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Picking a new rabbi? A new novel about a church shows how
(JTA) — About a decade ago, I served on my synagogue’s rabbinic search committee. Normally I am allergic to any activity at which minutes will be taken, but it was a great experience, thanks to the care and intelligence that my fellow committee members brought to the process. Flush with satisfaction for a job well done and probably a little full of ourselves, we even imagined other synagogues might learn from our example. We spoke about putting together a seminar, or perhaps a how-to book.
No one, I recall, suggested turning the experience into a novel.
That’s why I’m not Michelle Huneven, who this year published a novel about a church’s search for a new minister. I’ve been recommending it to anyone who wants to understand shul politics, or wants reassurance that Jews are just like everybody else, no more and no less.
“Search” is narrated by Dana, a 50-something restaurant critic, former seminarian and once-active congregant at a Unitarian Universalist church in Arroyo, California, who is recruited to the search committee when the current pastor announces plans to retire. The book tracks the search process from in-house focus groups to Skype interviews with applicants to the finalists’ “candidating week” — what you and I might call “auditions.”
Despite an unlikely premise for a mainstream novel, ”Search” is a smart, funny and enlightening book about contemporary religion, especially of the liberal, undogmatic variety that is typical of Unitarian Universalism and, well, much of non-Orthodox Judaism. It’s a worthy companion to “The New Rabbi,” Stephen Fried’s 2002 nonfiction book about a Philadelphia-area synagogue and its own search.
Huneven captures the impossible nature of a clergy person’s job, and especially the unrealistic expectation of congregations that want their spiritual leader to be all things to all people. Trying to narrow down what they are looking for, members of the search committee call out qualifications:
“‘Sermons with more spiritual depth and intellectual content,’ said Charlotte.
“‘Someone with an efficient, organized management style,’ said Belinda.”
Wonders Dana: “Who didn’t want a warm presence with a progressive social conscience, the management skills of a corporate CEO, and the work-life boundaries of a New Age life coach?”
As the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly warns in its manual for search committees, searches founder “not because of a dearth of qualified candidates but because the congregation’s expectations of rabbinic candidates is unrealistic.”
Regular synagogue-goers will recognize the tensions in the novel between the older members and the newcomers, between boomers and millennials, between theists and humanists. At one point, the assistant minister remembers when a midweek service led by a student intern began attracting a core of people who weren’t showing up on Sundays.
“You can’t have two congregations, no matter how small one is,” she explains. “It sets up a potential schism.”
Clergy searches are fraught because nearly every congregant regards themself as the rabbi’s boss. On the flip side, members grow attached to longtime rabbis, even when they outlast their changing congregations. In “Search,” the senior minister has been with the church for eight years, but remains under the shadow of his beloved predecessor, who had served for 28 years. (I was married by the “new rabbi” at my wife’s family’s synagogue, who at that point had been on the job for about 20 years.)
“Search” isn’t a satire, exactly, but Huneven has fun with the political and social winds that are blowing through liberal denominations. Some of the congregants are set on hiring a woman after almost four decades of male leadership. “But we can’t say that explicitly,” Dana warns. Another character is angling to be the head of the national church association, “though it’s not such a clear shot for straight white guys these days,” says a church consultant.
Unitarian Universalist, or UU, churches are also staunchly secular, which means the clergy don’t have to express a belief in God, let alone Jesus or a strict theology. That brings with it the paradox of choice: “Our ministers can be gay, trans, Buddhist, atheist, any race, or same-sex adoptive parents with mixed-race families. You name it,” says a member of the committee. “That’s the future. Everybody’s in.”
I would guess that a lot of liberal synagogues would love to be as open and diverse as that, but bump up against the reality that, despite a growing number of Jews by choice and Jews of color, synagogues tend to be white, upper-middle-class and heteronormative. As for theology, rare is the synagogue that doesn’t want its rabbi to “have been inspired to serve God,” as the R.A. handbook puts it; on the other hand, search committees disagree about how much theology and “God talk” they want from the bima.
And yet, even the most secular UU church or most liberal synagogue pursues the sacred in the ways they gather, worship, mourn and serve the community. As the squabbles intensify in “Search,” one older member of the committee laments that they’ve lost sight of their goal: how the search for a new clergyperson is a “a sacred task that will grow us spiritually.”
During my time on the search committee, I saw the sausage-making of synagogue life. Compromise is always hard. Even the most thorough, transparent search process is bound to disappoint someone.
