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Long-delayed Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial to begin Monday, igniting pain, fear and hopes for closure
(JTA) — Every Thursday, Brad Orsini gets on a conference call with dozens of other security specialists who, like him, focus on preventing threats to American Jews. But in a few days, and for the coming months, the conference call won’t just address the dangers of the present and future. It will also deal with events that occurred more than four years ago.
That’s because next week marks the beginning of the trial of the gunman who is accused of killing 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018.
Orsini, who oversaw the city’s Jewish communal security on the day of the attack in the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, hopes to find a sense of closure in the alleged shooter’s prosecution. But he also knows that the trial threatens to broadcast the white supremacist ideas that lay behind the attack, and continue to pose risks for Jewish communities. And he worries that, in addition to providing a possible pathway for survivors and victims’ families to move into the future, it could also thrust them back into a painful past.
“It’s long overdue,” Orsini said. “This has been looming large over the Pittsburgh community and, quite honestly, the Jewish community in the nation. We’re all looking toward finishing this trial and prosecuting this actor for what he did.”
At the same time, he added, “This trial is going to reopen wounds that this community has suffered for almost five years now, and it’s going to have the ability to retraumatize many people in the community. And we have to be concerned about that.”
Beginning on Monday, those countervailing emotions and expectations will come to bear as the deadliest antisemitic attack in American Jewish history is litigated in court. The trial, which will begin with jury selection, is expected to last about three months. Few doubt the guilt of the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, whose name is hardly uttered by Jewish residents of Squirrel Hill. But what remains unclear is what the trial will mean for American Jews — and for the families most directly affected by the attack.
Some hope for the defendant to get the death penalty — even though that will mean prolonging the legal ordeal — while others have advocated against it. Some hope for the trial to shed light on the threat of white supremacy, even as renewed attention on the attack could inspire other violent extremists. And some hope the trial will help them move past the tragedy, even as they know it will be difficult to hear the details of the shooting laid out in court.
“The country is going to have to undergo this unprecedented trial of the country’s worst mass killer of Jews,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “It’s going to be really hard, so I think our community is really going to have to buckle down and brace ourselves.”
The attack on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, killed 11 people from three congregations, all of which met at the same building, and injured six others, including four police officers. The defendant faces 63 criminal charges, including hate crimes and murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty — a choice some relatives of victims are vocally supporting. Previously, leaders of two of the three congregations that suffered the attack had opposed the death penalty in this case.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship,” Diane Rosenthal, sister of David and Cecil Rosethal, who died in the attack, told local journalists, according to reporting by the Pittsburgh Union Progress. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
For the survivors and families of victims, the trial will likely be especially painful. Some told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that they intend to take time off work, delay a vacation or be away from family for an extended period of time to be present at the proceedings.
“I want to see justice happen, but at the same time, I hate to think about the families having to potentially see images of what happened and things of that sort,” Steve Weiss, who survived the attack, told the weekly Jewish newspaper. “I’m sure they have mental images, but to have to actually see photos of victims and things of that sort I think can really be difficult for them.”
One thing few people question is the shooter’s guilt, despite his plea of not guilty. He offered to plead guilty in 2019 in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, but prosecutors, determined to pursue capital punishment for the crime, rejected the plea.
It was the same thing that had happened in the case of the man charged with killing nine Black worshippers in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015. But there, despite the rejected guilty plea, the trial took place a year and a half after the attack, and the shooter was sentenced to death. (In an illustration of the length of death penalty cases, his latest court proceeding happened in October, and he has not yet been executed.)
In contrast, the Pittsburgh trial is not starting until four and a half years after the shooting there. Part of the reason for the delay stems from the work of the defense team, which has pushed back the trial through various court filings. The alleged shooter’s lead attorney, Judy Clarke, has defended a series of high-profile attackers: the Unabomber, the attacker in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics bombing and the Boston Marathon bomber, among others. According to Pittsburgh’s local CBS affiliate, her singular goal is to avoid the death penalty for her client.
