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A conveniently timed conference offers Israel educators a safe space to explore complex feelings
CHICAGO (JTA) – At one point ahead of an international conference on Israel education, as raucous anti-government protests filled the streets of Israeli cities, conference organizers considered leaning into the tension created by the news: What if they focused one day of the gathering on conflict, and the next day on hope?
Ultimately, they decided “you can’t divorce the two,” in the words of Aliza Goodman, one of the organizers.
“If you separate them, then it means one is devoid of the other and vice versa,” said Goodman, director of strategy and research and development for the iCenter, the Israel education organization that hosted the conference in Chicago in March.
Israel educators, Goodman said, need to hold “the complexities together with the hopes for us to be able to move forward as human beings.”
That emotional challenge lay at the center of the conference, the iCenter’s fifth, called iCON 2023. The conference covered standard topics in Israel education, ranging from Hebrew literature and language to representations of Jews and Israel in popular culture to a bevy of subtopics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But the turmoil that has rocked Israel this year felt no less prominent. In sessions and on the sidelines, the more than 500 participants discussed the Israeli government’s proposed judicial overhaul, its far-right cabinet ministers and the preservation of Israel’s democratic character.
Conference attendees said they faced dual challenges: understanding the political issues at play and reckoning with what they mean for teaching about Israel. Their thoughts on the current historical moment suggested that those challenges would persist even though Israel’s government announced a pause on the judicial overhaul shortly after the conference concluded.
“We are responsible for doing something, don’t get me wrong, but my immediate responsibility is trying to really get a handle on understanding it for myself and for my students,” said Rebecca Good, the assistant director of education at The Temple, a Reform synagogue in Atlanta.
Good has found herself fielding new questions about Israel, mostly from adult congregants, “but we know that the questions and the feelings that are coming from the adults naturally play out in the home,” she said. In response to the perceived need she has recognized from her students, her synagogue planned a town hall-style meeting that took place in late March.
“It’s almost like you do triage, right? When things like this happen, it’s like, ‘OK, how are you?’” Good said. “You have to address that first and then you figure out what is needed and try to make that happen for people.”
Conference attendees included Hebrew school and day school teachers, executives from communal organizations, summer camp professionals, campus activists, young adult Israeli emissaries and more. iCON Program Director Ari Berkowicz estimated that 75% of the conference participants came from North America and 24% from Israel. Others joined from places like Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Educator Noam Weissman addresses the audience at a session of ICON 2023 at the Marriott Marquis in Chicago, Illinois, March 15, 2023. (Rachel Kohn)
“One of The iCenter’s approaches to education is to make all that we teach and all that we learn about both timely and timeless, but the current moment obviously has an impact on who we are as educators and who we are as learners,” said Berkowicz. While the sessions scheduled for iCON 2023 remained mostly unchanged, the facilitators, speakers, and educators were “different people” from what they had been three or six months ago due to the upheaval in Israel, he said.
“They aren’t the same people that they were even yesterday or two days ago,” Goodman added in an interview at the conference. “All of this is impacting them at the core.”
Questions and anguish about the judicial overhaul — and other Israeli government policies – filtered into the conference programming. A campus professional, who asked not to be identified because she wasn’t authorized by her employer to speak to the press, shared a practical concern during a breakout group: If the government follows through on its call to limit the Law of Return, which currently affords automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with one Jewish grandparent, what should she say to a student who wants to go to Israel but no longer falls under the government’s revised definition of who is a Jew?
In a nearby group, an Israeli expat from Dallas named Meirav said she likes that Israel doesn’t separate between religion and state. But she fears for women’s rights under a religiously conservative regime.
Another group endeavored to understand the specifics of the proposed judicial overhaul, comparing newspaper articles with Wikipedia text as they struggled to confirm how judges are appointed in Israel.
“It’s not only in America or everywhere else – I’m not sure everyone in Israel understands exactly what’s going on and the ramifications,” said Etty Dolgin, the Israeli-American principal of a Chicago-area Hebrew-immersion preschool and after-school program, in a different session. “I don’t know that anybody really knows what the ramifications are going to be.”
Former Jewish day school principal Noam Weissman, whose lecture at the conference drew a standing-room-only crowd of some 150 people, said in an interview that the current moment is an important one for Israel educators to be able to contextualize.
“Part of why cultural literacy is important is because history informs the present,” Weissman said. “People like to jump to judicial reforms, but if people don’t know about Israel’s lack of a constitution, it’s hard to be conversant in that.”
Weissman, the former head of Los Angeles’ Shalhevet High School who is now executive vice president of OpenDor Media, where he develops educational content on Judaism and Israel, said in his session that the goal of Israel educators shouldn’t be defending the country but “understanding and connecting.” He’s grateful, he said, that “the Israel education world has really, from a professional perspective, moved on from hasbara,” a Hebrew term for public relations or advocacy on Israel’s behalf.
“When someone recently said to me, ‘I don’t envy Israel educators at this moment’ … I actually said I feel zero pressure,” Weissman told his audience. “You feel pressure when you’re trying to defend everything Israel does. That’s the world of Israel advocacy, where you train young people to defend Israel. … If my job is to defend something that I have no interest in defending, this doesn’t work.”
