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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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Denmark Unveils $18 Million Plan to Combat Rising Antisemitism Amid Surge in Attacks
People take part in an anti-Israel demonstration in Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 4, 2025. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix/Emil Nicolai Helms via REUTERS
Denmark’s government on Tuesday unveiled an $18 million, five-year plan to combat antisemitism through 2030, focusing on security, education, and research, as the country’s Jewish community continues to face a wave of targeted attacks and hostility.
“Following Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, there has been a flare-up in antisemitism in Denmark,” the Danish Justice Ministry said while announcing the new plan.
Building on Denmark’s first national plan to combat antisemitism from 2022, the new initiative will focus on boosting security for Jewish institutions, combating online hate, and introducing programs for children and young people.
As a new addition to the previous plan set to expire at the end of this year, the newly released program will appoint an Education Ministry coordinator to fight antisemitism in schools and establish an association to combat antisemitic hate crimes.
Other measures will include expanded educational programs, giving all upper secondary schools the opportunity to apply for study trips that teach students about the Holocaust and antisemitism.
“Jews in Denmark should neither feel persecuted, harassed, nor receive death threats,” Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said in a statement.
“Fighting antisemitism must be done through education and prevention, as well as tough and firm consequences towards those who spread antisemitism and hatred against Jews,” he continued. “Jews in Denmark must be able to live and move freely and safely.”
The new plan also includes the creation of the Weinberger Institute, a research center focused on hate crimes, led by Jonathan Fischer, a former vice president of the Jewish Community of Denmark.
The government’s new initiatives come amid a startling rise in anti-Jewish hostility in the country, with attacks that include vandalism of businesses, murals, and memorials, as well as physical assaults and death threats targeting Jews and Israelis.
According to the Danish Jewish Community’s Department for Mapping and Registering Antisemitic Incidents, the country recorded 207 antisemitic incidents in 2024, up 71 percent from 121 the previous year and up sharply from just nine before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Over the last few years, the local Jewish community in Denmark has experienced a sharp rise in antisemitic bullying, violence, and death threats.
“Danish Jews are part of our common culture, history, and soul, and we as a society have a responsibility to surround our Jewish fellow citizens when antisemitism rears its ugly face,” Hummelgaard said.
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More Than 200 Celebrities Join Campaign Calling for Israel to Release Convicted Terrorist Marwan Barghouti
Marwan Barghouti gestures as Israeli police bring him into the District Court for his judgment hearing in Tel Aviv, May 20, 2004. Photo: Reuters / Pool / David Silverman.
Paul Simon, Sting, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, and Margaret Atwood are among the more than 200 cultural figures who have backed a campaign calling for Israel to release Palestinian terrorist mastermind Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences plus an additional 40 years in prison for orchestrating deadly terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada.
The celebrities who support the campaign are recognizable in the music, film, music, literature, and sports industries. They include actors Ian McKellen, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Simon Pegg, Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, Stephen Fry, Hannah Einbinder, and Ilana Glazer. Others who have joined the campaign include author Sally Rooney; broadcaster and former footballer Gary Lineker; and the musicians Annie Lennox, Brian Eno, Fontaines D.C, Massive Attack, and Mabel.
They are all urging the United Nations and governments around the world to pressure Israel to free Marwan, 66, who has so far spent 23 years in Israeli prison. They also condemn what they describe as Barghouti’s “violent mistreatment and denial of legal rights whilst imprisoned.”
According to Israeli officials, Barghouti co-founded Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a US-designated terrorist group that carried out suicide bombings and shootings attacks during the Second Intifada from 2000-2005, and formerly was the head of Fatah’s Tanzim armed wing. Barghouti, who denied having such a leadership role, was arrested in 2002 and convicted for helping to plan terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada that killed five civilians. He has been nicknamed the “Palestinian Mandela” by his supporters.
“Everyone that believes in freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people should join in the call for his immediate release” said Scottish actor Brian Cox from “Succession.” French writer Annie Ernaux claimed Barghouti “embodies the possibility of peace which [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu refuses, determined as he is to continue with the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.”
The International Campaign to Free Marwan that was launched on Nov. 29 is spearheading the efforts, which they claim resemble the cultural movement that helped secure the freedom of Nelson Mandela and ended apartheid in South Africa. Others who are backing the campaign to secure Barghouti’s freedom include billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, journalist Peter Beinart, Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, author and speaker Gabor Maté, and activist and author Angela Davis.
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StandWithUs Legal Team Requests Florida Investigate Guinness World Records for Anti-Israel Policy
In 2019, students, faculty and parents from the San Diego Jewish Academy broke the Guinness World Record for most sandwiches made in under three minutes, all of which were donated to San Diego’s Alpha Project, an organization dedicated to helping the homeless achieve self-sufficiency. Photo: Courtesy.
StandWithUs, the international nonprofit organization that fights antisemitism and promotes education about Israel, has called on the state of Florida to investigate Guinness World Records (GWR) over its ban on applications from Israel and to ensure that public funds do not support companies engaged in such a “discriminatory policy” against the Jewish state.
StandWithUs Saidoff Law, which carries out legal action for the pro-Israel group, sent a letter on Thursday to members of the Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) following the revelation this week that GWR has enforced a policy since 2023 not to accept submission applications from Israel and the Palestinian territories. Saidoff Law formally requested that the board investigate GWR and its affiliate Guinness World Records North America regarding the “boycott policy” to see if they should be included on Florida’s official list of “Scrutinized Companies or Other Entities that Boycott Israel” in accordance with Florida law. Guinness World Records North America is registered in Florida as a foreign profit corporation.
Created in 2016, the list currently includes 109 companies or entities that participate in a boycott of Israel, including actions that limit commercial relations with Israel or Israeli-controlled territories. The SBA is prohibited from acquiring direct holdings of the companies on this list, which is updated and published every quarter following review and approval by SBA trustees. In late September, 91 new entities were added to the list.
StandWithUs Saidoff Law is urging the Florida State Board of Administration to review GWR’s actions to see if they can be added on the list. “We hope that prompt action from the SBA will reaffirm Florida’s strong commitment to opposing discriminatory boycotts and upholding the integrity of the state’s investment and contracting policies,” the letter stated. It was signed by StandWithUs Saidoff Law Director Yael Lerman and Assistant Director Gadi Dotz.
Guinness World Records recently rejected a submission application by an Israeli charity that is organizing an event where a record-breaking 2,000 kidney donors will gather in one place. GWR said that since November 2023, “we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories [sic] or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, except those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.” The policy was enforced shortly after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which began with the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
GWR said it is “monitoring the situation carefully” and its policy is subject to a monthly review. “We hope to be in a position to receive new inquiries soon,” it noted.
StandwithUs Saidoff Law wrote in its letter to Florida’s State Board of Administration that GWR’s “refusal to engage in commercial relations with entities in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories … appears to be intentional, discriminatory in that it singles out Israel and Israeli-controlled territories despite its political neutrality policy, and is not based on neutral business criteria. Also, it squarely falls within Florida’s definition of a boycott of Israel.”
According to Florida law, a boycott of Israel means “refusing to deal, terminating business activities, or taking other actions to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territories, in a discriminatory manner.”