Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post An amended Conservative Jewish Passover policy taps into the booming gluten-free market appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Israel Rejects Lebanon’s Claim of Hezbollah Disarmament as ‘Insufficient’
Lebanese army members stand on a military vehicle during a Lebanese army media tour, to review the army’s operations in the southern Litani sector, in Alma Al-Shaab, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
The Lebanese government announced it has completed the first phase of a US-backed ceasefire plan aimed at disarming the terrorist group Hezbollah and asserting a state monopoly on weapons in the country’s south — a claim rejected by Israeli officials as insufficient.
On Thursday, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) said it had “achieved the objectives of the first phase” of the US-backed deal, which focused on “expanding the army’s operational presence, securing vital areas, and extending operational control” south of the Litani River.
As part of a 2024 ceasefire brokered with Israel, the Lebanese government committed to disarm the Iran-backed terrorist group. Hezbollah has long wielded significant political and military influence across Lebanon while maintaining extensive terrorist infrastructure in the southern part of the country, which borders the Jewish state’s northern region.
Last year, Lebanese officials agreed to the disarmament plan, which called for Hezbollah to be fully disarmed within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from five occupied positions in the country’s southern region.
Israel has continued to hold those five strategic positions south of the Litani River to prevent the terrorist group from rebuilding its military capabilities and rearming near its northern communities.
On Friday, Israeli officials sharply rejected the Lebanese Army’s claim that Hezbollah had been disarmed, warning that the government and military’s efforts, while a cautious first step, fall far short of curbing the Islamist group’s entrenched military power.
“Efforts made toward [disarming Hezbollah] … are an encouraging beginning, but they are far from sufficient, as evidenced by Hezbollah’s efforts to rearm and rebuild its terror infrastructure with Iranian support,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Thursday.
According to Israeli intelligence assessments, the terrorist group still possesses hundreds of long-range missiles and thousands of short-range rockets, representing between 10 percent and 20 percent of its pre-war arsenal.
Hezbollah also reportedly maintains more than 1,000 drones and continues expanding its arsenal. While its recruitment falls short of pre-war numbers, the group still reportedly retains over 40,000 terrorists.
“The facts remain that extensive Hezbollah military infrastructure still exists south of the Litani River. The goal of disarming Hezbollah in southern Lebanon remains far from being achieved,,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a post on X.
“Hezbollah is rearming faster than it is being disarmed,” the statement read.
Despite the statements published today in Lebanon, the facts remain that extensive Hezbollah military infrastructure still exists south of the Litani River. The goal of disarming Hezbollah in southern Lebanon remains far from being achieved.
This can be seen in the attached… pic.twitter.com/NPTIEbUapQ— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) January 8, 2026
Recent reports indicate that the terrorist group has been actively rebuilding its military capabilities, in violation of the ceasefire agreement with Israel.
With support from Iran, Hezbollah has been intensifying efforts to bolster its military power, including the production and repair of weapons, smuggling of arms and cash through seaports and Syrian routes, recruitment and training, and the use of civilian infrastructure as a base and cover for its operations.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted strikes targeting Hezbollah’s rearmament efforts, particularly south of the Litani River, where the group’s operatives have historically been most active against the Jewish state.
For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.
Despite pressure from US and Israeli officials to disarm, the group has repeatedly rejected efforts to relinquish its weapons, even threatening protests and civil unrest if the government tries to assert control over its arsenal.
Uncategorized
Jewish New York State Assembly Candidate Vows Change in Campaign Announcement
Will Sussman, candidate for New York State Assembly 4th District. Photo: Provided by Sussman4NY
Will Sussman, a Jewish civil rights activist and Yeshiva University professor, launched his campaign to become the next assemblyman for New York State’s 4th District in Long Island on Tuesday, promising to address “affordability,” government transparency, and waste caused by the alleged mismanagement of public programs.
In a press release, Sussman’s campaign contrasted his promises with the actions of the 4th District’s current representative in Albany, Rebecca Kassay, whom it described as a “pretend moderate” who once supported far-left Democrats’ initiative to “ban” gas-powered appliances such as stoves, furnaces, and water heaters. New York has already proscribed linking newly constructed buildings to natural gas lines despite its abundance and what energy experts have described as its deflationary effect on energy prices.
Combined with what Sussman called “more regulations” and imprudent “policies,” the radical wing of the Democratic party is making New York uninhabitable, Sussman argued, driving its tax base to other states even as the government promises more services that won’t pay for themselves.
“People aren’t leaving New York because they want to,” Sussman said on Monday. “They’re leaving because Albany has made it impossible to stay.”
He added, “We need an assemblyman who will say ‘no’ to [Gov.] Kathy Hochul and [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani — no to higher taxes, no to bail reform, and no to antisemitism. And we need someone who will shine a light on fraud, waste, and abuse in state government.”
