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A suburban NJ megamall is offering gender-segregated swimming to accommodate its Orthodox clientele
(JTA) — Featuring 15 water slides, cabanas and an enormous wave pool, the largest indoor water park in the United States is open to all customers almost every day of the year.
Almost.
The calendar for the DreamWorks Water Park at American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, features blackout dates a couple weeks from now, corresponding to two weekdays in the middle of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Sukkot. But while the park’s website says “No Tickets available,” that isn’t actually the case.
Patrons can head over to an Instagram page affiliated with the mall and aimed at Jewish visitors, called “L’chaim American Dream,” where they will see water park tickets being sold at $79 a pop for those very dates — Oct. 2 and 4.
But there’s a twist: The tickets are technically for a private event at the water park, hosted by a separate company that will segregate attendees by gender. On Oct. 2, the park is open to women only and two days later, is open only to men.
The gender-segregated hours are meant to serve haredi Orthodox Jews who abide by strict modesty laws prohibiting men and women from wearing revealing clothing — such as bathing suits — in public. Having separate times for men and women would enable customers to use the waterpark without running afoul of their Jewish observance.
It’s one of the many ways the mall, which opened in 2020, caters to an Orthodox clientele — along with a food court with 13 kosher restaurants and a department store with clothes that adhere to Orthodox standards of modest dress. Accessible to Orthodox communities in Brooklyn, New Jersey and upstate New York and housing a host of activities appropriate for young children, American Dream has made itself into a top destination for Orthodox families. Families are expected to flood to its attractions — including miniature golf courses, ice skating, a theme park and more — during the intermediate days of Sukkot, when haredi yeshivas are typically closed and outings are de rigueur.
In its outdoor spaces, the mall will house multiple sukkahs, the temporary huts erected during the holiday where many Jews eat their meals during the holiday. But the water park’s gender-segregated hours represent the most substantive change planned for the holiday — and to some potential visitors, they are welcome.
“Most women to the right of left-wing Modern Orthodox would seek out this kind of arrangement in order to swim,” said Rifka Wein Harris, a haredi attorney who has advocated for changes in the way Orthodox Jews are portrayed in the media. Otherwise, she said, “I would only swim in a women’s-only environment that was not subject to public view,” such as one that was “gated or enclosed or indoors, around other women.”
Yet for those who advocate for Orthodox women’s inclusion, gender segregation on a weekday afternoon at a large suburban mall has set off alarm bells.
“Individuals can make their own decisions as to how they want to conduct their religious practice,” said Daphne Lazar Price, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “But to have a large corporate entity make these kinds of decisions for everyone is problematic.”
The waterpark has offered men- and women-only hours in the past, geared toward Orthodox customers on Sukkot, as well as on Hanukkah and the intermediate days of Passover. On those holidays, as on the intermediate days of Sukkot, observant Jews aren’t prohibited from engaging in commerce or swimming, and their children are generally off of school.
But in the past, those opportunities have been offered at night, after the park’s normal hours of business. This is the first time when it will be gender-segregated during the day.
“This is really the first time we’re doing something during daytime hours, which is usually open for the public,” said a representative of American Dream who responded to a JTA inquiry but declined to give their name or title. “You’re expecting that most of the public or the kids are in school and not coming during that time. “We’re able to close it, close up for gender-separated hours, during these specific days.”
The mall is operated by Triple Five Group, a Canadian conglomerate owned by the Ghermezian family, who are Jewish and also own the Mall of America. In this case, the gender-segregated days are being run under the auspices of a private company that rented the water park for those hours, according to the American Dream representative, who declined to disclose the company’s name.
For some haredi customers, the accommodation is welcome. “This is our [only] chance to go swimming at all, other than the bungalow colony,” Wein Harris said, referring to summer vacation complexes in upstate New York that often offer separate swimming hours to accommodate Orthodox guests. “And for people like me who don’t have a bungalow, we never swim.”
But Lazar Price says the gender-segregated hours are of a piece with “alarming growing trends” she has witnessed — and she isn’t alone. Elana Sztokman, a feminist activist and sociologist, has watched with concern as Orthodox magazines and advertisements have declined to show women’s faces. Now, it seems to her that American Dream is encouraging a communal impulse to separate genders in a way that, she says, will abet the exclusion of women.
