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Jewish marriage rites are robust. Now a rabbi is innovating rituals for Jews who divorce.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — For Lyssa Jaye, throwing the wood chips into the Tuolumne River felt in many ways familiar to the tashlich ritual performed on Rosh Hashanah. But rather than casting off her sins, she was tossing away feelings: shame, resentment, anger.
They were the emotions that had taken residence inside Jaye since her divorce eight years ago, along with a sense of failure. And she had come to a Jewish retreat to rid herself of them.
“I’ve been carrying around these feelings for years now,” Jaye said. “I have a completely different life now, and I needed to let them go.”
Jaye was taking part in Divorce & Discovery: A Jewish Healing Retreat, the first-ever gathering in a series conceived by Rabbi Deborah Newbrun as part of her training, held this month at Camp Tawonga in the Bay Area.
One of the requirements at the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, where Newbrun was ordained last year in the first graduating class, “was that each of us had to do an innovation, or something that didn’t exist before,” she said.
Newbrun, who directed Camp Tawonga for more than two decades, has been recognized for innovative programming for such achievements as initiating Tawonga’s LGBT family camp and founding its wilderness department. She even won a prestigious 2018 Covenant Award for Jewish educators. But as she started thinking about how to fulfill the seminary requirement, her first thought was, “I don’t have any ideas left in me.”
Then she began reflecting back on her divorce years earlier. She remembered how she had approached numerous rabbis and colleagues in search of Jewish support around the grief she felt. And how they all came up empty-handed.
That’s when she realized: “I can put together something meaningful and helpful for people going through divorce.”
From the moment participants arrived at Camp Tawonga near Yosemite, they knew this would be no ordinary Jewish retreat. At the opening event, all of the facilitators, several clergy members and a therapist shared their own divorce stories, “to set the standard and normalize vulnerability, transparent sharing and establish that we all know what it’s like to have a marriage end,” Newbrun said.
Most participants were from the Bay Area, with a handful from farther afield. They were in different life stages, from those in their 30s dealing with custody battles over young children, to empty nesters in their 60s. Some had separated from their partners years ago, while others had gone their separate ways more recently. Some split amicably; a good many did not. But all had come up against a lack of Jewish resources or support when navigating this major life passage.
Rabbi Deborah Newbrun, the founder of Divorce and Discovery at the recent weekend. (Photo/Margot Yecies)
Jaye said she left no stone unturned in seeking out support, an experience Newbrun said she heard echoed by many participants. Jaye attended a retreat at a local meditation center. She read self-help books. She joined a support group for divorcees. She went to therapy.
And while they all helped in different ways, none was specifically Jewish.
“I knew I needed some kind of spiritual way forward,” she said. “I needed to do this in my own language, with my own people.”
Even though the retreat came nearly a decade years after Jaye’s divorce, “it was profound. It felt like coming home, and that this is what I needed all along. This model could be extremely powerful. The rituals we did could be taught in rabbinical schools or to Jewish educators so it’s not just ‘sign this get and goodbye,’” she said, referring to the Jewish divorce document.
Rather than create new rituals, Newbrun and her facilitators took familiar Jewish rituals and retooled them.
The tashlich ritual, led by Newbrun and Maggid Jhos Singer, had a call-and-response portion, and participants also could call out what they personally wanted to cast off. “One person ‘tashliched’ their wedding ring into the river and felt it was such a perfect place to let it go!” said Newbrun.
An optional immersion in the Tuolumne River followed. Jaye, who years ago went to the mikvah alone, with only the attendant there for support, said there was no comparison with how much more healing it felt performing the ritual in community.
A session on sitting shiva for one’s marriage, led by Rabbi Sue Reinhold, allowed participants to share and mourn the loss of what they missed most about being married. That resonated for Robyn Lieberman, who does not attend synagogue services but went to every session at the retreat on innovating Jewish rituals.
“I did need to mourn what I’m losing,” said Lieberman, who had been married to an Israeli. “We had a very public, open house around Jewish religion, and a constant Israeli identity, which fulfilled my Jewish needs.”
