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An amended Conservative Jewish Passover policy taps into the booming gluten-free market
(JTA) — Ahead of Passover 2020 — as life worldwide ground to an abrupt halt in the face of a rapidly spreading pandemic and people faced the specter of empty grocery shelves, or staying confined at home — a range of rabbis tried to make it a little easier to observe the holiday.
Long lists of foods and newly lenient guidelines from Jewish organizations circulated among people who keep kosher for Passover, explaining which foods they could purchase and eat on the holiday, given the year’s extraordinary circumstances. The message — sometimes explicit, sometimes implied — was that these special permissions applied only temporarily.
Now, one rule instituted as a COVID provision by the Conservative movement is becoming permanent: Before Passover begins, Jews may buy certified kosher products that have kosher-for-Passover ingredients and are certified gluten-free and oat-free — even if they aren’t explicitly certified kosher for Passover.
When it first appeared in 2020, that rule was written in a way that suggested it was an emergency measure, using the words “when the situation demands.” This year, that four-word phrase has been removed from the Rabbinical Assembly’s Passover guide, and the guidance has moved from a separate section into the main list of allowable products.
The edit reflects how some shifts in Jewish practice that first appeared at the outset of the pandemic, as stopgap measures, have since been normalized. It also allows — for at least a narrow set of Jews who observe Jewish ritual in accordance with the Conservative movement’s dictates — more robust and potentially less expensive options for keeping kosher during Passover.
Rabbi Aaron Alexander, chair of the Kashrut Subcommittee on the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which issues the movement’s Jewish legal rulings, said the change does not reflect a shift in the movement’s approach to Jewish law, known as halacha. Instead, he said, it reflects confidence that the Food and Drug Administration’s strict rules about how products can be labeled can be trusted when it comes to Passover observance.
“It’s not a significant change in how we understand halacha in general and how we understand the general Passover laws,” Alexander said. “It’s always been the case that there are products you can buy without a KP [symbol] before Passover, when you can be pretty sure that there’s no chametz and that any accidental admixture would be minimal.”
The requirement for foods to be certified gluten-free and oat-free, Alexander said, is “an extra line of defense” for people buying products before Passover that are not explicitly labeled kosher for Passover.
The policy shift opens new doors to kosher-keeping Jews: Rather than seeking out specialty items with Passover kosher certification, often carried only in kosher supermarkets and in major markets, they can observe Passover by taking advantage of the increasing number of products that are labeled kosher, gluten-free and oat-free, as long as the ingredients accord with Passover laws.
The gluten-free marketplace is estimated at $6 billion a year in the United States and is growing by an estimated 10% each year, according to industry trend reports. The marketplace serves people with celiac disease — whose incidence is rising — as well as people who seek to reduce or eliminate their gluten intake for perceived health reasons.
Some people with celiac disease say they look forward to Passover because more products will hit shelves that they can count on to be free of gluten. Now, Jews who follow the Conservative movement’s guidance can benefit from some of the wide array of gluten-free foods that are already available.
On Passover, five types of grain are prohibited (except for when they are used to make matzah): wheat, spelt, barley, oat and rye. By purchasing products that are certified gluten-free and oat-free, consumers can avoid buying food that contain those five ingredients.
“In an effort to definitively alert consumers to the presence of wheat gluten in packaged foods, the FDA mandates that any product including the words ‘gluten-free,’ ‘no gluten,’ ‘free of gluten,’ or ‘without gluten’ must contain less than 20 parts per million of glutinous wheat, spelt, barley, or rye,” a footnote to the guide states. “This eliminates the possibility of a gluten-free packaged food containing 4 of the 5 hametz-derived grains in any quantity that would be viable according to Jewish law.”
Alexander emphasized that the gluten-free and oat-free guidance should be seen as “a good way to figure out whether or not the products you’re getting before Passover could be problematic.” He cautioned that looking at the rest of the ingredients is crucial: Some certified gluten-free products, for example, could still be prohibited for Passover because they contain yeast.
