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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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Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Brazilians reelected Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva as president, defeating the center-right senator Flavio Bolsonaro, putting the breaks on a regional shift toward closer ties with Israel.
The current president, a left-wing leader of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party), obtained 51.79% of the valid votes, while Bolsonaro received 48.21%.
Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party, had pledged a close diplomatic partnership with Israel and cultivated ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Lula has become a critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Bolsonaro said he did not accept the election results, although it is not clear how he could challenge them.
In January 2024, Lula’s government endorsed South Africa’s decision to bring a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. A month later, Lula compared Palestinian suffering in Gaza to Hitler’s murder of the Jews, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Israel. Brazil’s Jewish umbrella organization, CONIB, publicly condemned the comparison as a distortion that offended the memory of Holocaust victims and their descendants.
The remarks were also criticized by the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Sen. Bolsonaro promised a big shift toward Israel when he spoke on June 28, 2026, in Buenos Aires in a meeting with Jewish leaders. “In 2027, Brazil will not only once again have an ambassador to Israel, but will also take the step of moving its embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem,” he said.
That night he also lauded the 120,000 Jews in Brazil, saying, “They are men and women who rank among the brightest in Brazilian medicine, industry, science, culture and business.”
After Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round on Oct. 4, Netanyahu sent a message the following day on X: “Congratulations @FlavioBolsonaro on yesterday’s vote and good luck in the final. I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil. Best wishes for your great victory, my friend.”
Since 2023, several Latin American countries have strengthened ties with Israel, in some cases reversing policies adopted by their predecessors, among them:
Argentine President Javier Milei elected in 2023, who makes support for Israel central to his foreign policy and meets with families of hostages Hamas abducted in its deadly Oct. 7, 2023, raid on Israel, which launched the current war;
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz Pereira, elected in 2025, who restored diplomatic relations with Israel severed by his predecessor;
President Nasry Asfura of Honduras, elected in 2025, who immediately formally recognized Israel’s new ambassador, a process his predecessor left in limbo;
Chilean President José Antonio Kast, elected in 2025, who is rebuilding ties with Israel diminished by his predecessor;
and Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, elected in May, who restored diplomatic ties with Israel severed by his predecessor, sent his foreign minister to inaugurate an embassy in Jerusalem and pulled out of the ICJ genocide case against Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift appeared first on The Forward.
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In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump disparaged Jewish voters who support Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, at a rally in Port Huron on Sunday.
“Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump told some 4,000 supporters in the city north of Detroit, where he stumped for Republican nominee Mike Rogers. “You should never speak to them again.”
Hundreds of Michigan Jews have pledged to vote for El-Sayed, who polls indicate is narrowly leading Rogers in a race key to determining control of the Senate. Another subset of Jews has pressured El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, to defend “Jewish safety — including for Zionist Jews” and “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” Still others have urged their community members to reject El-Sayed outright and back Rogers.
El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel, saying the country has committed genocide in Gaza and is “not an ally.” Those positions divided the Democratic party during his primary campaign against pro-Israel U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly bested in August. A former public health official, El-Sayed has also emphasized affordability in healthcare, housing and education. He has made a concentrated push to reach undecided Jewish voters in the homestretch before the Nov. 3 midterm election, hiring a Jewish outreach director last week.
Trump has in the past accused Jews who vote for Democrats of being “disloyal to Jewish people” and “disloyal to Israel.”
He said at the Port Huron rally that he is “polling at 99% in Israel,” which will hold national elections on Tuesday.
Trump did not cite evidence for the claim, which is unsupported by publicly available surveys. While he has historically scored high popularity among Israelis, a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute in June found the Israeli public’s trust in him was declining. The poll said that 12% of Israelis reported having a great deal of trust in Trump, down from 21% in May, while the share of Israelis with complete distrust in him rose from 32% to 37%.
Trump joined his comments about Jews and Israel to anti-Muslim rhetoric about El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim in the Senate if he is elected.
Trump baselessly called El-Sayed a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member” who was “on the side of the terrorists,” adding that he would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”
He threatened that “if Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”
Trump claimed that El-Sayed’s half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. On the first anniversary of the attack, Abdelhadi posted a video that said, “no matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we’re going through, the horizon of justice is just around the corner,” according to The New York Times. She did not directly mention or celebrate the violence.
