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A children’s book about Shabbat was returned to a Florida district’s shelves after year-plus ‘review’
(JTA) – Mara Rockliff’s “Chik Chak Shabbat” has become a standard for Jewish children since its 2014 publication. The picture book intended for young readers tells a whimsical story about a group of diverse neighbors who help an observant Jewish woman make her cholent — a stew traditionally served on the Sabbath — when they realize she doesn’t feel well enough to cook it herself.
So why did a school district in Jacksonville, Florida, purchase copies of the book only to keep it from students for 15 months?
That’s what happened at Duval County Public Schools. The district initially ordered Rockliff’s book for its students in July 2021 as part of a larger diversity-themed collection of books called “Essential Voices,” which is offered to educators by Iowa-based educational company Perfection Learning.
The books were delivered last winter, but remained “under review” as of September, when the literary free-speech activist group PEN America published a report on banned books in the United States. PEN’s report alleged Duval County had “effectively banned” Roclkiff’s and other books.
One month later, the district released many of them, including “Chik Chak Shabbat,” to students. At least one book with Jewish themes, “The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher” by Jewish author Dana Alison Levy, remains “under review.”
“We retrieved 179 titles from the Essential Voices collection for further review at the district level,” Duval County Public Schools spokesperson Tracy Pierce told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an email this week. “Of those 179, we determined that 106 meet statutory guidelines and are useful toward our reading goals. Those were distributed to classrooms in October.”
School reading materials are under increasing scrutiny amid conservative parent groups’ pressure to remove material they define as “critical race theory” and “gender ideology.” In an increasing number of places, books about Jews have gotten caught in the dragnet, including at a Tennessee district that removed “Maus” from its curriculum earlier this year; a Texas district that briefly removed an adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; and a Missouri district that briefly removed history books about the Holocaust.
Florida in particular has become a major rallying spot for challenging material in public schools, with its Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential hopeful, signing the “Stop WOKE Act” earlier this year restricting how race and gender concepts are taught in schools. DeSantis-endorsed school board candidates who are so-called parental rights advocates — conservatives pushing for an end to “critical race theory” and materials dealing with gender and sexuality in the classroom — currently hold a majority on Duval County’s board. Elsewhere in the state, the picture book “The Purim Superhero,” which features gay Jewish parents, was removed from a Panhandle-area district in April amid a larger purge of books with LGBTQ+ and gender-identity themes.
Pierce defended the length of time the district took to review the material: “The district will always take the time necessary to make sure the resources we provide for our students are appropriate for each grade level and meet the requirements of state statute.”
The district said 47 titles from the collection were returned to Perfection Learning, while another 26 remain under review. Among those still under review is Levy’s “Family Fletcher,” about a multicultural family that celebrates Jewish holidays. The family has two dads.
The district said Levy’s book was under review “while we await guidance from the state.” Levy did not return a JTA request for comment.
Unlike “Maus,” “The Purim Superhero” and “Family Fletcher,” “Chik Chak Shabbat” does not mention the Holocaust, feature any LGBTQ+ characters or contain any imagery that could be construed as sexual. The book’s most defining characteristic is that it’s about Jews.
Indeed, the book’s depiction of observant Judaism has made it a frequent favorite of the Jewish Book Council and of PJ Library, the literary nonprofit that distributes free Jewish-themed books to children nationwide. The group has distributed a parents’ reading guide to the book, noting, “After reading this story, you and your child may be inspired to make cholent together.” PJ Library declined to comment to JTA for this story.
Rockliff did not return a JTA request for comment, but told the Forward last week, “I doubt that anybody at this school district found [“Chik Chak Shabbat”] objectionable, or even read it.” (The book’s illustrations are by Kyrsten Brooker.)
A customer service representative for Perfection Learning, the company that distributes the Essential Voices collection, promised to forward a request for comment to the company’s CEO, but no comment was provided to JTA.
The district did not broadly communicate that most of the Essential Voices books had been released to students. Last week, apparently under the impression that none of the books had yet been released, several authors (including Jewish writer Ami Polonsky, author of the trans-themed young adult novel “Gracefully Grayson”) spoke out against the review policy at a school board meeting and signed an open letter circulated by PEN America and We Need Diverse Books.