Sarah Chandler, an ordained Hebrew priestess and Jewish educator who used to run a pickle business, already bought food with gluten-free labels during her pre-Passover shopping.
“It’s very practical, and it’s also consistent with other levels of kashrut,” Chandler told JTA regarding her pre-Passover shopping. “The fact that you and I can go to a grocery store and buy eggs — you don’t need a kosher symbol on it. We just know that it’s eggs. We’re not worried that the egg is from a bird of prey and not kosher. We can just assume that [if] it says ‘chicken eggs,’ they’re chicken eggs.”
She added, using a Hebrew term for kosher certification, “We don’t need a hechsher on it. The hechscher just means a certain level of supervision.”
Chandler is a vegetarian and eats a variety of nut butters, which are often expensive. Recently, she bought a jar of gluten-free cashew butter that was on sale for $6 instead of its regular price $12. (A jar of almond butter by a kosher brand marketed for Passover can run around $18.) Because it’s still unopened and the ingredients are kosher for Passover, she plans to eat it during the holiday.
Kosher-keeping Jews with gluten intolerance and celiac disease have especially found a lifeline in the growing marketplace of gluten-free food.
Lisa Goldman, also known as the “Gluten Free Jewish Momma,” is an Orlando-based advocate for the gluten intolerant on behalf of her now-grown daughter, who was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2012.
“My daughter was crying over not being able to have matzah balls because matzah [is] very high in wheat,” Goldman recalled. “So it was so exciting when all of the Jewish brands started to come out with a gluten-free version of many of their products.”
By the Way Bakery, a kosher, gluten-free and dairy-free bakery in New York City founded in 2011 by Helene Godin, may be a destination where Jewish shoppers who abide by the Conservative ruling could get food for the holiday. It is offering multiple Passover items this year, though the menu isn’t certified kosher for Passover.
By the Way Bakery is certified kosher, and its individual products that are sold in Whole Foods are in the process of being certified gluten-free.
“I’m really careful with the word ‘certified,’” Godin told JTA. “We are not certified with respect to Passover. I can tell you what is in [our products]. We’re very transparent. If you go to our website and you go to the FAQ section, there’s a link to our ingredient summary. And we list everything that’s in every product.”
Some of the items on this year’s Passover menu include an orange almond cake that Godin calls “the little black dress of desserts” because it goes with everything, and a chocolate truffle torte. By the Way Bakery’s cakes and cookies are made with wheat flour alternatives, many of which fall into the category of kitniyot, or foods such as legumes, corn, and rice that some Jews, including many Ashkenazim, avoid eating on Passover. Sephardic Jews traditionally eat kitniyot on the holiday and the Conservative Movement began permitting the consumption of kitniyot during Passover in 2016.
“There are people who say, ‘You’re not kosher enough,’” Godin said. “And there are people who say, ‘Oh, I’ll eat that.’”
Another popular gluten-free kosher bakery, Modern Bread and Bagel, is offering non-kitniyot foods for Passover. Like By the Way Bakery, Modern Bread and Bagel is not certified kosher for Passover, but all of its kitchen’s ingredients are kosher for Passover.
Godin says her company gains new customers every Passover, but this year has been an especially busy time. The number of orders for the orange almond cake, which has not been on the menu in several years, was three or four times larger than what she expected.
“Our projections were that we would be up 20% over last year. And we’ve well exceeded that,” she said. “Post-COVID, people just want to celebrate and get together.”
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The post An amended Conservative Jewish Passover policy taps into the booming gluten-free market appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Gavin Newsom just confirmed the demise of the Democratic party’s support for Israel
“Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism,” said Louis Brandeis, American Jewish leader and Supreme Court justice, in 1915. “To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.”
For much of the next century, most American Jews stacked their liberalism on top of their patriotism on top of their Zionism. They overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic Party, and overwhelmingly supported both Israel and the United States-Israel alliance.