Rabbi Jennie Chabon of Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek reflected on how much time she has spent with couples preparing for their wedding day, both in premarital counseling and in planning the event, and on how many marriage-related topics are covered in rabbinical school.
“And when it comes to divorce? Nothing,” Chabon said. “We’re all out here on our own trying to figure out how to wander through it.”
She was tasked with creating a havdalah ceremony with a divorce theme, in which she reimagined the wine, spices and flame typically used to mark a division between Shabbat and the rest of the week.
“There’s a fire that burns within each of us, and that flame doesn’t go out,” said Chabon, 47. “When you’re married for a long time, your identity, energy and spirit is so woven into that of another.” Her ritual was meant to affirm that “you are on fire just as you are, and you’re a blessing as an individual in the world. You don’t need a partnership or family to be whole.”
Even the Shabbat Torah service was on theme.
Rabbi Jennie Chabon reads from the Torah during a service at the Divorce and Discovery retreat. (Photo/Margot Yecies)
Rather than focusing on Noah’s emergence from the ark after the flood, Chabon spoke about a lesser-known section of the week’s Torah portion, in which Noah builds a fire and offers a sacrifice to God. But if the entire earth was drenched from the flood, Chabon asked, what did he burn?
“The answer is he must have burned the ark,” Chabon said in recalling her talk at the retreat. “What does that mean for people going through this incredibly painful and tender time in their lives, when what was once a safe container and secure and protected them, they have to burn it down in order to start life anew?
“This is a perfect rebirth metaphor. But what’s being birthed is a new self and a new identity in the world as a single person,” Chabon said. “You have to release and let go of what was to make room for the blessing for who you’re going to become.”
At a ritual “hackathon” workshop presented by Newbrun, participants suggested standing during Kaddish at synagogue to mourn their marriages, and offering their children a Friday night blessing that they are whole whether they are at either parent’s home.
Not all of the sessions centered on Jewish ritual. In a session on the Japanese art of kintsugi, or mending broken pottery, attendees made vessels whose cracks they fixed with putty, symbolizing that beauty can be found in imperfection. Many danced in a Saturday-night silent disco.
Everyone was assigned to a small group, or havurah, that they met with daily, so they could establish deeper connections within the larger cohort.
“To have gone through some of these practices was very meaningful to me,” said Lieberman. “It’s not like I put a seal on my marriage and wrapped it up in a bow and put it behind me, but it was a nice catharsis for completing a transition that I’ve been very thoughtful about.”
Newbrun aims to recreate the retreat in communities around the country. Both Jaye and Lieberman said they found value in being in community with people “who get it,” without the judgment they often face.
“I was a little skeptical that all I’d have in common with people was that we were Jewish and divorced, and that that wouldn’t be enough for me to form a relationship,” said Lieberman. “But having the willingness to talk about it and explore it did open up a lot of very vulnerable conversations. The expert facilitation really made us think about the fact that divorce is not about your paper [certificate], it’s about reexamining the direction of your life and who you want to be.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Trump Proclaims Isolationist Critics ‘Are Not MAGA’ While Defending Mark Levin From Vulgar Insult
US President Donald Trump speaks during a visit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
An uncouth online argument between two of the most prominent American conservative commentators inspired an intervention on Sunday night from US President Donald Trump, who backed radio host Mark Levin during a heated exchange with podcaster Megyn Kelly.
Trump also defended his policy toward Iran in his Truth Social post, lambasting isolationist critics of his foreign policy as not being part of his so-called “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” movement.
“Mark Levin, a truly Great American Patriot, is somewhat under siege by other people with far less Intellect, Capability, and Love for our Country. Mark is Tough, Strong, and Brilliant, hence the nickname, ‘THE GREAT ONE,’ conceived by our MAGA friend, the wonderful Sean Hannity,” Trump wrote before effusively praising Levin as “a true Conservative, and Intellect” who was “far smarter than those who criticize him but, above all, he is a man of Great Wisdom.”