Good said she appreciated the “brain trust” of fellow Israel educators she gets to interact with at the conference. At the same time, she likened the sense of uncertainty she is feeling these days to the concerns many Americans have felt in recent years when looking at their own fraught political landscape.
“That kind of feeling we all get, like, ‘Where could this go?’” she said. “That’s as best as I can put it.”
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Noah Wyle, TV’s nice Jewish doctor, is People’s Sexiest Man Alive
(JTA) — Noah Wyle, the Jewish actor who both mends and steals hearts as a doctor on the hit HBO Max medical drama “The Pitt,” has been named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.
Tuesday’s announcement described the actor’s “smoldering intensity” and “leading-man looks,” while noting that “he loves to do the dishes.”
Wyle, 55, told People he initially thought the news was “a classic set-up for a prank.” His wife, Sara Wells, helped persuade him to accept the honor, he said, because she believes his qualities as a husband and father are worth celebrating.
The actor, who starred in the ’90s medical drama “ER,” is enjoying a career resurgence as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the brilliant, troubled emergency-room physician at the center of “The Pitt.” The role has earned Wyle two consecutive Emmy Awards for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, along with renewed attention to his own Jewish heritage.
As JTA reported last year, Wyle drew on his father’s Russian-Jewish background in helping create Robby, his first Jewish character. The doctor wears a Star of David necklace and, in a pivotal scene in the show’s first season, clutches it while reciting the Shema, a central Jewish prayer, during an emotional crisis.
Wyle, whose father is Jewish and mother is Episcopalian, did not grow up in a religious household. But in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle this year, he said Judaism had become more relevant to his life through the show and that his daughter, then 10, has expressed the most interest to “pick up the mantle of Judaism.” She helped him with the pronunciation of the Shema, he said, and her bat mitzvah has been scheduled.
Wyle has also brought Jewish history into “The Pitt.” In an episode he wrote for the show’s second season, a patient with ties to the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Wyle said portraying a Jewish character offered an opportunity to present a humanist and healer at a time of heightened antisemitism. “I have come to learn that the world’s knowledge of Jews comes through depictions of them in the media,” he told the Jewish Chronicle.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says defending Israel would be ‘a lot easier’ if Netanyahu loses
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an incumbent Democrat running for reelection, said it would be “a lot easier” for her to defend Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses Tuesday’s election. New York has the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel and is home to many ex-pat Israelis.
In an interview with Politico magazine published as Israelis headed to the polls, Hochul suggested that Netanyahu’s “overreach” in the Gaza war has become an obstacle to Israel’s international standing and that his government policies have killed any prospects for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
“I believe we have to get people of goodwill who can make this happen, and as long as Netanyahu is sitting there, that is not in his interest to do that,” Hochul said. “It’s just not, and it won’t happen.”
Hochul has remained a strong supporter of Israel despite growing criticism of the country within her party. She was the first foreign elected official to visit Israel shortly after Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 and criticized the pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
In 2024, she came under fire for making an analogy to her hometown, Buffalo, in defending Israel’s military campaign against Hamas amid mass Palestinian casualties in Gaza.
“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” she said in remarks to Jewish leaders, first reported by the Forward. “That’s a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure it never happens again.” Immediately after it was publicized, Hochul apologized for implying that Israel had a right to destroy Gaza.
Hochul recalled in the interview privately warning Israeli officials during her visit to Israel that the country would lose international support.
“The world is with you when it comes to the brutal assault by a terrorist organization known as Hamas on innocent Israeli people,” Hochul said she told Israeli officials. “An overreach could change that dynamic, and that’s what’s happened.”
The Democratic governor also suggested that if Netanyahu continues as prime minister, it could complicate the prospects of a Jewish Democrat winning the party’s presidential nomination in 2028. The Israeli leader would remain “a lightning rod,” comparing his political survival instincts to those of President Donald Trump. “Who knows what he’s going to do next for self-preservation,” she said.
Closely watching the Israeli election
Hochul’s remarks came as Israelis voted in their first national election since Oct. 7, 2023, with unusually high turnout raising the possibility that participation could exceed 80%, a level not seen since the early 1970s.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is fighting to remain in power after nearly two decades in office. Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the security failures that allowed the Oct. 7 attack, while his supporters credit him with confronting Hamas and Iran. Recent polls suggest Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition could fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a government. His main challenger is Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son and two nephews were killed in the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s campaign slogan, “It’s the right or Palestine,” taps into post-Oct. 7 fears about the establishment of a Palestinian state, warning that an Eisenkot-led government dependent on Arab support will lead to Palestinian statehood. But a Netanyahu defeat would not necessarily bring the changes Hochul wants. Eisenkot and other opposition leaders like Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman also oppose a Palestinian state.
A balancing act
Hochul’s comments also reflect the political challenge she faces at home, where she has maintained strong ties with Jewish leaders while working closely with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fierce critic of Israel.