And “Search” the novel can be, at times, as tedious as a real-life rabbinic search, as characters deliberate over candidates at painstaking length. But Huneven understands that holiness is not just a matter of reading from a prayer book or studying from a text, but lives in the way people create communities and choose their leaders. It’s a messy process, but if you do it in good faith and in a spirit of humility, you might end up with a pretty great rabbi.
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New Report Exposes Docters Without Borders for Pursuing Anti-Israel Activism
A Palestinian woman helps a burn victim, Maria Abu Aawad, at a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Zawaida, in the central Gaza Strip, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
A new report is raising questions about whether one of the world’s most prominent humanitarian organizations has crossed the line from medical advocacy into political campaigning in its approach to Israel and the war in Gaza.
The analysis — published by NGO Monitor, an independent Jerusalem-based watchdog group that monitors nongovernmental organizations — scrutinizes the statements and activities of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
“Despite the slaughter of over 1,200 people, the injuries to thousands, and the kidnapping of over 250 hostages into Gaza [during Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities], MSF’s public communications and almost daily updates immediately pivoted to a singular focus on condemning Israel’s response,” the report says.
NGO Monitor also points to a December 2023 finding by former MSF Secretary General Alain Destexhe, who found that many MSF employees celebrated Hamas’s brutal incursion into Israel, contending that “over 40 percent of statements by staff, including senior figures, praised Hamas and the attacks.”
Destexhe warned last year that “MSF is no longer neutral; its humanitarian language now serves a political cause.”
According to NGO Monitor’s report, MSF, which purports to be a neutral provider of emergency medical care, has increasingly adopted language and positions that align with political advocacy, including accusations that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza. NGO Monitor argues that such claims are not supported by verified evidence and risk distorting the realities of a complex and ongoing conflict.
The report contends that MSF’s public messaging has relied on incomplete or unverified information while omitting key context, including the role of Hamas in embedding military infrastructure within civilian areas such as hospitals and residential neighborhoods. Israel has repeatedly cited these conditions as a central challenge in its efforts to target terrorist networks while minimizing civilian harm.
Further, the report accuses the MSF of “systematically omitting essential details and context” such as “the basic military requirements faced by Israel for neutralizing a terror organization with a massive underground tunnel network embedded in civilian infrastructure, and in which hostages were hidden.”
Critics highlighted in the report say that by failing to acknowledge these dynamics, MSF presents a one-sided narrative that could mislead policymakers, media organizations, and international institutions. The watchdog group further argues that statements from globally recognized NGOs carry significant weight and can influence legal proceedings and diplomatic pressure against Israel.
The report criticizes the MSF for asserting that Israel’s military tactics are tantamount to “death sentences,” claiming that the humanitarian organization “sought to leverage its influence” on world leaders” to pressure them to curtail supposed “indiscriminate violence unleashed on a helpless people.”
NGO Monitor also raises concerns about accountability within large humanitarian organizations, calling for greater transparency in how public claims are verified and communicated. It suggests that NGOs operating in conflict zones must maintain strict standards of neutrality to preserve credibility and avoid contributing to misinformation.
MSF has repeatedly defended its work in Gaza, emphasizing the dire humanitarian conditions and the urgency of medical needs on the ground. The organization maintains that its statements are based on firsthand observations by its staff and reflect the severity of the crisis facing civilians.
The report came out two months after Doctors Without Borders publicly acknowledged that armed individuals — many of them masked — were present inside the large compound of Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, citing intimidation of patients, arbitrary arrests, and suspected weapons movement as reasons for halting some of its work there.
The admission, buried in a rarely referenced FAQ page on the group’s website, lends factual support to claims long asserted by Israeli authorities about the use of medical facilities by Hamas and allied terrorists during the conflict in Gaza.
Last year, NGO Monitor obtained documents revealing that Hamas has long run a coordinated effort to penetrate and influence NGOs in the war-torn enclave — contradicting years of denials from major humanitarian organizations.
The study showed how Hamas has for years systematically weaponized humanitarian aid in Gaza, tightening its grip over foreign NGOs operating in the territory and exposing patterns of complicity and collaboration that contradict the groups’ persistent denials.
According to the documents, Hamas officials designated specific points of contact with “highly respected” international NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders and several others.
