(JTA) — DETROIT – The Trump administration’s antisemitism czar will speak to a Michigan synagogue on Wednesday for a Justice Department event that also doubles as a fundraiser for the state’s chapter of the Zionist Organization of America.

Leo Terrell, who chairs the administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, is attending on behalf of the department. The Justice Department touted the event on its website with a link  to a ZOA registration page that solicits donations to become an event co-sponsor.

Federal ethics regulations restrict fundraising by government employees and prohibit the use of government property for unauthorized purposes, though they allow authorized official fundraising and certain official speeches at fundraising events.

Terrell is visiting Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, a Detroit suburb; the synagogue is also listed as a co-sponsor. Other co-sponsors include a local Jewish high school, Mothers Against College Antisemitism and pro-Israel advocacy groups.

It comes weeks before the midterm elections, in which rhetoric on Israel and Jewish safety from the state’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has put local Jews on edge.

The Justice Department is billing the event as the first stop on Terrell’s “American Tour Against Hate,” adding, “All faiths and backgrounds welcome.” Terrell will be in conversation with Mort Klein, national head of ZOA, a usual stalwart Trump supporter who has broken with the president at times on Iran policy.

On its registration page for the event, ZOA Michigan notes that it “brings the Department of Justice directly into dialogue with Michigan’s Jewish community.”

ZOA Michigan also alluded to current tensions between the state’s Jewish community and El-Sayed.

“Antisemitism is reaching across Michigan — in schools, in public spaces, and among political candidates,” the event page reads. “Confronting it requires our community to stand together.”

The ZOA is a hawkish pro-Israel organization that backs the West Bank settlement movement and Israeli right wing government policies. In the U.S., it has also endorsed some of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies.

Federal tax law prohibits tax-exempt houses of worship from supporting or opposing political candidates, but Trump has sought to loosen the restrictions.

Rabbi Aaron Starr, of Shaarey Zedek, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Conservative congregation’s co-sponsoring of the event should not imply that it was endorsing one candidate over another.

“We are looking forward to working with anybody and everybody who wants to combat hate, whether that hate is antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism or any other form of hate,” Starr said. He added that the congregation would soon welcome Jewish Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin for a veteran’s Shabbat.

Starr said the synagogue became a sponsor because it had been approached by ZOA to serve as an event host. “We’re mostly just serving as a venue for the event,” he said, adding that he personally would not be there.

Terrell did not return a JTA request for comment on the event. But he has promoted it extensively on social media and had hinted at the talk, and the ZOA partnership, in a previous email he sent to JTA reporters.

“We hope to see everyone there making it clear hate has no place in America a.k.a the greatest country on Earth,” he wrote at the time. He also thanked ZOA Michigan “for their tireless work on bringing our powerful message into reality.”

ZOA Michigan’s executive director, Kobi Erez, told JTA the event was nonpartisan, but added that he was aware of voters planning to switch parties — an allusion to Democrats who are considering voting for Rogers.

“We are not planning to discuss particular candidates or tell anyone how to vote,” Erez said in an email.

“We do encourage people to examine candidates’ records and statements concerning the safety of the Jewish community and consider whether they will take antisemitism seriously,” he said. “We feel that Jewish safety is at stake now more than ever. We know people who, because of these concerns, plan to vote for a party they have never supported before, and we understand their position.”

Erez said that the point of the event was not fundraising. “We are accepting voluntary sponsorships and donations to help cover expenses and support our work, but the purpose of this evening is to confront antisemitism and connect the community with the Department of Justice,” he said.

Frankel Jewish Academy, a private Jewish high school in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield Township, is also listed as a co-sponsor of the Terrell event. Frankel leaders did not return a JTA request for comment.

Terrell, an attorney, former O.J. Simpson supporter and ex-Fox News contributor, is a senior counsel in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. In that role, he oversees antisemitism taskforces that include staffers from the departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services.

Terrell’s visit comes as Trump, and Republicans more broadly, see an opening for Michigan in the midterms, in part via the Jewish vote. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance will be campaigning in Michigan in the coming days. During Vance’s previous stop in Michigan, he went after El-Sayed for his reaction to the Temple Israel attack earlier this year.

Hundreds of local Jews have signed a petition pledging to vote for El-Sayed’s GOP opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, over their fears of the Democrat’s “extremism” on Jews and Israel, including El-Sayed’s remarks earlier this year about the attack on Temple Israel in the state. He has since apologized for those comments. 

