The Republican National Committee (RNC) has hired author and model Elizabeth Pipko, whom The Algemeiner selected for its 2023 list of the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life, as its newest spokesperson.

Pipko, who worked for former US President Donald Trump’s long-shot bid for the White House in 2016, revealed the news on a New York City area radio show last Monday. With the position, she will continue an unplanned career in US politics that has drawn opprobrium from critics who continue to scorn both her modeling career and her support for one of the most controversial American political figures in recent memory.

“‘Swimsuit model joins RNC’ is what I’ve been reading in the press lately,” Pipko told The Algemeiner during an interview on Monday. “Apparently, the fact that I have modeled in a swimsuit supersedes any degrees I’ve earned, any books I’ve written, any advocacy work I’ve done, or any charitable work or anything else I will ever do.”

Born in 1995, Elizabeth “Liz” Pipko is the descendant of Russian Jews who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States in the 1980s to escape antisemitism and an authoritarian government which reinforced its authority by terrorizing its own citizens.

Her parents used their fresh start in the US to give their children a better life. They kept a young Elizabeth busy studying foreign languages — she learned four, including Mandarin — and violin. In middle school, Pipko was elected captain of the math team, and she went on to earn degrees from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. The opportunities the US accorded Pipko’s family made her fervently patriotic, she told The Algemeiner.

“I’m the daughter of immigrants who came here with $90 in their pockets, and it’s humbling that I’ve been offered this kind of job just one generation removed from their arrival here,” Pipko explained. “It’s significant because it represents, to me and hopefully to other people, what’s possible only in the United States of America. My dad used to tell me stories about how he would walk home instead of taking the subway so that he could afford dinner. Regardless of where people are politically, they should celebrate America’s unique ability to lift people up.”

As recounted in her 2020 memoir, titled Finding My Place: My Parents’ American Dream Come True, becoming a political operative for Trump — as well as being associated with the Republican Party in general — has blocked Pipko from joining the “glitterati” of high fashion, a circle to which she believes she would have likely been admitted with open arms had she chosen to promote the politics of the progressive left. She regrets nothing, however, and believes the fate of the Jewish people in America, as well as that of the US-Israel relationship, hangs on the outcome of this year’s presidential election — which, she hopes, will be a victory for Trump.

“The answer in November is another Trump administration and not another Biden administration,” she said. “We can right now make a direct comparison between how President Biden and President Trump treated Israel and responded to rising antisemitism. There is one president who after two decades of broken promises moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, who recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, who brokered the Abraham Accords and extended protections of Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act] to include antisemitism. Under the current administration, there has been nothing but chaos abroad and rising antisemitism here at home.”

Beyond her political work, Pipko has been active fighting antisemitism, encouraging support for Israel, and promoting Holocaust education. Last year, she launched a new project, “Lest People Forget,” a digital museum designed to allow individuals anywhere to contribute materials in order to help preserve the history of the Holocaust.

For Pipko, a strong America is good for the wellbeing of the Jewish people. When asked to identify the biggest problems facing the US today, she cited declining faith in the country’s principles and ideological polarization as obstacles to a new American Century.

“These days, I reflect on President Ronald Reagan’s warning that freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction,” Pipko said. “When I was a child, my parents told me every second they could about the magnitude of the American experiment and what it continues to mean to the world. Our chances of overcoming the threats we face today and handing down to future generations the America we know and love would be greatly increased by renewed pride in what he have here. Too many of us don’t appreciate it.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Only in America’: Algemeiner ‘J100’ Pick Elizabeth Pipko Discusses New Role With Republican National Committee first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Several Islamic preachers and other authority figures in the US have been leveraging their positions in recent weeks to disseminate hateful messages about Israel and the Jewish people, contributing to a global surge in antisemitism that has reached record levels since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

Certain imams at mosques across the country have used their platforms to deliver sermons in which they pushed antisemitic conspiracies about Jews and promoted false claims about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, and elsewhere, according to research by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

In a Friday sermon delivered on April 26, Dr. Fadi Yousef Kablawi of the North Miami Islamic Center accused Israel of being “worse than the Nazis” and touted conspiracy theories that Israeli aid organizations used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a cover to harvest innocent Haitians’ organs.

“It is not enough that they [Israel] stole their land; now they steal their skin,” he said, suggesting that Israel is engaging in similar practices during its current war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

“Go and find who is behind organ trading in this country or this world. Go and ask them, those who know,” Kablawi urged his congregants. “All that is because there is no God for these people. All that is because these people look at you as nothing but a mistake, or at best, you were created for their service.”

Among his supplications at the end of his sermon, he pleaded, “Oh God, fall upon the tyrannical Jews,” and “fall upon the brothers of apes and pigs … Oh God cut off their seed.”

The North Miami Islamic Center (or Masjid As-Sunnah An-Nabawiyyah), where Kablawi serves as the sole imam, calls itself “one of the largest Islamic centers in the State of Florida.”

Days earlier on April 20, a different mosque in Fort Lauderdale, Florida featured a sermon by an unnamed imam who claimed “they [Jews, unlike Christians] are always injecting the poison inside the communities to affect them.”

His colleague, another unnamed imam, alleged at the same venue one week later that elite universities — currently the site of an eruption of anti-Israel protests — are “controlled by Zionists.”

“Why do they want this social unrest? In order to push their agenda,” he continued. “And their agenda is about what? It is about totalitarianism. It is about control. It is about subjugating every human being on the surface of this Earth to one group, led by the Zionists of this world. That is pretty much it.”

The speaker claimed that the university demonstrations were a cover for increased government surveillance while infiltrating Mossad [Israeli intelligence] agents were instigating campus violence.