But in many other ways, the parallels between the Charleston trial and this one are clear. Both concern shootings by alleged white supremacists in houses of worship, tragedies that have become gruesome symbols of a national rise in bigotry. In both, the culpability of the defendant was assumed before the trial began. Like the Pittsburgh defendant, the Charleston shooter has been lionized by white supremacists, including some who cited him as an inspiration for their own violent acts.
And in both cases, there is an understanding that a conviction does not heal the wounds opened by the shooter.
“This trial has produced no winners, only losers,” said the judge in the Charleston shooter’s trial, Richard Gergel, according to the New Yorker. “This proceeding cannot give the families what they truly want, the return of their loved ones.”
Still, some who are watching the Pittsburgh trial closely hope that it will bring new facts and connections to light. Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit that spearheaded a multimillion-dollar victory in a civil trial against the organizers of the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, hopes that the Pittsburgh trial illustrates the links among different white supremacist shootings — such as the attacks in El Paso, Texas; Christchurch, New Zealand; and at a synagogue in Poway, California.
Those attackers spouted similar conspiracy theories and referenced other recent violent attacks in their manifestos. Spitalnick said that the accused Pittsburgh shooter allegedly communicated with the organizers of the Charlottesville rally on the social network Gab, which is known as a haven for right-wing extremists.
“Trials like this can really be illustrative of how deep the poison of white supremacy and antisemitism goes,” she said. In the Charlottesville trial, she said, “The reams and reams of evidence… really helped pull back the curtain on what motivated the defendants, how they operated, the tools and the tactics of the movement, the conspiracy theories at its core.”
There’s also the possibility that, with the attack resurfacing the shooter’s motivations, and putting him back in the spotlight, it will act as an inspiration for other white supremacists. In the years following the synagogue shooting, Pittsburgh became a kind of pilgrimage site for the defendant’s admirers — leading to continued harassment of local Jews.
“We’re giving a platform to an individual who is a Jew hater, who wanted to kill all Jews,” Orsini said. “What does that spark in other like-minded people? We need to be very cognizant throughout this trial on what kind of chatter is going to be out there on the deep dark web, or even in open portals.”
In the face of concerns about retraumatization, Greenblatt said the ADL is preparing resources on how to discuss the trial with students and amid the Jewish community.
“To relive the horrors of, the grief of, the event — this thing being constantly in the news — it’s going to be hard to avoid, it’s going to be difficult and it could be grisly and upsetting,” Greenblatt said. “I would much prefer this trial didn’t happen — I would much prefer this crime never happened, I would much prefer that those people were all still with us today — but this is where we are.”
He added, “If there might be some ability to raise awareness among the non-Jewish population of what we’re facing, [that] would be of value.”
One potential challenge for American Jews as a whole, Spitalnick said, is that federal prosecutors don’t necessarily share the needs of Jews who will be following the proceedings. While the trial will conjure a mix of emotions for Jews locally and beyond, she said, prosecutors will be more focused on the nuts and bolts of what happened that day and the details of the accused attacker’s actions and motives.
“We’re going to probably spend a lot of time hearing from the prosecution about what motivated him, but it’s not through the lens of what we as Jews think about when we think about Jewish safety,” she said. “It’s through the lens of making the case that this guy did what he did motivated by this extremism and hate… It’s going to be very deliberate and tactical and precise, versus where we as American Jews have been thinking about this from a deeply personal, communal safety perspective.”
The deliberate and detailed work of prosecutors, however, may not be at cross purposes with the emotional needs of Jews, Orsini said. When the trial ends, he said, the establishment of Bowers’ guilt may itself prove to be transformative for how Jews relate to the tragedy, in Pittsburgh and beyond.
“The fact that this individual has not been fully brought to justice… and is not convicted yet of this mass shooting — in some way, yes, that closure and finality will be done at the end of this trial,” he said. “The community can kind of regroup and truly become resilient once this phase is over with.”