Other Jewish-themed books in the collection include Ruth Behar’s “Lucky Broken Girl,” a coming-of-age autobiographical novel about a Cuban Jewish girl who experiences a car accident while adapting to her new life in New York; that book was also returned to Duval County students in October, Pierce said.
“As an author and a cultural anthropologist, I think young readers should have the freedom to read widely about the human condition to develop empathy and compassion and tolerance,” Behar, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan who also signed the petition circulated by PEN America and We Need Diverse Books, told JTA. She added that she has not heard of any schools or individuals objecting to the book’s content.
The Essential Voices collection also includes a book by Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o; an entry from the “Berenstain Bears” series; books about Abraham Lincoln and Jackie Robinson; and a book supporting interfaith dialogue called “Celebrating Different Beliefs.”
The district’s reasoning for its review process was insufficient in the eyes of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, an activist group in the state that pushes for increased student access to books. The group has filed Freedom Of Information Act requests in an effort to get the district to disclose its reasoning for reviewing the books.
“We argue there was never a reason to remove the entire collection of books,” the group’s founders told JTA. “No one in the community complained about what their child was reading in their K-5 classroom.
“If there were only a few titles of concern because they were popping up on challenge lists in the state, they could have reduced the amount of time needed to complete a thorough review by reviewing only those titles while the entire collection remained in the classrooms. Instead, they pulled the entire collection and questioned the professional expertise of those that created it.”
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Cornell University Clears President of Wrongdoing After Incident With Anti-Israel Protesters
Cornell University students walk on campus, November 2023. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Cornell University absolved its president, Michael Kotlikoff, of wrongdoing following an incident in which anti-Israel protesters accused him of lightly impacting a student and an alumnus with his car as they participated in a mob which had surrounded the vehicle to prevent his leaving a parking space.
As seen in viral footage shared on social media and reported in local outlets, Kotlikoff was walking to his car on April 30 when an anti-Zionist group converged on him, demanding a chance to interrogate him about free speech and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kotlikoff resolved to go home, however, telling the group that he would not answer any more questions and asked them to stop recording.
After the protesters refused to comply, Kotlikoff denied the protesters their move to form a blockade around his parking spot, reversing out of it even as the student and alumnus held their positions to hold him still.
All the while, the mob banged on the vehicle, creating what the school described as a sense of imminent danger.
“The actions taken by these individuals on April 30th, which included following President Kotlikoff from an evening event into a parking lot and impeding his ability to leave, are inconsistent with university policies governing expressive activity and our standards for respectful conduct, safety, and the prohibition of intimidation,” the university’s Ad Hoc Special Committee of the Board of Trustees said in a statement on Friday announcing its decision after reviewing the incident. “President Kotlikoff has declined to pursue a complaint against the students involved.”
Noting it considered evidence gathered by the Cornell University Police Department (CUPD), including video footage and a sworn statement from Kotlikoff, the committee said the person at the scene who reported that Kotlikoff’s vehicle had made contact refused treatment from the EMS team and would not provide a sworn statement to CUPD. None of the individuals at the scene gave sworn statements about the incident.
The committee added that “appropriate action” was taken against at least one of Kotlikoff’s “non-student” harassers and called on students to appreciate the importance of “robust debate” and “peaceful protest,” values it extolled Kotlikoff for upholding “over the course of his decades long tenure at Cornell.”
Cornell University is no stranger to radical anti-Zionist activity. In 2023, a history professor there cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — a cornucopia of evils which included torture and gang rape. That same semester, an ex-student, Patrick Dai, threatened to perpetrate mass murder and sex crimes against Jewish students.
Anti-Zionists activists at Cornell have also heavily featured blood in their political messaging. Last year, they doused a statue in red paint and left behind a graffitied message which said “occupation=death.”
Kotlikoff, whom trustees appointed to the university’s top position in 2024 at the peak of student protests over the Israel-Hamas war, is a veteran of several clashes with the school’s anti-Israel faction.
