saada, 32, and her daughters – 8-year-old Diana and 6-year-old Deborah. Saada’s son Philip, 4, was injured in the crash and hospitalized at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park in critical condition. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested Yarimi, a single mother who has a young daughter, and she is awaiting arraignment in connection to the crash that took place Saturday afternoon at an intersection on Ocean Parkway off Quentin Road in Midwood. Police said she was driving with a suspended license at the time of the crash.
“This was a horrific tragedy caused by someone who shouldn’t have been on the road,” said Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “A mother and two young children killed, another child fighting for his life, a family and a neighborhood devastated in an instant. The NYPD sends its condolences to the family of the victims.”
Yarimi, who shares custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, reportedly told first responders with the Jewish-led volunteer ambulance service Hatzalah that she was “possessed” and that she believes the CIA was pursing her.
She has made similar claims about the CIA many times on Instagram, a former customer of hers told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased a wig from Yarimi several years ago and has been following her on social media for a number of years. Yarimi has 16,000 followers on Instagram and screenshots of her since-deleted posts, obtained by The Algemeiner, confirm she previously believed that the CIA is tracking her.
“It’s very convenient to plead insanity. But it’s not new. She is actually insane. This is [an] old topic,” the former client told The Algemeiner. “She thinks that she’s been followed by CIA for a long, long time already. She truly believes that CIA is spying on her … But only people who follow her [on social media] and know her for a long time would know this. She’s sick.”
In one since-deleted Instagram post, Yarimi wrote in part about the CIA: “They have control of EVERYONE here in this world BESIDES ME … when I went to Miami, it all clicked … once they knew that I knew, they followed me around the hotel, dressed up as young parents with a doona [stroller] and disco outfits like I was stupid and didn’t know who they were … if anything they stuck out like glue.”
“It was the government, blackjack, and the CIA who manipulated everyone and took control of everyone’s mind but because I was the catalyst and the sacrificial lamb so they did their best to break me,” she wrote in a separate post that has also been deleted. “They experimented (abused) me and that’s when they cloned my daughter and I so when I die, they could reinsert me into the crowd and make me into another person.”
Yarimi previously had a highlight on her Instagram page where she talked about demons and the CIA, but it has since been deleted, her former customer told The Algemeiner. Yarimi also wrote on her Instagram Story once that she believes Hollywood is trying to clone people to look like her.
“Why do you think most of the girls in Hollywood have similar features to me like Rita Ora & Jane the Virgin etc,” Yarimi once wrote on Instagram, as seen in a screenshot shared with The Algemeiner. “Wake up, this is not just happening in Hollywood. This is happening right here in the Jewish community in Brooklyn.”
Not long after she uploaded the Instagram posts, Yarimi was admitted to a psychiatric ward and when she returned to social media, she spoke about the experience, the source told The Algemeiner.
“After the above posts she was locked up for two weeks in a psych ward. She’s very public. She went live when paramedics broke into her house and took her. She came back online two weeks later and spoke about her psych ward experience,” Yarimi’s follower said. “And it was saved in her [Instagram] highlights as well … It was horrible.”
The Algemeiner has seen a copy of Yarimi’s Instagram video that shows police drag her out of bed after she refused their orders to get up by herself. In the clip, three police officers are seen in her bedroom and a fourth is standing by the doorway.
Another longtime Instagram follower of Yamini’s described her as “delusional” when speaking to The Algemeiner, and confirmed that Yamini has spoken online repeatedly in the past about how she believes the CIA is tracking her.
In December 2024, Yarimi won a $2 million settlement from the city of New York after she filed a lawsuit claiming that former NYPD Officer George Mastrokostas repeatedly raped her for several years after falsely arresting her.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Deputy Chief Richie Taylor attended the funeral for Saada and her daughters on Sunday in Brooklyn before their bodies were flown to Israel for burial. Saada is survived by her husband, Sidney Saada, her sons Philip and Jacob, her parents and three siblings. Adams called the crash “a tragic accident of a Shakespearean proportion.”
“A mother going for a simple stroll on a sunny day was struck and killed. As we pray for their families and this entire community, the city mourns this loss,” he added.
Police said Yarimi was driving a blue Audi A3 sedan when she rear-ended a 2023 silver Toyota Camry with TLC plates that was carrying four passengers – a mother and three children. NYPD Commissioner Tisch said the force of the crash caused the Toyota Camry to be pushed aside, while the Audi moved forward, crashing into Saada and her children as they were crossing the street before the car overturned. Saada and her two daughters were pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the Toyota Camry, a 62-year-old man, was hospitalized in stable condition. The four passengers inside his car sustained minor injuries and were also hospitalized, according to Tisch.
Yarimi’s car had 99 parking and camera violations between August 2023 and March 2025, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets, Eyewitness News ABC 7 reported, citing a website that tracks vehicle violations using city data. She had nearly $10,500 in fines and a car with the same license plate as Yarimi’s still has $1,345 in unpaid fines, the news outlet also revealed.
The post Driver Charged for Brooklyn Car Crash Killing Jewish Family Has History of Claiming CIA Follows Her first appeared on Algemeiner.com.