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Who can play a Jew — A debate in Germany
אױף דער בינע פֿון „דײַטשן טעאַטער“ אין בערלין טראָגט דער בלאָנדער שױשפּילער מאָריץ קינעמאַן אַ טלית. ס׳איז שװער צו זײַן אַ ייִד אין דײַטשלאַנד, גיט ער צו פֿאַרשטײן. שפּעטער שילט ער אין עולם אַרײַן מיט אױסגעשרײען פֿון „פּאַסקודנע גױים!“
מע װאָלט געקענט מײנען אַז קינעמאַן איז אַ ייִד, און אַז ער רעדט פֿאַר זיך אַלײן. ס׳איז אָבער נישט אַזוי פּשוט.
זײַן חבֿר דוד, דערציילט ער אין דער סאָלאָ־פֿאָרשטעלונג, איז אַן אַקטיאָר, נישט קיין ייִד, װאָס שפּילט גערן ייִדישע ראָלעס. ס׳איז אים אָבער שווער. „פּלוצעם װילן אַלע רעזשיסאָרן בלױז ׳עכטן׳ ייִדן!“ זאָגט ער. אײן מאָל האָט דוד אַפֿילו געבאָרגט בײַ מאָריצן זײַן יאַרמלקע כּדי צו פֿאַרבעסערן די שאַנסן צו קריגן אַזאַ ראָלע.
קינעמאַן שפּילט דאָ אַ פּאַרשױן וואָס, כאָטש ער טראָגט אַ טלית, איז נישט קײן ייִד. די פּיעסע הײסט טאַקע „פֿאַלשע ייִדן“ און זײַן פּאַרשױן איז באַשײַמפּערלעך באַזירט אױף אַ דײַטשן זשורנאַליסט אונטערן נאָמען פֿאַביאַן װאָלף.
יאָרנלאַנג האָט פֿאַביאַן װאָלף פּובליקירט פּראָװאָקאַטיװע פּאָליטישע עסײען פֿון אַ ייִדישן קוקװינקל אין אַ נאַציאָנאַלער צײַטונג – ביז זײַן לעצטן עסײ דאָרט אין 2023, װען ער האָט זיך מודה געװען אַז זײַנע מעשׂיות װעגן אַ ייִדישער באָבען זענען… פּוסטע באָבע־מעשׂיות. פֿאַביאַן װאָלף איז געװען אַזאַ מין „פֿאַלשער ייִד“, אַ װאָלף אין שאָפֿנפּעלץ, און פּונקט ווי וואָלף, האָט קינעמאַן דאָ אויך אָפּגענאַרט דעם עולם.
נאָך דער פֿאָרשטעלונג האָב איך בײַם שענק אין דער פֿאָיע פֿון טעאַטער געכאַפּט אַ שמועס מיט קינעמאַן און דעם דראַמאַטורג־רעזשיסאָר פֿון דער פּיעסע, נעם ברוזילאָװסקי. „קודם־כּל װיל איך װיסן, צי ביסטו טאַקע אַ ייִד?“ האָב איך געפֿרעגט בײַ קינעמאַן.
און איצט קלער איך, צי איז זײַן ענטפֿער װיכטיק?
ברוזילאָװסקי, װאָס איז יאָ אַ ייִד, האָט מיר דערקלערט׃ „ס׳איז מיר געװען װיכטיק צו טרעפֿן אַ בלאָנדן אַקטיאָר פֿאַר דער ראָלע. סוף־כּל־סוף האַנדלט זיך די פּיעסע נישט װעגן ייִדן, נאָר װעגן דײַטשן און זײערע נעװראָזן.“
די צוקוקערס פֿון דער פּיעסע האָבן נישט געוווּסט צי קינעמאַן איז אַ ייִד ביזן סוף. אַפֿילו דער קלאַנג־טעכניקער האָט הינטער די קוליסן געשטעלט די זעלבע פֿראַגע. קינעמאַן און ברוזילאָװסקי װילן דער עולם זאָל פֿאַרגעסן די סטערעאָטיפּן װעגן ייִדישן אױסזען און גלײבן, בשעת־מעשׂה, אַז קינעמאַן איז יאָ אַ ייִד.
