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A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’
(JTA) — Magda Teter’s new book, “Christian Supremacy,” begins in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalist neo-Nazis who ostensibly gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a local park broke into a chant: “Jews will not replace us.”
Other writers and scholars would note how antisemitism shaped white nationalism. But Teter, professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, saw something else: how centuries of Christian thought and practice fed the twin evils of antisemitism and racism.
“The ideology espoused by white supremacists in the US and in Europe is rooted in Christian ideas of social and religious hierarchy,” she writes. “These ideas developed, gradually, first in the Mediterranean and Europe in respect to Jews and then in respect to people of color in European colonies and in the US, before returning transformed back to Europe.”
In the book, subtitled “Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism,” she traces this idea from the writings of the early church fathers like Paul the Apostle, though centuries of Catholic and Protestant debates over the status of Jews in Europe, to the hardening of racist attitudes with the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Antisemitic laws and theology, she argues, developed within Christianity a “mental habit” of exclusion and dominance that would eventually be applied to people of color up to and including modern times.
Teter is careful to acknowledge the different forms antisemitism and racism have taken, distinguishing between the Jews’ experience of social and legal exclusion and near annihilation, and the enslavement, displacement and ongoing persecution of Black people. And yet, she writes, “that story began with Christianity’s theological relation with Jews and Judaism.”
Teter is previously the author of “Blood Libel: On The Trail of an Antisemitic Myth,” winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award. At Fordham, the Catholic university in the Bronx, she is helping assemble what may be the largest repository of artifacts and literature dedicated to the Jewish history of the borough.
We spoke Thursday about how groups like the Proud Boys embrace centuries-old notions of Christian superiority, how “whiteness” became a thing and how she, as a non-Jew raised in Poland, became a Jewish studies scholar.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Your book was conceived and written during the COVID lockdown. Where did the idea for the book come from?
It’s an accidental project. I’ve been teaching the history of antisemitism for years, and I live in Harlem so questions of race and racism are very stark in my daily life. And since I grew up in Poland, and American history was not something we were taught or studied, I’ve never been satisfied with the various explanations for the strength of antisemitism and history of racism. And as I mentioned in my prologue, I watched the Raoul Peck documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” which has a clip with James Baldwin saying that white people have to figure out why they invented the idea of the N-word and must “embrace this stranger that they have maligned so long.” You could also say that the European Christians created the idea of “the Jew” and that sort of caricature had absolutely nothing to do with flesh and blood Jews. I kept noticing these parallels, as an outsider, reading American and African-American history.
I was also thinking about this idea of servitude that was attached to Jews in Christian theology, and then in law.
You write in your book that “Over time, white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” What do you mean by servitude in this context?
In Christian theology, from the earliest Christian texts, the idea of servitude and slavery is attached to the concept of Jews and Judaism. Paul does it in his Epistles. He uses this quote from the book of Genesis that “the elder shall serve the younger,” which becomes really embedded in Christian theology. It is the Jews, the elder people, who should serve the Christians, the younger people. Later on in medieval theology and canon law, Jews are in a servile position, consigned for their sin of rejecting Jesus to perpetual servitude. So even though Jews were free people and could live mostly where they wanted to live, marry whoever they wanted to marry — nobody was sold and some even had slaves — that idea of Jews as confined to perpetual servitude to Christians created a habit of thinking of Jews as having an inferior social status.
That language became secularized in modern times, and we see the development of the [antisemitic] trope of Jewish power: that they are in places where they shouldn’t be. I worked on fleshing out the parallels between the idea and then legal status of Jewish servitude and the conceptual perception of Black people in servile and inferior positions.
Magda Teter’s new book explores how “white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” (Chuck Fishman)
What other kinds of parallels did you find between racism and antisemitism?
In the Christian theology, Black people, like Jews, will be seen as cursed by God. Jews were [portrayed as] lazy because they didn’t work physically — they made money and exploited Christians. Black people were [portrayed as] lazy because they were trying to avoid physical labor at the expense of white men. Both people were seen as carnal, both as sexually dangerous, and so on.
