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Conservative movement OKs vegetarian and vegan restaurants without kosher supervision
(JTA) — For years, a subset of Jews who eat only at kosher-certified restaurants have bent the rules by taking advantage of a growing trend: fully vegan eateries.
Now, a ruling issued by the Conservative movement has given that practice its official imprimatur, declaring that Jews may eat at vegetarian or vegan restaurants that don’t have kosher supervision.
In practice, the ruling’s target audience is small. Most Jews who eat only in certified kosher restaurants are Orthodox and pay little if any attention to Conservative opinions on Jewish law. According to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 17% of Jews identify as Conservative and only a fraction keep kosher at home. Even fewer adhere to the strict dietary laws when they dine out.
But the ruling does represent a change in how the Conservative movement approaches one of the core elements of traditional Jewish life. It comes as an increasing number of Americans are going meatless and amid a broader reckoning over what counts as kosher, now that products such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Pork, which are plant-based and contain no animal products, are available in grocery stores.
“It has been the case for a number of years already that many people, making a judgment of their own, have begun to eat at vegan restaurants, looking at them and seeing no obvious kashrut problems,” said Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, the ruling’s lead author.
A study by Dror Fixler, an Israeli religious Zionist rabbi and physicist, also concluded several years ago that Jews may eat in a strictly vegan restaurant, as long as they refrain from consuming vinegar, which could be non-kosher. The ruling also comes after the Conservative movement updated its Passover guide, permitting Jews to purchase certified gluten-free products ahead of the holiday, as long as they were also oat-free.
Previously, the movement deemed that Conservative Jews who keep kosher should eat only at restaurants under kosher supervision. But the 38-page ruling, issued earlier this month, says that without any meat products, many of the concerns surrounding kosher observance are rendered moot. The decision was voted on by 20 of the 25 members of the committee, the vast majority of whom voted in favor.
Without meat, there can be no mixing of meat and milk, the ruling says, and there is also no possibility of eating non-kosher foods such as pork. Even though the vast majority of kosher supervisors say cheese needs certification, the ruling permits eating at vegetarian restaurants on the grounds of a prior Conservative ruling stating that animal rennet is not prohibited.
The ruling is explicit in that it does not apply to restaurants that serve meat or fish but otherwise have vegetarian options, because there is still the risk of cross-contamination of un-kosher foods.
“The requirement to eat only kosher is not one of health or physical purity, but one of Godliness and the observance of mitzvot,” the ruling concludes. “While there are some levels of risk which the halakhah prohibits undertaking, we have argued that eating in an unsupervised vegan or vegetarian restaurant where government oversight exists and restaurants are generally concerned with their reputations does not overstep that boundary.”
The document adds that ancient rabbinic prohibitions on the consumption of bread baked by non-Jews were instituted primarily to prohibit social interactions with non-Jews.
“The prohibitions are social and unrelated to any concern of kashrut,” the decision says of the ancient ban. “We see ourselves and our gentile neighbors as equal members of society and reject social discrimination that holds us separate from those of other religious persuasions.”
The ruling notes that one of the reasons for the intricacy and strictness of certain kosher laws is to prevent intermarriage. Reisner said that the new openness to vegan and vegetarian dining does not signal a loosening of the prohibition on interfaith marriage.
“The Conservative movement has for some time been moving away from edicts to maintain social separation, arguing a more humanist position about the desirability of good relations with all of our compatriots,” Reisner said. “Now, that is not the same as to say that it approves of intermarriage.”
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Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad brawls during podcast debate on Israel
A debate between Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad and an anti-Israeli activist turned physical during the filming of a popular podcast on Monday.
Dennis Feitosa, who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for California’s 30th Congressional District, was one of 10 anti-Israel activists scheduled to debate Haddad for an episode of the Digital Social Hour, a longform podcast that features unfiltered conversations with controversial figures.
Haddad is one of Israel’s most prominent advocates and among the small minority of Arab citizens who voluntarily served in the Israel Defense Forces.
Videos posted online show Feitosa, one of the debaters, jeering at Haddad, calling him a “genocidal f**king freak,” while Haddad calls him a coward. Feitosa eventually grabs Haddad’s arm and begins to pull him across the table, before Haddad grabs his head and swings at him. In another video, apparently filmed in a parking lot after the recording, Feitosa grabs Haddad by the neck before Haddad punches him in the stomach, all while others attempt to get between the two men.
Haddad posted a video of the altercation on X, writing, “I was attacked by a groyper in the U.S… he just didn’t realize he had picked a Golani soldier!” A “groyper” is a term coined for fans of the far-right, white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
In his own posts on X, Feitosa claimed that Haddad spoke about ordering strikes on Palestinian schools during their conversation and made light of Palestinian deaths. He also reposted a photo of Haddad holding his head down with the caption, “Zionists want Christians to bow to them. They are literally the anti-Christ.” Another post called for Haddad to be deported.