A separate petition — spearheaded by Starr and other rabbis — outlines “non-negotiables” that some Jewish leaders have pushed El-Sayed and other candidates to agree to.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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(JTA) — Ziggy Valdez, a nonbinary Mexican Jew studying to become a rabbi, was born in Illinois and grew up moving around the country as the child of a Navy father, always attached to a Reform synagogue. Valdez, who uses they/them pronouns, has Mexican roots on both sides of the family and has been “physically brown since birth,” but latinidad and Chicano identity weren’t an active part of family life. Their father worked in the Navy, which according to Valdez’ was the biggest barrier between them and the Jewish world. They grew up with Ashkenazi traditions, even when it meant driving an hour from the base where they were stationed at the time to the synagogue.

Valdez went to 10 different schools between preschool and senior year of high school.In many, they often felt excluded. “The kids at school who were also from Mexican families were not Jewish, and at some points in my adolescence, told me I wasn’t actually Mexican because I was Jewish and not Catholic,” Valdez told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “At times, my identity as Mexican felt like a source of shame for my family, Valdez said.”

The family would occasionally spend Christmas Day in Bakersfield, California with Valdez’s abuelo, or grandfather, where he would “cook the best mole ever made, including fresh tortillas.” But other than that they did not participate in Mexican culture.

Valdez heard about Jewtina & Co. (pronounced Jewtina y Co.), a national community of Latin Jews. After moving to Los Angeles two years ago, they joined the educators’ cohort of Jewtina’s Puentes national leadership fellowship, which has alumni across six cohorts, according to Violeta Stolpen, Jewtina & Co.’s Director of Operations.

“We were given the time and space to sit with that miracle of an experience, to be in a room with each other talking about the loneliness of growing up a Latin Jew, and being grateful that, thanks to the Jewtina, we weren’t alone anymore,” Valdez told JTA.

Jewtina & Co. was founded during Latin Heritage month in 2019 by Analucía Lopezrevoredo, a Peruvian Jew who moved to California with her family when she was five years old. A sociologist by training, she grew up surrounded by vibrant Latin and Jewish communities and began calling herself a Jewtina early on.

The idea of Jewtina crystallized in 2018, when she applied for a fellowship focused on global Jewry. “It started with a question I had carried on since childhood: Where do people like me get to be whole?” she told JTA. It is a way for Jewish immigrants from Latin America in the U.S. to express their conflicting and overlapping Jewish and Latinos identities publicly. Its members are mixed-couple children of Latin American descent, Latin immigrants who converted to Judaism, Latin Americans who were adopted into an American family and many more shades of Jewish Latinhood.

Lopezrevoredo calls Jewtina part of a Jewish and Latin diaspora, which comes with its own identity challenges. Latino communities in the U.S. are heavily Catholic, so there is little space in these immigrant enclaves for members of other faiths. Latino Jews feel excluded from Mexican, Peruvian and other communities.  But there is also discrimination of Jewtina members from Latin American Jewish communities.  U.S.-based demographic categories, such as Latinos and Jews, can create exclusionary identities that do not fit neatly with complex migration paths.

“There is no single Latin Jewish experience” Loperevoredo said, “just as there is no single Jewish one. But one experience we hear again and again is the feeling of having to explain oneself.”

No national study has measured the size or demographic makeup of the Latin Jewish community in the U.S., according to Jewtina & Co.’s Director of Research and Evaluation David McCarty-Caplan, who holds a Ph.D. in social work. The closest estimate comes from “American Jewish Population Estimates 2020: Summary & Highlights,” a 2021 report by Brandeis University’s American Jewish Population Project. It found that about 6% of Jewish adults in the U.S. identify as Hispanic out of 7.6 million.

To make Latin Jews more visible and better understood, McCarty-Caplan is developing a national study of Latin Jewish community and identity in the U.S. The partners are Brandeis University’s Initiative on the Jews of the Americas and its Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, along with Universidad Hebraica in Mexico. He said it will be the first study of its kind.

McCarty-Caplan says he has felt deeply disconnected from his Latino origins and out of place in predominantly white Jewish spaces. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and adopted at 3 months old by a white American Jewish family. In 2019, he met founder Lopezrevoredo in a Jews of Color cohort of Bend the Arc’s Selah Leadership Fellowship. That’s where he learned about her work with Jewtina & Co.