I was struck by the fact that the racist turn of Christian supremacy — justifying the enslavement of Black people on theological grounds — is a fairly late development, taking hold in the early modern period when Europeans established slaveholding empires.
That’s right. In the summer of 2020, the summer of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, we were all thinking about these issues of race and racism and America. And as I was in the middle of writing the article that became the book, I felt that there was a deeper history that needed to be told, and that slavery is not bound by color until the enslavement of Black Africans by Europeans during the colonial expansion of Europe.
After the French Revolution, when Jews were offered “emancipation” in much of Europe, there were deep debates about whether they could be citizens and be entitled to the same rights and protections as Christian citizens of France and England and other countries. How was that debate informed by Christianity?
In pre-modern Europe, there was obviously both a religious and legal framework under which Jews existed. They had their place in a social hierarchy. After the French Revolution, people are creating a new political reality. The idea of equality obviously challenged the social hierarchies that existed, including the idea that Christians were the superior religion. And that begins to play a role on two levels. One is the level of, well, “how can you be equal and be our judges and make decisions about us?” It’s fear of power — political power and political equality. That challenges the habit of thinking that sees Jews as inferior, in servitude and otherwise insolent and arrogant.
The other level comes from Enlightenment scholars who begin to place Jews in the Middle East and in the Holy Land, in Palestine. Jews are no longer seen as European. They are seen as “Oriental,” and they are compared to the non-European religions and practices that these Enlightenment scholars have been studying. Their differences are now also racialized. “They are not like us, they can’t assimilate. They can never be Frenchmen, they can never be Germans.”
And I guess it’s a short step from that to regarding people with dark skin as inferior and subordinate.
That’s right. Enlightenment scholars are also trying to to understand why it is justified to enslave Black Africans and they do it through “scientific” and other means. They classify Africans as inferior intellectually and they create this idea of race.
I began to think about these European politicians and intellectuals in terms of creating their identities, and what I ended up arguing is what we saw in Charlottesville, what we’re seeing in Europe. It’s not necessarily just about hate, but it’s about exclusion and rejection of Jews and people of color from equality, from citizenship.
And the common thread here is that whiteness and Christianity become inseparable. You write that “freedom and liberty now came to be linked not only to Christianity, but to whiteness, and servitude and enslavement to blackness.”
That’s right. White Christian “liberty” becomes embedded and embodied in law.
Did you see any pitfalls in drawing parallels between the Black and Jewish experiences? I am thinking of those in either community who might say, “How dare you compare our suffering to theirs!”
Yes, I was tempered. I think what some call “comparative victimhood” has paralyzed conversations about this subject, and I kept it in my mind all the time. What I hope comes through is that there’s incredible value in a comparative approach. Coming from Jewish studies as my primary field, the comparison with the Black experience gave me clarity on the nature of antisemitism as well as on the nature of the Jewish experience, and vice versa: The Jewish experience can also give clarity to some of the aspects of anti-Black racism.
What’s an example?
So, for instance, questions like, “Are Jews white? Are they not white? When did they become white?” That’s a whole genre of scholarship. And when you look at it through the lens of law and ideology, you begin to see that from a legal perspective, Jews were considered white in the United States because they could immigrate and they could be naturalized according to law. They did not have to go to court to become American. Their rights to vote were not challenged. There was discrimination, they couldn’t stay in hotels and in some places they couldn’t find employment, but by law, they were considered citizens. The debate about the whiteness of Jews is creating a fog of misunderstanding.
Black Americans were targeted by specific legal statutes from the very beginning in the Constitution and then in naturalization law and so on. And then there was the backlash even after the Civil War to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments [aimed at establishing political equality for Americans of all races].
Statues at the Strasbourg Cathedral depict Ecclesia and Synagoga, representing the triumph of the church, at left, and the servitude of Judaism, which is represented by a blindfolded figure, drooping and carrying a broken lance. (Edelseider/Wikimedia Commons)
How much do modern-day white supremacists, like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, see themselves as Christian? Or is this a kind of white supremacy that doesn’t name itself Christian but doesn’t even realize how many of its ideas are based in theology?