“Suddenly what it means to be religious for a man means to be in a completely woman-free world. You can’t have women on the streets, you can’t have women near you,” she added. “These dynamics tell you that this has nothing to do with protecting women. It has to do with creating women free-zones so that men don’t have to deal with the fact that women exist.”
Gender segregation in public spaces has long been hotly debated in Israel, which has a large haredi community with political representation that sits in the current right-wing government. Some public buses in Israel have enforced gender separation, and there has been a proposal to have some publicly maintained natural springs do so at times.
Sztokman, who lives in Israel, sees a common thread between the policy at American Dream mall and the separation of men and women in her country.
“I feel like what’s happening in America is an extension of this because the haredi communities are connected; the religious communities are connected. If one practice becomes a norm then in one place, then the other communities have to ‘keep up with the Cohens’ kind of thing,” Sztokman said. “You can’t be less religious than your religious cousin across the ocean. You have to keep up.”
In the United States, institutions that attempt to enforce gender segregation in order to appeal to haredi customers have, in the past, run afoul of the law. In 2018, a federal appeals court ruled that an over-55 condominium complex in the heavily Orthodox city of Lakewood, New Jersey, was in violation of the Fair Housing Act because it offered separate swimming hours for men and women. Three non-Orthodox residents, including a married couple, filed a lawsuit against the complex after they were fined for refusing to get out of the pool when coed swimming hours had finished.
But when it comes to public accommodations such as publicly accessible swimming pools, the law appears to be different, said Michael Helfand, a scholar of religious law and religious liberty at Pepperdine University who is also a legal adviser to a branch of the Orthodox Union.
“Generally you can’t do this,” Helfand said. “But New Jersey has an exception that allows this kind of gender separation, gender exclusion under some circumstances.”
The federal Civil Rights Act does not bar discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sex. The New Jersey law that Helfand cited permits a number of establishments to restrict entry by sex if they are places that could be “reasonably restricted exclusively to individuals of one sex.” The list includes summer and day camps, resorts, dressing rooms, bathhouses, gyms, schools and swimming pools.
“There’s strong reason to think that having separate hours at a private New Jersey swimming pool would not subject the swimming pool to liability under New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law,” Helfand said. “There’s likely intuition that under some circumstances, that kind of gender separation, given a particular clientele, given a particular business might, quote-unquote, make sense.”
Wein Harris is excited by the prospect of enjoying an environment that accords with her religious requirements at an attraction that bills itself as the “largest indoor water park in North America.”
“I am overwhelmingly happy that our needs are being seen in a world where they’re not otherwise being seen,” she said.
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UCLA Settles Antisemitism Lawsuit, Agrees to Donate Millions to Jewish Civil Rights Groups
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a bullhorn during a protest at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on March 11, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit which accused it of fostering a discriminatory and antisemitic learning environment during the 2023-2024 academic year.
The sum includes $2.33 million in donations for a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Academic Engagement Network (AEN), and UCLA’s Hillel International campus chapter; another $320,000 will be awarded to the UCLA Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. The accusers — Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian, who were UCLA students at the time of filing, as well as UCLA Health Dr. Kamran Shamsa — will split the remaining $3.6 million.
“Antisemitism harassment, and other forms of intimidation are antithetical to our values and have no place at the University of California,” UC Board of Regents Chair Janet Reilly said in a press release on Tuesday. “We have been clear about where we have fallen short, and we are committed to doing better moving forward. Today’s settlement reflects a critically important goal that we share with the plaintiffs: to foster a safe, secure, and inclusive environment for all members of our community and ensure that there is no room for antisemitism anywhere on campus.”
Filed in June 2024, the suit excoriated UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of the 2024 spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up. According to the complaint, students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality.” In doing so, it continued, UCLA allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
Numerous antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the spring encampment, the complaint added.
Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the complaint said, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”
In Tuesday’s press release the plaintiffs said in a joint statement with UCLA that “we are pleased with terms today’s settlement. The injunction and other terms UCLA has agreed to demonstrate real progress in the fight against antisemitism.”
UCLA’s legal woes did not end with Tuesday’s settlement. On the same day, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division ruled that UCLA’s response to antisemitic incidents, some of which were cited in the students’ lawsuit, constitutes violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The ruling could threaten the $1 billion in direct funding the university receives from the federal government annually.
