Uncategorized
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.
Uncategorized
Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’
(JTA) — Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, sparked fierce condemnation from Israeli and Latin American leaders after he tweeted the phrase “Heil Hitler” Sunday in response to an op-ed endorsing a candidate in the country’s upcoming presidential election.
Petro, a left-wing president in the final weeks of his term ahead of the country’s June 21 runoff election, posted the Nazi phrase in response to an op-ed supporting right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
Petro subsequently defended his use of the Nazi slogan, arguing that he was critiquing the language used by the op-ed’s author, which he said included “fascist phrases.”
His defense came after criticism from Israeli leaders and others who said the “Heil Hitler” comment was inappropriate.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called on the Colombian leader to “come to your senses and apologize” before Wednesday, when he is slated to preside over a debate at the United Nations Security Council.
“President of Colombia, @petrogustavo, whatever is going on in your personal life, there are lines that must never be crossed,” Danon wrote in a post on X. “Using Nazi slogans is a disgraceful low from which there is no coming back.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also decried the post, writing on X that it was a “total loss of moral compass and an indelible stain on Colombia’s legacy.”
The episode comes amid shifting norms about the use of Holocaust analogies and language in political discourse. After being considered out of bounds for a long time, people on both the right and the left have increasingly shed those norms amid growing political polarization and extremism around the world.
The “Heil Hitler” post was not the first time Petro has landed in hot water for invoking the Holocaust. In the wake of Oct. 7, Petro drew backlash from Jewish and Israeli leaders for likening the actions of Israel to Nazi Germany. On social media, he has repeatedly called political rivals Nazis, including last month when he wrote in a post on X that Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had behaved like a “true Nazi” after he posted videos taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
In 2024, Petro also severed diplomatic ties with Israel, accusing the country of commiting genocide in Gaza, an accusation Israel has denied. Espriella, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to renew diplomatic ties with Israel.
On Monday, 24 Latin American lawmakers signed onto a statement condemning Petro’s rhetoric, warning that his repeated use of references to Naziism risked distorting Holocaust memory.
“The use of references to Nazism must not become a rhetorical tool to discredit political or ideological positions. Democratic leaders have a responsibility to promote a respectful public debate that is conscious of the weight of words,” the statement read.
The statement was initiated by the Coalition of Latin American Legislators Against Antisemitism, which is led by the Combat Antisemitism Movement. The signatories included lawmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.
Shay Salamon, CAM’s executive director of Latin American affairs, said in a statement that Petro’s invocation of the phrase reflected a “troubling record of antisemitic expressions and conduct” by the Colombian leader.
“When a leader uses the authority of his office to stigmatize the Jewish people or trivialize their historic suffering, silence is no longer an option,” Salamon said.
The post Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel looms large as Maine heads to the polls in Graham Platner’s Senate primary
(JTA) — As Graham Platner wrapped up his campaign for the Maine Democratic Senate nomination Tuesday, he ended it the way he began: by taking aim at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby and political funder.
The Democrat’s first online ad, released in August, boasted that, unlike his competitors, he would never get AIPAC’s endorsement because he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Last week, he suggested that AIPAC funding meant his Republican opponent was “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu,” drawing allegations of antisemitism from a range of Jewish groups.
Along the way, Platner has courted multiple rounds of controversy over Israel and Jews. And in the race’s final days, new reports about Platner’s past behavior toward women have fueled anti-Israel rhetoric among some of his supporters — and further splintered Democratic support for the oyster farmer and political neophyte whose spirited run for office has alarmed many Jewish leaders.
Now, Mainers are heading to the polls with Israel and antisemitism allegations looming large.
Platner, 41, ran as a populist promising to inject progressive energy into a Senate race where both the incumbent Republican and the establishment Democratic pick, Gov. Janet Mills, are in their 70s. (Mills suspended her primary campaign as Platner soared in polls, but she remains on Tuesday’s ballot.) In an election cycle when anti-Israel rhetoric is surging on the left, Platner — who has Jewish extended family, including a stepbrother who lives in Israel and works on Israel policy issues for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — embraced the stance by making genocide accusations a key part of his stump speech.