I think they might not be conscious of this legacy, but neo-Nazis take from the legacy of the Nazis who themselves were not thinking of themselves as Christian necessarily. But what I argue in the book is that white Christian supremacy becomes white supremacy. It never discards the Christian sense of domination and superiority that emerges from its early relationship with Jews and Judaism.
In the United States, Black people serve as contrast figures to whiteness, in the law and in the culture. You cannot have whiteness without Blackness. For Christians, Jews serve as that contrast figure. Consciously or unconsciously, the Proud Boys are embracing that. They talk of “God-given” freedoms for white people. That is the Christian legacy.
You said that the Nazis didn’t necessarily see themselves as a Christian movement. But I must ask, even though it is not the scope of your book, was the Holocaust a culmination of white Christian supremacy? Because I think many Christian theologians would want to say that Nazism was godless, and a perversion of the true faith.
I’ll say that when exclusionary ideology is coupled with the power of the state, that’s where it can lead.
In the years since the Holocaust especially, there have been many efforts by Christian leaders to address the ideological failings of the past. You write about Nostra Aetate, the 1965 declaration by the Catholic Church absolving Jews of collective guilt in the death of Jesus and some Protestant documents of contrition. But I got the feeling you were disappointed that many denominations haven’t gone far enough in reckoning with the past.
There was a sort of a moral sense that something needs to be addressed after the Holocaust. But then it is not fully addressed. I don’t think anybody has addressed the issue of power — the roots of hate, yes, but not the dynamics of power. We’ll see where the book goes, but maybe theologians will begin to grapple with this legacy of superiority and domination, and the way hierarchical habits of thinking have been developed through theology and through religious culture.
What other impact do you hope the book may have?
White supremacy is very much in the air. We need to speak up against it, and make connections and allyships. I hope that maybe because the book deals with law and power, it may create bridges among people who care about “We the People” as a vision of people who are diverse, respectful and equal, and not the exclusionary vision offered by white and Christian supremacy.
A cross burns at a Ku Klux Klan rally on Aug. 8, 1925. (National Photo Company Collection)
I’d love to talk about your background. You’re not Jewish but you are chair of Jewish Studies at Fordham, a Catholic university. What drew you to the study of Judaism and the Jews?
I grew up in Poland with a father who from the time I was a little girl would point out to me that there had been Jews in Poland. We would drive through the countryside, and he’d say, “This used to be a Jewish town and there used to be a synagogue and there was the Jewish cemetery.” I grew up being very conscious of the past’s presence and this kind of stark absence of Jews in Poland, where in the 1970s when I grew up Jewish history was taboo.
As soon as Jewish books on Jewish subjects began to be published, including those that dealt with antisemitism, we would read it together. We would talk about it. He wouldn’t just shift the destruction and murder of Jews in Poland on to the Nazis.
There was no Jewish studies program in Poland when I was applying to universities, so I studied Hebrew in Israel, and then studied Yiddish in New York at YIVO. I came to Columbia University to get my PhD in Jewish history and my career went in the direction it did. I was a professor of history and director of the Jewish and Israel studies program at Wesleyan University. I came to Fordham eight years ago and created a program in Jewish studies.
Your previous book was about the blood libel, the historic canard that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. This one’s about antisemitism. I don’t want to presume, but is your interest in these subjects in any way an act of contrition?
I grew up in a very secular household. I did not grow up Catholic. But I think growing up in Poland made me very, very aware of antisemitism and the history of antisemitism. I got my PhD from Columbia University in Jewish history, which did not emphasize Jewish suffering, but Jewish life, and I have studied Jewish life and teach about Jewish life — not just about Jewish suffering.
