Uncategorized
How one of North America’s largest Conservative congregations added 900 new members in 8 months
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
TORONTO (JTA) — At a time of declining synagogue affiliation rates and following a pandemic slump, one of North America’s largest Conservative congregations gained 900 new members in just eight months.
Launched in July 2022, an initiative called the Generations Membership Program attracted young families to Beth Tzedec Congregation here by removing membership dues for anyone under the age of 40.
The success of the no-dues model surprised leaders of the synagogue, whose next challenge is to strengthen the connections between the new members and the congregation.
“We were all surprised by how much uptake there was,” said Yacov Fruchter, the synagogue’s director of Community Building and Spiritual Engagement, Yacov Fruchter.
With over 4,000 members, Beth Tzedec is one of the largest Conservative congregations in North America. However, over the past decade, Beth Tzedec has suffered from a decline that has affected the Conservative movement, once North American Judaism’s largest denomination. In 1971, 832 congregations identified with the movement, a number which dropped to 562 by 2020. The number of Conservative Jews also dropped from 1.6 million at its peak to a half million by 2020, according to data from the 2020 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Jews.
The decline of the Conservative movement left Beth Tzedec struggling to attract new members while old families fell out of touch with the congregation. “Ten years ago, our membership was at 2,400 households, but I think that number was inflated,” said Rabbi Steven Wernick, its senior rabbi. “Into the pandemic, we saw membership drop to 1,700-1,800 paying units,” or families. That’s a decline of approximately 25% over the 2010s.
As director of education, Daniel Silverman oversees Beth Tzedec’s congregational school as well as bar/bat mitzvah educational programs. Silverman said that it was difficult to attract and maintain younger congregants due to shifting cultural perspectives and financial stresses that have worsened over recent years.
“It was hard to help people understand that synagogue was worth their time when we put up a relatively high [financial] barrier,” said Silverman. “People of this generation are not going to be inclined to join and pay money to join a synagogue in the way that their parents and grandparents were.”
Beth Tzedec’s membership dues are adjusted for each family unit depending on how much the family can pay. That doesn’t mean that membership is cheap, however. For the highest-earning members of the congregation, dues can be up to $6,000 annually per family.
Ariel Weinberg, 17, belongs to Beth Tzedec and participated in Silverman’s bat mitzvah educational program. When she becomes an adult, she said she would be happy to pay a portion of her salary for synagogue membership but wants her experience to be more than simply attending for the High Holidays.
“That’s a lot of money to put forth every month when I only use it twice per year,” Weinberg said.
Voluntary dues programs like Beth Tzedec’s have been growing in recent years. Synagogues adopting the model cite research showing that potential members see belonging to a synagogue as less of an obligation and instead want to be shown what a synagogue has to offer, as Rabbis Kerry Olitzky and Avi Olitzky argued in their 2015 book on membership models.
Wernick said that the way younger generations view synagogue membership is fundamentally different from previous generations.
“The traditional synagogue membership model was pay first and engage later. So what we decided to do was, engage first, and then we’ll talk about money later,” Wernick said.
Boosting membership on paper is one thing; creating active, engaged members who show up for worship and take part in programming is another. To demonstrate Beth Tzedec’s commitment to engaging the new cohort, the shul recently hired an engagement specialist and the board is also in the process of hiring a new cantor or rabbi. Leadership has also committed to meeting one-on-one for a “coffee date” with each new member of the congregation to strengthen new connections.
“The goal is to make a place as large as Beth Tzedec feel small and personal,” said Silverman.
Leadership’s attempts to better connect with congregants have already resonated well with new members. After Rebbecca Starkman and her family joined Beth Tzedec in September 2022, her husband met with Wernick as part of the “coffee date” initiative.
“He really, really enjoyed it,” said Starkman. “It also made him feel connected, connected and comfortable.”
When Wernick became Beth Tzedec’s chief rabbi in 2019, he set out to address Beth Tzedec’s membership woes. As the former CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the congregational arm of Conservative Judaism, he used his expertise to devise a plan that would reverse the previous trend in Beth Tzedec’s affiliation.