“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic antisemitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: the [Department of Justice] will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Kill All the Jews’: FBI Investigates Attack at New York Kosher Restaurant as Possible Hate Crime
Illustrative: FBI agents and NYPD officers work near the scene of a reported shooter situation in the Manhattan borough of New York City, US, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
A recent assault in New York targeting Jewish diners, who suffered several injuries and said they were also verbally accosted with antisemitic slurs, is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a possible hate crime, The Algemeiner has learned.
Bita Golbari, 51, a New York resident, told The Algemeiner that the FBI called her on Tuesday to discuss the incident that happened during the early morning hours of July 20 inside and then in front of a kosher restaurant in Queens called Sezam, which serves Russian and Central Asian cuisine. Public affairs officials at the FBI’s New York field office did not respond by press time to a request for comment on the bureau’s involvement in the case.
Officers of the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) 112th Precinct who were at the scene of the crime filled out two complaint reports about the violent attack that were obtained by The Algemeiner. Neither police report classified the incident as a hate crime, just an assault with an intent to cause injury. The Algemeiner made multiple efforts to speak to the detective in charge of the case but to no avail. The NYPD’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information did not respond to a request for comment on why the assault was not being investigated as a possible hate crime.
Golbari was having dinner with her husband and several other Jewish couples at Sezam late at night on July 19 before the violence ensued. She said there was a table nearby with several men and, around midnight, they brought two women from outside the restaurant to join the table. Golbari’s close friend, Elham Sharga, 45, was with her at the restaurant that night.
“From the beginning of the night, I saw there was a table next to us with a few men sitting at it, and they were staring at us. They were looking at our table,” Sharga told The Algemeiner. “My spot [at our table] was really close to them. I was really scared, so I moved my chair to the other side to sit next to my other friend. I didn’t give them attention; I just moved my spot.”
The two women who came into the restaurant at around midnight were responsible for starting the violence and uttered antisemitic slurs, but the men at their table also participated in physically assaulting Golbari’s family and friends, Golbari told The Algemeiner.
The altercation began when Golbari’s group was getting ready to leave the restaurant at around 1 am. Sharga could not find her handbag and noticed that one of the women at the nearby table had taken it, she explained. Sharga approached the woman and asked why she took her bag. In response, the female attacker pulled Elham’s hair and threw her down. The other woman joined in and started hitting Sharga as she remained on the floor.
“Hitting me on my head, my belly, my back, my neck,” Sharga recalled. “They were pulling my hair. And then I heard the other guys come and they all started hitting me. I was thinking I was dying. I was screaming for help. My husband heard and came to help me. Then they started hitting my husband. His face was full of blood. His arm was bleeding.”
Sharga’s husband was pushed, thrown on the floor, punched and kicked, she said.
“I really don’t know how long I was on the floor getting beaten up,” Sharga added. “I saw them then running after my other friends and saying, ‘You guys are Jewish, we wanna kill you all tonight’ … They pushed Bita’s husband. I see everyone screaming and he was on the floor. His head was bleeding. I was bleeding everywhere; I was in pain. They really were killing me. I was getting beaten up from head to toe.”
Sharga was hospitalized following the attack and fractured her ribs. She said she still experiences pain throughout her entire body.
Golbari noticed the violence as she was leaving Sezam, she told The Algemeiner.
“At the end of the night, I’m walking out the door and I see everybody is fighting,” she recalled. “I see my friend Elham on the floor and they [the two women] are kicking and hitting her, punching … and I see my husband and the other people all fighting with the guys.”
Golbari then quickly ran outside the restaurant to call 9-1-1. One of the women who was attacking Sharga saw Golbari go outside and began chasing her down the street.
“She came after me in the street,” Golbari said. “And I tried to hold up one of the cars in the middle of the street and I said, ‘Please call the police, someone is trying to kill me.’ So, she [the driver] rolled down her window and called the police, I think. I saw her phone in her hand. But the girl who was following me, reached me. She grabbed me and she said, ‘What the f–k are you trying to do? Are you trying to call the police on us? We are going to kill all of you Jews.’ And then she punched me so hard in the face I thought I was dead. And I said to myself, ‘She’s going to kill me.’ And I just ran for my life.”