However, in the last few years, antisemitism has certainly been on the minds of many of us. I also am committed to the idea of shared history, and therefore all my scholarship, as much as it is about Jews, it is also about the church and Poland and the law. Jews are an integral part of that history and culture. And, as such, I’m committed to that, to teaching about the vibrancy of Jewish life as much as the dynamics of what made that life difficult over the centuries.
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The post A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Isaac Accords, Wave of IRGC Terror Designations Signal Deepening Israel–Latin America Ties
Argentina’s President Javier Milei receives Presidential Medal of Honor from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
As Israel deepens its diplomatic outreach across Latin America, a quiet but notable convergence is taking shape, with regional governments tightening security cooperation and increasingly aligning efforts to counter Iranian-linked terrorism and illicit networks operating across the hemisphere.
During a state visit to Israel on Sunday, Argentine President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally signed the Isaac Accords, a new framework aimed at deepening ties between Israel and Latin American governments while jointly addressing antisemitism and terrorism.
According to Toby Dershowitz, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC–based think tank, this initiative builds on rising regional momentum for closer cooperation with the Jewish state and sets in place a framework for intelligence-sharing and coordinated law enforcement efforts aimed at countering Iranian proxy networks operating across the hemisphere.
Latin America has long been regarded as a hub for Iran-backed Hezbollah’s illicit drug trafficking and other criminal activities, which have been used to finance its broader terrorist operations worldwide.
“While just formally signed in recent days, there is already momentum behind some of the Isaac Accords’ goals,” Dershowitz told The Algemeiner. “Several countries have taken steps – including terrorism designations – to counter the Islamic Republic’s threat.”
“The Western Hemisphere has been plagued by Iran-backed terrorism for decades and countries are increasingly leveraging support from allies in the region to address the threat,” she continued.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic, US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
During the signing ceremony, Milei described the launch of the accords as “a historic moment for our nations,” saying they are intended to advance peace through efforts to strengthen long-term regional stability, security, and economic prosperity.
The Isaac Accords “will not only strengthen the relationship between Argentina and Israel, united by shared values, but also mark a step toward a freer and more prosperous hemisphere,” the Argentine leader said.
According to a joint statement between the two leaders, the new initiative will focus on technology, security, and economic development, with an emphasis on deepening cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
It will also seek to encourage partner countries to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem, formally designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding voting patterns on Israel at the United Nations.
Dershowitz explained that the push to formally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxy groups as terrorist organizations — an approach already adopted by several Latin American countries — is central to strengthening states’ ability to investigate and prosecute terrorism networks.
She also noted that such designations facilitate cooperation with global financial intelligence units, expanding the legal tools available to track and disrupt illicit financing.
“Iran has a concerning footprint in Latin America. Some countries in the region face major Hezbollah-linked drug trafficking challenges and, as a result, exposure to illicit financial flows,” Dershowitz said. “It is no doubt part of the calculus that led to these designations.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, and even more so amid the broader confrontation with Iran, Latin American countries have increasingly sought to align their domestic legislation with international sanctions frameworks targeting Hezbollah, Hamas, and the IRGC — all of which are designated by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Paraguay are among some of the countries that have designated Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC as terrorist organizations.
More recently, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago have also followed suit, proscribing all three Iranian and Iran-backed entities.
Once a formal designation is in place, authorities can immediately freeze a wide range of assets belonging to designated entities without the need for a prior criminal conviction.
The designation also makes it a criminal offense to provide such entities with material support — such as funding, transportation, housing, or false documentation — while giving authorities additional tools to track and map a group’s logistical and financial networks.
Last month, Argentina also designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, after previously designating the Palestinian group Hamas in 2024 and the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2019.
After Iran accused Buenos Aires of “siding with the aggressors” and violating international law with its latest designation, the Argentine government declared Iranian chargé d’affaires Mohsen Tehrani “persona non grata” and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
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Steeped in history, Pensacola Jews celebrate the 150th anniversary of Florida’s oldest synagogue
(JTA) — PENSACOLA, Florida — Mention the Jewish exodus to Florida, and people immediately think Miami Beach, Boca Raton or Aventura.