“What I attempted to do at USCJ was to help synagogues reinvent themselves for the 21st century,” Wernick said.
Part of that idea, said Beth Tzedec’s president, Patti Rotman, meant rethinking the congregation’s membership model. “It couldn’t just be transactional. It had to be transformational,” Rotman said.
Prior to the implementation of the Generations program, Beth Tzedec had attempted strategies to improve engagement. Previously, membership for families under the age of 25 was set at only $50 per year. The congregation was able to support this program as membership dues only accounted for 30% of operating income, the rest coming from other sources.
According to Wernick, as of 2022, only 5% of Beth Tzedec’s operating income came from families under 40. As such, the switch to no-fee membership for the under-40 cohort did not cause a significant financial impact.
“So you already had a circumstance where those over 40 were already paying for those under 40,” Wernick said.
In the months prior to the implementation of the Generations Membership Program, Beth Tzedec undertook a significant amount of research into synagogue engagement in Toronto. Based on the 2018 Environics Survey of Jews in Canada, they learned that 70% of Jewish Canadians belonged to a congregation, more than double the percentage in the U.S.
“If there’s 200,000 Jews in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area], then 30% are not affiliated,” said Wernick, “and then if you break it down by how many people are in their 20s and 30s, we’re talking about 16,000 Jews.” Out of the 16,000, Wernick estimates that approximately 30% grew up as part of the Conservative movement, while 30% grew up unaffiliated.
Geographic research told Wernick that prior to July 2022, there were around 500 households in the vicinity of Beth Tzedec in need of a shul.
Rabbi Steven Wernick, senior rabbi of Beth Tzedec in Toronto, previously served as CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. (Courtesy of USCJ)
Beth Tzedec was able to focus its social media campaigns on neighborhoods with the greatest concentration of young and unaffiliated Jews in the vicinity.
“We targeted the unaffiliated, we targeted the previously affiliated to Beth Tzedec, but who had dropped off for more than three years, and we targeted based on geography,” as well as the study by Environics and information from UJA-Federation of Greater Toronto.
Even with the sophisticated marketing campaign, Wernick said that the synagogue expected it would only gain around 20-50 new households per year.
“Just because you give it away for free doesn’t mean that people are going to come,” said Wernick.
By the end of the first day of advertising, 50 new families had signed up.
“We are well over 420 new households,” Wernick said. Seventy-five percent of the uptake are brand-new members while the remainder are former Beth Tzedec members who had fallen out of the fold for more than three years.
The 420 household figure represents mainly families, as well as couples and individuals. Beth Tzedec President, Patti Rotman, estimates that approximately 900 new individual members became part of the synagogue in the eight months since the program was inaugurated.
When it comes to reinvigorating community life, gaining new members is not the only task at hand.
The membership drive “is only mile one of a marathon,” said Silverman.
“The most difficult part is, how do you then keep people connected?” said Fruchter. “You have to have the capacity to develop the relationships that you are starting.”
As self-identified Modern Orthodox Jews, Rebecca Starkman and her family attend synagogue regularly. Because her primary congregation only meets every other week, Starkman had been attending Beth Tzedec for years prior to joining under the Generations program.
“I had been attending loosely since since 2015,” said Starkman. “We had always been members at this other congregation but had not joined Beth Tzedec until this past September.”
Starkman said that it was the financial barrier that had been preventing her and her family from officially joining Beth Tzedec.
“We didn’t feel like we had enough finances to pay membership at two organizations,” said Starkman. “The program definitely gave us the motivation to make the leap to being part of the shul.”
Starkman said that she knows of other families who were also in her situation, attending Beth Tzedec services without becoming official members due to the financial barrier.
“There are three other families who did the same thing we did,” said Starkman. However, one family was over 40 and still could not join the congregation under the program. Nonetheless, for families who are lucky enough to be covered, Starkman said that the program is definitely a motivating factor to join Beth Tzedec.