“It felt like meeting her, and finding Jewtina was the first time I felt fully seen and valued as a Latino, a Jew, and an adoptee all at once,” he said.

Members of Jewtina & Co. are often a mixture of identities. Founding member and Director of Education Kimberly Dueñas’ mother is an Ashkenazi Jew born and raised in Los Angeles, with family roots in Ukraine and Poland. Her father was born and raised in El Salvador, in a rural farming community. Through his side, she has converso Sephardic Jewish — a convert to Christianity or a descendant thereof — and Indigenous Mesoamerican ancestry. He met Dueñas’ mother at a Passover seder in Orange County,  California where Dueñas grew up.

“I know personally what it’s like to feel like I have to choose which identity to lead with,” said Dueñas who facilitates Puentes.

According to director of operations Stolpen, the organization ran 58 programs in 2025, 43 in person and 15 virtual, with 2367 participants. So far in 2026, it has held 47 programs and events with more than 1,200 participants, according to McCarty-Caplan.

The organization faces a harder climate than the one it was born into. When Jewtina & Co. emerged in 2019 and 2020, director of research McCarty-Caplan said there was a surge of support for groups working with multiracial Jewish communities. That support has since receded since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. Since “the events in Israel-Palestine on Oct. 7th, significant attention and resources have moved away from supporting organizations like Jewtina,” he added, referring to the war launched in 2023 after Hamas raided communities inside Israel.

Oct. 7 also changed things for Jewtina & Co.’s members. “Many Latin Jews have encountered antisemitism in spaces where they once felt cultural or political kinship,” Lopezrevoredo said, “while also entering Jewish spaces where conversations about race, immigration, Latin America or the diversity of Jewish experience can feel constrained.”

Dueñas said one of the organization’s biggest challenges is responding in real time to what its community needs. “We are navigating fear around immigration, ICE raids and deportation within our Latino communities, while also experiencing the rise of antisemitism and the ripple effects of the war in Israel and Palestine within our Jewish communities,” she told JTA.

Jewtina & Co. has responded with spaces for processing, healing and spiritual support, along with mental health resources, rabbinic wisdom and Know Your Rights programming.

“A Jewish family can carry memories of Poland, Syria, Turkey, or Morocco, become deeply Argentine, Mexican, Brazilian, or Cuban over generations, and later become Latino in the United States.” Lopezrevoredo said ”None of those layers cancels the others.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Latin Jews seek belonging and identity in a country where they feel excluded appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Israel-Diaspora relations will be made a top priority for former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid if their B’Yachad party joins the next Israeli government, according to a working plan shared with JTA.

Under the plan, the party seeks to elevate the importance of Diaspora Jewry by transferring responsibility for relations from the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The plan also envisions the election by Diaspora Jewry of a non-voting observer to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

The party will also work to ensure that all streams of Judaism are treated with respect in Israel, particularly at the sacred Western Wall, a particular issue of contention between Israel’s Orthodox rabbinical establishment and non-Orthodox movements in the Diaspora.

The plan is being promoted as Israelis are preparing to vote for a new prime minister and parliament on Oct. 27. B’Yachad is one of the factions in the opposition or “change” bloc that is hoping to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud-led bloc. B’Yachad has been highly disparaging of Netanyahu’s record on relations with Jewish communities abroad.

“Israel’s relationship with world Jewry isn’t merely of critical strategic importance; they are our family. It’s a moral imperative,” Lapid told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday.

“The challenges of the last few years have shown that we share a fate as a people and a responsibility for our people’s future,” he said.

Lapid said the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs needed to be shuttered “not because Israel doesn’t value world Jewry – but because we do.”

“The relationship with Diaspora Jewry is too important to be thrown around as an appointment for a politician who needs a job,” he said, referring to how the ministry is often used as a bargaining chip in coalition agreements.

“These ties need to be handled professionally, at the highest level, through the Foreign Ministry,” Lapid added.

On the Western Wall, or Kotel, the party states in its material that the site “is a sacred and unifying place, and it should be a place of Shalom Bayit [peace among ourselves], not civil strife.”

“We will work to preserve it as a place to which every Jewish man and woman, from Israel and around the world, can feel a sense of belonging and connection, while respecting the existing prayer arrangements at the Western Wall Plaza,” the party states in its platform.

