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The quest to replace Park East Synagogue’s 92-year-old rabbi is not going smoothly
(New York Jewish Week) — More than a year after it attracted attention for the abrupt termination of its popular assistant rabbi, Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue was again the scene of a heated squabble on Sunday.
And like last time, the spat centered on who will succeed the Orthodox congregation’s 92-year-old spiritual leader, Rabbi Arthur Schneier.
In the time since the former assistant rabbi, Benjamin Goldschmidt, was ousted, no one has been appointed to take Schneier’s place after his tenure ends. The synagogue announced a search for a “worthy successor” to Schneier 11 months ago, and a public event on Sunday night was supposed to herald the next stage in that process. A candidate for the position, Rabbi Yitzchok Schochet, delivered an hour-long lecture to a crowd of 100 people, including members of the search committee.
But following the talk, the event held in the synagogue’s Charles Brooks Ballroom devolved into a verbal sparring match between Schochet, the rabbi of London’s Mill Hill Synagogue, and Kalman Sporn, a political consultant who describes himself as a “human rights activist.” Sporn questioned Schochet’s past outspoken opposition to same-sex relationships. Schochet claimed that Sporn was engaging in “cancel culture.”
“Park East’s bimah is New York’s hallowed ground for human dignity,” Sporn told the New York Jewish Week. “It must not become a pulpit for prejudice.”
Michael Scharf, who serves on the rabbinic search committee, told the Jewish Week in an emailed statement that Sporn’s comments were “disrespectful” to Schochet.
“Rabbi Schochet is a most distinguished Rabbi with a demonstrable record of great accomplishment, an incredible speaker, a true man of faith, and certainly not one who should be the subject of a smear and libelous campaign emanating from a group of nasty malcontents who obviously did not listen to Rabbi Schochet’s eloquent rejoinders to their issues,” Scharf wrote.
Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet spoke at Park East Synagogue on Sunday about the pursuit of happiness, when some synagogue members began to question him about his record on LGBTQ and Palestinian issues. (Zoom Screenshot)
The incident has prompted congregants to consider whether Schochet has the right temperament to lead a congregation that has hosted a succession of dignitaries, including Pope Benedict XVI. Critics say Schochet’s history of controversy, in addition to his response to being criticized on Sunday, do not accord with the synagogue’s self-image as a distinguished public forum.
And the drama Sunday night has raised the same question that has nagged at the synagogue for more than a year: Who is a fitting replacement for Schneier, a longtime religious freedom activist and former U.S. alternate representative at the United Nations?
Goldschmidt, who was popular among young congregants and was once seen by some as Schneier’s heir apparent, was fired in October 2021. He was subsequently derided by Schneier’s allies as lacking the education and gravitas needed to lead the synagogue. That dispute ended with Goldschmidt founding a breakaway congregation, the Altneu, which also meets on the Upper East Side and has attracted a growing membership.
“Park East has a problem where they really haven’t had a rabbi for many years,” said one member who, like several who discussed the synagogue’s internal debates, wished to remain anonymous. “We’re down on people coming on Saturday. The schools are a problem. Covid hurt us. [Rabbi Schnier] is 92, so on a day-to-day basis, he hasn’t really been involved.”
Schochet, 58, is a Chabad-affiliated rabbi who has held a number of prominent positions in British Jewish communal organizations. For three decades, he has been the rabbi of London’s Mill Hill United Synagogue, an 1,800-member Orthodox congregation in northwest London. According to a biography on the synagogue website, he has also served as the chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Kingdom’s United Synagogue, and as a member of the British Chief Rabbi’s cabinet.
But Schochet has also faced backlash for his comments about Palestinians and their supporters. In 2018, the British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust condemned Schochet for referring to Jews who said Kaddish for Palestinians as “kapos,” or Jews who served in positions of authority in Nazi concentration camps.
In 2015, Middle East Monitor, a pro-Palestinian media outlet, criticized Schochet for two tweets he had written four years earlier in response to a user called “Jew4Palestine.” In one, he wrote, “I have a spare Israeli flag if you want to hang yourself on it.” In the second, commenting on unemployment statistics in Gaza, he wrote, “Then again if you include terrorism as work, it’s 100% employed.” Soon afterward, Schochet was removed as a patron of a charity called Faith Matters.
At the meeting on Sunday, however, much of the criticism of Schochet revolved around his past public opposition to same-sex marriage. Jewish law has traditionally prohibited same-sex relationships, and refusing to conduct same-sex weddings remains normative practice among nearly all Orthodox rabbis.
In 2011, Schochet said that “the time-hallowed sacredness of marriage should always be preserved.” In 2012, the rabbi called gay marriage “an assault on religious values.” That same year, he penned an essay for PinkNews, an LGBTQ-focused publication, called “Homosexuality is prohibited in Orthodox Judaism but so is eating bacon, everyone is welcome.”