Weinberg said that the Generations program will also improve diversity within the congregation.
“Our mandate really is to build a stronger Jewish future with youth and young professional engagement as our priority. And to go with that,” said Rotman, “we are also at the forefront of equity and inclusion.”
According to Rotman, Beth Tzedec maintains a vigorous diversity and inclusion committee dedicated to ensuring that the synagogue is an inclusive environment for everyone.
Given the local renaissance that Beth Tzedec has undergone, Rotman stresses the importance of bringing down barriers as the best way for synagogues to engage the current generation of Jews.
“Our goal is to inspire and enable Jews to live meaningful Jewish lives and the best way [to do so] for the under-40 cohort is to remove the barrier to membership,” Rotman said.
—
The post How one of North America’s largest Conservative congregations added 900 new members in 8 months appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Jewish groups plan to protest Ben-Gvir’s arrival in NYC. Will he show?
(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish groups are readying for the arrival of Israeli far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir in New York City next week.
Several progressive Jewish organizations have planned a protest at a plaza outside the United Nations, where Israeli media reported that the minister would be attending a conference on policing. Meanwhile, other left-wing groups have planned their own demonstrations and circulated an open letter with thousands of signatures calling for State Attorney General Letitia James to prosecute Ben-Gvir for war crimes upon his arrival.
But it’s unclear whether Ben-Gvir is coming at all.
“To our knowledge, Minister Ben-Gvir is not coming to New York at the moment,” a staffer for the Consulate General of Israel in New York wrote the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an email on Thursday.
Separately, a UN official confirmed to JTA on Thursday that Ben-Gvir was not yet registered for the UN Chiefs of Police Summit, which brings together ministers and law enforcement leaders from around the world. The conference is taking place on July 7 and 8, though it is still possible for him to register in the coming days.
Ben-Gvir, a highly controversial figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet, is the leader of the country’s far-right “Otzma Yehudit,” or “Jewish Power” party. Before he entered the Knesset he was convicted of supporting a terrorist group and other offenses, and since taking office he has advocated for policies such as renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza and has been sanctioned for allegedly “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Liberal Jewish groups have come out in vocal opposition to the idea of him setting foot in the Big Apple following Haaretz’s initial reporting that Ben-Gvir was coming.
“It’s really important for people, both American Jews and Israelis, to say that extremists like Ben-Gvir aren’t accepted in our community,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, told JTA in an interview. “He just doesn’t belong in New York, or in the Israeli government, or espousing his views anywhere in Jewish society,”
T’ruah is co-organizing a protest outside the UN’s summit on Tuesday, along with close to a dozen other liberal Jewish groups. Among them are New York Jewish Agenda, J Street, Israelis for Peace and the Union for Reform Judaism.
Jacobs said she believes the demonstration will be particularly impactful because it’s coming from “people who are not looking to destroy the state, who are not anti-Israel in any way,” but who envision a “place of both Israelis and Palestinians being safe.”
Another planned protest scheduled just hours later at the same plaza is being led by left-wing groups more sharply critical of Israel. Anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace is among the organizations promoting it. Their open letter calling on James to prosecute Ben-Gvir has more than 6,500 signatures.
The last time Ben-Gvir visited New York City, just over a year ago, his presence drew a series of heated protests and counter-protests. A few of them took place in Crown Heights, the neighborhood where he visited 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Chabad Hasidic movement.
He also made pit stops at another Chabad institution and the gravesite of the movement’s late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as well as at a Midwood kosher restaurant, where he drew a friendlier crowd. A number of other planned events during that trip were canceled the week before.
The same coalition of liberal Jewish groups held a rally last year outside a Wall Street restaurant where Ben-Gvir was speaking. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler introduced legislation during that rally aimed at combating settler violence in the West Bank.
Margo Hughes-Robinson, who’s now the executive director of NYJA, co-emceed last year’s demonstration. She said in an interview on Thursday that she hopes that elected officials attend this year’s and make clear that “what he represents, and his worldview, is anathema to our Jewish values, it’s anathema to the vision of Israel that we support.”
