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From bat mitzvah guest to backer of Israel in Congress: Nancy Pelosi’s Jewish journey
(JTA) — Five days after Nancy Pelosi made history in 2007 as the first woman elected to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, she held an event at her alma mater, the private Roman Catholic university, Trinity Washington.
She asked a rabbi, the Reform movement’s David Saperstein, to headline the event because she saw the movement as taking the lead on a crisis that deeply concerned her, in Darfur. “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,” Saperstein said, quoting Leviticus.
Pelosi was so pleased with Saperstein’s remarks that afterwards she pulled him into a family photo.
“I want you in this,” she told Saperstein as she grabbed his arm.
American Jews have been in the picture for Pelosi since she was born, when her father helped lead the movement in the United States to garner government support for the establishment of a Jewish state, and through her close relationship with Jewish Democrats whom she promoted to leadership roles in Congress.
Pelosi, who is 82, said Thursday she would step down as leader of the Democrats in the House, after her party lost the chamber to Republicans, albeit by a much smaller margin than anyone expected.
Here are some Jewish highlights from Pelosi’s career.
Following in her father’s footsteps
Pelosi was born into a family of prominent and powerful Baltimore Democrats.
As a congressman in the 1940s, her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, was outspoken in his criticism of the Roosevelt administration for not doing enough to stop the carnage in Europe and he was an early advocate of Jewish statehood. (Pelosi loves to tell people that there’s a soccer stadium named for him north of Haifa.)
After his congressional gig, D’Alesandro became Baltimore’s mayor, and forged a close relationship with the city’s Jewish community. “She likes to say that, growing up in Baltimore, she went to a bar or bat mitzvah every Saturday,” Amy Friedkin, a past president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Pelosi has at least two Jewish grandchildren. In 2003, she told AIPAC, “Last week I celebrated my birthday and my grandchildren — ages 4 and 6 — called to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ And the surprise, the real gift, was that they sang it in Hebrew.”
Carrying Israel close to her heart
Pelosi has visited Israel multiple times and has hosted Israeli leaders in Washington. One of her closest relationships was with Dalia Itzik, the Labor Party member of Knesset with whom Pelosi formed a bond because they both made history around the same time, as the first women speakers in their parliaments.
United States House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, holds the military identity disc of kidnapped Israeli soldiers during a ceremony at the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, on April 1, 2007. (Michal Fattal/Flash90)
Itzik was a leading advocate in Israel for the families of Israelis held captive in Arab lands. She gave Pelosi the dogtags of three Israelis who were missing in the 1982-1986 Lebanon war (they were eventually confirmed dead). Pelosi brought the dogtags to her meetings with Arab officials she believed might be able to help bring about resolution for the families — including on a 2007 mission to Syria that infuriated the Bush administration.
She promoted Jewish members of her caucus
A number of Jewish Democrats filled top positions under Pelosi’s two stints as House speaker, from 2007 to 2011, and since 2019.
In 2004, Pelosi saw a glittering future in a young woman just elected from South Florida, and two years later named Debbie Wasserman Schultz chief deputy whip, launching a leadership trajectory that would take Wasserman Schultz to the chairmanship of the Democratic Party.
Top Jewish committee chairs under Pelosi have included the late Tom Lantos of California (Foreign Affairs); Eliot Engel of New York (Foreign Affairs); Adam Schiff of California (Intelligence); Ted Deutch of Florida (Ethics); Susan Wild of Pennsylvania (Ethics); and Jerry Nadler of New York (Judiciary). Jewish members such as Schiff, Nadler, Engel and Jamie Raskin of Maryland took leading roles in impeachment hearings.
Raskin and Eliane Luria of Virginia have been prominent on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection spurred by former President Sonald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing
Just because Pelosi was close to the pro-Israel community did not mean she assumed its every policy or political position.
She got scattered boos in 2007 at an AIPAC conference when she announced plans to press for the downsizing of U.S. troops in Iraq, in part because then-Vice President Dick Cheney told the same conference that reducing a U.S. presence in Iraq would embolden Iran and make Israel vulnerable.
In 2008, when it looked like Barack Obama would overtake Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Pelosi opposed a procedural measure that might have checked Obama’s ascent. Twenty prominent Jewish Democrats, spearheaded by Israeli-American entertainment mogul and megadonor Haim Saban wrote Pelosi to tell her to keep out of the presidential stakes, allowing “superdelegates” to contradict the will of the people. She replied, more or less, thanks but no thanks.
A year later, she was clashing with Saban again when he sought to keep his friend Jane Harman, a California Jewish Democrat, in the top spot on the intelligence committee. Pelosi had her way and reportedly “went ballistic” at Saban for interfering.
Pelosi also spearheaded the successful effort in 2015 to keep Congress from nixing Obama’s Iran nuclear deal once he was president, as the pro-Israel community wanted her to do.
