If you are in New York City and struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. You can also dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
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Yeshiva University is left in mourning after a beloved gay alum dies by suicide
(New York Jewish Week) — Before eulogizing their friend on Thursday night, Beth Weiss draped a rainbow flag with a Jewish star over the podium.
It was a potent symbol of the twin identities that Weiss and others who knew Herschel Siegel said he had struggled to reconcile, particularly as a student and 2021 graduate of Yeshiva University. Siegel died by suicide Friday in Atlanta, where he grew up and had been living.
Weiss said during the eulogy they recalled having “a conversation with a gay friend about what it felt like to be queer in the Orthodox world” for the first time with Siegel, a classmate at Y.U., the Modern Orthodox flagship in uptown Manhattan.
“I can’t tell you how invaluable conversations and connections like that are,” Weiss said. “We talked about our dreams for the future, but also the reality of how our future might look because of our queerness.”
Weiss’ comments, delivered at a memorial held on the Y.U. campus and organized by some of Siegel’s friends from college, reflect a narrative solidifying around Siegel’s death. Many believe — based on their conversations with Siegel, his social media posts and their own experiences — that Siegel had considered that there may have been no place for him as a gay man in the Orthodox community where he grew up and attended college.
Even as some in Siegel’s community have downplayed the focus on his sexuality following his death, friends say his suicide should be a wakeup call at a time when Yeshiva University is deeply divided over whether and how to include LGBTQ students. In recent years, the school has fought not to have to recognize an LGBTQ student group, even petitioning the Supreme Court for relief. A trans woman was also told she could no longer pray in a synagogue affiliated with the school.
Weiss told the New York Jewish Week that there are many “Orthodox queer people who are possibly suffering, who feel like they are alone, and who feel like they don’t have a future,” adding, “I know that Herschel felt that way at points in his life because he told me.”
Experts caution that it is a mistake to attribute suicides to single causes. Still, there is no question that LGBTQ youth are at increased risk, particularly when they are not accepted in their communities. According to a 2023 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention in the LGBTQ community, 41% of LGBTQ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.
Siegel made his struggle transparent. In an Instagram post from March that has circulated widely after his death, he wrote about how the word “abomination” in a Torah portion brought up trauma for him as a gay man within the Orthodox community.
“According to that trauma, my very EXISTENCE as a gay, Jewish, Male was an abomination,” Siegal wrote. “And even decades later, that fear-based thought pattern erupted into my consciousness, at the most unexpected of times.”
He then asked, “Do we ever REALLY heal from the deeply traumatic memories within us? Or is it rather a Journey, like many other emotions, and then we come to realize that one day we are at ease while riding ‘the trauma-coaster’?”
Siegel ended the post on a positive note, sharing gratitude for anyone who “has ever experienced a profoundly traumatizing event within your lives. … The fact that we made it this far is something to be proud of in and of itself!”
He died a month later, on the eve of the Shabbat when the weekly Torah portion includes the Jewish legal prohibition on homosexual intercourse, calling it an “abomination.”
“I think about the bravery, the heroism, the strength of this kid,” said Mordechai Levovitz, a therapist and the clinical director of Jewish Queer Youth, an organization that seeks to support and empower Jewish LGBTQ teens, with a focus on the Orthodox community. “I think any person at all willing to endure a community in a religion that is very cruel to him — and yet sees the value because there is also still value — is someone that I think we can look up to, and that we can learn from, and that we can be inspired by.”
He added, “But also, we can admit and witness and bear the fact that it is because of the community that we created that this kid could not find a future for himself and thought that it would perhaps be better off if he was not here, or if he did not exist.”
Not everyone who has commented on Siegel’s death is connecting it with his sexuality. Rabbi Ilan D. Feldman of Beth Jacob Atlanta, Siegel’s synagogue, wrote an email to the congregation saying that “our thoughts and tefillos [prayers] go out to the Siegel family, whose agony can never be fully fathomed, and who will be embraced and supported by us, their community.” Siegel is survived by his parents and five siblings.
