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How a Kentucky lawmaker’s friendship with a Jewish woman helped inspire her viral speech decrying anti-trans legislation
(JTA) — Pamela Stevenson, a Democratic state representative in Kentucky, was chatting recently with her friend Zahava Kurland about one of Kurland’s duties at her Orthodox synagogue: preparing the dead for burial.
“She was trying to explain to me certain things that had to be done,” Stevenson, who is also a Black Baptist minister, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. The seemingly esoteric topic was one of many the two women have discussed over more than a decade of weekly Friday-morning conversations — which cover anything from politics and friendship to faith and being one’s true self.
Stevenson said her conversations with Kurland have made her attuned to Jewish sensibilities. “She’s always listening for and giving me information” about Judaism and Jewish experiences, said Stevenson, who was first elected to the Kentucky legislature in 2020.
So Kurland was not surprised when, in a viral speech on Wednesday decrying her fellow lawmakers for signing off on a law that bans gender-affirming care for trans youth, Stevenson also centered antisemitism.
“First, you hated Black people,” Stevenson said, addressing the Republican lawmakers who voted for the legislation. “Then, you hated Jews. Now, you’re hating everybody. So the question is, when the only people left are you, will you hate yourself?”
Kurland said her friend is a listener and naturally empathetic, so she would be sensitive to how hatreds intersect.
“She’s truly well balanced,” said Kurland. “She truly cares about people.”
Stevenson says she looks forward to her Friday morning talks with Kurland. She said the conversations have helped give her a more expansive perspective on life, which drives her to fight bigotry.
“I really believe that I will never know as much as she knows,” Stevenson said. “But I can develop an appreciation for what it’s like and not use my view of the world as the only view of the world.”
What prompted Stevenson’s floor speech was the overwhelmingly Republican legislature’s override of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a law that bans a range of medical treatments and practices for trans youth. It outlaws doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment to youth; requires them to cease care if it has already begun; bans conversations in schools about gender identity or sexual orientation; bans school districts from allowing transgender students to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity; and allows teachers to refuse to use a child’s preferred pronouns.
The bill was introduced weeks after state Sen. Karen Berg’s trans son, Henry Berg-Brousseau, died by suicide. Berg, who is Jewish, said that referring to the anti-trans bill as a parents’ rights bill is an “absolutely despicable affront to me personally,” according to The Washington Post. Stevenson, who has appeared alongside Berg at rallies, called her “phenomenal” and said, “This is infinitely more personal for her.”
Stevenson said that she mentioned anti-Jewish hatred in her speech because she believes hatreds are mutually reinforcing, and she connects the anti-trans sentiment she sees with rising racism and antisemitism.
“If you have a model where you have to hate somebody to win, then you always have to have somebody to hate,” she said. “People say it was out of nowhere, but it’s really out of somewhere. We’ve gone through the cycles of the Native Americans, the Black folks have been hated for a long time, the disabled. Everybody is always on the bottom of that model. And in just recent years, it was the Muslims, then it was the immigrants, and then it was back around the Blacks again. And so because of this overflow of hate, there’s been an uptick in antisemitic actions.”
Stevenson said her mission is to make people cognizant of the roots of hatred. “People want to say that all the attacks against the Jewish temples and the Jewish people in recent times came out of nowhere,” she said, referring to reports of a spike in antisemitic attacks. “No, it did not. We just have chosen not to pay attention to what’s been said.”
Kurland, who is a member of Congregation Beth Jacob in Atlanta, and Stevenson, a retired Air Force Colonel and an attorney who is running to be Kentucky’s attorney general, met in 2006 when Stevenson was serving in the Air Force and Kurland was working as an accountant in Atlanta. They attended a three-day course with Landmark, the personal development program that presses participants to face uncomfortable truths about themselves.
“When we were closer-in logistically she came over very often for Shabbos meals,” Kurland said. “I often invite people for Shabbos meals and the holidays and I love explaining, you know, how Judaism gave more to the world than anything, anybody, any person. Torah, Judaism has given the world its whole structure for society.”
The Air Force started moving Stevenson around. “That’s when we started talking on the phone all the time, because we couldn’t get together,” Kurland said.
Stevenson is “a committed listener, someone who’s going to hear you and call you out on your stuff,” Kurland said. “It’s not a friendship where you massage each other’s egos. It’s a friendship where you hold each other to account for who you say you are.”
They each speak with outrage at the lawmakers who, they feel, would breach the relationship between a parent and a child.
“As a mother, how dare you interfere with one of the most intimate relationships?” Stevenson said two weeks ago during debate on the bill, addressing Rep. Jennifer Decker, a Republican who was its lead sponsor. “We have no right to interfere in the parental rights.”
Kurland agrees. “These are all decisions to be made between a child and his parents or her parents and their doctor,” she said. “It has no place for the government to have anything to do with anything.”