Sussman is making his pitch to the 4th District, located in Long Island’s Suffolk County and including Stony Brook University, backed by a variety of experience which includes teaching, writing columns, and testifying before the US Congress about rising antisemitism on American college campuses.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Sussman was a plaintiff in an explosive lawsuit in June by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, Sussman and his co-plaintiff Lior Alon alleged that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “Resistance is justified when people are colonized.”
All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment.
“This is a textbook example of neglect and indifference. Not only were several antisemitic incidents conducted at the hands of a professor, but MIT’s administration refused to take action on every single occasion,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement announcing the suit. “The very people who are tasked with protecting students are not only failing them, but are the ones attacking them. In order to eradicate hate from campuses, we must hold faculty and the university administration responsible for their participation in — and in this case, their proliferation of — antisemitism and abuse.”
Sussman, who was forced to leave MIT in 2024 and walk away from work he had started in 2017, was himself personally harassed by a professor who “posted a message targeting Sussman by name on his X platform of over 10,000 followers, and another message.”
Policymakers in New York State have sent mixed messages regarding their views on rising antisemitism. While Hochul, a Democrat, recently approved a new Holocaust memorial, a candidate she endorsed, Mamdani, reversed the city’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism on his first day of office last week and revoked an executive order that opposed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Leading US Jewish groups, including the two main community organizations in New York, rebuked Mamdani for his first steps as mayor.
“Our community will be looking for clear and sustained leadership that demonstrates a serious commitment to confronting antisemitism and ensures that the powers of the mayor’s office are used to promote safety and unity, not to advance divisive efforts such as BDS,” the groups said in a statement. “Singling out Israel for sanctions is not the way to make Jewish New Yorkers feel included and safe, and will undermine any words to that effect. Bringing New Yorkers together and building broad coalitions will be foundational to the mayor’s ability to advance a more inclusive New York.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
What does Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break with Trump mean for Jews? Nothing good
Since her widely-publicized break with President Donald Trump, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been on a public redemption tour, including with an extended profile in The New York Times — the kind of media source that the far-right firebrand might have shunned for being biased against the right just a few short months ago.
Amid this reputation management tour, a familiar media reflex has kicked in: Pundits have rushed to frame the split between Greene and Trump as a sign of ideological moderation on Greene’s part. Perhaps Greene was “softening,” “repositioning,” or inching toward a more liberal posture. The editor of the center-left anti-Trump publication The Bulwark even declared that Greene’s break with Trump “gives me hope.”
In this telling, any deviation from Trump is assumed to be a move toward the center, or at least away from the hard right. But this framing badly misunderstands both Greene and the political tradition she increasingly represents, with potentially serious consequences for Jews.
Greene is not, in fact, becoming more centrist or less right-wing. Instead, her departure is the most dramatic symptom to date of deepening fractures on the far-right — largely over issues related to Israel, antisemitism and the meaning of nationalism itself.
To understand this, we need to stop thinking of the American right as a single ideological line running from “moderate” to “extreme.”
A political aberration on the right
The contemporary right is a coalition of sometimes incompatible traditions. Trump fused them temporarily, building a coalition of business-friendly Wall Street Republicans; conservative evangelical Christians; conspiracy-minded populists; and a younger, online, nationalist right. But now, after a year of Trump’s final term, the MAGA movement is under greater strain than ever before.
Perhaps the central factor in that strain is Israel.
Trump has loudly embraced Israel, cultivated high-profile Jewish allies, and positioned opposition to a certain kind of left-wing antisemitism associated with pro-Palestinian college student protestors as an essential part of his brand. During his first administration, he moved the United States embassy to Jerusalem, normalized relations between Israel and certain Gulf Arab states, and made support for Israel a litmus test for Republican loyalty.
But the striking philosemitism that characterized Trump’s first term has always coexisted uneasily with his fondness for dog whistles about “globalists” and conspiracy theories about George Soros, and with his early cultivation of a far-right fan base. Still, for a nationalist movement defined by border walls, civilizational rhetoric, and suspicion of cosmopolitan elites, the fact that Jews were rarely at the center of Trump’s list of enemies was rather unusual — in part because the kind of nationalist, closed-border politics Trump embodies has almost always placed Jews at the symbolic center of its animus.
In late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe, nationalist antisemitism was not simply a matter of old Christian religious prejudice, or of personal hatred. Rather, it was a cohesive worldview in which Jews were imagined as the antithesis of the nation-state: rootless, transnational, disloyal and corrosive to organic national unity.
In this ideological framework, Jews symbolized border-crossing itself. They were cast as the people who moved too freely, who belonged everywhere and nowhere, who undermined the stable boundaries that nationalism sought to impose.
This is why antisemitism became so tightly enmeshed in nationalist politics. Jews were not hated merely as Jews, but as embodiments of everything against which nationalism defined itself: cosmopolitanism, international finance, liberal universalism, and the erosion of traditional hierarchies. The figure of the Jew in nationalist antisemitic thought was a cipher for the destabilizing forces associated with modernity itself.
