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2025’s Jewish highlights — from ‘Marty Supreme’ to Max Fried’s menschy move
Jews have been in the spotlight in the past years for all kinds of reasons, many of them less-than-fun: Gaza, war, hostages, protests. But looking back, we wanted to boil it down into highlights. Or at least things that were just really, really Jewish. Basically, everything we thought was worth making note of in the last year, whether for its merits, its lack thereof, or just for its pure oddity.
You may notice reading that there seem to be a few doubles in these categories. But, you see, the “best Jewish movie” is not necessarily the “most Jewish movie.” That’s because there has been a glut of loudly Jewish content that’s awfully hard to ignore, screaming for our attention. That doesn’t mean it’s good, but it’s notable.
So read on for the Jewish things you should remember — whether you want to or not — from 2025.
Best Jewish movie
It’s apparently a Safdie family tradition to induce anxiety in movie-going Jews on Christmas. (Uncut Gems arrived Dec. 25, 2019.) Josh Safdie’s film, about salesman-hustler-table-tennis dynamo Marty Mauser, accumulates Yiddishkeit as it goes, including a brief cameo by a Forward delivery truck. Timothée Chalamet dons thick-rim glasses and hangs a Magen David over his chest as he jousts with a Holocaust survivor opponent (there were a few ping-pong champs who did, in fact, survive Auschwitz). A character in the tradition of Sammy Glick and Duddy Kravitz, Marty is as magnetic as he is entitled. While the film’s concerns are universal, it is perhaps primarily a portrait of the New Jew, not of the Nordau school, but the American one, who regarded success as something he’s owed.
Most Jewish movie
These days, there is such a glut of Holocaust content that each new book, movie or show has to find a unique niche. Nuremberg did so by focusing on the relationship between Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, and the psychiatrist assigned to analyze him before the eponymous trials, a man who hoped to find some genetic or mental component for evil that he can diagnose.
But the movie is so intent on being informative that it neglects to actually develop its characters and give real insight into Goering’s mind and motivations, or anyone else’s. Though it purports to be a movie about the banality of evil, it was actually just banal. It culminates in the shocking realization that evil has no genetic component, and most of its reveals carry just as little weight. Its most impactful moment is actually a piece of another film: the archival footage shown during the actual trial, which the movie excerpts.
Most Jewish movie that isn’t actually Jewish
Sentimental Value
In Joachim Trier’s film, which won the Grand Prix prize at Cannes, aging filmmaker Gustav Borg pursues reconciliation with his daughters by trying to cast them in his next film, which is a dramatization of his life. He wants the younger sister Nora, a theater actress who battles crippling anxiety, to play his mother who died by suicide; he’s cast the preteen son of Agnes, the elder sister, as a younger version of himself.
The Norwegian family depicted in this film isn’t Jewish. But Trier introduces all the classic beats of Jewish cultural concern: inherited trauma, the artist’s struggle, and the allure/disappointment of goyish blondes (this one played distractingly by Elle Fanning).
(Bonus points for Jewish musical-comedy darling Catherine Cohen’s bit part as Fanning’s phone-addicted manager.)
Most Jewish TV
The second season of Netflix’s Hot Rabbi hit rom-com, once again dominated Jewish conversations — and the streamer’s most-watched list. But much like its huge first season, the second left something to be desired in terms of its representation of Jews, who once again seemed to be incredibly limited by their religious identity and beliefs, and yet simultaneously eager to cast them off given the right opportunity. Stereotypes — like Jews being bad at sports or good at complaining — do a lot of the work of making the show Jewish. The effect is that Nobody Wants This doesn’t feel Jewish so much as it screams at the audience “this is a Jewish show!”
The show’s approach to Jewishness is perhaps best captured by the fact that menorahs, inexplicably, constantly appear in the background, even though it’s not Hanukkah at any point in either season. But without a hanukkiah on display — and, sometimes, lit — how would we know it’s Jewish?