But it was here in Pensacola — along the Gulf Coast’s fabled “Redneck Riviera” — that German-speaking Jewish pioneers first put down roots in the Sunshine State. In 1876, when Pensacola’s Temple Beth El was founded, Florida had 200,000 inhabitants, just 2,000 of them Jews.
Today, Florida is home to 24.3 million people and a Jewish population exceeded only by New York and California. Most of the state’s 762,000 Jews reside in three South Florida counties — eclipsing much older congregations in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Pensacola that thrived long before the advent of air-conditioning and interstate highways.
Pensacola is home to only about 1,800 Jewish adults, according to the American Jewish Population Project — a number that has remained constant for a century. Yet locals in this laid-back resort in Florida’s Panhandle, more than 600 miles northwest from the bustling Jewish communities of South Florida, say it is ripe for a Jewish renaissance.
“I’d like to make the case that this is also Florida, even though we’re only 10 miles from Alabama,” said Rabbi Joel Fleekop, 47, spiritual leader of Beth El since 2012. “The cost of living here is very low, we have no traffic or congestion, and there are plenty of good jobs.”
Pensacola also has three synagogues: a Chabad, an Orthodox-style congregation and Beth El, which this month is marking the 150th anniversary of its founding with a weekend of prayers, local art, Israeli music and dancing.
Beth El’s celebration began on Friday with a Shabbat service led jointly by Fleekop and Cantor Richard Cohen, former director of the Hebrew Union College’s School of Sacred Music and a and Pensacola native.
In a sermon, Fleekop told the story of the children’s book “Bone Button Borscht,” in which a wandering man helps the people of an impoverished town to create soup from their own meager ingredients that somehow taste far better together than separately.
“For 150 years, this temple — our temple, Temple Beth El — has thrived because similar to the people making soup in the story, its members have contributed and done what they could to nourish and enhance and better our community,” he said. “Our founding families like the man who set up the pot provided the vision that this little corner of the world could have a thriving Jewish community. Others provided the resources to build the sacred spaces our congregation has called home and to keep on the lights and, this being Florida, the air conditioning also on.”
Summarizing the wide range of contributions that members have made over the decades, Fleekop also noted changes that Temple Beth El experienced over the last 150 years: the number of stars on the American flag grew, the the Israeli flag was created, the amount of Hebrew in the service increased; and congregants are wearing “fewer neckties and fewer fancy hats” but more kippahs and tallits than they once did.
“Inevitably each generation had its own taste and so added their own ingredients, the spiritual equivalent of maybe some okra, or zaatar, or even some sriracha,” he said to laughs. “At 150 years, our congregation is no doubt very different from what was imagined at its inception. … The soup that is our temple has gone from a Bavarian borscht to a Gulf seafood gumbo to a gluten-free, Asian fusion matzoh ball soup. But in many ways, in the most essential ways, we are still the same congregation.”
The following evening, a gala dinner featured dancing and a live band. And on Sunday morning, congregants toured Pensacola’s Jewish cemetery, where the oldest tombstone dates from 1874 and many inscriptions are in Hebrew and German as well as English.
Among those buried in the cemetery is Florida’s first Jewish mayor, Adolph Greenhut, who served from 1913 to 1916 — two decades after his stint as Beth El’s president. Beth El also takes great pride in having been home to the nation’s first de facto female rabbi, Paula Ackerman, in the 1960s.
“There were really very few Jews in South Florida until the 1940s. People can’t believe there was a thriving Jewish community here at the turn of the century,” said Bill Zimmern, 74, a native Pensacolan like his mother and grandmother whose wife, Beverly, was once mayor of suburban Gulf Breeze.
That community was born after the Civil War, when Jews settled in Milton — a northwest Florida lumber hub — bringing their skills from heavily wooded areas of Bavaria and southern Germany. They began relocating to Pensacola in the 1870s as the city developed.