Having enacted a zero-tolerance disciplinary policy, Kotlikoff has pursued criminal investigations against protesters who break the law, as happened in September 2024 when a mass of them disrupted a career fair because it was attended by defense contractors Boeing and L3Harris. The incident resulted in at least three arrests, and, later, severe sanctions, including classifying five students as “persona non grata,” which, Cornell says, bans from campus “a person who has exhibited behavior which has been deemed detrimental to the university community.”
Anti-Zionist student groups have tried and failed several times to initiate mass demonstrations or make other big moves during these final weeks of the academic year.
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) “peacefully” took down an encampment it established in April to protest the institution’s financial ties to Israel after school officials rushed to the scene to take names and issue disciplinary referrals, deterring others joining in.
At Smith College in Massachusetts, SJP activists last month were granted a meeting with high-level officials at a later date in exchange for the group’s ending an unauthorized encampment established on campus to protest the board of trustees’ decision to reject a proposal inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Man Brutally Attacked in London After Speaking Hebrew
Jewish man beaten in London on May 17, 2026, after speaking Hebrew. Images circulating on social media show the victim’s face heavily bloodied and bruised, with multiple visible cuts and swelling in the aftermath of the assault. Photo: Screenshot
British police are searching for a group of attackers after a young Jewish man was brutally assaulted in the north London area of Golders Green following an incident in which he was overheard speaking Hebrew, the latest outrage in a surge of antisemitic violence and harassment shaking the city’s Jewish community.
On Sunday night, a 22-year-old Jewish man was violently attacked by a group of four to five unidentified individuals outside his home in Golders Green, one of the most visible centers of Jewish life in London, around 2 am, after they allegedly overheard him speaking Hebrew during a phone call.
According to multiple media reports, masked men walking nearby heard the man speaking Hebrew on his phone and began chasing him while shouting antisemitic insults.
Once they caught up with him, the group allegedly demanded to know if he was Jewish, before dragging him across the road, ripping his clothes, and stealing one of his shoes.
The attackers brutally beat him, according to reports, repeatedly kicking him until he was left close to losing consciousness, with images later circulating on social media showing his face covered in cuts and bruises.
Local law enforcement arrived at the scene shortly afterward, but the suspects had already fled. The victim was later taken to hospital for treatment of his injuries and has since been receiving medical care.
As authorities continue their investigation, the assault is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, with no arrests made so far.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British charity, strongly condemned the incident, warning of a sharp escalation in threats facing Jewish communities and calling for urgent action to confront the rising tide of violence.
“It is plain for all to see that Jewish lives are under threat in their own communities. We cannot wait any longer for real intervention against this horrific wave of violence against Britain’s Jews,” the statement read. “We are in dire need of urgent action.”
In the United Kingdom, the Jewish community has faced a mounting wave of antisemitic violence, intimidation, and street-level harassment over the past two years following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with the escalation deepening concerns over public safety.
Over the past couple months, however, the rate and intensity of incidents have spiked, with arson attacks, stabbings, and other forms of violence.
Recently, an increasingly popular antisemitic TikTok trend in London has led to arrests and convictions after young men filmed themselves using cash to mock and harass members of Orthodox Jewish communities.
Videos circulating on social media show young men walking through heavily Jewish areas of London carrying fishing rods with money attached to the line in an apparent attempt to “fish for Jews.”
In a separate incident last weekend in Stamford Hill, a man allegedly whipped several Haredi Jewish women with a belt before spitting at volunteer responders who arrived at the scene. Witnesses said he also shouted racist insults, antisemitic slurs, and threats at both the victims and the volunteers.
Hours later, in nearby Amhurst Park in north London, a Jewish child was allegedly assaulted outside a school after a woman screamed antisemitic insults and punched the minor.
Three weeks ago, an assailant stabbed two Jewish men in Golders Green — an attack that prompted the British government to raise the national terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe” for the first time in over four years.
In March, arsonists set fire to four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Hatzola organization in the area. Weeks later, a synagogue and the former premises of a Jewish charity in north London were also targeted.