Best Jewish TV
Long Story Short
The animated show from the creator of the surrealist show Bojack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, managed to avoid the pitfalls that so often plague very Jewish media — namely heavy-handedness around Israel, or antisemitism, or leaning on clumsy exposition to define Jewish practices for a gentile audience. Instead, the show just lets its Jewish family be, while also showcasing a wide range of Jewish diversity; the family includes a Black Jewish convert, both a ba’al teshuva son and another son who struggles to connect with his Jewishness, and a queer couple. Each character feels deeply familiar to anyone who spends time in Jewish community, but the show doesn’t try to make the jokes easy to read to non-Jews. Maybe that means some of them fly over the heads of anyone not in the tribe, but that means it’s pitch-perfect for those of us looking for a deeper, subtler representation of Jewish life.
Most Jewish play
The latest play from writer and actress Liba Vaynberg, imagines how six of the Biblical matriarchs — Miriam, Sara, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah and Tziporrah — would have lived today. Set over the course of decades, the girls start the play as 13-year olds and end it in the late stages of adulthood. Each girl’s path is a smart imitation of their matriarch’s actual story, transposed into the modern day. Sara struggles with infertility. Miriam becomes a rabbi, believing that studying Torah will help her lead a good life and avoid misfortune. Leah’s mandrake root is substituted by weed edibles. With humor and an impressive amount of Jewish references that only those steeped in biblical expertise might catch, the play asks: Why is life full of sacrifices, especially ones that seem unjustified? Vaynberg is not interested in giving a solid answer, but still provides a satisfying ending, assuring that life, no matter what it brings, is meant to be lived in full.
Best Jewish play
Slam Frank
Ragebait maestro Andrew Fox’s opus, which reimagines Anne Frank as Anna Franco, a pansexual Latinx immigrant from the “barrios of Frankfurt,” is a piece with many moving parts: a social media campaign that shames the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum for not including chanclas in their mountains of shoes and, yes, also a “real musical,” despite the doubts of many online who assumed it was pure trolling. In fact, it’s a lucid commentary on the state of woke, where identity boxes serve as proxies for character development, and stops just short of being a full referendum on inclusion.
The piece, riffing on nearly every virtue-signalled mega-musical of the last two decades, is at its most knotty when it takes on Jewishness; Fox knows being Jewish doesn’t map neatly to the fashionable formulas of white privilege and oppressor-oppressed. In the end, it is the reimagined attic residents’ existence as Jews that unravels the simple binaries of progressive politics.
Most Jewish book
Sam Sussman’s novel takes the author’s own nebulous biography as its subject — and the suspicion that Bob Dylan may be his father. If this wasn’t Jewish enough, the initial meeting of his mother and the future-Nobel Laureate took place in the studio of painter Norman Raeben, whose father was Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (aka Sholem Aleichem). The book generated a lot of interest as a work of a promising debut from a young novelist.
Another extremely Jewish book
Kaplan’s Plot
A rollicking story that toggles between a Ukrainian mobster scraping by and a modern-day tech worker digging through family history, essayist and memoirist Jason Diamond’s first novel digs into Jewish Chicago. Really, as any good Jewish story spanning generations, the book is an examination of the impact of inherited trauma, but it’s not too heavy; it crackles with fast-paced Yiddishisms and the propulsive plot of a thriller. Jewishness isn’t the book’s subject as much as it is its entire ethos.
Funniest Jewish newsletter
One of the brightest and least-talked-about trends in the Jewish world right now is the second wave of Substack newsletters introducing new perspectives on Jewish life. (Read about the first wave here.) Bagel Emoji, a semiregular dispatch from a semi-anonymous, gay semi-Orthodox Jew who lives in Los Angeles, delivers feverish, meandering riffs on niche trends like AI content in Jewish print publications and the notorious odor of a particular kosher grocer to say something deeper about frum life. Bagel’s general sass — thinly masking affection, I think — makes each entry essential reading.
Spiciest Jewish newsletter
Picture a newsletter about Israel discourse so hot it must be handled with gloves. That’s NonZionism, a regular rant from an Israel-based writer who goes by the pen-name Mascil Bina. Skewering the excesses and hollowness of both pro-Israel and anti-Israel ideology, the author’s perspective offers a third position: That Israel is “something that wasn’t inevitable, but cannot now be undone.” His takes are unsparing, and unexpected — one week, it’s the case for Bibi Netanyahu; the next, it’s a withering critique of hasbara titled “Zionism turns your brain to mush.” Just recommending it feels risky.