And both Kurland and Stevenson say religion is a key part of their identities.
“Judaism is the center part of my life,” said Kurland. “It’s what I am, it’s who I am, it’s what I’m about. And as a Jew, you cannot sit by and let another one of God’s human beings [be excluded]. I mean, when we honor other people, we are doing God’s work. We are honoring God. When we cut people out, then we’re not “
Stevenson likewise calls herself “a woman of faith.”
“I believe what is required, in almost every faith that I know of, is to love one another and take care of the people around us,” she said.
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The post How a Kentucky lawmaker’s friendship with a Jewish woman helped inspire her viral speech decrying anti-trans legislation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader
(JTA) — Canada’s main progressive party aims to make a comeback under its new leader Avi Lewis, a Jewish anti-Zionist.
Lewis, a filmmaker and former journalist, was elected to lead the New Democrats on Sunday. He campaigned on principles that have energized the global left, including affordability, the environment and unapologetic anti-Zionism. He repeated his position on Israel in his acceptance speech in Winnipeg.
“When Israel commits a genocide in Gaza, we call it by its name, and we do everything in our power to bring it to an end,” Lewis said in his speech.
Lewis hopes to rebuild a party that suffered its worst losses in history during the 2025 federal election. Center-left voters who were alarmed by President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada flocked to the Liberal Party and elected Mark Carney as prime minister.
Lewis comes from a line of progressive royalty. His grandfather, David Lewis, was one of the founding members of the New Democrats and its leader in the 1970s. His father, Stephen Lewis, led the party in Ontario. He is also the great-grandson of Moishe Lewis, who was an outspoken member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Eastern Europe and immigrated to Canada in 1921.
Lewis is married to Naomi Klein, a prominent author and critic of Israel. Klein was among several writers who declined to participate in PEN America’s annual World Voices festival in 2024, saying the group failed to “stand firmly” with Palestinian writers. She also addressed protesters during a rally outside U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn during Passover that year, called “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel,” and urged Jews against worshipping the “false idol” of Zionism.
Lewis was formerly a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera. In a debate with other candidates in January, he described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person” seeking to “unlearn and unpack the Zionist myths that most Canadian Jews were brought up with.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, said it acknowledged Lewis’ victory “with a deep sense of sadness.”
“Avi Lewis is himself Jewish, and we respect his family’s history in this party,” the group said a statement. “But Jewish identity is not a shield against accountability. When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique. He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate.”
On the eve of the New Democratic Party’s leadership convention, CIJA joined dozens of rabbis from across the country in an open letter criticizing the party.
“Too often, the NDP’s response to antisemitism in Canada has been inconsistent, hesitant, or clouded by rhetoric that fails to recognize how hatred manifests in today’s environment,” said the letter.
Perhaps anticipating Lewis’ victory, they added, “Even more troubling is the repeated elevation of fringe or non-representative Jewish voices to deflect, dilute, or dismiss the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of the Canadian Jewish community.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the top Catholic clergy in Israel be allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ahead of Easter, in an attempt to calm tensions that flared after police blocked their access.
Police cited wartime restrictions when prohibiting Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and three other Catholic representatives from visiting the church, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, a holy day for Christians.
Many holy sites in the city, including the Western Wall for Jews and al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, have been closed or tightly restricted since the start of the Iran war last month because they lack bomb shelters for the number of people who typically gather there. Shrapnel from Iranian missiles have landed in the Old City multiple times, including near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the prohibitions on Pizzaballa’s access come at a time when some Christians are expressing concern that Israel is discriminating against them. A statement from the Latin Patriarchate on Sunday accusing Israel of having made a “hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations,” seemed to fuel those sentiments.
“For the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” the Latin Patriarchate said. “This incident is a grave precedent and disregards the sensibilities of billions of people around the world who, during this week, look to Jerusalem.”
Christians believe that the church is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection, making prayers at the site on Palm Sunday, which kicks off the week leading up to Easter, particularly significant. Pizzaballa was seeking to pray privately at the site, not lead a major service as is typical.
Criticism over the closure resounded across the globe, including among allies of the Israeli government. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the closure as “an insult” and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it “difficult to understand or justify” given that wartime rules prohibit only gatherings of 50 or more.
Soon, Israeli authorities were negotiating a special arrangement that would allow Pizzaballa and a handful of other Christian leaders access to the holy sites without opening them widely. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he called Pizzaballa personally to express his commitment to religious freedom.
“I reiterate the unwavering commitment of the State of Israel to the freedom of worship for people of all faiths and the importance of upholding the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Herzog said in a statement.
For his part, Pizzaballa downplayed the incident when speaking to a Catholic news channel. “There were no clashes, and we don’t want to force matters, but rather figure out what to do while respecting the right to prayer,” he said. “There were misunderstandings, we didn’t understand each other, and that’s what happened. It’s never happened before; it’s a shame this happened. This morning’s events are important, but we must consider the broader context. There are people who are much worse off than us who cannot celebrate for very different reasons. Once again, we are celebrating a subdued Easter.”