Feldman presided over a funeral on Sunday that people who were present said was attended by about 200 people, with more than 450 tuning in on Zoom. Levovitz said that at the funeral, the rabbi referred to Siegel as being “mentally ill.” Mental illness is considered the strongest predictor of suicide.
Feldman told the New York Jewish Week over the phone that “even by reducing this story to a one-dimensional story of a guy who was gay, who committed suicide, we’re actually doing a disservice to gay people.” He also said Siegel’s family is distressed by the narrative, which they believe is untrue.
“The storyline of this particular case is an openly gay person who had wonderful relationships with the entire Orthodox community, including haredi Orthodox leaders,” Feldman said. “And now we’re going take this guy after his death, during his shiva while his family is grieving, and start talking about [how] gays are marginalized and whether this drove him to suicide, when this is the one case where an Orthodox community embraced a gay person with love and with no exceptions.”
But he acknowledged that there is “a big difference between pressures from the Jewish community and pressures from Jewish tradition,” which under Orthodox interpretations does not permit homosexuality.
“If he ever felt pressure, it was relieved by the love that he received in the community, but the pressure may have been there because Jewish tradition is inconsistent with gay activity,” Feldman said.
A source in the Atlanta community who said he had known Siegel since Siegel was a child said Siegel’s death comes on the heels of another suicide in the Atlanta Orthodox community, also of a young person who identified as a member of the LGBTQ community.
“There is a cloud of sadness. People just feel confused and lost. This is the second time in six months,” the source said. “It’s just resonating very hard for people. Young people taking their lives, it’s not supposed to be something that is normal and is regularly happening.”
Hundreds of people attended the funeral for Herschel Siegel last weekend in Atlanta. (Courtesy)
Chaim Nissel, a dean at Yeshiva University who was an associate provost during Siegel’s tenure as a student, spoke at the Thursday night gathering and said he had known Siegel well, and even had the student visit his home. (Nissel was originally named in the lawsuit by the YU Pride Alliance against the university but was dropped after Y.U. argued that he did not have authority over whether the LGBTQ student club was approved.)
“He struggled to reconcile his identity and love of Torah,” Nissel said. “He died from mental illness.”
Yeshiva University had previously released a statement about Siegel’s death.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Herschel Siegel, a member of the Yeshiva University family,” the statement said. “We express our deepest condolences to his family. May his memory be a blessing.”
Siegel’s family did not respond to a request for comment. People close to the family said they were too distraught to speak to the press. The source from Atlanta who knew Siegel since he was a child said the family was “angry for the way that this is being spun,” suggesting that Siegel’s sexuality should not be the only focus.
“I do resent anyone that is trying to make this about him being gay,” the source said. “It’s the chicken or the egg situation. Did being gay in the Orthodox community make his depression more triggering, or was it that he was depressed, and felt alone, which made being gay so much harder?”
Even his closest friends say it’s impossible to untangle those forces.
“Herschel struggled with mental illness and struggled with accepting himself as a gay Orthodox man,” said Emily Ornelas, a friend who was close to Siegel when he was at Y.U.
“That’s a reality,” Orneles said. “Gay people in any organized religion struggle with that. But I do wholeheartedly believe that by the end of his life, he had come to terms with and accepted himself and was able to love himself for who he was in whatever capacity he could. I feel that is true.”
Ornelas says she is choosing to remember the many bright spots in her friend’s life, rather than focus solely on trying to identify reasons for his death. She recalled the way he connected with children when the two staffed a Passover retreat, as well as his energy in his many theater performances at Y.U., the way his smile lit up a room.