This isn’t Haddad’s first physical altercation with someone who disagreed with him. In 2024, he got into a heated argument with a demonstrator outside Columbia University’s campus before he was shoved and punched. Haddad was slated to speak to a campus group that day.
Haddad, who has nearly a million followers on Instagram and 336,000 followers on X, is a popular figure in Israel, frequently speaking on the country’s biggest news channels (oftentimes in Arabic), defending Israel in international media, and speaking up about his military service as an Israeli-Arab.
While Arab-Israelis are generally exempt from serving in the IDF, they can elect to do so, which Haddad did. He served in the IDF’s Golani brigade, an elite combat unit, and was seriously injured during the 2006 Lebanon War.
After his military service, Haddad founded a non-profit called Together – Vouch for Each Other, which aims to promote greater integration of Arab citizens into Israeli society through encouragement of national service and volunteer work among the Arab population (a substitute for IDF service), and advocating for Arab-Israeli civil society issues in the government.
But Haddad is a controversial figure too. Critics both inside and outside of Israel accuse him of downplaying the discrimination many Arab Israelis face, and using his identity to justify the actions of the Israeli government. In 2024, a viral video showed him telling students wearing keffiyehs on Tel Aviv University’s campus to go study in Jenin, a West Bank city that has been a hotbed for terrorism and Israeli incursions.
Ahead of the upcoming Israeli elections, Haddad has expressed interest in starting a new political party in Israel, telling JNS in June, “My party would represent every Israeli, Arab or Jewish, secular or religious, anyone who is proud of our country.”
He added that he would not cooperate with existing Arab-Israeli leaders in the Knesset, who he charges with “destroying” the Arab-Israeli community by perpetuating the separation of Arab society in Israel. He also said he would not cooperate with Yair Golan, who leads the liberal Democrats party in Israel and has been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
A February survey done by the Midgam Institute, one of Israel’s most prominent public opinion polling firms, found that a Haddad-led party could win four Knesset seats and would take voters from both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the opposition.
The post Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad brawls during podcast debate on Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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‘The first time my band ever encountered such hostility’
[On Aug. 2, a performance by the klezmer band Dobranotch at a large folk festival in Galicia, Spain, was cut short when pro-Palestinian members of the audience began heckling the musicians and then throwing stones and other objects at them, targeting the band over recent concert appearances they made in Israel.
Afterwards, the festival organizers released a statement, explaining that they cancelled the concert out of concern for the musicians’ safety. The organizers also condemned the fact that “an event historically rooted in peaceful cultural exchange, community gathering, and musical celebration was disrupted by violence.”]
Dobranotch has a special connection with Galicia. In the early years of the band, we visited and performed there many times and developed a deep affection for its traditional music and culture. After many years away, we were glad to be invited back to perform at Festival de Pardiñas, a large local folk festival.
A few months before the event, the organizers informed us that the festival supported Palestine and that some members of the audience might display Palestinian flags. They asked how we would feel about this, given that our music is associated with Jewish culture. We replied that we had no objection, but did not want to be pressured into making political statements from the stage. This appeared to be fully understood.
We received a warm welcome, and the festival was well organized, with several thousand people in attendance. When we stepped onto the stage, a couple of Palestinian flags were visible in the audience. During our performance, more flags were attached to the barrier in front of the stage, and an enormous Palestinian flag was unfolded. A small but very vocal group at the front of the stage began chanting and held up handwritten signs demanding that we “say something about Palestine.”
I do not usually make political statements from the stage on behalf of the band. However, as the pressure continued to grow, remaining silent no longer felt possible. I therefore decided to share my personal views. I said that we are living through a period of growing polarization and radicalization in many parts of the world, visible in very different contexts, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and political divisions in the United States. My message was simple: We need to be kinder to one another.
But the pressure only intensified. They wanted me to speak more, and they tried to hand me a Palestinian flag to wave from the stage. I tried to explain that, in my view, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated — and the moment I said the word “complicated,” the crowd erupted.
I wanted to continue my statement, but I was not given the chance to do so.
A group of people shouted, insulted us and made hostile gestures. A person carrying a flag managed to get onto the stage. Objects began flying towards the stage, including stones. One of my fellow musicians was hit by a stone. At that moment, we realized that the situation had crossed a line and decided to stop the concert.
escândalo em Pardinhas, algum sionista no palco pic.twitter.com/yh6JNZDZEY
— maNu 🌰 (@nuMaGz) August 2, 2026
As we were leaving the stage, someone from the festival team, obviously shocked by the situation, suggested that I simply say “Free Palestine” so the performance could continue.