Trump also said that El-Sayed’s mother had “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.” A Times investigation reported that El-Sayed’s mother worked as a nurse in Missouri for a Muslim aid group that was later designated by the U.S. government as a supporter of terrorist groups. She was never accused of wrongdoing.
El-Sayed’s campaign has said that he “disagrees” with his sister on “a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.” He was raised by his father and stepmother and has said that he had little relationship with his biological mother while growing up.
Former President Barack Obama campaigned with El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, saying the candidate was “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’ appeared first on The Forward.
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CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties
(JTA) — GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Greenwich Public Schools in Connecticut said it would proceed with a planned fall trip for sixth graders at a Jewish camp in Massachusetts as planned this week, despite pressure from a Muslim advocacy organization over the camp’s Israeli symbols and Israel-related programming.
CAIR Connecticut, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, objected to the trip, saying that programming at Eisner Camp in Great Barrington “incorporates connections to Israel,” the chapter’s board chair Farhan Memon wrote in a letter to Greenwich Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones dated Oct. 13.
The four-day Greenwich Schools field trip was organized by the Outdoor Classroom project, which works with seven locations in New England, including Eisner. Four of the camps are affiliated with Christian organizations, and two have no religious affiliation. With its clients, Outdoor Classroom coordinates nature-related learning programs for kids.
Memon wrote that some parents in Greenwich had viewed a video and photos of previous school events at Eisner and “identified Israeli flags and yellow ribbons prominently displayed in spaces used during school visits.”
“At the very least, spaces used by Greenwich students on any school trip should be free of national and political displays,” Memon wrote.
Eisner director Paul Isserles said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “We welcome Outdoor Classroom to use our camp facilities. Throughout the year many outside organizations rent our facilities for various programs. URJ Eisner Camp is proud to have an Israeli flag displayed for our camp programs.”
When it comes to visiting groups, “Frankly, we are not regularly asked to do anything to remove those symbols or to cover them,” said Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs in a telephone interview with JTA. “Because to be honest, we wouldn’t.”
Answering Memon’s letter on Oct. 14, Jones wrote in an email that her school district “acknowledges that individuals and families have vastly different views regarding global events” and that it intends to “provide an inclusive and safe educational environment for all Greenwich Public School students, including when they are on field trips under our care.”
She added that she had “made it clear to a few families that we will not take a political or religious stand.” JTA has seen both the CAIR letter and the email response.
CAIR Connecticut did not respond to JTA’s query.
CAIR’s national website says the organization promotes interfaith dialogue and “condemns all acts of violence against civilians by any individual, group or state.”
The Reform movement founded the 600-acre camp in 1958 as the Joseph Eisner Camp Institute for Living Judaism. It is located in the Berkshire Hills south of the town center of Great Barrington.
It is one of more than a dozen of the movement’s overnight camps in the North America. Many of those camps are rented throughout the year by groups that have nothing to do with Judaism, URJ’s Rabbi Jacobs said. “If a group rents the camp, they come up with their own agenda,” he said.
He added, “There are flags and other symbols of Judaism and of Israel in our camps, and we’re proud of that.”
Some parents had raised concerns about the venue as early as March. CAIR urged the district to stop using the camp in the Oct. 14 letter.
Removing decorations from the camp would not be enough, he said, noting that parents were upset after seeing promotional material about Eisner bringing Jewish campers to visit Israeli army bases under the Gadna, an Israeli military youth program.
A July 2019 post on Eisner Camp’s website says a group of participants in its Israel trip chose Gadna, stayed at an army base, practiced drills and learned to shoot at a target.
“URJ Eisner Camp participants who go to Israel have not participated in Gadna since 2023,” camp director Isserles said in a statement provided to JTA. “Our Israel programming at camp and in Israel is focused on Jewish identity, community, education, and connection to Israel.”
What CAIR is saying is that “A Jewish institution can be an unfit place for public-school children because it is visibly Jewish and identifies openly with Israel,” wrote blogger and Eisner alumnus Rabbi Jeff Salkin in his “Unfiltered” Substack on Oct. 19.
“A Jewish institution should not have to hide its Jewish identity to count as a fit place for other people’s children. You would not ask a church camp to remove a cross, or a Muslim camp to take down a crescent. A standard that demands such hiding makes Jewish identity itself the problem,” Salkin wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties appeared first on The Forward.