An Israeli poem remains her lodestone in times of crisis
Pelosi has taken in recent years to quoting Ehud Manor’s song, “I Have No Other Country,” most recently when she delivered her first remarks after her husband was grievously wounded by a home invader spurred in part by Trump’s election lies and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
At first, the assumption was that a smart Jewish aide fed her the line to use at Jewish appearances, but the story was quite different. Isaac Herzog, then Israel’s opposition leader, consoled Pelosi in 2016 when they met at a Saban-underwritten dinner in Washington. Pelosi was mourning Trump’s presidential victory a month earlier.
JTA uncovered that story after Pelosi cited her favorite line in the poem on the House floor in the aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6 riots.
“I will not be silent now that my country has changed her face, I will not refrain from reminding her and singing here in her ear, until she opens her eyes,” she said.
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The post From bat mitzvah guest to backer of Israel in Congress: Nancy Pelosi’s Jewish journey appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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France Continues to See Surge in Antisemitism, New Government Data Shows, Amid Rampant Hostility Toward Jews
Procession arrives at Place des Terreaux with a banner reading, “Against Antisemitism, for the Republic,” during the march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate despite heightened security measures, according to a newly published data.
On Thursday, the French Interior Ministry released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warns that antisemitism remains “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Over the past 25 years, antisemitic acts “have never been as numerous as in the past three years,” the report says, noting a dramatic spike following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Les chiffres de l’antisémitisme en France en 2025 : un enracinement de la haine antijuive.
Le ministère de l’Intérieur a publié, ce jeudi 12 février 2026, les chiffres des actes antireligieux en France pour l’année 2025. Les données chiffrées concernant les actes antisémites… pic.twitter.com/PQXQfNwsqT
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) February 12, 2026
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled, leaving the Jewish community more exposed than ever.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to French officials, this latest report, which is based on documented cases and official complaints, still underestimates the true scope of the problem, largely due to widespread underreporting.
The first six months of 2025 alone saw more than 640 antisemitic incidents, a 27.5 percent decline from the same period in 2024, but a 112.5 percent increase compared to the first half of 2023, before the start of the war in Gaza.
The report also reveals a surge in physical attacks, totaling 126 incidents last year, with a striking 67.4 percent of all antisemitic acts aimed at people.
Of all recorded incidents, 30.5 percent of antisemitic outrages took place in private settings and 13.1 percent in educational institutions, but the true extent is likely higher, as these numbers do not account for school-related antisemitism reported by the French Ministry of National Education.
The latest data further indicates that anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling antisemitism, with one-third of incidents explicitly referencing Palestine or the war in Gaza.
The French government’s newly released figures come as the local Jewish community continues to face a growing climate of hostility, despite official efforts to increase security and curb the rise in anti-Jewish hatred.
In a shocking second antisemitic attack in less than a week, a 13-year-old boy in Paris was brutally beaten Monday by a knife-wielding assailant.
On his way to a synagogue in Paris’s 18th arrondissement, the schoolboy was physically attacked by a group of five individuals who beat him, pressed a knife to his throat, called him a “dirty Jew,” and stole his belongings, the French news outlet Le Parisien reported.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the victim was walking to a synagogue, clutching his kippah in his hand rather than wearing it for fear of being recognized, when five attackers confronted him. The group then stole his AirPods, sneakers, and coat, and forced him to empty his pockets.
The boy also told authorities that he was shoved, punched in the face, and threatened with a knife to his throat before his attackers stole his belongings, shouting antisemitic remarks throughout the assault.
In a separate incident over the weekend, three Jewish men wearing kippahs were physically threatened with a knife and forced to flee after leaving their Shabbat services near the Trocadéro in southwest Paris’s 16th arrondissement, European Jewish Press reported.
As the victims were leaving a nearby synagogue and walking through the neighborhood, they noticed a man staring at them. The assailant then approached the group and repeatedly asked, “Are you Jews? Are you Israelis?”
When one of them replied “yes,” the man pulled a knife from his pocket and began threatening the group. The victims immediately ran and found police officers nearby. None of the victims were injured.
Last week, a Jewish primary school in eastern Paris was vandalized, with windows smashed and security equipment damaged, prompting a criminal investigation and renewed outrage among local Jewish leaders as targeted antisemitic attacks continued to escalate.
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Antisemitism bills head to NYC Council Committee to Combat Hate
The New York City Council committee is moving forward with a series of bills aimed at addressing the rise in antisemitism, including a controversial proposal that would limit protests outside houses of worship.
The newly created Committee to Combat Hate is set to hold a hearing later this month on seven related bills introduced last month by Council Speaker Julie Menin, who is Jewish. The measures include a proposal to establish a 100-foot buffer zone outside synagogues and educational centers, increased funding for security measures, expanded education on online harassment, and improved reporting of antisemitic incidents.
Antisemitic incidents continue to account for a majority of reported hate crimes in New York City. According to the New York City Police Department, antisemitic incidents made up 57% of all hate crimes reported in 2025. The trend has continued into the new year, with more than half of all hate crimes reported in January targeting Jews or Jewish institutions, NYPD data showed.