Best Jewish music moment
Streisand and Dylan duet
Streisand announced an album of duets, The Secret Of Life: Partners, Volume Two, with the likes of Hozier, Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande and — finally — Bob Dylan, resolving decades of a great musical will-they-won’t-they.
“The track opens with the sound of harmonica, a sound often associated with Dylan,” wrote the Forward’s Seth Rogovoy. “But this harmonica sounds nothing like Dylan’s style, and it is definitely not Dylan playing.” He is singing though, and Barb comes in by the fourth line. Unfortunately, they have yet to duet on “Lay Lady Lay,” a song Dylan purportedly wrote with Barb in mind.
Best “Good for the Jews” moment
Britney Spears admiring the beards of Chabadniks playing chess
The Instagram post was rizz recognizing rizz.
Best Jewish Food Moment
Manischewitz launches food truck
Since 1888, the Manischewitz Company has been a Jewish household staple. But now, it’s taking its signature products on the road. The Manischewitz Deli on Wheels, an orange truck that serves rugelach, hot dogs, vegetarian egg rolls, and matzo ball soup, launched this March as part of the brand’s plan to market to younger audiences. Last year, the company launched a frozen food line that emphasized convenience, a quality they are also trying to capture in their truck. Manischewitz has a city-wide license and plans to take the truck all over New York and New Jersey. Its creative branding and warm servings of classic Jewish comfort food are a welcome addition to the already bustling food-truck scene.
Most Jewish Food Moment
New York City sets a new record for the world’s biggest Shabbat dinner
On Nov. 20, more than 2,500 Jews — 2,761 to be exact — sat down at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and broke the record for the world’s biggest Shabbat dinner. The previous record had been set by Berlin in 2015 with a dinner of 2,322 people. The Forward’s Hannah Feuer was in attendance to get all the details — and do her best to eat all the food served over the multi-course meal. The event included 811 pounds of kugel, 402 challahs, and 22,500 hors d’oeuvres and, in an AI generated video, Albert Einstein, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Golda Meir and the Hebrew patriarch Abraham offered commentary on the dinner. For entertainment, a woman in a leotard, suspended by wires from the ceiling, played “If I Were a Rich Man” on the violin and the Jewish a capella group Six13 sang “We Are the Champions” to celebrate the victorious occasion.
Biggest Jewish sports disaster
A bicycle blowup
Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams had a hobby — competitive cycling — and a dream: using the sport to bolster Israel’s image abroad. That dream crashed hard into reality this summer at the Spanish Vuelta, where Adams’ team — called Israel-Premier Tech, and featuring zero Israeli or Jewish riders — turned out thousands of anti-Israel protesters.
Several of the race’s stages were altered or cancelled, including the final, which was halted several miles short of the finish line. By the Vuelta’s conclusion, some of the other riders were openly campaigning for Israel-Premier Tech’s exclusion and the team had removed “Israel” from its jerseys. The team’s demise became official this month when it was announced that retired Spanish footballer Andres Iniesta had bought IPT and, er, rechristened it.
Best Jewish sports performance
Avdija delivers
Deni Avdija was not supposed to be this good. Yet in his sixth season, the Portland Trail Blazers’ forward has been producing like an All-Star — he’s averaging 26 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists per game as of this writing, with borderline elite efficiency — and with any justice, he’ll soon become one.
Most heartwarming Jewish sports moment
A very Jewish draft
It’s gotta be the back-to-back selections of Jewish Brooklyn Nets rookies Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf at June’s NBA Draft. Some draft prognosticators were expecting Wolf, a dynamic seven-footer who led Michigan to the Sweet 16, to be picked early in the first round — before Saraf, a spindly Israeli point guard. Instead, when Nets took Saraf with the 26th pick, the Wolf ganze mishpoche was still twiddling their thumbs. Moments later, though, Commissioner Adam Silver called Wolf’s name, sending older brother Jake Wolf into full-blown sobs — and into the unofficial sports meme hall of fame.
