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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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More Troubling Anti-Israel Activity Occurs at North Carolina Colleges, Possibly Violating State Law
North Carolina State University. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Twenty professors currently working at public universities in North Carolina have pledged to promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel “in the classroom and on campus.”
The pledge characterized Israel as a “settler colonial state.”
All 20 are employed by the University of North Carolina (UNC) System, which is required by State law and the UNC equality policy to be institutionally neutral “on the political controversies of the day.” All 20 signed the BDS pledge using their UNC System credentials.
As reported last week, one of these professors, Kristen Alff, is currently teaching the “History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” at NC State University (NCSU).
Alff is the only professor currently teaching at NCSU who signed the BDS pledge. Nevertheless, she was chosen to teach the course on Israel, which suggests to the community that the university has an anti-Israel agenda.
Dr. Stanley Robboy, Professor Emeritus of Pathology at Duke University, wrote to UNC System President Peter Hans and other officials about Alff’s course: “Is it not curious that NC State has chosen the one historian among its ranks who openly calls Israel a colonial settler state and publicly supports the BDS movement to teach its course on Israel?”
A local professional wrote to university officials, “As a recipient of federal funding, the university [NCSU] is subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which obligates institutions to address conduct that may create a hostile environment for Jewish students, including antisemitism related to shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.”
A parent of two NCSU graduates wrote to Dean Deanna Dannels: “University leadership needs to step up and stop this biased teaching against Israel … This is teaching Jew Hatred.”
The UNC System appears dismissive of such concerns. The Vice President for Communications told me: “Faculty have wide latitude in how they teach about controversial issues. Expectations of neutrality do not apply to individual scholars in the same way that they do to institutional leaders.”
I contacted most of the 20 professors who signed the pledge. One wrote back that he doesn’t “advocate” for any political cause in the classroom, but refused to remove himself from the list. Besides one other vague response I got, the rest of the professors refused to comment.
Due to space constraints, I will highlight just two more of the 20 UNC System professors who pledged to advance BDS “in the classroom and on campus.”
In 2023, I attended an infamous UNC event, in which one of the invited speakers called Oct. 7 a “beautiful day” and spoke with pride and admiration for Hamas.
Sara Smith, who signed the BDS pledge using her UNC-Chapel Hill credentials, served as moderator and host of the event.
From what I observed, it didn’t appear to me that one person in the room — including Smith — appeared troubled by the enthusiastic endorsement of Hamas.
Several panelists openly agreed with the vile, pro Hamas comments. At no point did Smith or any other UNC faculty member or participant challenge this public support of Hamas or say to the students in attendance, “There was nothing beautiful about Hamas’ murder and rapes that day.” Audience questions were not permitted, which meant that the pro-Hamas comments went completely unchallenged.
Within a week of my event report, UNC-Chapel Hill’s provost at the time wrote a blistering letter of concern to faculty and officials, saying, “One thing is clear: from the outside, the academy appears to be fostering a banal kind of evil.”
UNC apologized repeatedly for this event.
Nadia Yaqub also signed the BDS pledge using her UNC-Chapel Hill credentials. In 2024, I attended a UNC event that Yaqub moderated and hosted. From what I observed, it seemed she was in charge.
As I reported at the time, all five panelists were anti-Israel radicals. Four panelists had signed the BDS pledge and the fifth had signed an anti-Israel statement. Students and the community were provided a one-sided demonization of Israel that ignored the legal requirement of institutional neutrality without including a single pro-Israel or even neutral voice to challenge the biased panel and the two hours of Israel-bashing speeches.
About 55 seconds into her opening remarks, Yaqub told the audience that Israel is fighting “Palestinian resistance groups.” Not a single panelist spoke up to disagree, and to let the audience know that the United States and many other countries had designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.
That same year, Yaqub spoke at a UNC Faculty Council meeting to oppose a resolution titled “Condemning Antisemitism on Campus.”
Yaqub and Smith were each contacted for this column and did not respond.
The UNC System and the North Carolina legislature must initiate comprehensive investigations to ascertain whether any professors are fulfilling their pledges to utilize taxpayer-funded public classrooms and campuses for the purpose of boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning Israel. The US Department of Education also needs to launch an investigation to determine if Jewish and pro-Israel students and scholars are being discriminated against in North Carolina public universities.
Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.
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Israeli President, Jewish Leaders Meet to Discuss Diaspora Strengthening Support for Judaism, Israel
Senior leadership members of the Aish organization met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Jan. 14, 2026. Photo: Haim Zach/GPO
Senior leaders of the Jewish educational organization Aish met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at his residence in Jerusalem on Wednesday to discuss Jews in the diaspora and their engagement with Israel following the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in the country on Oct. 7, 2023.
The discussion focused on the increase of Jews seeking connection, education, and a sense of community with their Jewish peers and Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack. The term “Oct. 8 Jews” was coined to describe Jews who had the desire to strengthen their Jewish identity and/or relationship to Israel after the 2023 massacre. However, Aish and other Jewish organizations have noticed that has time has passed, maintaining that sense of connection to Judaism and Israel has become difficult.
“The wave is there; we need to bring our efforts together across the Jewish world to sustain the newfound sense of Judaism and Zionism and strengthen it,” Aish CEO Rabbi Burg told Herzog during Wednesday’s meeting.