“You cannot criticize the prime minister [of Israel], and you cannot deny the Holocaust, and you cannot say that it is a genocide [in Gaza]. Yes, I can! Yes, I can! We all do, we all do,” he said.

The same imam had recently referenced antisemitic assertions about the Talmud that Jews believe gentiles are “animals in human form … created to serve them.” Further notable libels from the sermon included him saying that it is “an honor for the Jews to shoot Gazan babies while they are still in their incubators and it is permissible for them to steal land from non-Jews,” and claiming that “throughout history you will find that Jews orchestrated everything against Muslims. But who executed? The Christians.”

Abdelrahman Badawy, imam of the Muslim American Society (MAS) Staten Island Center, preached at the MAS Youth Center the same day as Kablawi’s sermon, vocalizing his belief that “the devils, the Zionists, have no interest in leaving the Muslims alone over there. They don’t care which borders you go back to; they are going to keep taking and taking and taking.”

Badawy drew parallels between modern Israel and Banu Qurayza, the Jewish tribe that feuded with Muhammad and the early Muslims and were executed for their alleged treason.

“Banu Qurayza had not officially taken up arms yet … They did. They officially broke the treaty … Well, it wasn’t official because they have their sneaky ways,” he said. “So, these people were cunning, they were conniving, they were foul, and you see the parallels today. They go for the women and children.”

Other public statements by Islamic scholars were directed at anti-Israel college protesters.

Tarik Ata, the imam of the Orange County Islamic Foundation in California, preached last month that “every ounce of fear and anger that you put in the heart of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his thugs, and all those who support, collaborate, and finance this violent and inhumane war against a primarily civilian population — every ounce of fear that you put in their hearts by your lawful protests is rewarded by Allah.”

He added, “Allah never wastes a reward for those who do a good deed. Allah says in this verse that whatever step you take that brings you pain — emotional pain, I mean — that brings fear into the hearts of these cruel people, these enemies of humanity, that you will be rewarded for it.”

Ata also conspicuously did not refer to the Holocaust by its name: “The only comparison today between Nazi Germany and that whole fiasco — that terrible situation — and what is going on today is that you, Netanyahu, are similar to Hitler and Zionism is similar to Nazism.”

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), characterized the effort to convert Jews as a religious duty while speaking on May 3 at the Muslim Community Center of the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Our number one priority today is da’wa [literally ‘invitation,’ with the meaning of ‘Islamic outreach/proselytism’],” he urged. “We are people all throughout this country who are hurting and who are suffering, and they need this message, they need the goodness of this Islamic nation to help them.”

Walid continued, “I looked to the left, I saw nothing, but a bunch of white Jewish people – women who we wouldn’t even think were dressed appropriately – were putting up their hands, and the Muslims said ‘amen’ and these Jewish people said ‘amen.’ They need to be invited to Islam.”

Walid’s comments came after CAIR’s co-founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, said in November that he was “happy” to witness Hamas’ rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, when the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped over 250 others as hostages. The massacre launched the ongoing war in Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas and freeing the hostages.

Since the atrocities of Oct. 7, there has been a global surge in antisemitism, with several countries reporting record numbers of antisemitic incidents.

The Anti-Defamation League released a report last month showing antisemitic incidents in the US rose 140 percent last year, reaching an all-time high. Most of the outrages occurred after Oct. 7, during the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

On college campuses specifically, the ADL report found that antisemitic incidents rose 321 percent, disrupting the studies of Jewish students and causing many to feel unsafe.

Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents have also skyrocketed to record highs in several other countries around the world, especially in Europe, since Oct. 7.

In October, Cygnal conducted a survey indicating 57.5 percent of Muslim American respondents felt that Hamas was at least “somewhat justified” in attacking Israel “as part of their struggle for a Palestinian state.”

The post Islamic Preachers in US Escalate Antisemitic Rhetoric Amid Gaza War, Campus Protests first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Jewish chef and cookbook author Eitan Bernath is hosting a new original digital series that follows him as he samples Jewish cuisine around Mexico City, cooks with natives, and learns about the culinary history of the city’s Jewish Mexican community.

Among his adventures in “Eitan Explores: Mexico City,” which premieres on Monday, Bernath prepares a traditional Shabbat stew called “Sobremesa,” tries Mexico street food, and visits sites and synagogues that are part of the city’s Jewish community. He also meets locals, eats with them, and learns more about the city’s Jewish roots. Each two-minute episode of the series will highlight the diverse Jewish life, culture, and food found in Mexico City, from the kitchens, restaurants, and homes in Mexico’s capital.

In the show’s premiere episode, Bernath meets Estrella Jafif, a native CDMX chef who has Lebanese and Cuban roots. Estrella takes Bernath on a Friday to her favorite local market where they taste local produce and Oaxacan cheeses and buy ingredients to cook a traditional meal for Shabbat. They also see Jewish kippah-wearing customers shop for themselves before Shabbat begins.

In one episode, Bernath tastes vegetarian Mexican street foods at a tented taco stand owned by a non-Jewish woman named Elsa who has been serving the local Jewish community since the 1960s. She tells Bernath about how Jewish locals requested meat-free options from her mom, the founder of the taco stand, so they can eat there. It has now become a neighborhood staple.

The seven-episode docuseries was produced by Eitan Productions and distributed in partnership with Tastemade. It will stream on Tastemade’s Instagram account, with an episode being released daily through May 19.

The post Chef Eitan Bernath Learns About Jewish Cuisine, History From Mexico City in New Docuseries first appeared on Algemeiner.com.