In recent years, however, many have found it increasingly difficult to deny is that support for Israel is, at present, hard to square with liberalism. And a statement this week by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the probable 2028 Democratic candidate for president, made clear exactly how profoundly that shift has changed the Democratic party.
Israel is discussed by some “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” Newsom said on a podcast, adding that the U.S. would likely have no choice but to reconsider its military aid to the Jewish state.
Given that Newsom is broadly a centrist, his words made a clear statement: Politicians understand that uncritical support for Israel is no longer compatible with the Democratic mainstream. Democratic voters are pushing politicians to, if not abandon Israel entirely, then at least condition their support for it. And the future of American Jews and the Democratic Party is now not only up to Democratic politicians who decide how much to give Israel and under what conditions.
It is also up to American Jews, who have to decide whether those politicians, in doing so, are moving away from their values, or bringing them back into alignment.
Shifting sympathies
A Gallup poll released last month found that Americans’ sympathies now lie more with Palestinians than with Israelis. Up until last year, the opposite had held true. For Democrats, whose sympathies already “flipped strongly” — per Gallup — to Palestinians in 2025, the difference is more stark: 65% said they sympathize more with Palestinians, while just 17% say they sympathize more with Israelis.
Those tempted to write the change off as the result of a party captured by a young far-left should consider that, last year, Pew found that 66% of Democrats over the age of 50 have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from just 43% in 2022. (For those ages 18 to 49, the number was 71%.) A full 73% of Democrats over 50 said they had “none at all” or “not too much” confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I have no doubt that some will say that the change is because people don’t understand the complexity of the situation in the Middle East; because they have forgotten the lessons of history; or because the Democratic Party is comfortable embracing antisemitism.
These claims ignore a simpler explanation: That the voters who are registered with the one major U.S. political party that still claims to care about liberalism, democracy, and human rights watched as Israel, by its own admission, killed some 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
They saw Israel’s leaders make it next to impossible for civilians in the Strip to receive necessary food and humanitarian aid. They see settler violence rising in the West Bank, including against American citizens, amid increased talk of annexation. They hear Netanyhau continue to insist that there can be no Palestinian state, and understand that the alternative he foresees is not one state with equal rights, but either a future of endless wars, or an undemocratic state in which Palestinians live under Israeli control without the rights of citizens.
In that context, many voters see that unflinching support for Israel is no longer in line with the values that drew them to their party. And since they cannot change Israel, they are trying to change their party.
No more cognitive dissonance
Democratic voters, in insisting that their politicians not walk in lockstep with Israel, are insisting that the party break its cognitive dissonance around Israel. Which means that the future of American Jews in the Democratic Party depends not only on how sensitively Democratic politicians navigate criticizing and checking Israel without elevating antisemitism. It also depends on whether American Jews are willing to admit this dissonance to ourselves.
For some, this is not an open question. There are American Jews who have no relationship to Israel, or whose relationship is an overwhelmingly critical one. Per last year’s Jewish Federations of North America National Survey, a combined 32% of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as either anti-Zionist or non-Zionist.
(Only 7% of American Jews overall consider themselves to be anti-Zionist, and just 8% say non-Zionist,. But most don’t subscribe to the label “Zionist,” either, with just 37% describing themselves as such).
In 2021, one poll of American Jews found that a quarter deemed Israel an apartheid state, well before Newsom likened it to one.
There’s also the reality that the vast majority of American Jews do not name Israel as their top issue when they go to the voting booth, and that the Republican Party is undergoing its own schism over Israel.
Still, that same JFNA poll found that most American Jews — 71% — do say that they feel emotionally attached to Israel. And 60% say that Israel makes them proud to be Jewish, even as 69% say that they “sometimes find it hard to support the actions taken by Israel or its government.”
What this means: For many American Jewish Democrats, encouraging politicians to break with Israel — or accepting that break is already in process — is likely more emotionally challenging than it is for American Democrats generally.