Menin, who is the first Jew to lead the city’s legislative body, said last month that the council would vote on her five-point plan to combat antisemitism at Thursday’s meeting, hoping to pass it on an “aggressive and fast timetable.” A council spokesperson said the timetable has since been modified to align with the Feb. 25 committee hearing. After that hearing, the Speaker will decide when the bills go to the full council for a vote.
The panel is chaired by Councilmember Yusef Salaam, who is Muslim and has spoken about the need to confront antisemitism alongside Islamophobia. “When antisemitism rises, Islamophobia often follows,” Salam said at a news conference when the speaker announced her plan. “When Islamophobia is tolerated, antisemitism finds new grounds to grow.”
Before she became speaker, Menin privately promised Inna Vernikov, a Republican from Brooklyn, to create a subcommittee dedicated to combating antisemitism. Instead, she formed a task force, co-chaired by Vernikov and Eric Dinowitz, a Democrat from the Bronx and chair of the seven-member Jewish Caucus. The appointment of Vernikov drew criticism for her incendiary remarks on social media about Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Party’s approach to antisemitism.
Mamdani, a strident Israel critic who faces scrutiny from mainstream Jewish organizations over his response to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests, said he broadly supports the package introduced by Menin but expressed reservations about the legality of the proposed 100-foot buffer zone around synagogues and other houses of worship. “I wouldn’t sign any legislation that we find to be outside of the bounds of the law,” he said.
On Wednesday, during a budget hearing at the state Legislature, Mamdani was questioned again about his response to antisemitic rhetoric, including the slogan “globalize the intifada,” that has been chanted at protests against the war in Gaza. “I strongly discourage the language, and I have not used the language,” Mamdani said.
Progressive groups that support Mamdani, including Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, called on council members to reject the buffer zone bill. “When houses of worship host non-religious political events, they are making a choice with the knowledge that they might be protested for doing so,” the groups said.
Mamdani has faced criticism twice for his response to protests outside synagogues hosting events about real estate investment in Israel. On Jan. 8, protesters outside a Queens synagogue featured chants of “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here.” Though Mamdani quickly condemned the language, he had to follow up later to denounce Hamas.
Just after Mamdani’s election in November, he issued a mixed response to a demonstration outside Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue that featured anti-Israel and antisemitic slogans. He initially questioned the use of a sacred place for an event promoting migration to Israel. He later clarified his statement and said he would consider legislation limiting protests outside synagogues.
Critics said the response, which took nearly a day, was slow and undercut Mamdani’s repeated pledges to protect Jewish New Yorkers, and raised fresh questions about what kind of mayor he intends to be. New York City is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
The post Antisemitism bills head to NYC Council Committee to Combat Hate appeared first on The Forward.
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James Van Der Beek, ‘Dawson’s Creek’ star, had longstanding ties to Israel
(JTA) — James Van Der Beek, the beloved star of the 1990s television show “Dawson’s Creek” who married his wife in Tel Aviv in 2010, has died.
Van Der Beek died on Wednesday at 48, following a years-long battle with colorectal cancer.
“Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning,” his family wrote on Instagram Wednesday. “He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity, and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.”
Van Der Beek’s breakout role, playing 15-year-old Dawson Leery in the hit teen drama “Dawson’s Creek” in 1998, earned him widespread acclaim and cemented him as a teenage heartthrob of the early 2000s.
Van Der Beek, who was not Jewish, met his wife, Kimberly Brook, in 2009 while traveling in Tel Aviv at a restaurant on Bograshov Beach.
In August 2010, the pair returned to Israel where they were married at the Kabbalah Center in Tel Aviv and toured around the country during their honeymoon.
In a post on Instagram in 2021, Van Der Beek recalled his time in Israel and Hebron, a city in the West Bank, detailing shouts of “Mazel Tov” from Israelis as well as the arrest of their tour guide by Israeli police.
“This is by no means a complete picture of the situation, and I won’t pretend to understand the geopolitical complexities fueling this conflict…,” wrote Van Der Beek. “But there’s a lot of humanity on both sides of that razor wire, and whatever ‘solution’ fails to recognize that… isn’t a solution.”
Van Der Beek is survived by his wife and their six children, Olivia, Joshua, Annabel, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Jeremiah.
Among the close friends and associates who mourned Van Deer Beek after his death were “Golda” director Guy Nattiv and Becky Tahel, an Israeli-American creative whose career in Hollywood began as a babysitter to the Van Der Beeks’ young children.
“Looking back at so many moments, so many evenings that became sacred because you were in them,” Nattiv posted on Instagram. “Birthdays, Jewish holidays, crowded tables, loud laughter, NFL games and concerts. James, you weren’t just present in our lives you were woven into them. Every piece of you lives inside our hearts now.”
The post James Van Der Beek, ‘Dawson’s Creek’ star, had longstanding ties to Israel appeared first on The Forward.