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As execution day nears, advocates for Texas Jew on death row say hopes are dimming
(JTA) — A Chabad rabbi is planning a trip to Texas’ death row to lead a final ritual confession, and Alan Dershowitz is trying to call the governor, as advocates for a Jewish man set to be executed on Tuesday are losing hope that he will avert his sentence.
The inmate, Jedidiah Murphy, killed 79-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham during a carjacking in 2000 in Dallas County. He is due to die by lethal injection on Tuesday, Oct. 10, which is World Day Against the Death Penalty.
His case has mobilized Jewish opponents of the death penalty, including Dershowitz, the emeritus Harvard law professor and political commentator; Cantor Michael Zoosman, a former prison chaplain who runs L’Chaim, a Jewish anti-death penalty group; and Rabbi Dovid Goldstein, a Chabad rabbi in Houston who has advocated for Murphy for years.
But those advocates and Murphy all recognize that his opportunities to obtain clemency are running out. With days to go before the execution date, Murphy has written a thank-you letter to his supporters, parts of which Dershowitz shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Please relay my sincere thanks to Professor Dershowitz for all that he has been putting into this,” Murphy wrote in the letter. “Should they deny clemency, chances are high that my time will be short.”
Since 1982, Texas has executed 583 people, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty — a far larger number than any other state.
Texas executed five men in 2022 and has executed the same number so far in 2023. Four more executions, including Murphy’s, are scheduled before the end of the year. If they are carried out, this year will see the most executions in the state since 2019, when Texas also carried out nine death sentences.
It is possible to avoid a death sentence with just days to go. Exactly four years ago, Randy Halprin, who was also Jewish and scheduled to be executed on Oct. 10 of that year, was granted a stay of execution on the grounds that the judge who presided over his trial was antisemitic and used anti-Jewish slurs. Last year, Halprin was granted a new trial.
In Murphy’s case, Dershowitz told JTA he was pessimistic about the prospects for a commutation. He has sought a conversation with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, but so far has not secured one.
In legal filings on Murphy’s behalf, Dershowitz has focused on the exacerbating circumstances that the prosecution cited to argue for the death penalty, including a kidnapping prior to the murder. But Murphy was never charged for that kidnapping, and there is evidence of an alibi.
Dershowitz has also argued that the jury’s conclusion that Murphy would again commit violence has been belied by his decades in prison without incident. The Texas Observer reported that Murphy has completed chaplaincy department programs and wants to be a field minister in prison.
“Hope is running out, obviously,” Dershowitz said. “And it would be a wasted, wasted life. This is a man who could do good in prison, helping to counsel other people and using his religious faith as a way of helping other people.”
Goldstein, who in 2016 led Murphy through a bar mitzvah ceremony that included the laying of tefillin, or phylacteries, is now preparing for the possibility on Monday of conducting a much grimmer ritual with the prisoner — viddui, the traditional Jewish confession before death.
Zoosman says he communicates daily with Murphy.
“He’s hoping for the best but aware of the possibility of the worst, and I think we stand with him, supporting him as best we can,” Zoosman told JTA.
Murphy, was 25 when he shot and killed Cunningham and used her stolen credit cards to buy cigarettes and liquor. He recently told The Forward that he was high on cocaine and does not remember the incident. He has confessed to the crime. He did not respond to an email request for comment from JTA.
Murphy was abused as a child by his birth father and his adoptive father, and abandoned by his birth mother, who was Jewish, according to the Forward. The Observer reported that he sought mental health care in the year or so before murdering Cunningham, and doctors diagnosed him with mental dissociative identity disorder, major depression and alcohol dependency. They said he posed a threat.
The facility where Murphy is being held, the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, is named for a San Antonio man with Jewish heritage. The Observer reported that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has agreed to forgo the practice of embalming Murphy after his death, deferring to Jewish injunctions against tampering with a dead body.
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The post As execution day nears, advocates for Texas Jew on death row say hopes are dimming appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israeli Culture Minister Cuts Funding for Film Awards After Palestinian Drama Wins Top Prize, Chosen for Oscars Submission
A scene from “The Sea.” Photo: The Israeli Academy of Film and Television
Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar said his ministry will pull state funding for Israel’s Ophir Awards, which is the Israeli equivalent to the Oscars, after it awarded a top honor to a film that “defames” Israel’s “heroic soldiers,” he announced on Wednesday.
At this year’s Ophir Awards ceremony on Tuesday night, “The Sea” won best picture, which automatically makes the film Israel’s submission for the 2026 Oscars in the category of best international feature film. The drama, directed and written by Shai Carmeli-Pollak and produced by Baher Agbariya, also won best screenplay, best actor for the 13-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Gazawi, best supporting actor for Khalifa Natour, and best original score. The movie, filmed in Arabic and Hebrew, marks Gazawi’s first acting role.
The Ophir Awards are voted on by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, a nonprofit organization that is the Israeli version of the US-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. It has more than 1,000 members, including filmmakers, producers, content creators, and actors.
“The Sea” follows a 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Khaled, from a village near Ramallah, who gets the opportunity to go the beach for the first time in his life on a class trip to Tel Aviv. When he is forced to return home at a military checkpoint, while his classmates continue on to the beach, Khaled decides to risk his life and dodge Israeli authorities on his solo journey to reach the ocean. “The Sea” premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival this summer and received support from the Israeli Film Fund.
In a statement on X, Zohar said that after the “pro-Palestinian” film, “which defames our heroic soldiers while they fight to protect us,” won the award for best film at the “shameful” Ophir Awards on Tuesday night, he decided to discontinue funding for the ceremony.