Trump warned that “those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound.” He went on to proclaim, “THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM, and MAGA includes not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
Repeating his pledge to obliterate the Islamic regime in Iran, Trump vowed that “MAGA is about stopping them cold, and that is exactly what we are doing. GOD BLESS OUR GREAT MILITARY, WHICH I HAVE REBUILT SINCE THE BEGINNING OF MY FIRST TERM, TO ACHIEVE EVERLASTING PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
While not naming the specific individuals who had attacked Levin, online observers recognized the commander-in-chief had written in response to a provocative exchange between “the Great One” and Kelly which had devolved into grade-school-level taunting.
In recent months, Kelly has earned the ire of pro-Israel advocates due to her decision to align herself with the antisemitic positions and conspiracy theories promoted by fellow podcasters Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes. During a discussion with Carlson in January, Kelly praised Fuentes — a man who has celebrated Adolf Hitler, promoted Joseph Stalin, supported Hamas, and urged his “Groyper” followers to rape women — as “very interesting and he’s very smart.” She said, “There is value to be derived from that guy’s messaging.”
Kelly, Owens, Carlson, and Fuentes have also been adamantly opposed to the US military campaign against Iran, claiming without evidence that Israel dragged Trump into the conflict.
On Sunday, Levin wrote on X: “Poor Megyn Kelly. An emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck. She’s completely revealed and destroyed herself. She’s everything people say she is, but much worse. Never an intelligent, thoughtful, or substantive comment. Utterly toxic.”
Kelly reposted Levin’s remarks before she struck below the belt. In a post that has since received 6.3 million views, Kelly wrote, “Micropenis Mark @marklevinshow thinks he has the monopoly on lewd. He tweets about me obsessively in the crudest, nastiest terms possible. Literally more than some stalkers I’ve had arrested. He doesn’t like it when women like me fight back. Bc of his micropenis.”
Levin then reshared Kelly’s jab at his manhood and responded with a Freudian implication, writing, “Busy Sunday morning for Megyn Kelly. She wakes up and has ‘micrope*is’ on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlot, and posts like a harlot, it’s … well, you know the rest. Shalom!”
Early Monday morning, Kelly doubled down on her vulgarity and responded to Trump’s Truth Social post, suggesting that Levin had requested support.
“Micro penis @marklevinshow is such a SMALL MAN he had to go beg the president for a pat on the head (in the middle of a war!) to make himself feel better about … well, you know,” Kelly wrote. “This, after one mean tweet about him – following his 111 (!) nasty, non-stop, personal, misogynistic attacks on me. (Fox has an OBSESSED HARASSER on its hands.)”
Kelly added, “Just like all feckless, weakling bullies Micro can dish it out but he can’t take it. After just one post putting the so-called ‘great one’ in his place, he ran crying to Daddy.”
Rejecting the charge that he had solicited support in their flame war from the president, Levin wrote on X that “no, I did not speak to the president about releasing any statement. These reprobates have nothing but lies and conspiracies and hate. And the more they talk and post, the more people have had enough of them. They will eventually dry up and blow away, like those who’ve come before them.”
On Sunday night, Levin thanked Trump for his praise, writing, “I am beyond humbled by your words and graciousness in writing such a beautiful note and sharing it on Truth Social. I am honored that you took the time to write it. Your courage, strength, and moral clarity are truly unparalleled. And your leadership has made our country and the world much safer.”
Six hours after Kelly’s initial insult against Levin, her ally Owens took her own shot, writing in a long note on X that “no matter how many articles Bari Weiss publishes or how many monologues Mark Levin stammers through, the overwhelming majority of people in the world sense that Charlie Kirk was murdered for opposing this war and that Israel’s hands are not clean in the story.”
Owens further aligned herself with Carlson and Kelly, stating, “People like myself and like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly (however ignorant we may or may not have been in our earlier assessments) once genuinely supported Israel and thought Zionism was a moral position.”