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Trump Admin Investigates New York City for Antisemitism Following Nonprofit’s Exposure of ‘Palestine Teach-Ins’
A general view of the US Department of Education in Washington, DC, on Dec. 1, 2020. Photo: Graeme Sloan via Reuters Connect
The Trump administration is investigating the New York City Department of Education (DOE) for allegedly violating federal civil rights laws by failing to stop K-12 teachers from procuring students for membership in anti-Zionist study groups, an enterprise which the government says will flood public school classrooms with antisemitism.
The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said last week that reports regarding the activities of a group which calls itself “NYC Educators for Palestine” prompted its inquiry. First publicized by the North American Values Institute (NAVI), they range from teaching extracurricular courses on “Palestinian resistance” to holding “Palestine teach-ins” on federal holidays.
NAVI has noted that public sector union leaders enrolled in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) are some of the group’s most eager participants and endorsers. The problem, according to critics, is that their affiliation implies the approval of a city government that the Trump administration says should be ending the practice.
NYC Educators for Palestine targets children as young as five, the US Education Department alleged in a press release announcing the action, describing long sessions in which teachers drill into them the notions that Israelis are “genocidal white supremacists” and that Hamas terrorists are “martyrs.”
The group also targets high school students preparing to transition to college and the workplace as well. In January, it held a “teach in” on the Martin Luther King holiday, casting a wide net for children “ages 6-18.”
The inexorable outcome of the group’s indoctrination is the radicalization of students who will point to disinformation confected by anti-Zionist activists as cause to abuse their Jewish classmates, the Education Department said.
“No child should be taught by his or her teachers to hate their peers. Neither should Jewish children be taught that being Jewish somehow makes them inherently guilty or proponents of hate and violence,” Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. “Discrimination has no place in our schools, and, unlike the previous administration, the Trump administration will not turn a blind eye to antisemitic harassment. [The Office for Civil Rights] will investigate these appalling allegations to ensure the equal treatment of all students.”
According to NAVI, the leading supplier of money and support for the NYC Educators for Palestine’s initiatives is a little-known nonprofit titled “Rethinking Schools,” which describes its mission as “strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism.”
Rethinking Schools in turn is a beneficiary of the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, and the Lannan Foundation — a benefactor of Mohammed El-Kurd, an anti-Zionist activist who has trafficked in antisemitic tropes, demonized Zionism, and falsely accused Israelis of eating Palestinians’ organs. The Schwab Charitable Fund, founded by investment banker Charles Schwab in 1999, has also donated some $78,000 to Rethinking Schools, according to NAVI.
In an exclusive interview with The Algemeiner, NAVI chief strategy officer Josh Weiner said that NYC Educators for Palestine’s activities clearly violate civil rights laws even as they transgress professional ethics.
“First off, they’re actively advertising and speaking at these events and sharing their status as New York City public school teachers to attract attendance, which is misleading for suggesting that they are sponsored by the Department of Education or New York City,” he explained, noting that the group will hold at least six more events before the end of the academic year. “Essentially what they’re doing is training students to be hostile toward fellow students based on their identity as Jews as Israelis. That likely creates a hostile environment at school and limits their access to an equal education.”
The federal government’s intervention in the matter is “long overdue,” Yael Lerman, executive director of StandWithUs Saidoff Law, a legal advocacy group based in California, told The Algemeiner in a statement.
“Jewish and Israeli students are afforded the same protections as every other child under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” Lerman said. “Schools are not free for qll political activism — especially when that activism creates a hostile environment for students based on their identity. When educators blur the line between instruction and indoctrination, and when repeated warnings from parents and advocacy groups go unaddressed, federal intervention becomes necessary. This case matters not just for New York City but for school systems across the country.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Social Justice Academy in California Tormented Jewish Student After Oct. 7 Attack, New Lawsuit Says
Illustrative: High school students participating in anti-Israel demonstration on Jan 26. 2024: Photo: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Another California public school district has been accused of allowing antisemitic discrimination and harassment in a disturbing new civil lawsuit filed by The Deborah Project, a legal advocacy group that has contested a slew of similar cases across the state.
The victim in the case is Eden Horowitz, a female Jewish student from Alameda County who says the San Leandro Unified School District (SLUSD) stood down while students and instructors at the Social Justice Academy of San Leandro High School tormented her for nearly three years.
“This case exemplifies a disturbing trend: schools that champion social justice while turning a blind eye to antisemitism,” Jerome Marcus of The Deborah Project said in a statement announcing the action. “We are holding these institutions accountable to their own shared values.”