The plan’s finer print specifies that the southern end of the Western Wall, otherwise known as Robinson’s Arch, will remain a space for “prayer and gatherings in diverse ways” but will not “disrupt Orthodox prayer arrangements at the Western Wall Plaza.”

Such a plan stands in contrast with the outgoing government’s trajectory, which has advanced legislation criminalizing all non-Orthodox Jewish prayer at the site. The legislation has already received preliminary approval. If it ultimately becomes law, it could severely strain relations between Israel and the Reform movement, the largest stream of Judaism in the United States.

The proposals come amid signs of growing disaffection among Diaspora Jews with Israel and its Netanyahu-led government. Recent polls suggest that support for Israel among Diaspora Jews, especially in response to its policies in Gaza and on matters of democracy, is slipping.

A February survey of American Jews by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only one-third of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as Zionist, even as nearly nine in 10 say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.

A separate Pew poll examining American views of Israel found that Jewish attitudes have shifted since 2024. The survey found that 83% of Jews now view the Israeli people favorably, down from 89% in2024, while 47% of Jews view the Israeli government favorably, compared with 54% in 2024.

“We welcome Bennett and Lapid’s recognition of the importance of preserving the Western Wall as a place that belongs to the entire Jewish people, and their commitment to allowing different forms of prayer there,” Anna Kislanski, CEO of the Israel Movement for Progressive and Reform Judaism, told JTA.

However, she said that she would like to see even more steps to ensure the area was accessible to all streams of Jewish prayer.

“The Western Wall does not belong to any one stream of Judaism. Ensuring equality at the Wall is an obligation of the State of Israel to the entire Jewish people,” Kislanski said.

Yochi Rappaport, CEO of Women of the Wall, an activist group that advocates for women-led prayer and Torah readings to be allowed at the holy site, also welcomed B’Yachad’s efforts.

“The various attempts made in recent years by the Israeli government and other entities were all designed to exclude and undermine the prayer rights of liberal Jews, women, and the millions of Jews in the Diaspora who wish to pray at the holiest site in Judaism,” she said.

Nachman Shai, dean of Hebrew Union College and a former minister of Diaspora Affairs under Bennett and Lapid’s government from 2021 to 2022, said that during the tenure of the current government “the lives of Jews in the Diaspora have been severely disrupted.”

“There have been physical attacks on Jews worldwide, alongside antisemitic and anti-Israel activities, that have impacted Jewish life in every corner of the globe; the very least the Israeli government could do is to embrace the non-Orthodox movements,” he said, adding that “the State of Israel must offer every Jew the opportunity to hold ceremonies at the Western Wall plaza in a dignified and egalitarian manner.”

Israel-Diaspora relations are not at the forefront of the Oct. 27 election campaign, nor are they a central theme of Israel’s foreign policydebate. B’Yachad is one of the few political parties in the running that has explicitly addressed the issue in its policy platform. It is also among the few to have published dedicated material in English, with the goal of reaching segments of world Jewry who also have a vested interest in the outcome of the vote.

According to the plan, which was developed by B’Yachad parliamentarian Michal Slawny Cababia, the party will establish a Diaspora Jewry Council, which will elect a permanent observer-level representative to the Knesset. The representative will join certain parliamentary committees dealing with Diaspora Jewry.

Diaspora representation in the Knesset has long been a source of controversy. A 2020 legislative proposal to require consultation with Diaspora leaders on issues salient to the international Jewish community went nowhere.

The B’Yachad plan also includes an educational program to teach Israelis about Diaspora Jewish communities, the establishment of a National Authority for Combating Antisemitism, and an initiative to make the Hebrew language accessible to Jews around the world.

Lapid said that the plan was “about giving world Jewry a voice at decision-making tables in Israel on issues that impact them and focusing on the fundamentals: showing basic respect to every stream, Hebrew education, programs to bring together young Israelis and Jews from around the world, and a task force to combat antisemitism professionally.”

“As the nation-state of the Jewish people and the capital of the Jewish world, Israel and its government have to lead on maintaining and strengthening these ties. In the new government, I want to take direct and personal responsibility for rebuilding the relationship,” Lapid told JTA.

A request for a response by JTA to the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism regarding B’Yachad’s plan was not immediately answered.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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