That has earned him support in some corners. In a viral video from a rally over the weekend, a Platner supporter dismissed concerns about his tattoo of the Totenkopf symbol, a skull-and-crossbones image worn by Nazi concentration camp guards, which Platner tattooed over earlier this year amid criticism even as he insisted that he hadn’t known it was a Nazi symbol.
Then the supporter asserted that if Platner had a different tattoo, it would have been a dealbreaker for her: an Israeli flag.
“I don’t support genocide, and he doesn’t either, and that would show that he’s being inconsistent,” the woman told the New York Sun.
The exchange exacted disbelief from some. “Are you kidding me? A tattoo of the Israeli flag is worse than a Nazi symbol?” tweeted Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who is Jewish. “This should not be welcome in the Democratic Party!”
Pro-Israel donors have responded accordingly, shoring up the war chest of Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
“Susan Collins’s latest financial report just came out. A staggering one-third of her money raised this quarter came directly from AIPAC,” Platner tweeted on June 1. “Senator Collins is bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.”
Collins has described herself as broadly “pro-Israel” but also recently provided a crucial vote for a measure to end the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. OpenSecrets, the nonpartisan campaign finance information website, confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that its analysis of public Federal Election Commission data showed that a third of donations to Collins in the previous quarter were gifts from individuals who used the pro-Israel lobby as an intermediary. Collins also received a small donation directly from the group’s super PAC.
Still, Platner’s tweet ignited sharp criticism for suggesting that AIPAC represented Israeli influence, rather than donations by American supporters of Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League said the remark “invokes classic antisemitic rhetoric” and added, “Such accusations call up the age-old dual loyalty trope that casts Jewish Americans as more loyal to Israel than their own country.”
The Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog that is more forgiving of some forms of criticism of Israel than the ADL, also criticized the tweet.
“The insinuation that the government of Israel is ‘buying’ or directly controlling any politician who receives AIPAC funding or any American political donor that donates through a pro-Israel conduit is reductive and wrong,” Jonathan Jacoby, Nexus’ president, told JTA in a statement.
Undeterred, Platner on Saturday again invoked AIPAC while going after a member of his own party: Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a staunch Israel supporter. Fetterman had recently criticized Platner in harsh language, telling CNN, “When I was growing up, if someone had a clear Nazi tattoo on them, you probably could conclude that they’re a Nazi sympathizer.”
Fetterman, Platner said in response, had “become a stooge for AIPAC and the Republican party.”
Reached for comment on the phrasing of his AIPAC remarks, a Platner campaign spokesperson said, “Whether it’s private equity, billionaires, corporations, super PACs, etc., Graham is committed to getting money out of politics.”
Amid the mounting scandals, Platner met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week to shore up support for his candidacy among Democratic leaders. Speaking with reporters afterward, Schumer — who is Jewish, considers himself a leader on fighting antisemitism and had said he would support Platner’s campaign after Mills dropped out — repeatedly dodged questions about his confidence in Platner.
Some anti-Israel voices claim that the criticism reflects a conspiracy by Israel to prevent Platner from taking office.
“If you want a handy list of people who work for Israel, look at everyone criticizing Graham Platner now, especially Democrats,” the progressive influencer Cenk Uygur tweeted on Friday. “I get why Republicans want to tear him down. But Democrats attacking their own candidate only happens when they are ordered to do so by their handlers.”
His supporters, meanwhile, went on the offensive after a report in The New York Times cited multiple ex-girlfriends who said he had engaged in abusive and bullying behavior during their relationships.
The story featured as its most prominent voice Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative and former staffer at the conservative Heritage Foundation. In the article, Fifield claimed that Platner had known about his Totenkopf tattoo when he was dating her despite the candidate’s public insistence that he hadn’t recognized its Nazi origins. Platner had called his tattoo “my Totenkopf” while with her, Fifield told the Times, sharing a text in which she referred to the tattoo as a Nazi symbol before Platner said he was aware of what the tattoo represented.
Platner “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest,” Fifield texted her friends last summer, according to the Times. “It’s a Totenkopf … I will personally go campaign for Collins.”