From this perspective, Trumpism’s early philosemitism was not the norm. It was the exception.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, and a different kind of nationalism
Greene has always been different from Trump when it comes to Israel — and to Jews.
Since her election to Congress in 2020, she’s engaged in critiques of U.S. support for Israel and flirtations with antisemitic conspiracy theories. In doing so, she has signaled alignment with a more traditional nationalist logic — one that views Jews, whether in Israel or in the diaspora, as challenges to a purified vision of the nation-state.
She’s not alone. For younger activists on the American right, especially those shaped by online subcultures and post-Iraq War cynicism about an assertive U.S. role in global affairs, Israel has increasingly become seen as a problem, rather than a partner.
In the past three years, the percentage of young Republicans who have a negative image of the state of Israel increased from 35% to 50%, a shockingly rapid change in such a short time. As one young staffer at the Heritage Foundation explained, “Gen Z has an increased unfavorable view of Israel, and it’s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic. It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy.” During a recent focus group, one young, extremely online conservative said that Jews are “a force for evil.” These younger far-right voters frame Israel not as a civilizational ally but as a foreign state entangling America in unwanted wars.
And in so doing, they treat American Jewish influence as suspect, recycling old tropes about dual loyalty, financial manipulation and media control.
In November, at a Turning Point USA event, a young conservative activist asked Vice President JD Vance why the U.S. was expending resources on “ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and declared that Judaism “as a religion, openly supports the prosecution of ours.”
Vance did not challenge him. Vance likewise dismissed leaked chats from young Republican leaders praising Adolf Hitler and joking about gas chambers, commenting: “They tell edgy, offensive jokes, like, that’s what kids do”— even though some of these “young Republicans” were in their thirties.
To interpret Greene’s break with Trump as a move toward moderation is to assume that Trump defines the far-right baseline. In reality, Trump has actually moderated certain aspects of far-right politics, even as he radicalized others. His movement was nationalist, but selectively so. It was anti-globalist, but not uniformly antisemitic. It was populist, but protective of certain elites.
Greene represents a faction that wants to resolve these internal contradictions within the MAGA movement. In her worldview, nationalism should be consistent. All foreign aid, including to Israel, is suspect. All international alliances are burdensome. And groups perceived as transnational — whether immigrants, NGOs, or Jews — are inherently destabilizing.
A perilous future
Greene and Trump didn’t fall out over Israel. Instead, the final breaking point appears to have been related to Greene’s demand that Trump’s Justice Department release all of the files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But their rupture over the Epstein files exposed the deeper gap between how Trump understands right-wing nationalism, and how Greene does.
Greene framed Epstein as proof of a corrupt, transnational, globalist elite that must be confronted openly, even if doing so means attacking powerful figures within her own movement. Trump, by contrast, prioritized loyalty, message control and coalition management, treating the issue as a political risk rather than a moral crusade.
In that sense, their fight reflected a clash between grievance-driven, anti-elite populism, and a leader-centered nationalism organized around personal loyalty and strategic discipline.
The reasons behind their rift thus helps to explain why Israel has become a flashpoint.
Support for Israel, and for Jews who advocate for it, increasingly feels incoherent to many on the far-right who share Greene’s populist vision. If nationalism is about defending one’s own people, why privilege another nation’s security over domestic concerns? And if elites are corrupting the nation — so the antisemitic thinking goes — why exempt those associated, whether fairly or not, with global networks?
It is telling that younger right-wing activists increasingly view Trump’s Israel policy as a betrayal rather than a triumph. For them, Trump’s philosemitism looks like an accommodation to donors, evangelicals or geopolitical inertia.
Instead, they hold postures like Greene’s: suspicious of foreign entanglements, hostile to perceived cosmopolitan influence, and willing to revive taboos that Trump temporarily suppressed.
None of this means Greene is destined to lead the Republican Party. But it does suggest she may be closer to the future of Trumpism than Trump himself.
That trajectory should concern anyone committed to pluralism and democratic stability. But it should also sharpen our analytical clarity. Calling Greene more moderate because she breaks with Trump obscures what is actually happening.
The conflict is not between right and center. It is between two versions of the right. One is at least marginally pragmatic, transactional and selectively inclusive. The other is ideological, purist and draws deeply from historical antisemitic tropes.
This is what those Jews who cast their lot in with the Trump administration in the name of policing campus protests failed to understand. It was never going to be possible, in the long term, to build a right-wing nationalist movement that was fine with Jews.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is not an aberration. She is a correction. And if the past is any guide, it is her version of nationalism, not Trump’s historically exceptional philosemitism, that more closely resembles where far-right movements end up.
The post What does Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break with Trump mean for Jews? Nothing good appeared first on The Forward.