Menschiest Jewish athlete
Max Fried
The Yankees ace called reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal to tell him he deserved to start the All-Star game in his stead. “It’s a very professional thing to do, and you got a ton of respect for guys that do stuff like that,” Skubal later told reporters. What we were thinking: This kid must have great parents!
The post 2025’s Jewish highlights — from ‘Marty Supreme’ to Max Fried’s menschy move appeared first on The Forward.
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New York Times hires Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg to cover Jewish American life
(JTA) — The New York Times has hired Atlantic staff writer Yair Rosenberg to launch a national beat covering Jewish American life, bringing a widely known journalist on antisemitism and Jewish affairs to a newspaper whose coverage of Israel and the Jewish community has been under unusually intense scrutiny since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
The appointment, announced Monday by National Editor Nestor Ramos, creates a dedicated beat focused on American Jews at a moment when questions of antisemitism, Israel, religious identity and political polarization have moved to the center of public debate.
It is the first time that the newspaper, published in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population, has a beat dedicated to Jews.
“Over the course of 15 years chronicling Jewish life in America and abroad, Yair has taken on the biggest, thorniest stories on the beat,” Ramos wrote in a memo to staff. “Now, Yair will bring that boundless energy and deep expertise to a new religion beat on National focused on Jewish American life, chronicling a period of extraordinary tension but also possibility and reinvention.”
The move brings Rosenberg to a publication that he has occasionally criticized for its coverage of Jewish affairs, but without echoing some critics’ charges of institutional bias.
For the past five years Rosenberg has written The Atlantic’s “Deep Shtetl” newsletter, blending coverage of antisemitism, American politics and Jewish culture with essays on history, religion and popular culture. Before joining The Atlantic in 2021, he spent nearly a decade at Tablet, a magazine of Jewish affairs.
Over the years, Rosenberg has broken or advanced reporting on online extremism and antisemitism while also becoming known for explaining Jewish issues to a broad audience. His work has ranged from investigations into antisemitic disinformation networks to historical features. He has written about antisemitism on the far left and on the Republican right.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, an Anti-Defamation League study found Rosenberg was among the Jewish journalists most frequently targeted with antisemitic abuse on Twitter. Rosenberg became known for responding publicly to trolls and for developing technological tools — including an “Impostor Buster” bot — designed to expose white supremacists posing online as minorities in order to inflame social tensions. The effort drew widespread attention before Twitter eventually suspended the tool.
He later described those experiences in a New York Times guest essay titled “Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter,” and has remained a frequent public speaker on combating online hate while preserving free expression.
Ramos’s announcement emphasized that Rosenberg’s beat would extend beyond antisemitism.
“Yair knows better than most that these fraught moments are not all that define Jewish life today—not even close,” Ramos wrote, citing stories on Hanukkah traditions, Jewish representation in popular culture and other facets of American Jewish life.
The Times, through a spokesman, declined to comment beyond Monday’s announcement. Rosenberg did not respond to a request for an interview by press time.
The hire comes as The New York Times continues to navigate a complicated relationship with many Jewish readers.
For decades the newspaper has occupied an outsized place in American Jewish public life, employing prominent Jewish reporters and editors while producing influential coverage of religion, Israel and antisemitism. Yet the newspaper has also faced sustained criticism from parts of the Jewish community over its Israel coverage, criticism that intensified after Oct. 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Media watchdog organizations, some Jewish communal leaders and a number of current and former journalists have accused the Times of factual errors, headline framing and insufficient skepticism toward claims made by Hamas officials in some early coverage of the conflict.
A May 2026 column by Nicholas Kristof, alleging systemic sexual violence by Israeli authorities against Palestinian detainees, was widely criticized for amplifying unverified claims and platforming biased sources. The Times stood by Kristof’s column in an editorial note.
Defenders of the Times argue that accusations of institutional anti-Israel bias often conflate disagreement over editorial judgments with evidence of systemic prejudice.