The complaint that says that, on paper, Horowitz should have fit in at the Social Justice Academy, which says that its mission is to uplift minority students by teaching them to oppose “power oppression, capitalism, white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia … and transphobia.” In addition to being Jewish, she is a multiracial American of Brazilian, African American, Native American, and Eastern European heritage — an archetype of the kind of student sought by progressive institutions across the US.
However, the complaint alleges that Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel caused students and faculty to cancel out everything that once merited Horowitz’s being embraced by the SJA community. Overnight, her “intersectional” racial identity became second to the fact that she is Jewish, and her lawyers say that attending the Social Justice Academy became a daily tribulation.
One teacher, Erica Viray Santos, led the movement against her, the complaint charges. In class, Santos made a show of accusing Israel of “genocide” and proclaimed that she would not teach key units on the Holocaust. Allegedly, Santos also publicly paraded her contempt for Horowitz, denouncing her in arguments with the school’s principal that she initiated within earshot of the class. Meanwhile, her classmates began calling her a “Zionist” and a “racist,” according to the lawsuit.
The profusion of anti-Jewish sentiment fused with near manic obsession over the Middle East conflict to inspire criminality, the complaint continues. As the SJA community fulminated over Horowitz’s refusal to accept their views, someone allegedly graffitied antisemitic messages alluding to the Holocaust and other classic antisemitic tropes in a school bathroom. Having already refused to acknowledge the situation’s rising severity despite receiving a stack of complaints related to it, SLUSD officials responded to the hate crime with more indifference, according to the suit. District officials saw to the graffiti’s erasure, delayed condemning it, and later dropped its search for the culprit.
Ultimately, the district allegedly found cause to punish the Jewish victim. While her bullies walked free, the Social Justice Academy “expelled” her from every initiative she had joined to foster the better world envisioned in the school’s mission statement. It then, according to the complaint, refused to perform services related to disability accommodations for the student to sabotage her academic performance and “isolated” her from everyone else. Topping off what her lawyers describe as “retaliation,” SJA placed her in a probationary program under the threat that she would be expelled from the school if she did not fulfill its cumbersome requirements.
By that point, a doctor had clinically diagnosed Horowitz with depressive and anxiety orders, and she was suffering panic attacks. Her parents’ last recourse for remedying the situation, filing a lawsuit, ultimately prompted SJA to act on its threat to expel her, which it did after an attorney notified a district official of the coming action.
SJA staff allegedly announced the news to the student body as a way of “further humiliating” Horowitz, who then received failing grades in every course.
On Friday, SLUSD declined to comment on the troubling allegations, telling The Algemeiner it “is aware of the lawsuit, and because it is an active legal matter, cannot comment at this time.”
In the meantime, Horowitz’s attorneys say that SLUSD has to be held accountable for “state-sponsored exclusion” and for corrupting progressive values to use them as instruments of racial hatred.
“Faculty didn’t just ignore the antisemitic abuse — they fueled it,” said Ryan Weinstein, counsel for The Deborah Project’s partner in the case, Ropes & Gray LLC. “When confronted with the truth, the district didn’t investigate it; it retaliated. We are seeking systemic change to ensure that ‘social justice’ is never again used as a shield for discrimination against a Jewish student — or any student.”
All of California is under scrutiny over K-12 antisemitism, as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
In February, a consortium of Jewish advocacy groups — the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs — sued the state, alleging that Jews have been called “k—kes,” threatened with gang assaults, and subjected to chants proclaiming “F—k the Jews” at anti-Israel demonstrations promoted by faculty.
In one highly disturbing incident described in the legal complaint, fifth graders from the Oakland Unified School District were filmed telling their teacher, “Another major thing that I’ve learned is that the Jews, the people who took over, basically just stole the Palestinians’ land” and “one thing that’s really surprising to me, and that appeals to me is that the US is helping the Jews.” In another incident, the Oakland Education Association created a curriculum in which the intifada — two prolonged periods of terrorism in which Palestinians murdered Israeli civilians — was taught to third graders as a nursery rhyme.
“Jews consistently are being targeted with hostility because of who they are, including in California and particularly in K-12 public schools. This lawsuit seeks to remedy that,” StandWithUs chief executive officer Roz Rothstein said in February. “It is imperative that California K-12 schools not be co-opted by those seeking to indoctrinate students into antisemitic hate. However, Jewish students and parents indicate that this is precisely what is happening in California. Shockingly, those tasked with enforcing non-discrimination laws in our schools have failed to intervene effectively to put a stop to this growing problem.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.