Uncategorized
As day school educators gather, focus is on investing in leadership and creativity
When Rabbi Adam Englander arrived at a recent national gathering in Denver of Jewish day school and yeshiva educators, he had a good sense of what conference sessions he wanted to attend and whom he wanted to meet.
But it turns out that one of the most valuable benefits Englander experienced at the Prizmah educators conference were the serendipitous encounters he had with colleagues and the new opportunities for collaboration and creativity they presented.
As head of school at the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, or HALB, in Woodmere, New York, Englander’s main focus usually is what’s happening at his school, not elsewhere. But at the conference he met with two colleagues with whom he shares a leadership coach, they created a WhatsApp group chat for sharing ideas, and Englander soon walked away with a new idea for a dynamic workshop to run with his leadership team this summer.
“Already just from this group I have an amazing idea,” Englander said. “That kind of good stuff can happen where you might meet someone who is like, ‘Oh, yeah. I have the same problem as you.’ Now you are connecting with some principal from San Francisco whom you’d never have met in a million years.”
He added, “Day school leaders really need to take the time and energy to invest in themselves, and their own growth.”
“Creative Spirit” was the theme of the conference in January organized by Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, the national network organization that was created several years ago through a merger of five different day school organizations. The conference in Denver drew more than 1,000 professional and lay leaders from over 200 Jewish day schools and yeshivas across North America. It was the third-ever iteration of Prizmah’s national conference.
With tens of thousands of students spread out over hundreds of schools across the continent, day schools have become laboratories of creativity: for learning, for Jewish action, even for tackling societal challenges.
“Jewish day schools are inherently creative places,” said Prizmah CEO Paul Bernstein. “The exceptional level of shared optimism and imagination around the bright future of Jewish day schools was palpable at the conference. Day school leaders clearly share a belief and innovative determination in the opportunity to grow enrollment in the next decade — by promulgating the value proposition of Jewish day school, ensuring a pipeline of excellent educators and addressing the challenge of affordability.”
A salient example of creativity in action is how day schools adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic, not just adjusting to remote learning and figuring out how to return to classrooms safely, but in reconfiguring teaching approaches to suit different kinds of learning.
“Because of schools’ creativity, and because of the way that different stakeholders in schools — from administrators to teachers to parents to students — were able to work together, they solved these brand new problems we hadn’t seen before,” Bernstein observed.
Another area of tremendous creativity is how Jewish schools are managing the challenges of affordability: Day schools are almost entirely privately funded, tuition is a barrier for many families, and yet tuition fees alone are insufficient to cover costs. In recent years, some schools have adapted innovative and flexible fee models, from setting tuition based on a fixed percentage of a family’s income to using Jewish community grant funding to cap tuition for new families.
Much of the conference was devoted to ideas for the future of Jewish day school education, covering everything from curricula to leadership to finances. One main area of focus is recruiting and retaining quality educators and school leaders.
Debra Skolnick-Einhorn, head of school at the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, D.C., who spoke on a conference panel about professional development, said she believes the key to better educator retention is improving compensation and benefits, providing more opportunities for professional growth, and expressing more gratitude toward staff.
Tal Ben-Shahar, an American-Israeli bestselling author who teaches about the psychology of leadership, spoke at the conference about the importance of investing in leaders.
“It’s important to focus on self-care for the teachers, invest in people in the field,” Ben-Shahar said. “It’s critical to treat teachers well, keep them involved, treat them as professionals, and value their opinions.”
“Jewish day schools are inherently creative places,” said Prizmah CEO Paul Bernstein at the organization’s biennial conference in Denver, January 2023. (Courtesy of Prizmah)
John D’Auria, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of four books on leadership, spoke about how great leaders focus on mutual learning — getting colleagues to share and learn from one another — rather than top-down leadership. It’s an approach embodied by many day school curricula, which focus on collaborative and experiential learning.
At the conference, Lisa Kay Solomon, Louie Montoya, and Ariel Raz from Stanford University’s d.school K12 Futures team offered an art project dubbed Hall of Descendants where participants could create a portrait and message for future children and educators.
“While we can’t predict the future, we know it’s going to be filled with a lot of uncertainty, complexity and tensions that we can’t solve,” Solomon said. “The hall creates a relatability to that distant time travel and a sense of responsibility about what we might do today to serve that future descendant.”