Continuing to advance her conspiracy theory of Israeli involvement in the murder of her friend Kirk, Owens wrote, “In their sheer arrogance, rather than meaningfully working to restore relationships, zionists continue to use tactics of slander, deception, law-fare and yes, murder to force their perspectives. They no longer seem capable of making a distinction between illusion and reality. They wrongly assumed that with enough money, they could purchase truth.”
On Monday, former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene backed Kelly in the feud, writing, “I wholeheartedly support Megyn Kelly telling the world that Mark Levin has a micropenis. It’s the most deserved insult and I don’t care if it’s vulgar. And Trump’s gigantic defense of Levin only enraged the base more. People are DONE. MAGA destroyed by micropenis Mark Levin.”
Greene had written her comment in response to Kelly defending her rhetoric to far-right influencer Mike Cernovich, who criticized the intra-right battle as a “total distraction to spend hours a week reacting to each other. It’s slave behavior.”
Kelly responded to Cernovich by justifying herself, writing, “Disagree. You can take the high road and ignore for a while but eventually after hundreds of tweets/attacks you punch the bully in the rhetorical face. And then he goes running to daddy about his Micropenis.”
While debates about Israel and the Iran war may engage online pugilists with audiences to entertain, polling shows that the vast majority of Republicans (85 percent) and self-identified “MAGA” supporters (91 percent) back Trump’s decision to bomb the Islamic regime in Iran.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Leaves the Left Party Over Anti-Israel Stance, Lack of Support Amid Death Threats
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s antisemitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has resigned from the Left Party, citing a rise in antisemitism within the ranks, relentless personal attacks, and a party climate that has become intolerable.
“I struggled with this decision for a long time, as I have felt a deep connection to the party over many years,” Büttner wrote in a letter to the party leadership, as reported by German media.
“But I have reached a point where I must acknowledge that I can no longer remain a member of this party without betraying my own convictions,” he continued.
According to several German media reports, the commissioner, who had been a member of the Left Party since 2015, said he was resigning over the party’s handling of antisemitism, internal expulsion proceedings aimed at removing him, and relentless personal attacks.
“The fight against antisemitism is a task that transcends party lines,” Büttner wrote in his letter. “All the more shocking for me is what I have had to witness within my own party for years.”
He criticized the Left Party’s rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, noting that the party falsely regards it as a tool to repress protest while continuing to relativize antisemitic rhetoric.
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016.
Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
In his letter, Büttner also condemned the Left Party in Lower Saxony, a federal state in northwestern Germany, for its position on Zionism, insisting that challenging Israel’s right to exist is unacceptable — especially after the state convention passed resolutions branding Israel a “genocidal state” and an “apartheid state.”
“These resolutions are no longer acceptable to me,” he said.
In recent years, Büttner has faced not only external threats but also a sustained campaign of insults and defamation from members within his own party.
“The way my own party has handled attacks against me is particularly troubling,” Büttner wrote in his letter. “Instead of clear solidarity, I have too often experienced silence.”
Federal party leader Jan van Aken expressed regret over Büttner’s resignation but rejected any accusations of antisemitism within the Left Party, reiterating that the party “stands unequivocally against antisemitism.”
Earlier this year, Büttner endured two personal attacks within a single week, the second escalating into a death threat.
The Brandenburg state parliament received a letter threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
A former police officer, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
In the week prior to this latest attack, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red, inverted Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking what was at the time latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
In August 2024, swastikas and other antisemitic symbols and threats were also spray-painted on his personal car.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials have noted that the real number of antisemitic crimes registered by police is likely much higher, as many do not get reported.
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Over 100 Groups Call on University of California to Address Campus Antisemitism
Illustrative: Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
Over 100 Jewish advocacy groups have signed a petition imploring the University of California (UC) system to confront faculty antisemitism amid the fallout over a new AMCHA Initiative report which argued that professors accelerated the campus antisemitism crisis by promoting the use of their platforms to promote anti-Jewish tropes in the name of opposing Israel and Zionism.