“I crossed the street, I found a guy, I held his hand, and I said, ‘Please, don’t leave my side. Somebody is trying to kill me.’ He said, ‘Are you Jewish?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘OK, I’m going to help you. It’s OK, stay by me,’” Golbari continued. “He held my hand, and when the girl saw that he was with me, she ran. Her friend [the other attacker] saw that she was running, and she also ran.”
The kind stranger escorted Golbari back to the restaurant, where she found her husband on the floor, bleeding from his lip and head after being brutally attacked. By the time NYPD officers arrived at the scene, all the attackers had fled either by foot or car. No arrests have been made yet. None of the restaurant staff intervened to stop the fighting, which started near the exit and proceeded outside of the establishment.
The manager of Sezam, Andrew, was present when the incident unfolded but did not want to provide his last name. He told The Algemeiner he believes “it was just a common fight between two drunk people. It was nothing extraordinary … They were just fighting. Pushing themselves and that’s it.” He added that the restaurant has been in touch with the NYPD about the incident.
Both Golbari and Sharga told The Algemeiner that the disc jockey performing that evening at Sezam was sitting at the table with the attackers. Sharga also said when she asked the DJ to play Hebrew music that night, he blatantly refused. The manager of Sezam was unwilling to share with The Algemeiner the name of the DJ performing at the restaurant the night of the attack.
The incident came amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. Jews were targeted in a staggering 54 percent of all hate crimes perpetrated in the city last year, according to data issued by the NYPD.
The NYPD complaint report from the early morning hours of July 20 noted that Golbari’s husband was punched in the face and back of the head multiple times. Golbari herself was punched in the face and neck, while Sharga and her husband both suffered several injuries, including to their face, legs, and arms.
Golbari’s husband was taken to the hospital on the night of the assault and remained there the next day as well. He was discharged but has since returned to the hospital twice because of a fever, loss of hearing in one ear, nausea, and severe headaches related to a head concussion and fracture he suffered during the attack, Golbari shared. He also had internal bleeding in his head that has since stabilized. He is still suffering from nausea and headaches.
“This is all because we are Jewish,” Sharga said. “Very sad. We just went out to have dinner. To have fun. Not to have these things happen to us.”
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‘Pod Save America’ Hosts Call on Democrats to Cut All US Military Aid to Israel, No Longer Accept AIPAC Money
Pod Save America hosts on tour. Photo: Screenshot
The hosts of the influential progressive podcast “Pod Save America” — all one-time aides to former US President Barack Obama — on Tuesday called on the future Democratic presidential nominee to cut all funding and military ties with Israel, urging party leaders to adopt a “total mindset change” in their relationship with the Jewish state.
The trio of hosts — Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett, and Jon Favreau — also said that Democrats should no longer accept money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), send Israel military aid, or block anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations. The Obama administration alumni lambasted Israel for deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the Gaza strip and pursuing military action in Lebanon, Iran, and Syria.
There has to be a total mindset change in the Democratic party. When the war ends, we are not going back to the pre-October 7 status quo. pic.twitter.com/Bow5zmYS2v
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) July 29, 2025
“The things I want to see Democrats at least calling for is cutting off military assistance to Israel,” Vietor said. “I would like to see talk about sanctioning Israeli government officials that use genocidal rhetoric or talk about ethnic cleansing openly. We should support a ceasefire resolution at the UN.”
“When the war ends, we are not going back to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo,” he added, referring to the period before the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Vietor argued that the Democratic Party should not develop close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, decrying former US President Joe Biden’s decision to maintain a tight bond with the Israeli premier. He accused Netanyahu of continuing the war in Gaza for political purposes and said that he attacks Iran, Syria, and Lebanon “when he wants to.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization, pummeled northern Israel almost daily with barrages of missiles. The Lebanese Islamist movement fired over 10,000 projectiles at Israel in 2024. About 70,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel and flee to other parts of the country as a result. Israel responded with a blistering campaign targeting key command centers, military leaders, and weapons depots crippling Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, which the US intelligence community has for years identified as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
“Especially if we are going to head into a primary, like, table stakes is going to be no more military aid for Israel,” Lovett added.
The ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has divided the American political left. Polling suggests that commanding majorities of liberals now express greater empathy for Palestinians than Israelis, representing a massive shift from previous years.
Seemingly in response to a shifting sentiment among liberal voters, the “Pod Save America” hosts have adopted a more adversarial posture against Israel in recent months.