Brad Phillipson, head of school for the Jewish Community Day School of Greater New Orleans, said he found the Hall “a powerful exercise in prioritizing the values with which I most closely identify, personally and professionally, and in contemplating the world I want to pass along to future generations — through our students, through my child, and, indirectly, through what my students, and my daughter, will teach their children.”
Tal Grinfas-David, who led a session at the conference on creative leadership and Israel, said it’s important for leaders to take risks. More often than not, she noted, leaders can be “risk averse to placate, to take safe pathways.”
Grinfas-David, who is vice president of outreach and pre-collegiate school management initiatives at the Atlanta-based Center for Israel Education, turned to Israeli history for examples of leadership that educators could emulate.
“What I wanted them to see was examples of courageous leadership and risk taking and where that could lead,” Grinfas-David said. “Hopefully, they see that leaders of Israel have had to strengthen the future of the state regardless of the circumstances, just as the school leaders need to leave behind a legacy of a stronger institution.”
Bernstein, Prizmah’s CEO, said that the recent gathering underscored how important collaboration is to Jewish education — and that regardless of location or denomination, colleagues have a lot to learn from each other.
“What we are seeing is that when Jewish day school leaders come together, whether you are Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, pluralistic, or nondenominational, whether you are from the Southwest or the Northeast, from the U.S. or Canada and beyond — there is so much more that unites than divides,” Bernstein said.
Prizmah’s next conference will be held in the winter of 2024.
—
The post As day school educators gather, focus is on investing in leadership and creativity appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Iran’s regime is obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein
In the hours leading up to the recent ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, pro-regime AI-generated videos flooded social media. In one widely circulated clip, a Lego version of Donald Trump is shown desperately pleading with Iran for a ceasefire. The response comes in the form of a ballistic missile with the words “in memory of the victims of Epstein’s Island” written on it, hurling toward U.S. allies in the region.
Another video shows a terrified Trump in bed with young girls, having a nightmare of an Iranian missile barrage before waking and agreeing to ceasefire terms while eating a taco — a reference to the acronym “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”).
These videos are just some of the dozens released by media organizations affiliated with the Iranian regime that invoke pedophile sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein in its anti-Western propaganda.
“The IRGC is very happy to use him in every venue they have—in media, newspapers, speeches,” said Saeid Golkar, an Iranian-born expert on the Iran regime’s propaganda, using the acronym for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Everything they are talking about, especially right now, goes back to the corruption of the West and Epstein.”
Golkar, who grew up exposed to regime messaging, said the fixation on Epstein reflects a broader ideological goal: convincing Iranians that the West is a place of moral decay.
“From the beginning, one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic’s ideology was anti-Westernism and portraying the West as a corrupt place,” he said. “There is no respect for families or values … no limitation for sexual interaction. I remember the phrase ‘living like pigs’ — that they are living together like animals. That was a big concept.”
Golkar says the Epstein files released by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year have been a “gift” to the regime, offering a concrete example of the Western immorality it hopes to present to its people. When Iranians express a desire for a “normal life” without Sharia law or morality police, the regime invokes Epstein.
“They say, ‘You don’t want a normal life — you want a corrupted life…. These people don’t care about your freedom. They are a group of pedophiles.’” This, despite the fact that girls can be legally married in Iran at the age of 13, and even younger with the approval of a male guardian and judge.
The Baal game
One of the most prominent features of pro-regime rallies in Iran is the burning of Baal statues. The figure of Baal — meaning “lord” in ancient Semitic languages — is referenced in the Old Testament as a rival to the God of the Israelites. Historically, Baal was a fertility deity associated with rain and agricultural prosperity. Later interpretations and conspiracy theorists came to portray the worship of Baal as tied to sexual deviance and child sacrifice.
A popular online conspiracy theory ties Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators to Baal, pointing to a viral document from the Epstein files that appears to show bank transfer details with the name “Baal.name” listed where a financial institution would typically appear. They interpret this as evidence that Epstein maintained an account connected to the deity, suggesting he may have worshiped Baal or been involved in ritual abuse. Popular right-wing influencer Candace Owens weighed in with a video titled, “BAAL SO HARD: The Epstein Files,” where she referred to Jews as “pagan gypsies.” It has almost 3 million views.
Fact-checkers have disputed the interpretation of the bank document, noting that “Baal.name” is likely a misreading or formatting artifact of “Bank Name,” and that the actual account name — Clearlake Centre, LLC — is clearly identified elsewhere in the record.