In 2014, England, Scotland and Wales legalized same-sex marriage. The following year, Schochet wrote that the Torah prohibits homosexual acts, but does not condemn a person for having homosexual feelings.
Schochet did not respond to a New York Jewish Week request for comment.
Sporn has posted tweets criticizing Schochet’s positions, and at the meeting on Sunday, brought up Schochet’s record of controversial statements during the question-and-answer portion of the event.
“I personally have been troubled by some of the positions you have taken in the past,” Sporn said. “You have openly fought efforts for marriage equality, while you want gay people to in your words feel reassured that they are always welcome into synagogues.”
Sporn was eventually cut off from using the microphone. Schochet responded, saying he had seen Sporn’s tweets. He said he had been invited to write an essay for PinkNews in 2012 “precisely because I was deemed as being the more moderate amongst all the Orthodox rabbis on gay issues.”
He added that the previous year, in a segment that aired on the BBC, he defended a gay couple who were denied access to a hotel room by a Christian owner. Schochet also said that a high-ranking member at his synagogue was gay.
“To everyone’s surprise, other than my own and those who know me to be a liberal conservative, I argued that everyone has a right to uphold their religious convictions without compromise,” Schochet wrote in a blog post about the BBC broadcast. “However, what you cannot do is look to impose those on others. That’s religious fundamentalism.”
In that same blog post, Schochet doubled down on his opposition to gay marriage. “If you choose to reject religion and lead a gay lifestyle, or conduct extra marital affairs, then frankly that is your business,” Schochet said. “That I choose to frown upon what you do because my G-d says it is wrong is very much my entitlement.”
Schochet then began to criticize Sporn, mentioning Sporn’s involvement in a scheme to apportion Catholic papal knighthoods for cash.
“You and I can go on canceling each other all night long,” Schochet said. “Cancel culture, which is the scourge and the malaise of our 21st century is, in the words of Barack Obama, scorched earth, partisan politics, where people we disagree with are maligned.”
(In 2019, regarding condemnations of people on social media, Obama said, “That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change, if all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.” A column on the Jewish website Aish.com about Obama’s comments does criticize “this scorched-earth partisan politics – where people with whom we disagree are denied a fair hearing and a voice in public life.”)
Schochet continued, “it divides families, it divides society, it tears apart relationships, it polarizes and pits people against one another. We may always be two Jews as indeed we are with three opinions, but we should always maintain one heart. I invite you to join me in that mission statement.”
When he finished, the crowd erupted into applause. The room became calm, until later, another member of the congregation, who did not use a microphone, stood up and confronted the rabbi about his exchange between him and Sporn — leading Schochet to apologize to Sporn.
“If I did embarrass you, I do genuinely apologize to you profusely and I hope you forgive me, and I mean that sincerely,” he said.
Addressing the crowd following the incident, Schneier — who has led Park East for more than 60 years — said, “When it comes to the selection of a rabbi, it is entirely up to the membership.”
“The purpose of Rabbi Schochet coming here with us, some of you did not have a chance to to hear him, to meet with him, and now I hope you get to know him a bit better,” Schneier said. “All kinds of rumors, forget about them.”
Schochet’s reaction to Sporn was “a personal attack,” the member who wished to remain anonymous said. He added that Schochet’s conduct did not reflect the decorum the synagogue strives to maintain.
“He ganged [the crowd] up in a mob mentality where they cheered for him,” the member told the Jewish Week. “Instead of answering the question, he attacked him. [Schochet] had such a great opportunity to be diplomatic. This guy is not diplomatic on an interview. Could you imagine if he had a contract? This is almost beyond belief.”
This member also said that Schochet is the only rabbi who has been brought to the synagogue by the search committee.
Another synagogue member told the Jewish Week that Sporn’s tweets attacking Schochet provided critical context for their exchange.
“It did not come across to me as embarrassing to Kalman,” the member said. “It came across to me as Rabbi Schochet saying that what you’re doing is being unfair.”
He added that what is getting lost amidst the squabble is that Park East “is looking for a rabbi.”
“Every member should have the opportunity to come and ask questions,” the member said. “The sense I had from people is that they got a really good understanding of where Rabbi Schochet stands on the issues. Yes, Kalman brought up an issue, and Rabbi Schochet apologized.”
That member said no decisions have been made thus far as to who will be hired.
Meanwhile, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, the wife of Benjamin Goldschmidt, told the New York Jewish Week that the new synagogue they started is “only growing” and that she hasn’t followed developments at her husband’s old congregation.
“I really don’t have anything to do with that place,” Goldschmidt said of Park East Synagogue. “We have moved on.”