צװישן זײַנע מאָנאָלאָגן האָט מען איבערגעשפּילט אױסצוגן פֿון רעקאָרדירטע אינטערװיוען װעגן די אַזױ גערופֿענע „קאָסטיום־ייִדן“. דאָס איז אַן אמתער פֿענאָמען׃ דײַטשע שאַרלאַטאַנען װאָס מאַכן זיך פֿאַר ייִדן און רעדן עפֿנטלעך װעגן דעם חורבן פֿון אַ ייִדישן קוקװינקל. פֿריִער האָבן זיי זיך געמאַכט פֿאַר לעבן געבליבענע פֿונעם חורבן, און הײַנט — װי זײערע קינדער און אײניקלעך. עטלעכע „קאָסטיום־ייִדן“ האָבן, אײדער מע האָט זײ אַנטפּלעקט, דערגרײכט גרױסע הצלחה. אײנער איז אַפֿילו געװאָרן דער ראָש פֿון אַ ייִדישער קהילה מיט הונדערט מיטגלידער.
אין אַן אינטערוויו האָט באַרבאַראַ שטײַנער, די מחברטע פֿונעם בוך„די אינסצענירונג פֿון ייִדישקײט“, געטענהט אַז קאָסטיום־ייִדן „דערגאַנצן אַ בלױז אין מאַרק“. אין אַ געזעלשאַפֿט מיט קאָלעקטיװער שולד לגבי אַ מינאָריטעט ציִען שאַרלאַטאַנען צו אַ היפּשן עולם. זײ פֿאַרשטײען גאַנץ גוט װעלכע רעפּליקן פֿאַרקױפֿן זיך.
ענלעכע פֿאַלן געפֿינט מען אין אַנדערע געזעלשאַפֿטן. אין קאַנאַדע, למשל, האָט מען אין די לעצטע יאָרן אַנטדעקט שרעקלעכע באַװײַזן פֿונעם אַמאָליקן גענאָציד אױף די אָרטיקע ערשטע אײַנגעבוירענע פֿעלקער. גלײַכצײַטיק האָט מען אַנטפּלעקט אַז דער פּרעמירטער קאַנאַדער שרײַבער טאָמאַס קינג, באַקאַנט פֿאַר זײַנע ביכער אָנגעשריבן פֿון אַ טשעראָקי־קוקװינקל, שטאַמט בכלל נישט פֿון די ערשטע פֿעלקער.
בסך־הכּל לעבן אין אַ לאַנד פֿון 83 מיליאָן מענטשן בלויז אַ 200 טױזנט ייִדן, לרובֿ אימיגראַנטן פֿון אַמאָליקן ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד אָדער מדינת־ישׂראל – ווי אויך אַ גרױסע צאָל גרים פֿון דײַטשן אָפּשטאַם. דער „צענטראַלער ראַט פֿון ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד“ פֿאַרטרעט בלױז אַרום אַ העלפֿט פֿון די ייִדן, װײַל נישט אַלע ייִדן פֿילן זיך צוגעבונדן צו דער אָפֿיציעלער ייִדישער קהילה אין זײער שטאָט. נישט געקוקט אױף דער קלײנער פּראָפּאָרץ ייִדן אין לאַנד – 0.24% – קומען זײ צו רײד בײַ כּלערלײ געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע דעבאַטעס: בפֿרט װעגן געשיכטע, װעלטפּאָליטיק און דער ראָלע פֿון אימיגראַנטן אין דײַטשלאַנד. מע קוקט אױף ייִדן װי די „גוטע, אַסימילירטע“ מינאָריטעט. להיפּוך — לױטן ראַסיסטישן נאַראַטיװ — אַסימילירן זיך קוים די מאַכמעדאַנער אימיגראַנטן און פּליטים און ברענגען מיט זיך אַן „אימפּאָרטירטן אַנטיסעמיטיזם“.