“We urge the [UC Board of Regents] to act now: stop faculty and academic units from using UC authority, resources, classrooms, and UC-branded platforms to advance political advocacy as institutional practice by strictly enforcing UC’s existing rules, and strengthening them where needed,” said the petition, which has so far amassed 124 signatures from groups, as well as 4,000 individuals. “This is not about policing faculty speech. It is about enforcing the crucial boundary between private speech and institutional advocacy.”
It continued, “When that boundary disappears, academic norms break down and students face harassment, intimidation, and exclusion. We call on you to protect students, restore the university’s academic integrity, and rebuild public trust in the University of California.”
The petition’s signatories include Alums for Campus Fairness, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, The Lawfare Project, Zionist Organization of America, and Students Supporting Israel (SSI).
The AMCHA Initiative report, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California” examined the “antisemitism crisis” across UC campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. It included dozens of examples of faculty antisemitism, including their calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; founding pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters; and endorsing institutional adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report said, adding that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) alone holds at least 115 faculty endorsers of the BDS movement, according to the report. Meanwhile, dozens of its academic departments issued statements of support of the pro-Hamas encampments which struck college campuses during the 2023-2024 academic school year and became the hubs of antisemitic assault and discrimination.
It also said that FJP chapters offered more than supportive words, “defending and helping orchestrate boycott-aligned activism (including encampment demands), seeking to deplatform Israeli speakers, and filing an amicus brief … that denied Zionism’s place within Jewish identity and defended exclusionary encampment conduct toward Zionist Jewish students, including expulsion from campus spaces.”
UC Office of the President spokesperson Rachel Zaentz reportedly said the UC system was taking AMCHA’s report “seriously” and reviewing it. However, UC spokesperson Dan Mogulof expressed concerns about the methodology used to compile the data.
“While we appreciate this organization’s dedication to confronting antisemitism, it is unfortunate that no apparent effort was made to seek information directly from the campus and/or confirm information, some of which appears to have been gathered from unreliable sources,” Mogulof told The Daily Californian.
The AMCHA report followed previous studies revealing the extent of faculty misconduct in higher education promoting anti-Israel animus and even outright antisemitism.
In February, The Algemeiner learned that, according to a lawsuit, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University assigned a Jewish student a project on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”
Similar incidents have come at a fast clip since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre: a Cornell University professor praised the terrorist group’s atrocities, which included mass sexual assaults; a Columbia University professor exalted Hamas terrorists who paraglided into a music festival to murder Israeli youth as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance”; and a Harvard University FJP chapter shared an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Zionists as murderers of Blacks and Arabs.
The AMCHA Initiative has explored faculty antisemitism before.
In September 2024, the organization published a groundbreaking study which showed that FJP is fueling antisemitic hate crimes, efforts to impose divestment on endowments, and the collapse of discipline and order on college campuses. Using data analysis, AMCHA researchers said they were able to establish a correlation between a school’s hosting an FJP chapter and anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity. For example, the researchers found that the presence of FJP on a college campuses increased by seven times “the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students” and increased by three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death.
FJP, AMCHA’s researchers added, also “prolonged” the duration of “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protests on college campuses, in which students occupied a section of campus illegally and refused to leave unless administrators capitulated to demands for a boycott of Israel. They said that such demonstrations lasted over four and a half times longer where FJP faculty — who, they noted, spent 9.5 more days protesting than those at non-FJP schools — were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students.
Additionally, FJP facilitated the proposing and adopting of student government resolutions demanding acceptance of the BDS movement — which aims to isolate Israel culturally, financially, and diplomatically as the first step toward its destruction. Wherever FJP was, the researchers said, BDS was “4.9 times likely to pass” and “nearly 11 times more likely to be included in student demands,” evincing, they continued, that FSJP plays an outsized role in radicalizing university students at the more than 100 schools — including Harvard University, Brown University, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and Yale University — where it is active.
“One of the important functions of these groups is to give academic legitimacy to the notion that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and that’s a hugely important trope being trafficked on campuses right now,” AMCHA Initiative executive director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.