Ben-Gvir was slated to make another trip to the U.S. more recently for a wedding, though he ended up canceling the trip after he was asked to provide his fingerprints in order to obtain a visa.
Unlike during Ben-Gvir’s last visit, New York’s mayor is now an anti-Zionist who has vowed to arrest Netanyahu if he steps foot in Israel due to his outstanding International Criminal Court arrest warrant, even though the US is not a party to the ICC. (There is no reported ICC arrest warrant for Ben-Gvir.) Following the election of Zohran Mamdani, Ben-Gvir described the result as “a moment when antisemitism triumphed over common sense.”
Mamdani’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A number of local officials spoke out following the most recent appearance of a far-right Israeli minister in New York, condemning finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who attended the Israel Day parade. None have weighed in so far on Ben-Gvir’s possible return next week.
The post Jewish groups plan to protest Ben-Gvir’s arrival in NYC. Will he show? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Races to watch: As staunch Israel critics notch wins, these candidates could be next
(JTA) — A wave of left-wing candidates with sharply critical Israel stances have won their Democratic primary this year and are set to head to Congress. Who else of like mind could join them in the coming months?
Several candidates who fit the bill have benefited from the endorsement and vast volunteer infrastructure of the Democratic Socialists of America. Others are simply meeting the moment for the growing number of Democratic voters who think the U.S. government is too supportive of Israel. Meanwhile, some Jewish groups and other critics have been concerned that their campaign rhetoric in this election cycle has at times veered into antisemitism.
Last week’s New York City results showed the power of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement and alarmed some Jewish leaders who watched as two pro-Israel incumbents lost their seat. Some onlookers questioned whether those victories could be replicated in other parts of the country, but Melat Kiros’ decisive win in Tuesday’s Colorado Democratic congressional primary for a district representing Denver answered the question with a resounding yes.
With just over two months left in the primaries, here are the upcoming races featuring left-wing insurgents whose results may hinge, at least in part, on sentiment toward Israel, Zionism and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group.
Arizona: 4th Congressional District (July 21)
Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton is facing a primary challenge from activist Kai Newkirk in Arizona’s 4th District, which covers parts of Phoenix and Maricopa County.
Stanton, who took office in 2018, is pro-Israel and has picked up the endorsement of AIPAC — support that Newkirk, whose activism has largely focused on campaign-finance reform, has blasted.
Newkirk’s platform includes imposing a complete arms embargo on Israel and ending all military subsidies to the Jewish state, which he accuses of committing genocide. He identifies as a democratic socialist (though he’s not endorsed by the DSA), and is backed by a number of progressive organizations, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ group Our Revolution and Track AIPAC.
“Kai is Israel Free and has fought to get money out of politics his whole life,” wrote Cenk Uygur, the host of the Young Turks, who has spread conspiracy theories about Israel.
Newkirk spoke out against last year’s killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. “I stand always with my beloved Jewish siblings against the scourge of antisemitism just as I will never stop in the nonviolent struggle to end the genocide in Gaza, release all hostages, and open the way to just, lasting peace,” he wrote.
Missouri: 1st Congressional District (Aug. 4)
Former Missouri Rep. Cori Bush is running for Congress in St. Louis again, two years after AIPAC’s super PAC poured millions into her race to oust the former “Squad” member from the House. Bush, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, will now take on Wesley Bell for the second time in the Democratic primary.
Bush, who supports the movement to boycott Israel, has alarmed a number of Jewish leaders in St. Louis over her positions on Israel.
She has expressed reluctance about calling Hamas a terrorist group, saying in a 2024 interview that racial justice protesters in Ferguson were also called terrorists. Bush was one of two members of Congress to vote against a measure to deny entry into the United States to Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre.
Her opponent, Bell, a supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship, has the backing of a number of Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus.
Bush, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman — who was ousted the same year as Bush in a race with heavy spending by AIPAC — St. Louis’ DSA chapter and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.