At Tablet and The Atlantic, Rosenberg occasionally criticized aspects of the Times’ reporting on both Israel and antisemitism. In a 2018 Tablet article he criticized The New York Times Book Review for offering a platform for the novelist Alice Walker to recommend a book by the English author David Icke that was heavily saturated in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The next year he called out the Times for a profile of former CIA officer and would-be congressional candidate Valerie Plame that failed to mention her history of tweets sharing antisemitic theories. He has also regretted that the Times in 1937 dropped its subscription to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency syndication service because of the perception at the time that JTA’s coverage of Nazi Europe was alarmist.
Unlike some Jewish media watchdog groups, however, Rosenberg has not argued that the Times is institutionally or inherently biased against Israel or Jews. Against that backdrop, Rosenberg’s hiring is likely to be watched closely by Jewish readers across the political spectrum.
According to Ramos, Rosenberg will begin work July 20 and will be based in New York while traveling nationally for the beat.
The post New York Times hires Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg to cover Jewish American life appeared first on The Forward.
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Canadian Museum for Human Rights opens ‘Nakba’ exhibit amid pushback from Jewish leaders
(JTA) — After weeks of backlash from Jewish groups and leaders, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights this weekend opened its exhibit on the Nakba, the narrative of Palestinian defeat and displacement upon Israel’s founding.
The Winnipeg, Manitoba, exhibit is called “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present” and features photography, poetry and everyday objects that document the experience of Palestinian-Canadians impacted by the Nakba. Palestinians use the term, meaning “catastrophe,” to describe their mass displacement upon Israel’s establishment.
The exhibit has drawn fierce condemnation from some Jewish groups, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
“Materials that are one-sided and driven by a political agenda can contribute to discrimination, bullying and even assault targeting Jewish students,” the group wrote in a post on X last week. “The federal government must hold the CMHR’s leadership accountable for this egregious mishandling.”
The museum’s only Jewish board member, Mark Berlin, was upset enough by the exhibit to resign.
“Because the museum chooses to proceed with this exhibit in its present form despite repeated concerns raised by myself and members of the mainstream Jewish community and others seeking a more balanced and historically complete presentation, I can no longer, in good conscience continue to serve as a Trustee,” Berlin wrote in a resignation letter dated June 22.
In the letter, Berlin argues that the exhibit omits the context that “hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands” were also displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
“A story detached from the surrounding factual details is not the truth, it is just a story,” Berlin continued. “The museum has a statutory and moral obligation to tell the full truth, not to sacrifice it at the altar of politics.”
The museum has vigorously defended the exhibit. In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Isha Khan, the CEO of the museum, said that “focusing in this one exhibit on the human violations faced by of Palestinian Canadians does not negate the human rights violations faced by Jewish people.”
“Sharing the stories of one community in no way minimizes the experiences of another,” Khan continued.
Khan added that the exhibit had drawn “both criticism and support from Jewish Canadians.”
Several progressive Jewish groups in Canada, including Independent Jewish Voices, the Jewish Faculty Network, and United Jewish Peoples’ Order, defended the exhibit in a joint statement Thursday, writing that it was the “result of dedication, persistence, care and advocacy, especially from the Palestinian Canadian community.”
“We are proud to celebrate a Canadian institution that has remained steadfast in the face of unfounded criticism and pressure and chose to move forward with integrity,” the statement continued. “We hope this historic opening, and the ongoing inclusion of the exhibition in the Museum, encourages learning, reflection and action.”
The dispute over the exhibit comes as Jews in Canada have faced a spate of antisemitic attacks in recent months, including in March, when shots were fired at three Toronto-area synagogues. In 2025, there were 6,800 antisemitic incidents in Canada, marking a 9% rise from 2024, according to B’nai Brith’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents.
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Jewish, LGBTQ and progressive groups denounce Pride harassment of Jewish politician Scott Wiener
(JTA) — A growing number of Jewish, Democratic and LGBTQ figures are condemning the harassment of Jewish congressional candidate Scott Wiener by anti-Zionists at the San Francisco Trans March on Friday.
Wiener’s political opponent, meanwhile, did not condemn the incident directly when asked, instead disavowing “threats of violence and hate speech” more generally.
Wiener had been filmed at the march while several activists, including the man filming him, surrounded him and yelled at him about Gaza and Israel; he ultimately left the scene. The incident followed another at which Wiener was accused of supporting genocide while at a sports bar, and preceded a filmed anti-Zionist harassment of another local Jewish LGBTQ politician at a San Francisco Pride march.