“I remember that his hugs were absolutely crushing,” Ornelas said. “I think he could have cracked my ribs easily. I remember that when he smiled, he smiled literally with every single one of his teeth. You could probably count them. I can hear his voice. He has a very particular affect to the way he spoke, and I think it was like a tiny bit of a Southern drawl. He was just like a really big part of my life — and all of our lives — for a very long time.”
At the memorial service, Weiss exhorted others who might feel tormented about being gay in an Orthodox community to hold on, despite their pain.
“You are not alone,” they said, holding back tears. “You have a future, and you have people who love and see you fully. You have people who celebrate all the wonderful, beautiful parts of you. And if it feels like you don’t have those people yet, we are here waiting for you with open hearts.”
They then shifted to a “a message to everyone else here with us tonight” — those who identify as allies, and those who are just deeply sad about their friend’s tragic death.
“Be like Herschel,” Weiss said. “Be like Herschel and embrace and love each of us with enthusiasm and with joy. Be like Herschel and see us as the full, valid and nuanced human beings that we are. Be like Herschel, and support us unconditionally. Be like Herschel so that we can continue to be here even though Herschel can’t. And be like Herschel, so that this never ever happens again.”
—
The post Yeshiva University is left in mourning after a beloved gay alum dies by suicide appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Samuel Beckett’s characters may have seemed inert, but he didn’t wait to fight antisemitism
A newly published diary of Samuel Beckett’s extended trip to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s helps to explain why the Nobel Prize-winning Irish author became active in the Resistance movement in Occupied France. Already discussed and cited by Beckett scholars in such studies as Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937, the new book explains how the creator of Waiting for Godot, that dramatization of stasis and futility, could turn out to be a man of action opposing the Holocaust and the downfall of German culture.
At a time when only an estimated 1% or so of French citizens dared to assist the Resistance, Beckett was from neutral Ireland, where sympathies were often skewed to the enemies of the much-loathed British. But he risked his life to participate. Notoriously, after Adolf Hitler died in 1945, Irish Prime Minister Éamon de Valera visited the Reich ministry in Dublin to express official condolences at the demise of Der Führer. By contrast, Beckett scorned the Irish politician W.T. Cosgrave in a letter to a friend. Cosgrave, whose 1930s followers donned so-called Blueshirt uniforms and saluted superiors like worshipers of Mussolini and Hitler, was simply a “cockatoo” arrayed as a “Fascist,” according to Beckett.
Beckett spent time in almost three dozen German cities listening to fascists describe the appeal of the New Order, as well as radio broadcasts by Nazi leaders and other believers in the Third Reich. Yet unlike youthful foreign aesthetes who dallied in Fascist Europe, like the American architect Philip Johnson, who became a vocal advocate of Nazism and antisemitism, Beckett was never seduced by German propaganda. Possibly due to his close ties to Jewish friends and family members, Beckett refused to accept Nazi beliefs on race. Also, his finely honed artistic taste did not permit him to discard creative spirits because of their family origin.
Not limiting himself to reading about and discussing such persecution with sympathetic Germans as well as devotees of Nazism, he also spent time with Jews who had already suffered from the regime’s racial laws. One example was the painter Gretchen Wohlwill, a student of Matisse who was forbidden to paint by German authorities. Murals by Wohlwill at a public high school in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel named after women’s rights and education advocate Emilie Wüstenfeld were painted over by a Nazi-approved artist. Beckett met with Wohlwill repeatedly during his extended stay.
Beckett also dined at The Halali, a well-known Jewish-run wine restaurant and bar in the central Altstadt district of Hamburg. Ironically, the establishment’s name in German refers to a traditional cry or signal played on a horn to announce the successful end of a hunt. By the time Beckett patronized the place, Jews had already become the prey of Germany’s fascist rulers. His guest was Ilse Schneider, a German teenager on whom he had an unrequited crush. In romantic matters, Beckett was typically cool.