On numerous occasions, the Iranian regime has staged the burning of Baal statues in major cities during pro-regime rallies, sometimes even coordinating multiple burnings across the country. Mehr News Agency, a state-owned Iranian news network, reported on one such rally in early February, writing: “Participants set fire to the symbolic Baal idol, describing the act as a representation of condemnation over crimes linked to Jeffrey Epstein’s island, where children were abused.”
These events are often accompanied by chants of “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” or “God is Great.” In some cases, the statues have been marked with a painted Star of David.
The Baal figure has also appeared in many of the AI-generated videos circulating online amidst the war. In one, created by pro-regime media organization Explosive Media, Lego versions of a drunken Pete Hegseth and Trump are paired with a rap track: “We hitting the Baal-worshipping Epstein Island crew, the ones who hurt the kids. Revenge for every American soul you and Trump’s dirty crew oppressed and did. We taking payback for the girls you broke.”
Though Explosive Media claims it is not directly affiliated with the Iranian government, Golkar said he has seen evidence suggesting it operates as part of the IRGC’s media apparatus. The regime has also acknowledged granting tiered internet access to select individuals tasked with amplifying official messaging. In early March, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said full internet access had been given to those “who can carry the voice of the government further.” Explosive Media, which says it has 2.5 million followers across Iranian messaging platforms, has cited its status as a media organization to explain its continued access. This has prompted experts like Moustafa Ayad, a researcher with the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, to raise questions about how closely it is connected with the state.
Another video, played on Iranian state TV, depicts figures the regime frames as victims of the West — a Native American man, a Gazan child, an Epstein victim, and former Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike in 2019 — gazing skyward as an Iranian missile strikes the Statue of Liberty. In this version, the statue is reimagined as Baal holding a Talmud. Upon impact, both sink into the Hudson River.
The Epstein fixation extends beyond rallies and social media. Golkar said Epstein is frequently referenced in official Basij (a plainclothes paramilitary volunteer militia in Iran) and IRGC materials, as well as in speeches by Iranian officials. Just two days before his assassination, Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, posted on X, “It has been reported that what remains of Epstein’s network is working to prepare a conspiracy aimed at fabricating an incident similar to the September 11 attacks, in preparation for accusing Iran of being behind it.”
In another post in response to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Laranjani posted on X, “Mr. Hegseth! Our leaders have been, and still are, among the people. But your leaders? On Epstein’s island!”
The Epstein War?
These propaganda videos are largely made in English. With Iran still in a media blackout, the Iranian people may not be their intended audience.
Shaping global perception through media is a key part of the Iranian war strategy. In a meeting with a group of Iranian poets in 2024, Ayatollah Khamenei, who was assassinated on the first day of the war, stated, “All war is a media war. Whichever actor has greater media influence will achieve their goals.”
The IRGC has spent years building a media apparatus designed to do just that. IRGC-affiliated production studios, media-focused university programs, and cultural centers are dedicated to training and refining propaganda content. Iran also outsources some of its media production to countries more attuned to Western cultural cues, particularly Pakistan.
A key element of the regime’s narrative is the claim that the Trump administration initiated the war to distract from the Epstein files. This theory has also circulated on both the left and the right in the United States.
In Washington D.C., posters cover the streets referring to the War in Iran, formally titled Operation Epic Fury, as Operation Epstein Fury.
U.S. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky posted on X shortly after the war began, garnering over 250 thousand likes, “Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will.”
The popular podcaster Joe Rogan espoused the theory on a recent episode, stating, “Look, the Epstein files comes out — we go to war with Iran. It’s a good way to get people to stop talking about certain things.”
The post Iran’s regime is obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Dan Bilzerian wants to ‘kill Israelis’ and thinks Judaism is ‘terrible.’ Now he’s running for Congress.
(JTA) — Dan Bilzerian, the mega-influencer who’s spread conspiracy theories about Jews and said he wants to “kill Israelis,” is running for Congress.
Bilzerian registered this week to run in the Republican primary against the Jewish far-right firebrand Rep. Randy Fine in Florida’s sixth district. Bilzerian initially gained fame for his Instagram photos alongside bikini-clad women but has since become a vocal critic of Israel and Jews — and has repeatedly called Fine a “fat Jew” in the lead-up to his campaign launch.