The incidents have retriggered discourse about Jewish inclusion in LGBTQ and other left-wing spaces as anti-Zionist activists become more numerous and strident.
Assigned Media, a popular trans news outlet, denounced the Trans March harassment of Wiener led by local activist Dimitry Yakoushkin as “left antisemitism.”
“We need to reckon with the fact that Yakoushkin was able to incite an outpouring of rage against a Jewish man by mentioning Gaza,” the author, Evan Urquhart, wrote on Monday. “The only explanation for that is antisemitism. Enough attendees at the Trans Pride March were open to seeing a Jewish man as a proxy for Israel that Yakoushkin was able to whip them into a frenzy for his own purposes.”
Donations have also poured into Wiener’s campaign following the incident, with his campaign telling the San Francisco Standard that he received his highest single-day donation numbers afterward. Yet the harassment has raised questions about the viability of Jewish candidates like Wiener, who has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza while still seeking to maintaining a liberal Zionist identity.
Wiener, who is gay and is running for the seat being vacated by former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote in a lengthy statement that he had been chased out of the annual Trans March event while on his way to a Pride Shabbat. It was, he said, the first time he had been unable to participate in the event since it launched 22 years ago.
“They were so physically and verbally aggressive that it was impossible for me to safely remain in the park,” Wiener said in his statement, noting the protesters had “made statements about my ‘Israeli handlers,’ among many other inaccurate, extreme, and vile statements.”
The California Senate’s Democratic statehouse caucus condemned the harassment as “unacceptable,” calling Wiener “a fearless champion for the LGBTQ+ community even when it was not politically popular.” The caucus did not mention Israel or antisemitism in its statement.
“We are saddened and appalled that Senator Scott Wiener experienced antisemitic invectives, harassment, and physical intimidation while attempting to join the Trans March,” Jaimie Krass, president of the LGBTQ Jewish organization Keshet, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
San Francisco’s Jewish mayor Daniel Lurie, the local Jewish Community Relations Council, and The Nexus Project, a national antisemitism watchdog group that is more forgiving of anti-Zionist critiques than the Anti-Defamation League, all called Wiener’s harassment antisemitic.
At a Pride breakfast Sunday morning hosted by a historic San Francisco LGBTQ Democratic group, other local and national leaders expressed support for Wiener.
“Hate has no place in our community,” Imani Rupert-Gordon, president of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, told Wiener at the breakfast, according to the Bay Area Reporter, a local LGBTQ news site. “Scott, you were treated horribly.”
San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Rafael Mandelson, who is gay and Jewish, said that what happened to Wiener “happens to gay Jewish electeds far too often. It is about Jew hatred. It is wrong.” Wiener himself did not mention either of his harassment incidents in his speech at the breakfast, according to the Reporter.
A spokesperson for Wiener did not respond to a JTA request for further comment. A request for comment to the Trans March was also unreturned; the march has released a statement on a separate incident, in which several participants were arrested following an altercation with police.
The targeting of Wiener was especially notable given that he has been celebrated locally for years as a lawmaker with a strong record on trans rights — something acknowledged by Yakoushkin, who in a video he filmed and posted, yells, “I think your policy on the genocide in Gaza is terrible,” as others yell expletives at the state senator.
“It’s sad because while he’s written some good legislation for queers, hes [sic] ultimately a genocidal-supporting center right shill,” Yakoushkin wrote on social media in a post accompanying his video of himself harassing Wiener. On Instagram, Yakoushkin called Wiener a “Yimby zionist,” using a shorthand for activists who push for more housing.
A JTA request to Yakoushkin for comment was not returned. A life coach, Yakoushkin told one critic on X, “i[f] he was great on Gaza I’d still roast his ass.”
Wiener had said during his primary campaign earlier in the month, in which he came in first, that he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza — a shift that came after pressure from the left and one that cost him a leadership role in the statehouse’s Jewish caucus and led to backlash from the Bay Area Jewish community.