דער סאָציאָלאָג י. מיכל באָדעמאַן ז״ל און דער פּאָעט מאַקס טשאָלעק באַשרײַבן די עפֿנטלעכע דיסקוסיע װעגן ייִדן װי אַ מין מעטאַפֿאָרישן בלאָף, דעם אַזױ גערופֿענעם „אָנדענק־טעאַטער“: צו ערשט שרײַבט אַ נישט־ייִדישער דראַמאַטורג אָן דעם סצענאַר; דערנאָך קלײַבט ער אויס אַ ייִד װאָס זאָל רעדן פֿאַר אַלע ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד; אָט דער „רעפּרעזענטאַנט“ זאָגט אױס דעם דראַמאַטורגס רעפּליקן ווי געהעריק — און דער נישט־ייִדישער עולם אַפּלאָדירט. די מעטאַפֿאָרישע פּיעסע רעדט זיך װעגן די טױטע ייִדישע קדושים פֿון אַ מאָל, װעגן אַ נײַעם אױפֿבלי פֿון ייִדישקײט אין דײַטשלאַנד און מדינת־ישׂראל, װעגן אַנטיסעמיטיזם בײַ לינק־געשטימטע מענטשן און בײַ מאַכמעדאַנער, װעגן דײַטשן תּשובֿה טאָן און ייִדישן מוחל זײַן. אמתע ייִדן מיט אײגענע מעשׂיות אָדער מיט די „פֿאַלשע“ מײנונגען געהערן נישט אױף אַזאַ מעטאַפֿאָרישער בינע.
די שרײַבערין דבֿורה פֿעלדמאַן, באַקאַנט פֿאַר איר בוך „נישט־אָרטאָדאָקסיש“ און דער נעטפֿליקס־אַדאַפּטאַציע דערפֿון, האָט געשריבן אַ בוך אױף דײַטש מיטן טיטל „ייִדן־פֿעטיש“. לױט איר איז דער איצטיקער דײַטשער פֿילאָסעמיטיזם ענג פֿאַרבונדן מיטן אַלטן אַנטיסעמיטיזם. בײדע פֿאַרגרינגערן און פֿאַרשטומען די ייִדישע פֿילמיניקײט.
דאָס אויסטײלן ראָלעס אין טעאַטער קען זײַן פּריקרע, אַפֿילו ווען עס האָט גאָרנישט צו טאָן מיט אידענטיטעט. קינעמאַן האָט אפֿשר אַ מוסקוליעזן גוף אָבער ער זעט נישט אויס ווי קיין קינאָ־שטערן. די ראָלע־דירעקטאָרן (casting directors, בלע״ז) װײסן אָפֿט נישט װעלכע ראָלעס פּאַסן אים: איז ער אַ „נערד“ צי אַ „העלד“? „װי אַ שױשפּילער בין איך בײַ די ראָלע־אויסטײלער אין די הענט“, האָט קינעמאַן געזאָגט.
אין 2023 האָט דער אַמעריקאַנער נישט־ייִדישער אַקטיאָר־רעזשיסאָר ברעדלי קופּער, שפּילנדיק דעם דיריגענט און קאָמפּאָזיטאָר לענאַרד בערנשטײן אינעם פֿילם „מאַעסטראָ“, געטראָגן אַ פֿאַלשע „ייִדישע“ נאָז. דאָס האָט דערפֿירט צו אַ קלײנעם סקאַנדאַל, אָבער בערנשטײנס קינדער האָבן קופּערן פֿאַרטײדיקט.
ס׳איז שױן דורכױס פּסול, אַז אַ װײַסער אַקטיאָר זאָל זיך אױספֿאַרבן דאָס פּנים און שפּילן אַן אַפֿראָ־אַמעריקאַנער אױף דער בינע. אַזױ האָט געטאָן דער ייִדישער אַקטיאָר על דזשאָלסאָן (אַסאַ יאולסאָן) אין די פֿאַראײניקטע שטאַטן אין די 1910ער יאָרן אָן – און איז דעמאָלט געװאָרן אַ שטערן פֿון טעאַטער און קינאָ, דער „מלך פֿון ׳בלעקפֿײס׳“. מיט זײַנע קאָמישע פֿאָרשטעלונגען פֿון טראַדיציאָנעלע אַפֿראָ־אַמעריקאַנער לידער האָט דזשאָלסאָן, צװײ דורות נאָך דער שקלאַפֿערײַ, צעזײט און צעשפּרײט כּלערלײ ראַסיסטישע סטערעאָטיפּן.