The police said the closure was justified because in addition to the lack of bomb shelters in the Old City, the area’s narrow and winding streets make it hard for emergency vehicles to reach anyone who might be injured in an attack.
Netanyahu said that while he understood the safety considerations involved in turning Pizzaballa back on Sunday, he had called for changes going forward.
“I have instructed the relevant authorities that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, be granted full and immediate access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” he said in a statement.
The dustup came as Pope Leo, in his Palm Sunday address in the Vatican, condemned the Iran war and lamented that Christians in the Middle East “are suffering the consequences of a brutal conflict and, in many cases, are unable to observe fully the liturgies of these holy days.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions appeared first on The Forward.
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While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons
You may not know the name Jimmy Grashow, but it’s likely you’ve seen his work. His psychedelic drawings have been featured in The New York Times, Ms. and Playboy. He illustrated album covers for The Yardbirds and Jethro Tull. His cardboard sculptures of people, animals and buildings have been shown all over the country, including at MoMA, the Library of Congress, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Within the first 30 seconds of Jimmy & the Demons, a documentary about the artist directed by Cindy Meehl, I recognized his cardboard sculptures of a dancing couple; a version lives in the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington in my home state of North Carolina.
The documentary follows Grashow as he works on his latest commission: an eight-foot tall wooden sculpture of Jesus hoisting a cathedral on his back, while demons, each one completely different from the other, reach out of the flames around his feet. The cathedral’s intricate exterior is matched by an equally elaborate interior: A mural of Eden decorates the cathedral wall and a figure resembling the piece’s commissioner Michael Marocco, a Catholic art collector who has several Grashow pieces in his private sculpture garden, kneels in prayer. If you look closely at the mural, you can see God’s name written in Hebrew on a painted banner. The cathedral’s stained glass windows are illuminated by an electric bulb.
Grashow’s work is painstakingly detailed and took years to complete, as the slightest error in measurement or cut could have ruined the whole thing. While the documentary doesn’t last for years the way the project did, it follows a similarly leisurely pace, spending lots of moments in silence with Grashow in his home workshop in Redding, Connecticut. It’s a close look at the mostly solitary work of an artist, although viewers also get a few moments to meet Grashow’s family, including his daughter who is a rabbi.
Meehl has profiled unconventional figures in her past documentaries, such as Buck, about horse whisperer Dan “Buck” Brannaman, and The Dog Doc, about holistic veterinarian Marty Goldstein. Grashow, who passed away in September 2025, three months after the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is no exception.
Despite his artistic talent, Grashow said that as a kid he “felt inadequate in every way.” Dyslexic and bad at math, Grashow struggled in his Brooklyn high school. At home, he felt overshadowed by his athletic brother and brilliant older sister. But he found a place to succeed at the Pratt Institute, where he studied woodworking, and received a Fulbright to study in Florence. There he fell in love with the cathedrals that would appear in many of his projects over the years.
Grashow did not view his sculpture of Christ as conflicting with his Jewish faith, noting the relationship between the word “Israel,” which means one who wrestles with God, and the meaning he saw in the piece.
“The world is full of peril and devils,” Grashow said. “And there you are trying to carry your faith and keep your faith alive. It’s a simple idea of trying to move forward in life with chaos and the possibility of chaos everywhere.”
“I’m wrestling all the time,” Grashow said. “It’s a brutal world.”
Grashow told the filmmakers that, when the idea for Marocco’s sculpture came to him, he “knew it was like a hineini moment,” using the term which means “here I am” and is also the name of a prayer traditionally chanted during the High Holidays, implying that one is showing up as their full self, with all of their flaws.
“It was God saying ‘Here’s this’ and it was up to me to say ‘Here I am. I’ll do it,’” Grashow said.
It was not a simple task. In addition to the years spent building the project, there was an emotional toll. Early in the film, Grashow says that the project feels like “the grand finale.” He asks that the filmmakers not share that information with his wife, Guzzy, although she later tells them herself that she feels Grashow’s time is running out.
Later in the film, the Museum Contemporary Art in Westport, Connecticut offers Grashow a retrospective exhibit of his work, with the new piece at the center. Grashow’s musings about death imbue the project with a sense of urgency and the proposed exhibit title is fittingly Man, Mortality: A Retrospective. However, when the museum refuses to fully fund the show, Grashow and Guzzy are left scrambling for a way to showcase his life’s work.
As Grashow wrestles with his own corporality, his art is both an escape from and an expression of his worries.
“When I’m doing demons, I know that it’s a little boy playing,” he said. “And an old man being terribly afraid.”
Jimmy & the Demons opens in New York at the Quad Cinema on April 3, 2026.
The post While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons appeared first on The Forward.