In a TMZ interview after Bilzerian announced his candidacy, the outlet’s Jewish founder, Harvey Levin, questioned the influencer on whether his use of the phrase “fat Jew” was antisemitic.
“[Fine] literally talks about how Muslims are lower than dogs, so, is that Islamophobic?” Bilzerian shot back. Fine drew bipartisan criticism for his comments earlier this year.
“Yes,” TMZ’s Levin and Charles Latibeaudiere responded. (Bilzerian added that Fine “tweets that, and he’s a senator,” though Fine is actually a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who was formerly a state senator.)
Bilzerian responded to a follow-up question by denying that he’s antisemitic — and questioning the term “antisemitism” altogether, saying it’s been “hijacked to only talk about Jews.”
“No, I’m not antisemitic. I think that that’s kind of a made-up term, I think the Palestinians are the real Semites,” Bilzerian said.
“Was Hitler antisemitic?” Levin asked.
Bilzerian did not say.
“Like I said, the term is focused solely on Jews, but actual Semites are the Arabs,” he answered. “And Palestinians are Semites as well. They actually have more DNA lineage to that region than any of the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews that have taken it from them.”
The comments were nothing new for Bilzerian, who has 30 million followers on Instagram and 2 million on X. He regularly tweets opinions like “Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today,” questions the accuracy of the statistic that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, and reposts clips of avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes.
But now, Bilzerian’s foray into electoral politics could serve as a test of the popularity of an emerging, anti-Israel faction within the Republican party headlined by figures like Tucker Carlson and Fuentes, who’ve espoused conspiracy theories about Jews.
Those figures’ opposition to the war in Iran have sped up their dissent from President Donald Trump. During the TMZ interview, Bilzerian said Fine should be tried for treason for putting “Israel before America,” and also criticized Trump for being “Israel first.” He has tweeted that Trump “needs to be impeached.”
(Ironically, Fine introduced a bill that would ban dual citizens from serving in Congress, and Bilzerian is a dual American-Armenian citizen.)
Bilzerian is not the only anti-Israel Republican challenger to Fine, a staunch Israel supporter who’s been backed by AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“I appreciate @DanBilzerian‘s zeal to take @RepFine out of Congress. I’ve been working tirelessly for one year on the same goal,” wrote Aaron Baker, who’s been endorsed by the Anti-Zionist America PAC. “I would however also appreciate if Dan ran for FL-16 much closer to where he grew up. Make @AIPAC spend $ defending more seats. Divide and conquer.” FL-16’s current representative, Vern Buchanan, was endorsed by AIPAC in 2024.
But Bilzerian, with his 29.6 million followers on Instagram and 2.1 million on X, brings a larger national audience to the congressional primary.
“I’d never heard of this guy before, until a couple of days ago, but having watched your interview, it’s clear that he simply doesn’t like Jews. In America you’re allowed to do that,” Fine said on a TMZ appearance following Bilzerian’s. But, he continued, “I don’t think it’s going to work out to become a congressman, having that perspective.”
Bilzerian gained many of his followers when he was the “king of Instagram,” posting photos of himself surrounded by scantily clad women, sports cars and with large guns. In June 2015, Bilzerian said he would be running for president, though by December he’d gotten behind the candidacy of Trump.
Before that, he’d served four years in the U.S. Navy starting in 1999, and dropped out of the University of Florida to play professional poker. His father, Paul Bilzerian, is a businessman who, as a corporate takeover specialist, was sentenced to four years in prison for federal crimes including fraud and criminal conspiracy.
In the months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza, Bilzerian’s social media presence began taking its current shape of focusing predominantly on Israel and, eventually, Jews.
“Do you think the Israeli attacks on Gaza are justified or f–ked up?” Bilzerian asked his followers on Nov. 6, 2023. By 2024, the occasional surveys he took of his followers became pointedly focused on Jews.
“Who causes the majority of the worlds problems,” he asked, with users overwhelmingly voting for the multiple-choice option “16 million Jews.”
In January 2025, Bilzerian asked his followers whether Hitler was a “good person,” a “terrible person,” or if they didn’t know. A third of the 178,000 voters said Hitler was a “good person,” and another 23% said they didn’t know.
Bilzerian laid out his views on Jewish people in a 2024 interview with conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David, during which he said Jews “knew about 9/11” and “had JFK assassinated.”