אָבער װער מעג דען שפּילן אַ ייִד, און װער נישט? װײַטער׃ װער מעג רעדן פֿאַר די ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד 81 יאָר נאָכן חורבן?
אױף אָט די פֿראַגעס האָט קײנער אינעם שענק פֿון „דײַטשן טעאַטער“ געהאַט קײן קלאָרן ענטפֿער. סיר הענרי, אַ שױשפּילער בײַ דער בערלינער „פֿאָלקסבינע“, אַ געבױרענער אין קאַנאַדע, טענהט׃ „בעסער זאָלן דאָס די ייִדן דערצײלן די ייִדישע װיצן. אױף דער בינע, פֿונדעסטװעגן, װענדט זיך אַלץ אינעם קאָנטעקסט און די כּללים זענען נישט אַזױ פֿעסט.“
דער ייִדישער רעזשיסאָר ברוזילאָװסקי איז מסכּים׃ „מיר האָבן נישט קײן כּללים אין טעאַטער.“
The post Who can play a Jew — A debate in Germany appeared first on The Forward.
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Defining the Goals of the Iran War
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
Going after the unacceptable threat Iran posed to American, Israeli, Gulf Arab States, European, and Asian military and political interests — and understanding the destructive hand of China behind the mullahs — was not a mistake. It was recognition of the stakes for the civilized world.
But the US and Israel, indispensable allies at many levels, have to take account of their differences in threat level and capabilities, and forge a political as well as military path together.
Two points to make in wartime:
First — achievable goals are essential to ending a war. Corollary 1: It is easier to start a war than end one Corollary 2: Every war must end
Second — there are things you don’t know and won’t know (although in some cases, people knew, but people weren’t listening.
President Donald Trump said in his State of the Union address: “They [the Iranians] have already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
He was right, but dismissed with a collective snicker.
My husband, security analyst Dr. Stephen Bryen, ran the statement through Google Gemini and found disparaging references to the President in The Washington Post, The Guardian, American Progress, PBS NewsHour, PolitiFact, The New York Times and CNN, among others.
He found “experts” who told us that the range of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal was about 2,000 km, which made Israel and the Gulf States potential targets, but allowed the Europeans to claim immunity. In 2025, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment posited that Iran was “years away” from possessing a viable ICBM.
They were wrong.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News in February, “We are not developing long-range missiles … we have limited the range below 2,000 kilometers.”
He lied.
Trump was right. The range is closer to 4,000 km, technically putting Paris in range (about 4,200 km from Tehran).
[Aside: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said in a TV interview that Iran had enough uranium to make nuclear bombs, but there was no reason to do anything about it because Iran’s missiles couldn’t yet reach the US. Is he still sure?]
The unwillingness to see and understand threats is, in some ways, an admirable attempt to avoid war. War is terrible. No one wants war. War may kill the enemy, and surely it will also kill innocents. But the decades-old idea that one could negotiate with terrorists is a huge failing in the Western world.
The Oslo Accords were not peace. Temporary deals with Lebanon are not peace. Multiple Gaza ceasefires were not peace. Operations Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer were not peace. The return of the Israeli hostages was not peace.
Israel collected intelligence and built an extraordinary military force in cooperation with the United States, while the US built Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPS). But it also assumed that giving the people of Gaza a decent life, including work permits in Israel, would keep things calm.
It worked at some level until October 7, 2023.
After that, Israel’s determination to defend its citizens forced a reckoning. It would no longer ignore Iran. President Trump agreed. Last summer’s attack on Iranian assets was a masterpiece of coordination and cooperation.
But it wasn’t enough.