Indeed, a few months after returning from Germany, he had an affair with the American Jewish heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who found Beckett so languid and lethargic that she nicknamed him Oblomov, after an indecisive character in a 19th century Russian novel. An inert nobleman, the book’s eponymous hero rarely leaves his room or bed; in the first 50 pages, Oblomov only manages to move from his bed to a chair. Yet the inaccuracy of Guggenheim’s gibe was proven a few years later, when France awarded Beckett medals for working as a courier for a French Resistance network and assisting in sabotage operations against German occupation forces in the Vaucluse mountains, evading imminent arrest by the Gestapo. And all the while, he continued his literary output, polishing his much-admired 1944 novel Watt.
In his diary, just as the Polish Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum’s Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto were intended to preserve traces of daily life soon to vanish, Beckett carefully, even pedantically, noted details of his experience in Germany, even specifying the streets he walked along during outings in Hamburg and elsewhere, as if expecting them to be destroyed in an upcoming apocalypse.
The result is evocative, if not always compelling, reading. But an apparently dry extended list of paintings and monuments seen, noting when works by Jewish artists were missing or stored out of sight, had a documentary value in response to exalted rhapsodic Nazi tomes. Beckett carefully read (with frequent underlinings) Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf as well as “Der Stürmer” (Stormtrooper) a weekly German antisemitic tabloid newspaper. These doubtless made him reject lofty pro-Hitler advocacy which he persistently heard from others during his visit.
Although Beckett would always demur if interviewers asked about the philosophical content in his work, during his German visit and afterwards, he was drawn to Jewish philosophers in an attempt to puzzle out how Germany, whose culture and language he admired, could self-destruct through racist inhumanity. To address this mystery, Beckett pored over Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics; works by Edmund Husserl and Fritz Mauthner; and Ernst Cassirer’s biography of Immanuel Kant. Mauthner concluded with a prefiguration of Nazi devastation: “In his negative thinking, Kant is already the destroyer of everything.”
Similarly, soon after his arrival in Germany in 1936, Beckett realized that war was inevitable. Enthusiasm for Hitler, stoked by Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, was such that Germans “will soon have to fight: a war, or “they will explode.” With omnivorous energy akin to that of his mentor James Joyce, Beckett also consumed popular schlock like Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer’s novel about Spinoza, Amor Dei (Love of God), an antisemitic polemic that likens Jewish scholarship to a spider’s web spun over a “cup of joy,” to the “disgust of the thirsty.” Or Hans Grimm’s People with No Room (Volk ohne Raum), a fictional account justifying German invasion of East Europe to acquire land and wealth.
Beckett absorbed this deleterious material, but also read works of banned Jewish authors like Franz Werfel and Stefan Zweig. While mostly remaining discreet in public about his convictions, Beckett nevertheless marveled about the political obliviousness of Karl Ballmer, a painter whose canvases he admired. Ballmer would return to his native Switzerland in 1938 after blithely ignoring foreshadowings of the destruction of European Jewry.
The newly published diaries, which will appear next year in the U.S. and will be dramatized on Deutschlandradio, a public broadcasting corporation in Germany, understandably have less literary verve than Beckett’s missives to friends. Jotted down in a crabbed handwriting and not intended for publication, his diaries were preserved in a cellar storage space of Beckett’s Paris apartment and later donated to an archive at the University of Reading. Always one to belittle himself, the modest Beckett termed the journal “absurd” because it “serves no purpose” and is merely “the act of an obsessional neurotic.” On the contrary, as documentary evidence of how fascism can take hold of a population, its significance is ever-more timely and powerful for Jewish readers in America and elsewhere.
The post Samuel Beckett’s characters may have seemed inert, but he didn’t wait to fight antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Can an anti-Zionist Democrat win in a heavily Jewish South Florida district?
(JTA) — Democratic primary voters in Florida’s newly drawn 25th Congressional District are choosing on Tuesday between an anti-Zionist member of the Democratic Socialists of America and one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress.