Later that year, conservative media personality Piers Morgan asked Bilzerian how many Jews he believed died in the Holocaust.
“I don’t know, but I would bet my entire net worth that it was under 6 million,” Bilzerian said.
According to FEC filings, Bilzerian’s campaign treasurer is Patrick Krason. Krason was also the treasurer for the short-lived presidential campaign of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, another public figure who’s spread conspiracy theories about Jews.
Bilzerian has promoted the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that Jews control the media and are using that position to push an “anti-white agenda” and replace whites with non-white immigrants.
“It started with the jewish owned news stations telling us ‘white supremacy is the greatest threat to America,’” Bilzerian wrote last year. “Whites were replaced in movies & streaming networks. Then the Jewish exec run Blackrock forced DEI on all major corps.”
Bilzerian often cites passages from the Talmud to make claims about Jewish beliefs, such as that Jews approve of stealing and raping as long as the crimes are committed against non-Jews. Other figures like Candace Owens have similarly taken passages from the Talmud, but rabbis have criticized those figures for using quotes that are mistranslated and often taken out of context from the text, which includes centuries of rabbinic debates and is not a formal code of laws.
During a stream with the influencer Sneako, who has also spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, Bilzerian said he supports “exterminating Israel” and that he “would sign up tomorrow and go f—king put boots on the ground and go f—king kill Israelis.”
“Give me a rifle and send me the f–k over there,” he said, adding, “I truly believe that the majority of that country is evil.”
On Morgan’s show, Bilzerian said Judaism innately promotes “Jewish supremacy,” and pointed to the State of Israel as being the result of that ideology.
“Israel is a manifestation of that religion,” he said. “And I think that religion is terrible.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dan Bilzerian wants to ‘kill Israelis’ and thinks Judaism is ‘terrible.’ Now he’s running for Congress. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
After AIPAC-backed primary loss, Tom Malinowski endorses rival who says Israel committed genocide
(JTA) — After Tom Malinowski narrowly lost a primary in which AIPAC spent $2.3 million against him, critics said AIPAC’s plan backfired as it had inadvertently boosted a candidate farther from its pro-Israel agenda.
Now, Malinowski has thrown his support behind that victor, the Bernie Sanders-backed progressive Analilia Mejia.
“A couple of months ago, Analilia and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination,” Malinowski said in a video posted on Thursday afternoon. “Together, we are here united as Democrats in common cause.”
The video, which featured a friendly Malinowski and Mejia seated next to each other, was released ahead of her special election next week, and emphasized the need for Democrats to “take back the House.” Neither politician mentioned Israel or AIPAC in the video, though both politicians slammed the lobbying group following their tight primary race.
After Mejia’s victory back in February, AIPAC brushed off criticism that its attack ads against Malinowski — who describes himself as “pro-Israel” but crossed the group’s red line of supporting conditions on military aid — inadvertently contributed to Mejia’s win. Mejia has been harsher in her criticism of Israel and, unlike Malinowski, refers to its war in Gaza as a “genocide.”
But Mejia, an AIPAC spokesperson said, was only nominated for a special election that would fill the seat vacated by Gov. Mikie Sherrill through the end of 2026.
“The real race for the full congressional term is in the June primary, and we’re going to take a close look at that,” said Patrick Dorton, spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project.
But if AIPAC had its sights set on supplanting Mejia come June, those plans may have been complicated by her newfound support from Malinowski, a popular politician in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District.
Meanwhile, on Friday morning, Mejia was endorsed by J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group that supports a growing number of candidates who back conditions on military aid to Israel. J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, blasted AIPAC in a Substack column following the February primary. He also wrote positively about Malinowski, but did not mention Mejia in the column.
“I look forward to working in partnership in our shared commitment against antisemitism, bigotry and hate,” Mejia wrote, accepting J Street’s endorsement.
On Tuesday, Mejia appeared at Temple Ner Tamid, a Reform synagogue in Bloomfield, New Jersey, for a conversation with its rabbi about issues of Jewish concern including Israel and synagogue security. (Joe Hathaway, the Republican nominee, joined the congregation for a conversation the night before.)
“I’m running for congress to give every person in NJ-11 a voice – that’s why I’m committed to listening to folks from every corner of our community,” Mejia wrote after the event.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post After AIPAC-backed primary loss, Tom Malinowski endorses rival who says Israel committed genocide appeared first on The Forward.