“After Oct. 7, we witnessed something remarkable,” he added. “Oct. 7 shattered our sense of security, but it also awakened something profound in the Jewish soul. Jews who had never felt connected to their heritage searched for meaning. Students on college campuses who once stayed silent became the defenders of both Judaism and the State of Israel. Families began observing Shabbat, and Jews began expressing their faith and connection to Israel in a myriad of ways, showing who we truly are as a people. At Aish, we’ve built our entire mission around this movement, creating pathways for every Jew to discover the depth, wisdom, and beauty of our tradition.”
Burg and other Aish leaders presented Herzog with the organization’s plan to combat this challenge through the use of technological and educational initiatives. The strategy includes using learning tools driven by artificial intelligence that can, for example, provide personalized Jewish education, long and short-form content to reach Jewish social media users, and conversational platforms that can answer questions about Jewish law, history, and philosophy.
“Aish recognized that waiting for Jews to seek out educational institutions may no longer be sufficient in an era when much of Jewish identity formation happens through screens, and we pivoted accordingly,” Burg said.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Aish leaders and Israel’s president also discussed the antisemitism that Jewish students have faced on university campuses following the Oct. 7 attack, and Aish shared the resources they need to support students who are targeted.
“I congratulate Aish on their impressive and impactful work in the field of Jewish education in Israel and around the world,” Herzog said in a released statement. “Since Oct. 7, Aish’s broad-ranging efforts to engage Jews with authentic educational experiences and meaningful online Jewish content have become more important than ever. May Aish continue to go from strength to strength.”
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Israel to Honor Charlie Kirk at Antisemitism Conference
Senior Advancement Director at Turning Point USA Stacy Sheridan speaks next to a portrait of slain conservative commentator Charlie Kirk during his memorial service at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, US, Sept. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara
The State of Israel will posthumously give Charlie Kirk an award for his efforts to combat antisemitism at the 2026 International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced on Wednesday.
The honor comes amid an effort by the so-called “new” political right, including voices such as podcaster Candace Owens, to rewrite the history of Kirk’s conservative activism and rebrand him as someone preparing to turn against Israel in the days before his assassination on the campus of Utah Valley University in September.
Their revisionism, however, obscures the fact that Kirk was an ardent supporter of Israel throughout his career, taking on activists of both the far left and far right who promoted rising antisemitism and sought to undermine the US-Israel alliance.
“There’s a dark Jew hate out there, and I see it,” Kirk told a student during a podcast episode which aired in 2025. “Don’t get yourself involved in that. I’m telling you it will rot your brain. It’s bad for your soul. It’s bad. It’s evil. I think it’s demonic.”
Following Kirk’s death Netanyahu issued a statement which praised the US activist for “speaking truth and defending freedom” and noted that the two had set tentative plans for him to visit Israel.
“A lion-hearted fiend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization,” the Israeli premier said. “We lost an incredible human being. His boundless pride in America and his valiant belief in free speech will leave a lasting impact.”
Born on Oct. 14, 1993, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, Kirk formally entered the political arena in 2012, five months before the reelection of former US President Barack Obama, to found Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — which served as a bellwether of declining youth support for the progressive consensus on race, free speech, and economics that took hold in American college campuses in the 1960s.
TPUSA grew rapidly, challenging campus primacy of the College Republicans organization and exuding confidence in conservative ideas at a moment when political scientists and other experts speculated that the Republican Party would decline to the point that the Democratic Party would achieve long-standing majorities in local and federal government.
Far-right activists have attempted to distort Kirk’s legacy, with figures such as Tucker Carlson implying that he was murdered by “guys sitting around eating hummus” in Jerusalem and Owens suggesting Israel was behind his death.
There has been so evidence to support such claims. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged for murdering Kirk and potentially faces the death penalty. He was romantically involved with his transgender roommate, and prosecutors have reportedly argued that Kirk’s anti-trans rhetoric was a key factor that allegedly led him to shoot the Turning Point USA founder.
Experts have argued that far-right efforts to distort Kirk’s stance on Israel and antisemitism are part of an effort to undermine not only the US-Israel alliance but Washington’s leadership in the world more broadly.
“It’s antisemitism for the purpose of undermining Americans’ confidence in ourselves and in our post- World War II role in the world,” Hudson Institute scholar Rebeccah Heinrichs said during a conference on antisemitism held in Washington, DC in December. “That is very dangerous because we can’t come to consensus on anything else we need from a grand strategy perspective if American scapegoat our problems to the Jews and if they believe that Israel is no longer an ally but it never was, and in fact that we were on the wrong side of World War II, which is now the narrative being pushed.”
Meanwhile, antisemitism is surging across the US.
This past weekend, a 19-year-old suspect, Stephen Pittman, was arrested for allegedly igniting a catastrophic fire which decimated the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. According to court filings, he told US federal investigators that he targeted the building over its “Jewish ties.”
“This latest deplorable crime against a Jewish institution reminds us that the same hatred that motivated the KKK to attack Beth Israel in 1967 is alive today,” the Florida Holocaust Museum said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner following news of Pittman’s arrest. “Antisemitism is still trying to intimidate Jews, drive them out of public life, and make houses of worship targets of violence instead of place of safety and community.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024 — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, providing statistical proof of what has been described as an atmosphere of hate not experienced in the nearly 50 years since the organization began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The FBI disclosed similar numbers, showing that even as hate crimes across the US decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this rise in antisemitic hate crimes, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.