The race offers a test of whether the Democratic Party’s progressive insurgency can extend to a district that includes Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Miami Beach and an electorate that is roughly 25% Jewish, highlighting the party’s widening divisions over Israel.
Redistricting has transformed what had been solidly Democratic territory into a district President Donald Trump would have carried in 2024. The new lines pit Oliver Larkin, a DSA member who has accused Israel of genocide and called for ending U.S. military aid to the country, against Jared Moskowitz, a two-term congressman who backs continued U.S. military aid even as support for it has eroded within his party.
Polling from Moskowitz-aligned firms has shown him with a lead of 30-plus percentage points, while a more recent poll from a Larkin-aligned outlet this month put the two in a statistical dead heat.
Larkin’s language has alarmed some Jews, including his labeling of modern-day Israel as a “religious supremacist” country and his call for Israel to become a “secular” state. “I do not support a religious supremacist regime, whether it be in Israel or Saudi Arabia, or any other country,” Larkin told Fox News.
Larkin supports a complete arms embargo on Israel, and told JTA that that should be “the minimum standard for anyone claiming to support democracy.” Asked by Fox News if he supports selling defensive weapons to Israel, Larkin responded, “I do not make a distinction between offensive and defensive weaponry.” He also backed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goal of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Larkin doubled down after Mamdani backed down from the stance, saying, “I believe that the United States, any federal or otherwise law enforcement entity that has the legal jurisdiction to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for his war crimes — that should be enforced.”
Larkin has courted support from left-wing, anti-Zionist Jews who support his platform and says that he has spoken out against antisemitism on the campaign trail.
“Our campaign believes in collective liberation for all people and that includes the liberation of Jewish South Floridians and Jewish people the world over from antisemitism,” Larkin said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said that there is a rise in fascism across the U.S. and that we “must recognize the link between antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and more and build a coalition to unite together to defeat these forces.”
Larkin said he supports a “one-state solution with equal and democratic rights for all people.”
Progressive, pro-Palestinian candidates with similar platforms have won the Democratic nomination this midterm cycle in deep-blue districts around the country. Larkin, who worked on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, is betting he can match their success even in a heavily Jewish district that leans more to the center.
Moskowitz, who is endorsed by AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, outright accused Larkin of fueling antisemitism, telling the Sun Sentinel editorial board in a letter that his opponent “has embraced the support of individuals and organizations that have repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and hostility toward the Jewish community.”
Last month, a Boca Raton rabbi encouraged Republican congregants to register as Democrats so they could cast their votes for Moskowitz. The far more moderate Democrat has refused to debate Larkin, saying that his opponent is contributing to antisemitism.
Moskowitz has also claimed that Larkin is “running against me solely on my religion.” The Sun Sentinel board rated Moskowitz’s claim “demonstrably untrue” and, in an unusual move, said it would not endorse him for reelection after he declined a joint interview with Larkin. The paper decried what it described as Moskowitz’s “lack of respect for voters.” Moskowitz’s campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment.
Moskowitz has outraised Larkin 11-to-1, according to local media estimates. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has raised $667,200 of Moskowitz’s $2.5 million through June 30, according to campaign finance analyses done by the website Open Secrets.
Donna Nevel, a member of the South Florida chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, believes Larkin can win.
“There are thousands and thousands of us, from Jewish communities and all across South Florida, who are doing everything we can to make sure that Oliver will be our congressperson,” Nevel said to a cheering crowd, during a fundraiser held in New York City earlier this month.
She also said that “many Zionist organizations think that South Florida is their backyard.” She continued, “And we say, ‘Hell no!’”
In an email to JTA, Nevel said there are a “large and growing” number of Jews in the district supporting Larkin, including “well over a hundred Jewish canvassers on a regular basis.” Larkin joined a JVP-hosted Shabbat dinner with Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Florida’s left-wing U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon on Friday.