Zimmern added that nearby Naval Air Station Pensacola, home to the Blue Angels, has long welcomed Jews to the area, and that many Jewish men and women in uniform who were once stationed there eventually settled in Pensacola and joined the congregation.
Beth El’s first home was a wooden structure on Chase Street in downtown Pensacola, but it burned down in 1901 and all records of the shul’s first 25 years of existence disappeared in that fire. It was later rebuilt near what is today the on-ramp for Interstate 110, but closed in 1931 when its members inaugurated the current synagogue on nearby Palafox Street, and the previous structure became a roller-skating rink.
Soon after Beth El’s founding, Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe — mainly traders and merchants — settled in the area, and they were not especially happy with its Reform services. So in 1899, they parted ways and established B’nai Israel as an Orthodox synagogue.
In 1923, congregants bought a house and converted it into a house of worship; by 1953, they had finally raised enough money to construct the building it currently occupies, according to Yehoshua Mizrachi, B’nai Israel’s rabbi.
At the time, it also chose to affiliate with the Conservative movement, then the largest denomination in the United States. It remained part of the movement until about a decade ago, separating after the Conservative movement opted to ordain gay rabbis and sanction same-sex marriages.
“I am the 19th rabbi to hold this pulpit, and all but three or four of them were Orthodox,” said Mizrachi, 62. Originally from Lakewood, New Jersey, he said B’nai Israel’s membership consists of 60 to 70 families, compared to 185 families at Beth El.
“This congregation is independent, so they dropped their affiliation 10 years ago. When they hired me, I told them not to expect me to do anything to compromise my personal integrity as a Jew,” Mizrachi said.
Even so, the rabbi added, “we are not an Orthodox congregation. We have mixed seating and women are called to the Torah. In all other aspects, this shul operates according to the standards of halacha,” or Jewish law.
Rabbi Mendel Danow runs the Pensacola Chabad Jewish Center along with his Israeli-born wife, Nechama, from a 120-year-old house less than a mile from B’nai Israel. Between 500 and 600 people are on his mailing list, he said.
“A lot of Jews here are unaffiliated. They don’t have that natural connection,” said Danow, 30. The best way of drawing them in is by inviting them to Friday night services and Shabbat dinner; anywhere from 20 to 80 people usually show up, he said. “It’s laid back. Davening [prayer] is shorter, dinner is longer. It’s been a very important part of our community.”
Danow is clear-eyed about the challenges of living an observant Jewish life in Pensacola.
“There’s no kosher restaurant within a 400-mile radius. The closest is in Jacksonville or Atlanta,” he said. “Obviously we’re not the first destination for an Orthodox Jew looking to move to Florida.”
But he’s trying to make things easier. His Chabad recently opened Pensa-Kosher — a mini-market for the handful of locals who strictly observe Jewish dietary laws. He and his wife, who have six children together, run a Hebrew school with close to 20 students, as well as a preschool with 10 children. And they are trying to support the few Jewish students at the nearest university.
“When we moved here, one of the first things we noticed was a lack of Jewish life on campus, so we started a Chabad student club at the University of West Florida,” Danow said.
With Pensacola enjoying a relatively low cost of living and ranking high when it comes to job growth, beach quality and even the density of Waffle House restaurants, the city is growing — and Chabad is bursting out of its current home. Early next year, it will relocate to a larger complex two blocks down the street. Among other things, the new facility will include a synagogue, Hebrew school and Pensacola’s first full-service mikvah.
Danow said any antisemitism in the city is dwarfed by support for Israel and Jews.
“Three years ago, a gang of four teenagers threw a brick through our window, and ‘Heil Hitler’ was spray-painted on the brick,” he recalled. “But after Oct. 7, people began dropping off flowers and giving donations. There was such a sense of sharing in our pain. People would stop me on the street to say, ‘We’re praying for Israel.’”
Mizrachi shared similar experiences. “There’s a church on every street corner. People are very pro-Israel here,” he said. “Strangers stop me in the supermarket and tell me they love Israel. It happens all the time.”