Missouri: 4th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
Tenant organizer and radio host Hartzell Gray is running with the DSA’s backing in a Democratic primary in hopes of supplanting AIPAC-backed GOP congressman Mark Alford in the November general election in a solidly Republican district that includes some of Kansas City and its suburbs.
During a recent interview with Hasan Piker, Gray said that American elected officials, including Alford, are “catering to Israel, not to our folks here at home,” and broke down his views on the issue that he called “very much at the core of who I am.”
“I’m very honest. Listen, Israel’s apartheid ethnostate has been committing genocide to Palestinian people since before the Nakba,” Gray said. “They’re committing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon as we speak. We should be ending all ties — all diplomatic ties — with Israel.”
Gray had raised close to $170,000 as of March 31, according to FEC filings, by far the most of the seven Democrats in the running (none of whom are elected officials).
Michigan: U.S. Senate (Aug. 4)
The race for an open U.S. Senate seat between former county health executive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Rep. Haley Stevens and the trailing State Sen. Mallory McMorrow has been one of the country’s most closely watched primaries, with Israel and AIPAC at its center.
A physician and former public health official, El-Sayed, who led Stevens by 5 percentage points in the latest poll, has made Medicare for all a core plank of his campaign.
He is also a staunchly pro-Palestinian candidate who’s campaigned alongside fellow hardline Israel critic Hasan Piker. A number of major left-wing figures are backing El-Sayed, including Sanders and a handful of Congress’ most outspoken pro-Palestinian members, such as Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and California Rep. Ro Khanna. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added her endorsement on Thursday.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent more than $2 million on ads boosting Stevens, who describes herself as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat.”
In a recent interview with Semafor, El-Sayed called Stevens “a suit with a large AIPAC bank account,” adding that he hopes AIPAC finds “some way to teach her how to string together two coherent sentences.”
Following the attempted attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, earlier this year, El-Sayed drew criticism from some Jewish leaders — including the synagogue’s rabbi — for releasing lengthy remarks that discussed Israel’s war in Lebanon, after initially condemning antisemitism in a statement.
Michigan: 13th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
State Rep. Donavan McKinney could be the next to join the wave of DSA-backed insurgents heading to Congress. He has the backing of major democratic socialists Sanders and Tlaib, as well as Metro Detroit DSA.
Unlike many DSA congressional candidates, McKinney has not made Israel or Gaza a primary focus of his campaign. On his campaign website, AIPAC is not mentioned by name in the section on “getting big money out of politics,” and Israel is not cited in the foreign policy section.
PAL PAC, an anti-AIPAC pro-Palestinian organization, endorsed McKinney. He thanked the group and said that his policies “reflect the growing majority of Americans who want to end US tax funding of weapons to Israel to destroy Palestinian communities, and instead invest resources back into American working families.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar, the incumbent looking to stave off McKinney, is backed by pro-Israel groups AIPAC and DMFl, and has supported military aid to Israel since joining Congress in 2023.
AIPAC mobilized against Thanedar when he ran in 2022 because of legislation he once co-sponsored in the Michigan House that described Israel as an “apartheid state” and urged Congress to end U.S. aid to Israel. Thanedar later walked back his legislation, telling Jewish Insider that it had been an “emotional reaction” to the 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and that he would support Israel in Congress.
Michigan: 7th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
A Democratic primary between three major candidates is unfolding in a swing district in Michigan, with its winner hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in November.
William Lawrence, 35, is occupying the race’s left lane, with endorsements from Sanders, Khanna and Tlaib. He co-founded Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy organization, in 2015. (The group, which he left in 2020, has since become increasingly vocal in advocating for Palestinians.)
Lawrence is facing off against retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink, who’s said she resigned because Trump “kept siding” with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.
At a candidates’ forum in June, Lawrence was the only participant to refer to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. Lawrence opposes weapons sales and American military aid to Israel. Though not endorsed by the DSA, Lawrence is a member of the left-wing group.