The attacks launched this year were designed not only to eliminate Iran’s weapons and weapons-producing capability, but to put in place a new strategic pattern for behavior.
Much of the Arab world has come to his thinking. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and even Qatar, seeing that they are targets for Iran, not allies, have stepped up. Azerbaijan, too. Syria is silent and Lebanon is trying to figure out how to get rid of Hezbollah. In Europe, the Czech Republic and Estonia defied the EU resolution on the war.
In the past few days, Japan and several European countries appear to have awakened to the fact that their future, their security, and their people are on the firing line.
The late Fred Iklé, a defense strategist and official in the Reagan administration, wrote a book entitled Every War Must End. He was writing primarily, but not only, about American wars. For Iklé, who passed away in 2011, the essential lesson was that it is much easier to start a war than to successfully conclude one. Having achievable aims — both military and political — and stopping when they have been met — is the key to success.
The alternative is to slog along with grinding casualties until the conflict peters out ignominiously when public opinion no longer supports the effort. The French, he pointed out, were the military victors in Algeria — as were the Americans in Vietnam — but in both cases, the Western power withdrew without a political victory, and public disillusionment hampered the government at home and abroad for years after.
The Russians left Afghanistan when it produced unacceptable grumbling at home. More recently, the US left Afghanistan and northern Syria.
In none of those cases was the war over; in each case, people continued to die on the ground when we went home.
But Israel is home. Israel needs victory to ensure peace — how you define that between allies is precisely the point. And America and Israel must find a definition of victory that works for each.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.
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When a Jewish Landmark Disappears, So Does Jewish Presence
The Contemporary Jewish Museum. Photo: screenshot.
Another major Jewish institution has collapsed – and the implications reach far beyond San Francisco.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) has closed and is selling its building. What was once a bold, architecturally striking institution in the heart of downtown will soon be something else entirely. Another civic space repurposed. Another cultural anchor lost.
I loved seeing that building. Designed by Daniel Libeskind, it was bold, unmistakable, and confident – right off Yerba Buena Gardens in the heart of the city. It stood prominently, not tucked away or obscured, but fully visible. It sent a simple but powerful message: Jewish life belongs in the civic fabric. For me, it was a symbol of pride.
And now it is gone.
The explanations offered are familiar. Attendance declined by roughly 50 percent from 2019 to 2023–2024. Revenue fell. In the fiscal year ending June 2024, expenses outpaced revenue by more than $5.9 million. Leadership acknowledged that the building itself had become “beyond our capacity” to maintain.
All of that may be true. But it is not sufficient.
Institutions do not simply collapse because conditions change. They collapse because they fail to respond to changing conditions with clarity, discipline, and purpose. And when a flagship Jewish cultural institution disappears in one of the wealthiest and most philanthropic regions in the country, it is worth asking not only what happened, but what it says about us.
At one level, this is a story of institutional failure. The museum expanded into a large and expensive footprint – a 63,000-square-foot facility completed in 2008 at a cost of $47 million in a city already becoming more difficult to sustain. It relied on a fragile mix of philanthropy and foot traffic in a downtown that was hollowing out even before COVID accelerated the trend. The museum was still carrying roughly $27 million in outstanding construction debt. When those pressures intensified, there appears to have been no clear plan to right-size the institution, refocus its mission, or rethink its role in a changing cultural landscape.
Instead, the result was a slow drift toward insolvency – followed by closure.
But the deeper problem is not simply managerial. It is cultural. And it was visible in the year before the closure, when the museum found itself caught in an episode that illustrated just how far it had drifted from its core identity.
In spring 2024, the museum mounted its first major open-call exhibition of California Jewish artists. Seven of the accepted artists withdrew their work in a coordinated protest, demanding that the museum commit to BDS – the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel – and divest from all funding associated with the Jewish state. The museum rejected those demands. But rather than confidently reaffirming its identity as a Jewish cultural institution, it hesitated publicly, left blank spaces on its walls where the withdrawn works would have hung, and framed the episode as a “complicated moment.” It was a moment that revealed an institution uncertain of what it stood for.