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Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’
(JTA) — For two decades, MetroWest Jewish Day School eked out an existence in the suburbs of Boston, providing what parents say was a warm and nurturing Jewish education to just dozens of children.
Now, the school says it simply cannot go on. MetroWest will shutter at the end of the academic year, officials announced last week.
“Despite extensive and sustained efforts by our Board, school leadership, faculty, staff, and committed community members to identify a viable path forward, we have concluded that our model of highly individualized Jewish day school education is no longer sustainable in the Metrowest area of Boston,” wrote board chair Steven Finn and head of school Brian Cohen wrote. “This decision was made with great care and reflection.”
Located in Framingham, Massachusetts, MetroWest Jewish Day opened in 2003 and enrolls students in pre-K through eighth grade. In its closure announcement, the school said it has served more than 300 students from over 30 towns in the greater Boston area over 25 years. According to social media posts, graduating eighth grade classes are typically between five and 10 students.
Currently, there are only about 20 students enrolled across all grades, school officials said. The school’s website shows 15 faculty and staff members.
“It’s a well-respected school,” Cohen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But in the end, if there’s not a demand for the product, the quality of the product doesn’t necessarily matter, because you don’t have customers wishing to participate.”
The closure follows a spate of recent closures of small Conservative or pluralistic Jewish day schools across the country, including in New Jersey, New York City and Arizona. Many of the schools had seen enrollment dwindle sharply. (Orthodox schools are faring better.)
Prizmah, the nonprofit network supporting Jewish schools, said it believed interest in day school enrollment had risen in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, as families gained new appreciation for Jewish community. But Cohen said there had been no “surge” at MetroWest, which already suffered during the Covid era.
“A lot of schools have substantially lower enrollment now than they did at the same time 10 or 20 years ago,” Cohen added. “We just are the one that is in the most critical condition right now.”
Now, MetroWest’s families must find other schools for next year. The school says founders Steven and Renée Finn “have generously committed to providing tuition scholarship support for current students who continue their Jewish day school education through eighth grade.”
Where the students might land is an open question. The Boston area is home to 13 other day schools, according to Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the city’s Jewish federation. (A “diasporic” day school that does not support Israel as a Jewish state is also in development; its founder has declined to speak with JTA but has said she believes there is adequate demand for such a school.)
MetroWest is about 15 miles from its most similar alternative, another pluralistic primary school called Jewish Community Day School of Boston. Commuting in the city’s notorious traffic could take up to an hour.
“The end of the MetroWest Jewish Day School leaves a huge hole for the local community,” said Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah. “Steven and Renee Finn, working with Brian Cohen and so many others, created a wonderful school and built a proud 25-year legacy for the students and families whose lives it enriched.”
For now, the school is being mourned by the families that used it. Aviva Fellman, a rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a parent of four. Her children attended MetroWest for eight years, commuting about 60 miles roundtrip.
Last year, after her oldest daughter graduated the family opted to put all of the children in schools closer to their home.
“They are still close to the friends that they made there, and we are grateful to the school for the education and social-emotional support that they received as they are all thriving and able to self-advocate and stay on top of their schooling through these changes,” Fellman said. “We also continue to be impressed with how each of our children are critical thinkers, enthusiastic learners, kind to others, and feel strongly and proudly Jewish and we thank the school for supporting and being part of all of that.”
The post Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’ appeared first on The Forward.
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France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’
(JTA) — France has issued arrest warrants for two French-Israeli activists for “complicity in genocide,” a charge that stemmed from the pair allegedly blocking humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
The arrest warrants were issued in July against Nili Kupfer-Naouri, the president of the organization Israel Is Forever, and Rachel Touitou, an activist with the organization Tsav 9, a right-wing Israeli group that was sanctioned by the United States in June 2024 for destroying humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The two have been charged with “complicity in genocide” and “public and direct incitement to genocide,” the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Monday. They are accused of trying to block humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza between January and November 2024 and in May 2025.
An array of activists, including military reservists and family members of some hostages, sought to block the aid trucks from entering Gaza on the theory that helping Gazans would alleviate pressure on Hamas.
In an interview with i24News, Kupfer-Naouri said, “I blocked trucks that were supplying Hamas. If I had to do it again, I would do it again.” (Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid shipments to Gaza during the conflict.)
The warrants are notable because they represent a success by advocacy organizations seeking to hold Israelis responsible for what they say are war crimes. The warrants stemmed from a complaint made last year by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the groups Al-Mezan and Al-Haq, which were all sanctioned by the United States in September for having “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
In a joint statement with the French Jewish Union for Peace, which joined the complaint, the groups called the arrest warrant against Kupfer-Naouri “a historic step forward in the fight against impunity.”
The warrants call for Kupfer-Naouri and Touitou, who were both born in France and live in Israel, to appear before an investigating judge, but not for their detention, according to the French news agency AFP.