Speaking to Maine’s public radio after the Times story ran, Platner denied Fifield’s claim. In another interview with MS NOW, Platner struggled to sort out the timeline of Fifield’s text to her friends about his tattoo, which occurred before he said he knew about the tattoo’s origins. Reached for comment, a Platner campaign spokesperson pointed to a previous interview the candidate held with JTA, in which he noted his “direct family connection to Judaism” and positive associations with Jewish religious tradition. Platner has also cast doubt on Fifield’s account, alleging that she is the sole source for reports about his knowledge of his own tattoo.
Reached for comment, Fifield told JTA by email, “I’ve been a vocal Zionist since college. I’ve been a proud conservative since then as well. Both of those things were true when I dated Graham.” Fifield is also close with the Jewish conservative commentator Bethany Mandel, with whom she formerly co-hosted a podcast.
To JTA, Fifield added, “If not being an antisemite is enough to fuel a mob of conspiracy theorists, it says something very dark about our culture.”
Some of Platner’s defenders have suggested the Times article was fueled by pro-Israel adversaries. Online, pro-Palestinian commentator Mehdi Hasan called Fifield “an anti-Palestinian racist and bigot,” sharing a tweet of hers in which she mocked the concept of “a Palestinian museum” and wrote, “What are their accomplishments, inventions, or other notable figures apart from terrorists and bombs made from the water pipes Israel gave them to pipe in free water for their people?”
Others have pointed out that the reporter who wrote the article, Katie Glueck, was co-president of Students for Israel at Northwestern University when the chapter won an “Activist of the Year” award from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC in 2009.
“The most shocking part of this story is that the NYT had a former AIPAC Activist of the Year (Katie Glueck) write a piece devoted to detailing unsubstantiated claims from a professional Republican activist (Lyndsey Fifield) on how a left Democratic Senate candidate who has promised to take on Israel (Platner) was a lousy boyfriend and sold it as a legit journalistic scoop,” tweeted Marcus Stanley, the director of studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-interventionist think tank.
In a statement to JTA, a New York Times spokesperson defended Glueck’s participation in the article.
“Katie Glueck has covered politics for over a decade and is one of the best journalists in media at producing incisive coverage of candidates and campaigns,” the Times’ Charlie Stadtlander wrote in an email. “She approached this article about Graham Platner’s past personal conduct with the same independence she brings to all of her reporting.”
Stadtlander added that the Times stands behind its reporting “of the accounts from Ms. Fifield and the other women, who provided a revealing look at the behavior of a major candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
The drumbeat of criticism has tempered excitement among some Democrats about Platner and his potential to flip a Senate seat. Even California Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading critic of Israel in Congress, offered indirect criticism of Platner and his defenders on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” over the weekend, where he said Platner’s supporters shouldn’t go after his accusers and “should not attack the New York Times reporters who wrote this story.”
“I know those reporters. They’ve written things critical of me. That’s what journalists do,” Khanna said. “Our party doesn’t attack the press. Our party believes that you treat women with equality and respect in all aspects of their lives.”
Still, he continued to signal support for Platner, saying that “he’s taken accountability for that period of his life.” Khanna also spoke at a rally for Platner in Maine over the weekend.
While Platner does not have many prominent Jewish supporters in Maine, and has seen the Jewish Democratic Council of America pointedly withhold its own support of his bid, one of his most visible Jewish allies in the state says he will stand by him.
“I’m still very much in Camp Platner,” Steven Koltai, the chair of J Street Maine who helped organize a Passover seder with the Platner campaign, told JTA following the latest revelations.
Koltai suggested that Platner’s past behavior paled in comparison to the president’s: “Thanks to President Trump, the bar for public office in America has been set at a level that even a subterranean earth worm could overcome.”
Asked about Platner’s comments regarding Collins and AIPAC specifically, he signaled a degree of difference with his candidature: “Of all Senator Collins’s votes, her votes on aid to Israel are very low on my list of complaints about her voting record.”
Platner is expected to sail through the primary. Most recent polls suggest that he and Collins are running neck and neck heading into November.
The post Israel looms large as Maine heads to the polls in Graham Platner’s Senate primary appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
The post The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration appeared first on The Forward.