What Newsom’s comments show is that this is an emotional problem American Jewish voters will need to face sooner rather than later. Democratic voters are forcing Democratic politicians to resolve a disconnect, and they want it resolved quickly. The year is no longer 1915. Democratic American Jews are going to need to decide what it means to be “good Americans and better Jews.” If it can no longer involve being both liberal and staunchly pro-Israel, we will need to decide which of those items we find most important.
The post Gavin Newsom just confirmed the demise of the Democratic party’s support for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Poland Returns Jewish Religious Objects to Greece Stolen by Nazis During WWII
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Poland on Wednesday returned 91 Jewish religious objects to Greece that were stolen by the Nazis from Greek synagogues and Jewish families during World War II.
The handover took place at a ceremony in Warsaw and marked the first time that Poland has repatriated cultural items illegally taken from their country of origin. The returned items included Torah scrolls, hanging ornaments, and fabrics.
The objects were stolen by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a Nazi organization that focused on looting Jewish cultural items throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. The items were discovered in Poland after the war, and in 1951, the Polish Ministry of Culture transferred the Greek-Jewish artifacts to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where they were stored until this week.
“These relics, which were removed from synagogues throughout Greece during the Second World War, are today on their way back to their homeland,” said Greece’s Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni. “These relics do not only have historical or artistic value. They are part of the memory of my country and of the Jewish Greeks. They are intertwined with narratives passed down by parents and grandparents. They connected with the memory of relatives who never returned from the camps, victims of the Holocaust … Their emotional weight is great and the desire of all of us for their return has been particularly intense.”
“In order to demand the return of what rightfully belongs to one, one must be ready to return what rightfully belongs to others, when there is a clear legal and moral obligation,” Mendoni added.
The Greek government officially requested the restitution of the Greek-Jewish artifacts in December 2024, and the World Jewish Restitution Organization worked with Greek and Polish authorities to organize the return of the items. The objects will now be transferred to the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens.
“We have been waiting for this moment for many years,” said Poland’s Minister of Culture Marta Cieńkowska. “Today, we are living a historic moment. Thanks to the close and determined cooperation of our two ministries, to the systematic engagement of experts and researchers, in less than two years, we can deliver today this remarkable piece of history.”
Before World War II, approximately 77,000 Jews lived in Greece, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust. After Nazi Germany and its allies occupied the country, Greek Jews were deported to Nazi extermination camps and a total of 60,000 of the country’s Jewish population died in the Holocaust.
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Trump Seeks Kurdish Allies Against Tehran, but Analysts Say Plan Is Risky, Could Take Years
Iranian Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) take part in a training session at a base on the outskirts of Erbil, Iraq, Feb. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
The Trump administration, weighing whether the war with Iran could eventually require US troops on the ground, has begun reaching out to Kurdish opposition leaders in Iran with an offer of “extensive US aircover” as it looks for ways to destabilize the regime while the American-Israeli campaign intensifies, an idea one analyst told The Algemeiner would be very difficult to translate into action.
The outreach comes amid reports from Iran that it had preemptively attacked Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming the strikes caused heavy losses.
According to The Washington Post, which cited people familiar with the matter, US President Donald Trump held calls with Kurdish minority leaders in Iraq, including Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, as well as anti-regime Iranian Kurdish groups about taking control of areas in western Iran.
A senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said Washington asked Iraqi Kurdish authorities to “open the way and not obstruct” and to “provid[e] logistical support” to Iranian Kurdish groups mobilizing in Iraq.
“He told us the Kurds must choose a side in this battle — either with America and Israel or with Iran,” the anonymous official told the paper.
Trump himself on Thursday encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces to go on the offensive but did not indicate whether the US has been coordinating with them.
“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that; I’d be all for it,” the president told Reuters in an interview.
When asked if the US would provide air cover, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that,” but noted that the Kurds’ objective would be “to win.”