Too many institutions in recent years have confused relevance with purpose. In an effort to remain current, they have chased trends, embraced fashionable programming, and diluted the very identity that made them distinctive. In doing so, they have weakened the case for their own existence – both to the public and to their donors.
Jewish institutions are not immune to this drift. When they lose clarity about who they are and what they are meant to do, they risk becoming interchangeable with any number of other cultural organizations. And interchangeable institutions are far easier to abandon.
The museum’s collapse also raises uncomfortable questions about the direction of Jewish giving. The Jewish Federation Bay Area manages more than $2 billion in assets and provided millions in grants in fiscal year 2023 alone. The Bay Area is home to some of the most generous Jewish philanthropists in America. If a flagship institution like this cannot be sustained in that environment, the problem is not a lack of resources. It is a question of priorities.
Much contemporary giving is directed toward causes, programs, and initiatives – often important ones. But less attention is paid to sustaining the shared institutions that give Jewish life visibility, continuity, and public meaning. Museums, cultural centers, and communal spaces do not always produce immediate or measurable outcomes. But they create something more enduring: a sense of presence.
The board chair told reporters that the building “does not define the museum.” And perhaps he is right, technically. The executive director expressed optimism about a smaller, reimagined future. That deserves acknowledgment. But what has been lost in the interim – the physical presence, the civic statement, the visibility – cannot simply be reimagined back into existence. Presence is not just programmatic. It is architectural. It is spatial. It is the fact of a building that stands in the middle of a great city and says: we are here.
Places like the Contemporary Jewish Museum did something rare. They connected past and present, insiders and outsiders, tradition and creativity. They offered a space where Jewish life could be explored without precondition – neither purely religious nor purely academic, but deeply cultural and civic at once. They were not simply museums. They were part of the infrastructure of Jewish public life.
The disappearance of such institutions is especially troubling given what is happening in the broader culture. The ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, the highest level since tracking began in 1979 – a staggering 893 percent increase over the past decade. The FBI simultaneously recorded the highest number of anti-Jewish hate crimes since it began reporting data in 1991. A majority of American Jewish college students report feeling uncomfortable or unsafe on campus because they are Jewish.
At a moment like this, the disappearance of visible Jewish institutions sends precisely the wrong signal. It suggests contraction when presence is needed. It risks normalizing a quieter, less visible Jewish public life.
It is also worth noting that the CJM’s collapse is part of a wider pattern in San Francisco’s struggling cultural sector – the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, California College of the Arts, and the nearby Mexican Museum have all faced severe financial distress in recent years. This context matters. The CJM did not fail in a vacuum. But it is not exculpatory, either. What distinguishes the institutions that endure is usually not better luck. It is clearer purpose and stronger accountability.
When an institution like this collapses in a wealthy and engaged community, it is rarely because no one cared. It is because no one felt ultimately responsible for ensuring that it endured. Not the board. Not the donors. Not the broader community.
Everyone assumes someone else will step in. And no one does.
That is the accountability failure. And it is correctable – if the community chooses to correct it.
The sale of the Contemporary Jewish Museum should not be treated as a local story or an isolated failure. It is a signal, one that should prompt concrete action.
Jewish philanthropists and federations should dedicate a meaningful portion of their giving specifically to sustaining cultural institutions – not just causes and programs, but the physical and civic infrastructure of Jewish life. Boards of Jewish institutions should be held to explicit accountability for institutional survival, not just programmatic innovation. And Jewish communities in every major city should ask, right now, whether their flagship cultural institutions are financially sound – and what they would do if they were not.
If the CJM survives in some smaller, reimagined form, that would be welcome. But the larger lesson stands regardless: Jewish presence in American public life is not self-sustaining. It requires deliberate investment, disciplined governance, and a community willing to prioritize endurance over the fashions of the moment.
Some institutions are easy to replace. Others are not.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum was more than a museum. It was a statement.
And its disappearance should force us to ask whether we are still willing to make such statements – or whether, slowly and quietly, we are allowing them to disappear.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.