The front lawn of Zimmern’s best friend, Charles Kahn, 74, a retired federal judge, boasts two signs: “Go Gators” — a reference to his alma mater, the University of Florida — and “We Stand With Israel.”
“Right after Oct. 7, I got that sign,” Kahn said while sipping coffee as he sat on his porch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. “My neighbor on one side is a retired Navy captain. He asked for one also, and my other neighbor on the other side asked for one too — and then the people across the street, then two houses down. We ended up with five of them just on this street.”
Kahn is a past president of Beth El, as is his wife Janet. Their Reform synagogue is by far the largest Jewish house of worship in the city.
“We’re a full-function, mainstream Reform synagogue. We follow Reform rules, and our house of worship is a place where people who disagree on politics can still be friends,” said Fleekop, a Philadelphia native who grew up in Reno, Nevada, and moved to Pensacola 13 years ago. His wife, Andrea, runs the temple’s School for Jewish Living, which has 55 children enrolled.
“We welcome the LGBTQ community. Some gay and lesbian Jews who were rejected elsewhere have found themselves here at Beth El,” he said. “We also have a lot of Jews by choice.”
One of them is Nichole Friedland, 51, a Pensacola-born nurse who was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism 16 years ago — on Easter Sunday no less — under Fleekop’s guidance. She’s now the vice-president of Beth El and treasurer of the Pensacola Jewish Federation.
“Most of our congregants are either interfaith or have converted to Judaism,” said Friedland, who with her husband is raising a blended family of eight kids. “I wanted my children to have a good foundational religion, and Judaism made the most sense to me. It was, and is, the correct choice.”
The federation, based inside Beth El, is entirely volunteer-run and rarely publicizes events or occasions — a sharp contrast to the vibe in the Jewish metropolises of South Florida.
But Mizrachi sees potential for Pensacola in some of the same forces that are luring Jews to Boca and Aventure — including unhappiness among New Yorkers with the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
“After Mamdani’s win, a lot of people are thinking of moving to Florida,” Mizrachi said. “But instead of going to Dade or Broward, they should consider Pensacola. There is Jewish life here.”
The post Steeped in history, Pensacola Jews celebrate the 150th anniversary of Florida’s oldest synagogue appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats Nominate Lawyer Who Praised Hezbollah for Top University Post
A sign at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Photo: Ken Lund.
The Michigan Democratic Party nominated attorney attorney Amir Makled over incumbent Jewish Regent Jordan Acker on Sunday, drawing fresh scrutiny towards Makled’s defense of international terrorist organizations and anti-Israel posture.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) efforts on campus.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
For months, anti-Israel student activists and progressive organizers had pressed for changes to the board, arguing the university should divest from companies tied to Israel amid the war in Gaza. Acker, one of the board’s most vocal opponents of divestment, became a particular focus of that pressure campaign. In December 2024, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted an inverted red triangle on Acker’s car, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
Makled, who represented a student arrested during the university’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment protests, had argued publicly that the university should reconsider its investment policies regarding Israel. His nomination, however, also drew scrutiny after resurfaced and later-deleted social media posts in which he appeared to praise Hezbollah and shared antisemitic content. The Michigan chapter of the Service Employees International Union reportedly withdrew its endorsement following the controversy.
An investigation by The Detroit News revealed that Makled was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.”
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.
The race underscores how university governance battles have become a new front in national political fights over Israel. While university divestment decisions are often constrained by legal and fiduciary obligations, regents can shape investment policy, institutional messaging and the university’s overall posture toward such campaigns.
With eight regents serving staggered terms and only two seats on the ballot this cycle, a single election does not determine the university’s investment policy outright. But activists on both sides increasingly view these races as critical long-term contests over whether public universities will resist or embrace institutional divestment from Israel.
As the general election approaches, the regent race is likely to remain a closely watched test of how far the Democratic Party’s internal debate over Israel is reshaping not only national politics, but the leadership of major American universities. Recent polls indicate that Democratic constituents have rapidly shifted away from supporting Israel