Larkin has said that we “should not be supporting or allowing AIPAC to influence our elections.” He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the group has a “corrupting influence” and that it only supports Congress members “on the condition, in my estimation, that they support wholesale U.S. military aid to Israel.”
Left-wing streamers Hasan Piker — a staunch Israel critic who’s drawn antisemitism accusations — and Michael Beyer, who was suspended from Twitch after calling Jews a “demon ethnicity,” have both fundraised for Larkin.
Asked about their support, Larkin told the Sun Sentinel that both figures have used “language that I personally have not used and will not use,” and said that as a candidate it is important “that I speak in respectful terms and based in fact.”
“But I believe that when those individuals have made those references it’s been towards members of the Israeli government,” Larkin said, as well as Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
“So certainly they’re not politicians and they don’t speak in political terms, and I don’t condone language that dehumanizes any individual,” he said. “I do think that they have legitimate criticism — even if it is rather unvarnished in how they convey it — of what the Israeli government has done.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Can an anti-Zionist Democrat win in a heavily Jewish South Florida district? appeared first on The Forward.
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Florida’s primaries have many pain points for Jews. Here are 5 races to watch
(JTA) — As an exhausting primary season begins to wind down, voters in Florida, the last remaining big state yet to hold its primaries, head to the polls Tuesday with several races on the Jewish community’s radar.
The conservative state is home to large numbers of Jews, including a growing number of Jewish emigres from more liberal enclaves, and features several marquee matchups on both sides of the aisle. The state has faced some political turmoil, including last-minute Republican-led redistricting that could hurt the chances of some pro-Israel Jewish Democrats at a moment when such figures are an endangered species in the U.S. House.
On the GOP side, the right’s civil war between hardline pro-Israel figures and a growing crop of white nationalist-adjacent Israel skeptics will be laid bare in multiple races.
Here are some of the storylines for Jews to watch for on Florida’s ballot:
The ‘groyper’ governor’s race
No other low-polling candidate this cycle has grabbed as much attention as James Fishback, the former investment banker running for governor in Florida.
Despite consistently trailing his rival, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, in the GOP primary, Fishback has raised concern among both Jewish conservatives and party elites. He has embraced online far-right figures including Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist and antisemitic influencer, and uses memes and coded phrases such as “goyslop” to court Fuentes’s “groyper” movement of young men who spread irony-laced antisemitic talking points online.
Asked earlier in the campaign about “goyslop,” a term that refers to low-quality food supposedly promoted by Jewish elites, Fishback told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he employed it in a speech “because it’s funny. Get a life.”
Much of Fishback’s campaign has focused on the youth vote, fueling concerns that antisemitism could be a building block of the next generation of the right. His college campus visits have boasted high turnout, and young Republican groups that have hosted him have themselves been criticized for antisemitic behavior.
Few analysts expect Fishback to win the primary. His campaign has been mired by scandal and odd behavior, and Donalds, the Trump-endorsed frontrunner, leads most polls by comfortable margins. But Fishback is polling in the double digits in some recent analyses of likely voters from polling outlets including Cygnal, which also has him outpacing two other establishment candidates, and primary polling in Michigan and Wisconsin that turned out to be inaccurate further complicates the prognosis.
Even a reasonably strong performance from Fishback, particularly among the youth vote, would be met with alarm in some Jewish conservative corners.
A Jew who insults Muslims takes on a rival who insults Jews
Elsewhere in Florida’s Republican field, tensions between rising antisemitic and anti-Islamic sentiment within the party are mounting.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, the incumbent in the state’s deep-red 6th District, has prompted considerable ire on Capitol Hill for comments denigrating Muslims — including comparing them to dogs — and saying that Gazans should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages were released. As a hardline pro-Israel voter who also wears a kippah on the House floor, Fine has made his Judaism central to his political identity, making him a litmus test for both the right and organized Jewry.