I support the right of all people, including both Israelis and Palestinians, to live in freedom, dignity and safety. But repeating political slogans under pressure would have been both meaningless and unacceptable.
The organizers subsequently announced that the concert was being stopped for safety reasons and reiterated the festival’s support for Palestine.
After the concert, we discovered evidence suggesting that the protest had been planned and coordinated in advance. We found social-media posts published before the festival accusing us of having performed in “occupied Palestine,” apparently referring to a previous concert in Tel Aviv, and calling for a boycott of our performance.
This was the first time Dobranotch had encountered such hostility, whether as a group performing Eastern European Jewish traditional music or as anti-war emigrants from Russia. It is deeply regrettable and disturbing that such a radicalized and hostile atmosphere could have developed at a traditional culture festival.
The incident shows how difficult public discussion has become when artists are expected to repeat prescribed political formulas rather than being allowed to express a thoughtful position — or simply to choose not to make political statements from the stage at all.
We look with deep sadness at the amount of violence and radicalization in the world, and we wish for peace, safety and freedom for everyone. We believe that our music can do more to bring people together than political arguments ever could. This is where we want to focus our energy.
The post ‘The first time my band ever encountered such hostility’ appeared first on The Forward.
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After settling antisemitism claims, Columbia now faces lawsuit from Palestinian students
A group of current and former Palestinian students and faculty at Columbia University filed a lawsuit this week, alleging that the university discriminated against them because of their Palestinian identity and treated them less favorably than other students engaged in political advocacy.
Filed in New York State Supreme Court, the complaint accuses the university of encouraging the mistreatment of Palestinian students by holding “unfair and biased disciplinary hearings” and creating a “hostile and unsafe environment” following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked university-wide protests and tensions on campus. The lawsuit alleges that the university “actively participated in and amplified the racially, ethnically, and politically motivated targeting of Palestinian students, staff, and faculty.”
The case is the latest in a string of legal battles born out of Columbia’s handling of campus protests. In July 2025, the Ivy League university on New York’s Upper West Side agreed to pay $21 million to settle charges by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged a hostile work environment for Jewish employees as a part of its federal resolution agreement with the Trump Administration.
In February 2026, the university also settled with a group of Jewish plaintiffs that had alleged the university failed to protect them from antisemitism. As a part of that settlement, Columbia agreed to implement additional programming to address antisemitism.
The new lawsuit alleges that Columbia discriminated against Palestinian students by, among other things, retaining private investigators to surveil students involved in a March 2024 “Resistance 101” teach-in. The event featured Khaled Barakat, whom the U.S. State Department has identified as a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. Following the event, the lawsuit states that six students were suspended from the university and evicted from Columbia housing.
The suit also accuses the university of failing to treat physical assaults of Palestinian students seriously, citing alleged incidents where keffiyehs were forcibly removed from Palestinian students, and an incident where a student sprayed a foul-smelling substance at pro-Palestinian demonstrators in January 2024.
That incident was initially investigated by the New York Police Department as a possible hate crime, with some claiming that the substance was a military grade chemical weapon, but Columbia later announced that the substance was a legal, non-toxic novelty fart spray. The students involved were suspended, but eventually reached a settlement with Columbia after arguing that they had wrongfully portrayed the incident as a chemical attack rather than a “harmless expression of his free speech.”
It also challenges Columbia’s decision to call in New York police to clear protest encampments and arrest demonstrators in the spring of 2024.
Plaintiffs include lecturer and former anthropology student Hadeel Assali, who allegedly canceled her classes so that students could attend Pro-Palestinian protests and who made headlines earlier this year when she gave a talk at the City University of New York’s law school called “The Underground in Gaza.” That lecture, and her dissertation at Columbia overseen by Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, sought to examine “the history and usage of tunnels in Gaza, focusing on land use and social organization in resistance to colonization,” apparently referring to the Hamas tunnel network.
Other plaintiffs include Bahia Munem, a former lecturer at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race; Mahdi Sabbagh, a Ph.D. student; Maryam Alwan, who graduated from Columbia in 2025 and was a student leader in the pro-Palestinian movement who was arrested during the encampment protests; and Layla Saliba, who earned a master’s degree in social work from Columbia in 2025.
In April 2025, the Columbia office of Institutional Equity investigated Saliba and Alwan for their role in writing an op-ed in the campus newspaper Columbia Spectator that called on the university to stop admitting Israeli students who had served in the Israel Defense Forces. The university later dropped its investigations into the two activists.
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages under New York City Human Rights Law, which prohibits discrimination or harassment based on race, creed, national origin, immigration status, or citizenship.
Columbia University did not immediately respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
The post After settling antisemitism claims, Columbia now faces lawsuit from Palestinian students appeared first on The Forward.