Hochul endorsed Mamdani last year after staying neutral during the Democratic primary. But she has continued to distance herself from the mayor on issues of antisemitism and Israel, which has left many Jewish New Yorkers uneasy. Her most recent state budget included a measure establishing a buffer zone around houses of worship to prevent disruptive protests from blocking access, an issue on which Mamdani had raised objections.
In the Politico interview, Hochul said Mamdani had brought “new energy” to the party, even as she acknowledged their disagreements. “Again, differences on approaches to the Jewish community, Israel and all that — that’s another topic,” she said.
A recent poll found that 65% of Jews in New York City disapproved of the mayor’s handling of antisemitism, while Hochul received 54% approval.
Hochul is seeking reelection against Republican Bruce Blakeman, the Jewish Nassau County executive, who has made support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism central themes of his campaign. But Blakeman has struggled to match the support former Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin received from Jewish voters and Hasidic voting blocs four years ago.
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‘Text me when you get home’ — on confronting hatred as both a woman and a Jew
There’s a universal language that every young woman I know speaks. It’s an expectation, a pact even, to “text me when you get home.” A baseline understanding that the walk home isn’t always safe for us.
A different dialect of that same universal language exists across our Jewish community. It shows up when my mom texts me to ask, “does your shul have good enough security?” before I walk into Shabbat or high holiday services.
Being a Jewish woman in America means having to constantly do the calculus of how to be safe as a woman and as a Jew. And I know that my experience is not unique. With antisemitism rampant and other forms of hate still deeply embedded in our society, so many people across America with overlapping and intersecting identities — people of color, trans people and others — are also doing this calculus every single day.
The question I keep asking myself is why? Not why we have to do this constant mental exercise, but why it isn’t getting any easier. The FBI reported a decline in hate crimes in 2025, but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Hate crimes often go unreported, whether because people don’t feel safe reporting to law enforcement or because agencies lack the training, resources and requirements to properly identify and document them. And beyond what gets counted, hateful rhetoric, threats, and violence continue to shape how we move through the world. Hate permeates our daily lives in ways that statistics alone cannot capture.
Turn on the news or scroll through Instagram on any given day and you can see why we don’t feel safer, despite what the data is telling us. You can see that the static noise of hate and violence continues to intrude on every aspect of our lives.
Our lives — across identities and generations — have been marked by hate, by story after story of deadly attacks at synagogues, mosques, churches, schools and supermarkets.
Twelve years ago, a man fueled by his hatred of women killed six and injured 14 people in Isla Vista, California — my hometown. When I think about that time in my life, I don’t think about graduating high school or my senior prom. I think about the flashes of images of my town, of the victims, on the news. And eight years ago today, a gunman took the lives of 11 congregants and wounded six others in an antisemitic attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the day before my 22nd birthday, another moment in my life now marked by grief.
Hate and hate-motivated violence are not new phenomena in our country. But in the last decade, we have seen a normalization of hate that is both new and devastatingly familiar.
We have seen this normalization fester online, where once fringe antisemitic, misogynistic, racist, and anti-immigrant beliefs — like those held by the Isla Vista and Tree of Life attackers — are now part of mainstream conversations. We have seen this normalization take hold in our halls of power, where our president, members of Congress, and leaders around the country not only legitimize but promote hateful rhetoric and conspiracy theories.
And, we have seen this normalization thrive in policy, where hate and violence are being systematized in executive orders and legislation by the same leaders who made it normal. Policy can and should be used as a shield to keep people safe. Instead, it’s being weaponized before our very eyes to foster an environment where hate can thrive.
It’s no wonder we don’t feel safe when our president and many of our lawmakers are using their power to target women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and so many others. It’s no wonder we question whether our institutions will protect us when the Department of Justice cancels grants supporting victims and programs designed to prevent hate and violence. And it’s no wonder survivors of gender-based and sexual violence feel abandoned when this administration is deliberately refusing to use Title IX to protect them but is instead weakening this law to harm trans people.
For people my age, who grew up with social media and the 24-hour news cycle that brought reports of hate directly into our homes, it can be hard to fathom what to do at this moment. But there are people all around us who not only know what to do, but have done it before.
I spend my days at National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) working to dismantle antisemitism and the hate plaguing all of our communities. I am fortunate to work with and learn from people who have dedicated their lives to building a world where every person can feel safe and thrive. We are fighting every day to ensure that our institutions and our laws protect people from hate, violence, and discrimination. NCJW has been doing this work for over a century, and we know that progress is not inevitable.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, signed into law 17 years ago this week, was the result of nearly 20 years of advocacy — a reminder that disrupting hate and building a safer world requires perseverance. It takes leaders willing to fight against hatred, not embrace it. And, it takes partners, allies, friends, and neighbors to move the work forward together.
That is why we have no choice but to keep showing up, to keep fighting, even when the hate and violence all around us feels like it has taken over our lives. We have to keep working, every day, to build that world we seek, where our rights, our safety, and our dignity are not up for debate.
And hopefully, one day, we will all live in a world where we don’t have to say “text me when you get home.”
The post ‘Text me when you get home’ — on confronting hatred as both a woman and a Jew appeared first on The Forward.