Some of that ire has made it back to his home district, where Fine is facing primary challenger Dan Bilzerian, a celebrity poker player and Instagram influencer who routinely promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories. He has said he wants to “kill Israelis,” has called Fine a “fat Jew” and called antisemitism “a made-up term.” He has further claimed that Israel “wanted Oct. 7 to happen” and called reports of Hamas raping victims that day “bull—t.” Bilzerian has spent at least $1 million of his own money on the race.
The primary has been marked by inflammatory rhetoric and personal attacks. Fine responded to Bilzerian’s entry into the race by declaring that “we don’t want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress” (Bilzerian is Armenian), prompting anger from Armenian-American groups.
Last week a Fine campaign sign was defaced with a swastika, an act condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups. In a release, Fine accused Bilzerian’s supporters of having painted the swastika, a charge Bilzerian has denied and labeled “the most jew move of all time.”
On Friday, Fine’s campaign said the candidate had referred Bilzerian to federal investigators for allegedly receiving unreported campaign donations from China. Bilzerian’s pitch to voters heavily centers around antisemitism: “District 6 understands the jewish problem,” he wrote on social media over the weekend, accompanied by pictures of his campaign stops.
Some Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, have condemned Fine’s rhetoric on Gaza and other matters. He still receives support from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, as well as the Republican Jewish Coalition, whose PAC has given his campaign thousands of dollars this cycle, according to federal election filings. In recent days, Republican leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson — who had declined to condemn Fine’s earlier remarks about Muslims and dogs — have condemned Bilzerian’s antics as antisemitic.
The combined presence of Bilzerian and Fishback on the ballot is leading at least one GOP group to lump them together as similar threats. The Front Line, a Republican PAC aligned with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and formed with the goal of curbing antisemitism within the party, released an ad during the World Cup that attacked them both.
In the ad, which was generated with artificial intelligence, the two candidates are shown hosting a party with media personalities Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the pro-Palestinian group Code Pink and Iranian clerics who cut a giant cake made to look like a crossed-out Israeli flag.
One pro-Israel Dem faces a left-wing challenger…
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the most pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, is finding himself in a familiar predicament this election cycle: fending off an anti-Zionist democratic socialist.
Activist Oliver Larkin is running against Moskowitz for the seat in the state’s 25th District, which is about 25% Jewish and is considered a toss-up in November after being redrawn this year. Moskowitz currently represents the 23rd District, which covers much of the same ground.
Moskowitz has outraised his challenger 11-to-1, according to local media estimates, and has refused to debate him. He has the support of AIPAC, which has raised at least $667,000 for him, according to analyses of federal campaign reports.
He also has a groundswell of Jewish support in the district, even from some unlikely corners: The rabbi of a large Orthodox synagogue in Boca Raton has encouraged his congregants to change their voter registrations from Republican to Democrat in order to cast votes for Moskowitz.
Polling from Moskowitz-aligned firms has shown him with a considerable lead, while a poll from a Larkin-aligned outlet this month put the two in a statistical dead heat.
Moskowitz has also outright accused Larkin of fomenting antisemitism, telling the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorial board in a letter that his opponent “has embraced the support of individuals and organizations that have repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and hostility toward the Jewish community.”
Moskowitz has also claimed that Larkin is “running against me solely on my religion.” The Sun Sentinel board rated Moskowitz’s claim “demonstrably untrue” and, in an unusual move, said it would not endorse him for reelection after he declined a joint interview with Larkin. The paper decried what it described as Moskowitz’s “lack of respect for voters.”
But Larkin’s own language has alarmed some Jews, including his labeling of modern-day Israel as a “religious supremacist” country and his call for Israel to become a “secular” state. Asked by Fox News if he supports selling defensive weapons to Israel, Larkin responded, “I do not make a distinction between offensive and defensive weaponry.” A rally he and other progressive candidates were scheduled to participate in with Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan on Friday was moved at the last minute after the venue, citing Jewish leaders’ concerns over Tlaib’s anti-Israel rhetoric, cancelled.