“During my tenure – the citizens of Israel will not pay out of their pockets for a disgraceful ceremony that spits on the heroic IDF soldiers,” he added. “This great absurdity, that Israeli citizens are still paying out of their pockets for the disgraceful Ophir Awards ceremony, which represents less than one percent of the Israeli people – is over. Starting from the 2026 budget, this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money. The citizens of Israel deserve for their tax money to go to more important and valuable places.”
Several winners on stage at the Ophir Awards ceremony, including Carmeli-Pollak and Agbariya, sported a black T-shirt with a message that called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and said in Hebrew and Arabic “a child is a child.” Others wore shirts that called for the return of the hostages abducted by Hamas-led terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and talked about the devastation taking place in Gaza during the ongoing war. Acclaimed Israeli director Uri Barbash received a lifetime achievement award at the ceremony, and in his acceptance speech, he condemned actions of the Israeli government and Zohar, pleaded for an end to the war, and called for solidarity between Jews and Arabs.
“It is our sacred duty to bring all the hostages back to their families immediately,” he said. “To end the accursed war and replace the ‘divide and rule’ regime that has declared war on Israeli society!”
Other movies that competed alongside “The Sea” for best film at this year’s Ophir Awards included Nadav Lapid’s “Yes,” “Dead Language – which made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is an expanded version of the Oscar-nominated short film “Aya” – and Natali Braun’s “Oxygen,” which is about a single mother fighting to pull her son out of military service and his deployment to Lebanon.
Israel has had 10 nominations in the category of best international feature film at the Oscars but has yet to win. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences will announce on Dec. 16 a shortlist of 15 contenders for the 2026 Oscar for best international feature film. The final list of nominations will be announced on Jan. 22, 2026, and the 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 15, 2026.
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HBO Max Acquires US Rights to Scripted Series ‘One Day in October’ About Hamas Attack
Bartender and survivor of the Nova Festival, May Hayat, takes cover as rocket sirens sound, during her first visit to the scene of the attack, on the one-month anniversary of the attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Oct. 7, near Re’im, Israel, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
HBO Max has acquired exclusive rights in the United States to “One Day in October,” a scripted series based on real-life, first-hand accounts from the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“One Day in October” is the first real-time scripted portrayal of personal stories from the massacre in southern Israel, where Palestinians terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages. The attack was the deadliest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“One Day in October” will debut on HBO Max in the US on Oct. 7, the two-year anniversary of the attack, FOX Entertainment announced on Monday. Filmed on location in Israel, the four-episode series is co-produced by FOX Entertainment Studios in partnership with Israel’s yes TV, the New York-based production company Sparks Go, and Israel’s ZOA Films, in association with Moriah Media.
The series “presents seven emotionally gripping and artistically interwoven narratives of love, courage, sacrifice and survival,” according to a description provided by HBO Max. “From families torn apart to moments of hope emerging in the face of unspeakable tragedy to incredible bravery against the odds, each episode reveals the human cost and resilience born out of chaos. The series portrays the victims’ and survivors’ experiences of that day and is brought to life by a distinguished cast and acclaimed creative team.”
“One Day in October” is created by Daniel Finkelman, founder of the New York-based production company Sparks Go, and Oded Davidoff, who is also the director and writer on the series. Sparks Go helped co-produce the series.
“The tragic events on Oct. 7 had a profound impact on all of us,” said Fernando Szew, president of FOX Entertainment Studios. “From the very beginning, we approached this series with the utmost care, sensitivity, and urgency to ensure that the stories were told with authenticity and respect and paying homage to the victims and the heroic survivors. Oded and the incredible cast, crew and teams at Sparks Go, ZOA, and yes TV have truly created compelling storytelling that we are proud to showcase.”
The cast includes Swell Ariel Or, Noa Kedar, Naomi Levov, Hisham Suliman, Wael Hamdoun, Yuval Semo, Avi Azulay, Naveh Tzur, Yael Abecassis, Moran Rosenblatt, Michael Aloni, Neta Roth, Sean Softi, Lior Ashkenazi, and Uri Perelman. The series features writing by Liron Ben-Shlush, Davidoff, Amir Hasfari, Keren Weissman, Orit Dabush, and Yona Rozenkier. Jim Berk and Sheldon Rabinowitz with Moriah Media are also executive producers on the series.
“For me, film and television have always been more than entertainment, they are a way to bear witness,” said Finkelman. “These are stories of ordinary people facing extraordinary moments. In a time when truth is fragile, the most powerful thing we can do is to appeal to humanity itself. My hope is that these stories will open hearts and spark meaningful conversation.”
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Merz Says Criticism of Israel in Germany Has Become Pretext for Hatred of Jews
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends celebrations of the newly completed renovation of Reichenbach Strasse synagogue in Munich, Germany, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday that criticism of Israel was increasingly being used in Germany as a pretext for stoking hatred against Jews.
Speaking at an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Central Council of Jews, Merz said that antisemitism had “become louder, more open, more brazen, more violent almost every day” since the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the Gaza war.
“‘Criticism of Israel‘ and the crudest perpetrator-victim reversal is increasingly a pretext under which the poison of antisemitism is spread,” he said.
Germany is Israel‘s second biggest weapons supplier after the US, and has long been one of its staunchest supporters, in part because of historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”
Last month, however, Germany suspended exports of weaponry that could be used in the Gaza Strip because of Israel‘s plan to expand its operations there – the first time united Germany had acknowledged denying military support to its long-time ally.
The decision followed mounting pressure from the public and his junior coalition partner over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In his speech in Berlin on Wednesday, Merz mentioned his about-turn, saying that criticism of the Israeli government “must be possible,” but added: “Our country suffers damage to its own soul when this criticism becomes a pretext for hatred of Jews, or if it even leads to the demand that Germany should turn its back on Israel.”