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Iran’s Executions More Than Double in 2025, Making Up 80% of Global Total, New Data Shows
A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier.
The Islamic regime in Iran led the world in documented executions last year, with 2,159 people killed out of a total of 2,707 across 17 nations, according to a report released on Monday by Amnesty International.
Iran’s executions surged since 2024, when the regime carried out at least 972. All executions were conducted through hanging.
Following Iran, the next countries with the highest totals included Saudi Arabia, 356 or more; Yemen, 51; the United States, 47; Egypt, 23; Somalia, 17; Kuwait, 17; Singapore, 17; Afghanistan, six; and the United Arab Emirates, three.
Three countries executed one person: Japan, South Sudan, and Taiwan. In the US, nearly half of all executions took place in Florida. In total, Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for 93 percent of documented global executions.
Notably, the 2025 total did not include “the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes continued to be carried out in China, which remained the world’s lead executioner.”
China “continued to execute and sentence to death thousands of people but kept figures secret,” stated the report, which explained other countries did not disclose their death penalty numbers including North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Belarus.
“In the face of the state secrecy that continued to surround data on the death penalty, disclosures and commentary by the Chinese authorities once again pointed to an intentional use of the death penalty to send a message that the state would not tolerate threats to public security or stability; and would impose severe punishment to maintain order,” the report said.
According to Amnesty International, 2025 saw the highest number of executions globally since 1981, with Iran leading the surge.
“This alarming spike in the use of the death penalty is due to a small, isolated group of states willing to carry out executions at all costs, despite the continued global trend towards abolition,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International. “From China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Kuwait, Singapore, and the USA, this shameless minority are weaponizing the death penalty.”
Callamard warned that the use of the death penalty sought to “instill fear, crush dissent, and show the strength state institutions have over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities”
The report showed a disturbing trend among the executions: that 46 percent of offenders (1,257) received the sentence for drug convictions, with 998 in Iran, 250 in Saudi Arabia, 15 in Singapore, and two in Kuwait. Amnesty documented 11 public hangings in Iran and six in Afghanistan — spectacles meant to terrorize communities as much as punish individuals.
Amnesty published its findings weeks after a joint-annual report released by the European groups Iran Human Rights (IHR) in Norway and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) in France found Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, a 68 percent leap from the 975 killed in 2024 and the highest seen since tracking began in 2008.
In March, the Human Rights Activists News Agency released a report on broader crackdowns in Iran last year, identifying that 78,907 people were arrested on ideological or political grounds from March 2025 to March 2026. In addition, the group found at least 6,724 protesters, including 236 children, were killed, with an additional 11,744 cases still under verification. Researchers also discovered 105 women were murdered with seven classified as “honor killings,” and that 68 were victims of sexual violence.
While men dominated the list of executions in the annual report, Iran executed 61 women and Saudi Arabia executed five.
Regarding methods of execution deployed, hanging was the preference of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore, and South Sudan. Countries using firing squads included Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Taiwan, the UAE, and Yemen. China, the US, and Vietnam rely on lethal injections while some US states use nitrogen gas asphyxiation.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s only state to continue beheading as a method of execution. The kingdom maintains the practice in accordance with Islamic law which mandates death for a wide range of offenses including adultery, sorcery, and apostasy.
The report noted that last year in Yemen, 18 people were convicted and sentenced to death “for sexual acts that do not constitute internationally recognized offenses – including sexual relations among consenting adults of the same-sex, and drug-related offenses.”
Saudi Arabia has also executed people convicted of offenses as children. Researchers described how on Aug. 21, 2025, the government executed Jalal Labbad (who was born on April 3, 1995) for his alleged “participation in protests in 2011 and 2012 against the treatment of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority in Al-Qatif, as well as his attendance at funerals of individuals killed by security forces. On Aug. 1, 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) convicted and sentenced him to death for alleged offences committed when he was 16 and 17 years old.”
Amnesty claimed success in its campaign to end capital punishment which started in 1977, noting that at the time 16 countries had banned the practice and today the number has reached 113.