Larkin has denied charges of antisemitism and spoken positively about Judaism on the campaign trail. In a statement to JTA, his campaign said he would advocate for “the liberation of Jewish South Floridians and Jewish people the world over from antisemitism,” and said an arms embargo on Israel should be “the minimum standard for anyone claiming to support democracy.”
He also has the support of Jewish figureheads on the anti-Zionist left. Author and trans activist Abby Stein was among a group of progressive figures who hosted a fundraiser for him in Brooklyn earlier this month.
… while another faces a redistricting controversy
Things once seemed simpler for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an establishment Jewish Democrat and former chair of the Democratic National Committee who has comfortably served in Congress since 2004 from a safe blue seat.
But after a late GOP-led redistricting push in Florida earlier this year, prompted by President Donald Trump’s demands for Republicans to redraw their districts to help them hold the House, Wasserman Schultz’s future is suddenly a lot less certain.
Instead of the district she has represented for decades and which many Democratic observers believed she could still win despite the gerrymandering, the congresswoman decided to run in the neighboring 20th — a heavily Black district that for three decades has been represented by a Black lawmaker.
And Wasserman Schultz’s primary opponents, including a former congresswoman facing a federal fraud trial and 2 Live Crew rap star “Uncle Luke” Campbell, aren’t happy she’s gunning for the seat. Critics accuse Wasserman Schultz of carpetbagging and say her decision to run in an easier seat will harm Black representation in government. Campbell has said her decision to run would harm Black-Jewish relations.
Even congressional leaders normally in Wasserman Schultz’s corner have balked at her decision. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries withheld an endorsement in the race, citing what he called the “sensitivities of the moment.”
Florida’s third Jewish Democratic mainstay in the House, Rep. Lois Frankel, is facing her own primary challenge in a new district — though in her case, the boundaries are similar to her old district. Frankel, a staunch Israel supporter, will have to defeat progressive challenger Victoria Doyle, a retired attorney. The close resemblance to her old district and lack of substantive groundswell support behind Doyle likely means Frankel will retain the party’s nomination.
Besides redistricting, Wasserman Schultz and Frankel, as with other institutional Democrat figures, are also facing a voter base unhappy with the party’s status quo. This year the state’s LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus withheld endorsements in both races, despite Wasserman Schultz’s and Frankel’s historically good relationships with the caucus. Rep. Jared Moskovitz, meanwhile, did receive the caucus’s endorsement.
DSA vs. Soviet refugee in Dem Senate primary
Democrats haven’t held a U.S. Senate seat in Florida since 2019. But in a midterm environment expected to favor the party, the state could prove pivotal, and the primary to replace former Sen. Marco Rubio is putting one of the party’s biggest division points — “socialist” branding — in the spotlight.
The frontrunner for the nomination, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, is a Kyiv-born Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union. Vindman, whose twin brother is a congressman in Virginia, attained broader name recognition during the first Trump administration, when he publicly testified about a controversial phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Vindman’s opponent is state Rep. Angie Nixon, who, in contrast to her opponent’s family history of fleeing from socialism, recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America. Nixon has made noise in her party for pushing pro-Palestinian legislation on the state level — including a push, less than a month after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, for “de-escalation and cease-fire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine.”
Nixon has campaigned alongside Oliver Larkin, as well as far-left elected figures in the party including Tlaib, and her pro-Palestinian positions are a big point of worry for some Jewish figures. But in a state with high numbers of voters, particularly Latinos, who have fled socialist or Communist regimes, it’s the candidates’ associations with the “S”-word that may prove the deciding factor.
Vindman has far outraised Nixon to date, and leads in the scant polling that has been conducted so far. A July poll from the University of North Florida, however, suggests that Nixon fares slightly better against the Republican nominee, appointed Sen. Ashley Moody.
Joseph Strauss contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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