“If they’re going to do that, that’s good,” he added.
Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had information that “separatist groups” intended to breach its western borders for an attack.
“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” the ministry said, according to a statement published by the state-run IRNA news agency.
Accounts diverged Wednesday night over whether an Iranian Kurdish ground invasion had begun. Fox News said Kurdish militias based in Iraq had crossed into Iran, but Tasnim, Iran’s semi-official outlet, reported via Reuters that its journalists in three border provinces found no evidence of an incursion. Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, who initially cited a US official as confirming the operation, later said reports were “conflicting,” adding that a senior official in one Iranian Kurdish faction also denied that any offensive was underway.
Peshawar Hawramani, a spokesperson for the government in the federated Kurdistan region of Iraq, known as the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, has released a statement denying involvement in any incursions or armament.
“[A]llegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded,” Hawramani said, calling the reports “malicious.”
Reports that speak about a role of the Kurdistan Region and the allegations claiming that we are part of a plan to arm and send Kurdish opposition parties into Iranian territory are completely unfounded. We categorically deny them and affirm that they are being published…
— Peshawa Hawramani (@PHawraman) March 5, 2026
The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat outlet reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, have pressed Iraqi officials for details about the phone calls between Trump, Barzani, and Talabani.
Iran also told Iraq’s federal authorities in Baghdad that it “must provide sufficient guarantees and take the necessary measures” to prevent Iraqi Kurdish groups from aiding Iranian opposition groups, the report said, citing unnamed sources.
Iran’s Kurdish population — estimated at roughly 8 million to 12 million people — lives largely in mountainous western provinces along the Iraqi border, where several armed opposition factions have long operated and where some Iranian Kurdish groups maintain bases across the frontier in northern Iraq.
The country’s Kurdish minority has a long history of political activism based on decades of rebellion against central rule, a dynamic that predates the Islamic Republic. Kurdish forces briefly established their own state in northwestern Iran, the Republic of Mahabad in 1946, before it was crushed, and Kurdish groups have periodically clashed with successive governments in Tehran ever since.
A day earlier, CNN reported that the CIA has been working for months with Iranian Kurdish groups to foment an uprising.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday: “None of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force. So, what other entities may be doing, we’re aware of, but our objectives aren’t centered on that.”
Northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region has long served as a rear base for Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but only so long as local leaders kept them from launching attacks into Iran. That delicate arrangement could unravel if fighters mobilize across the border as part of the wider war effort, said Seth Frantzman, a regional analyst who has studied Kurdish militant groups.
If Iranian Kurdish factions begin operating from Iraqi territory and the broader US-Israeli campaign fails to decisively weaken Tehran, Kurdish authorities in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah could find themselves exposed to retaliation from Iran, Frantzman said. Leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan “have tried for years to keep the balance” hosting Iranian Kurdish opposition groups while maintaining a working relationship with Tehran, he said.
Even if Washington were prepared to support Kurdish factions, turning them into an effective anti-regime force would take far longer than the current conflict timeline suggests.
Frantzman said any outside backing would take time to put in place, requiring logistics channels and training. “These types of programs, advising and assisting groups, or arming them, takes time,” he said, pointing to past US experiences from Afghanistan to Syria as examples.
Frantzman said Kurdish factions would be looking for assurances that outside support would last, wary of being pulled into an uprising only to be left exposed if backing fades and Tehran reasserts control.
“They would be very wary and skeptical of taking chances today, having already lost lives and lost territory,” he told The Algemeiner.
He pointed to several examples, most notably the US-backed Kurdish campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, when Washington trained and equipped Kurdish fighters to form the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015. The campaign, which took more than four years, required sustained support and came at a heavy cost, with about 11,000 fighters killed.
Even that effort, he noted, which targeted a terrorist group in a limited area rather than an established state, took over four years to complete. Any comparable attempt inside Iran — a country of roughly 90 million people with a far larger military and security apparatus — would be far more difficult.