Touitou condemned the arrest warrant in a post on X Monday.
“If peacefully demonstrating with an Israeli flag against a terrorist organization seizing humanitarian aid, diverting it, and reselling it at exorbitant prices to Gazans is a crime—then there’s no need to look down on the Mullahs, France is just like Iran!,” she wrote. “I will always fight to defend the truth, my people, and my country 🇮🇱.”
In an interview posted on X last month, Kupfer-Naouri called the investigation an “antisemitic delusion,” adding, “I will no longer be able to set foot in France because I have no intention of going to French jails, neither in police custody, nor anything else.”
Kupfer-Naouri said the investigation could set a “very dangerous precedent” for French-Israeli soldiers in the Israeli military who return home to France.
Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad have faced war crime inquiries for their actions in Gaza. Over the summer, some Canadian IDF soldiers also reported that they feared returning home after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced it had opened an investigation into crimes committed by Canadians during the war in Gaza.
The post France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Islamic State Terrorist Attack on Niger Airport Potentially More Deadly Than Government Revealed
Members of the Nigerien army walk near the motorcycles seized from the attackers, following an attack on Niamey International Airport, in Niamey, Niger, Jan. 29, 2026, in this screengrab from a video. Photo: ORTN/Reuters TV/Handout via REUTERSISIS
Islamic State’s attack on the airport in Niger‘s capital Niamey last week may have been more severe than the Nigerien government claimed, according to recent reports and a video released by a media outlet affiliated with the terrorist group.
More than 30 members of the Islamic State branch in the Sahel region targeted the Diori Hamani International Airport and Air Base 101 shortly after midnight on Thursday using guns, drones, and explosives. The jihadist group on Friday took credit for the assault in a short statement released online through its propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.
US forces had previously used the air base in Niamey — located six miles from the presidential palace — for maintaining drones until withdrawing in 2024 following the previous year’s coup d’état orchestrated by former Presidential Guard commander General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who now serves as the landlocked country’s 11th president.
Niger’s military and Russia’s Africa Corps mercenary group, which was also stationed at the base, said they combated the attack. Niger has so far reported four of its troops suffered injuries and there was little damage. The government said it killed 20 attackers and captured 11, at least one of whom was a French national, leading Nigerien authorities to blame France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the attack.
“We remind the sponsors of those mercenaries, who are Emmanuel Macron [president of France], Patrice Talon [president of Benin], and Alassane Ouattara [president of the Ivory Coast], we have sufficiently heard them bark, and they should now in turn be prepared to hear us roar,” Tchiani said in a statement on national television.
While the government’s reason for ignoring Islamic State was not immediately clear, Niger has previously blamed its neighbors and former colonial ruler France for internal instability.
However, following its initial claim of responsibility, Islamic State published a 90-secoind video of the attack through Amaq News Agency, depicting far more damage than what Nigerien authorities claimed.
The video showed that some attackers came in on motorcycles and attacked aircraft hangars in Air Base 101, burning and shooting the planes. The video also presented a burning helicopter, and an additional statement from the terrorist group claimed the torching of a drone.
Local reports and accounts circulated on social media aligned with Islamic State’s account of greater damage, describing hits on civilian aircraft and a destroyed ammunition depot.
The base is a key military hub in the region, reportedly hosting a contested stockpile of uranium and the headquarters for the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali Joint Force.
Caleb Weiss, an analyst who focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa, reported in the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Long War Journal that unconfirmed social media reports reveal “a much higher death toll for both local Nigerien security forces and men from Russia’s Africa Corps who were also stationed at the airbase” — specifically, at least 24 Nigerien soldiers and three Russian mercenaries.
At the same time as the Niger attack, Islamic State’s West Africa Province perpetrated a similar strike in Nigeria’s Sabon Gari army base in Borno, leaving at least nine dead and more wounded.
The assaults came amid a surge of Islamic State terrorist activity across Africa, including the Sahel region, which stretches from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, just under the Sahara Desert. The Islamic State regional affiliate there has killed more than 120 people in the Tillabéri territory in September and also kidnapped an American in October.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said in January.
Terrorism in western Africa has exploded in recent years following three coups which have led their military leaders to create a confederacy aligned with Russia. Niger has joined with Burkina Faso and Mali to create the Association of Sahel States (AES), as an alternative to the ECOWAS. Reports have emerged of alleged atrocities committed by Russian mercenaries in Mali.
A November report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point revealed that Africa had become the global hot spot for terrorist killings. Analysts explained that “where once the global terror threat was concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, today it is centered in the Sahel, specifically in the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.”
The data showed that 86 percent of deaths caused by terrorism happened in 10 countries with 7 in Africa and 5 in the Sahel.