Local anti-Zionist activists have continued to target him. The Trans March incident was the second such harassment Wiener faced in the past week. Days earlier, a local artist filmed himself confronting the candidate at a sports bar, shouting, “Wiener, you gotta get the f-ck up out my hood, bro,” and “It’s free Palestine here, you already know what it is — we against the genocide.”
The artist, Jesus “Frisco Lens” Coba, did not return a JTA request for comment. In his statement, Wiener said that Coba had in 2023 “stalked me on a plane and in an airport, shouting at me about my ‘tainted bloodline.’”
San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, who is running against Wiener in the November congressional runoff, did not directly address Wiener’s harassment in a statement she sent after JTA requested comment.
“As an elected leader, and a candidate running for office, I have experienced the rough and tumble of San Francisco politics including folks who disagree with us publicly and sometimes vehemently,” she said. “And I accept and understand this responsibility. And as someone who has been a target of hate and threats of violence, I stand firm against threats of violence and hate speech. There is no place for hate and violence in our City.”
Chan had also attended the Trans March and was feted there, including by some of the activists who harassed Wiener on camera. Asked by JTA if the harassment of Wiener was antisemitic, a Chan spokesperson responded, “In this moment, what matters is how State Senator Scott Wiener felt and feels about the interactions. We must stand in solidarity against hate whenever someone tells us they are experiencing hate.”
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents a different Bay Area district, called the harassment of Wiener “simply wrong.” In the same statement, he promoted legislation to end the sale of military weapons to Israel.
“There is no place for harrasment [sic] or physical violence in our democracy,” Khanna, among the House’s fiercest Israel critics, wrote on X. “Let’s focus on passing @RepThomasMassie amendment to zero aid to Israel. Hold elected officials accountable. But do so in the spirit of building a politics of conviction and dignity, not insult and aggression.” A representative for Khanna did not return a JTA request for further comment.
Also over the weekend, an anti-Zionist activist filmed themselves harassing Manny Yekutiel, a local Jewish restaurateur running for San Francisco’s board of supervisors, while Yekutiel marched in a Pride event. The activist criticized Yekutiel, who is also queer, over having hosted Hen Mazzig, an LGBTQ pro-Israel activist, at his restaurant, because Mazzig served in the Israel Defense Forces.
Yekutiel’s campaign did not return a JTA request for comment; Yekutiel’s restaurant, Manny’s, has been targeted multiple times by anti-Zionists in the past.
“The person that you’re talking about, he was Israeli. I didn’t know that he was an IDF soldier,” he told the activist who confronted him in video from the march. The activist responded, “Well, maybe having Israelis at the cafe isn’t a good idea because it’s an apartheid state committing a genocide.”
Some local politicians jointly condemned the harassment of both Wiener and Yekutiel, linking their identities as Jews.
“The harassment campaign against Jewish candidates @Scott_Wiener + Manny Yekutiel is gross and unacceptable,” Trevor Chandler, a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, wrote on X. Chandler added that the local Democratic group “condemns antisemitism.”
The day after Wiener’s harassment, two different groups of LGBTQ Jews had contrasting receptions at a New York Pride march.
One, Jewish Queer Youth, experienced a largely peaceful march; a second, fronted by Zioness, a more explicitly Zionist group, faced harassment. Another prominent Pride event, the NYC Dyke March, was staged on Saturday without many of its longtime Jewish participants, the Forward reported, after organizers stated for the second year in a row that anti-Zionism was a core value of the event; many Jewish former Dyke March organizers split away to form their own group.
Some Jewish LGBTQ leaders say the majority of such spaces remain welcoming. Krass, the Keshet president, said in her statement to JTA that “nearly every instance” of the “nearly 100 Pride events Keshet has organized this year” were “met almost entirely with celebration.”
In a newsletter on Monday, Krass told Keshet’s followers that she was “appalled” by some of the reactions to Wiener’s harassment.
“Some people are refusing to acknowledge that antisemitism played any role. Others are using this incident as an opportunity to project false, harmful generalizations onto the entire trans community,” Krass wrote. “I have even seen fellow Jews call for the Jewish community to abandon the LGBTQ+ community and our shared fight for equality. This is not the way.”
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