Wisconsin: Governor (Aug. 11)
In the crowded Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s open gubernatorial seat — a seat that is seen as winnable by either party in November — state Rep. Francesca Hong has established herself as the left-wing candidate, with backing from two DSA chapters in the state.
She introduced statewide legislation earlier this year that would repeal a 2018 law banning state contracts with businesses that boycott Israel. In March, Hong criticized outgoing Gov. Tom Evers after he signed into law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Progressives have criticized the definition for characterizing some criticism of Israel as antisemitism. Hong wrote that adopting it “will compromise free speech across the state and academic freedom at our universities.”
She recently appeared on both Hasan Piker’s show and on the stream hosted by Michael Beyer, an influencer known as “Mike from PA” who came under fire after saying that Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented.”
“If Wisconsin is going to be a state that actually values human rights, then we have to ensure that we’re supporting, we’re fighting for the pro-Palestine movement,” Hong said on Beyer’s show.
The race’s most recent polling, conducted in March, had Hong leading with 14% of votes ahead of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, at 11%. Sixty-five percent of voters were undecided.
Florida: 25th Congressional District (Aug. 18)
Oliver Larkin, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, has made an effort to compare himself to Zohran Mamdani.
Larkin is up against the staunchly pro-Israel, AIPAC-backed Rep. Jared Moskowitz in the district that includes Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. Larkin is being backed by DSA and advocates for the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, which he accuses of committing genocide. His platform also includes the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Now, some of the energy generated by the Mamdani-backed candidates’ success in New York appears to be lifting Larkin’s candidacy: His campaign reportedly raised $115,000 in the week after the New York primaries.
In an appearance on Piker’s show, Larkin differentiated his policies on Israel from those of Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, the anti-Israel, fringe GOP candidate who has courted the online far right.
“The key difference is that when we talk about banning U.S. military aid to Israel, banning U.S. colleges and government from investing in Israel bonds, we’re talking about universal economic benefits,” Larkin said, meaning those tax dollars would go toward domestic programs for all.
November’s general election for the recently redistricted seat is seen as a toss-up. Should Larkin win the primary, his candidacy could serve as a test of how left-wing candidates fare in swing seats as opposed to moderate Democrats.
A recent poll showed Moskowitz with a 32-point lead; 72% of voters were unfamiliar or had no opinion of Larkin.
Massachusetts: 4th Congressional District (Sept. 1)
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, another staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, is facing a primary challenge from AI and policy researcher Jason Poulos.
Poulos’ platform calls to end U.S. support for Israel by signing onto legislation like the Block the Bombs Act and Tlaib’s bill stating that Israel is committing genocide. He also calls for AIPAC and DMFI to register as foreign lobbying groups.
Poulos told the Newton Beacon that Israel was an animating force in his entrance into politics.
“What really was radicalizing for me was watching the United States send tens of billions of dollars in military arms to Israel and watch them participate actively in the genocide of the Palestinian people,” Poulos said. He also said that he sided with the campus pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024 and their aim of lobbying the schools to divest from Israel.
Poulos has slammed Auchincloss for his endorsement from AIPAC. At a recent town hall, Auchincloss said it “concerns” him that there are numerous lobbying groups influencing politics, but only “one group of people get pummeled above all others.”
The next day, Poulos called Auchincloss “comically out-of-touch.”
“The reason why AIPAC is singled out is because it has already poured nearly $50m into congressional races nationwide, is bankrolled by MAGA mega-donors, and is in lockstep with the foreign policy interests of a foreign gov’t,” he wrote.
The post Races to watch: As staunch Israel critics notch wins, these candidates could be next appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Quiz: For America 250, how well do you know U.S. Jewish history?
The Forward produced The Great American Jewish History Quiz! using Claude, a generative artificial intelligence tool by Anthropic. All questions and answers were researched and written by Louis Keene, who prompted Claude to create the user interface and underlying code and to track statistics.
Questions or feedback? Send us an email: forwardquiz@forward.com.
The post Quiz: For America 250, how well do you know U.S. Jewish history? appeared first on The Forward.
