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A first kiss, then marriage: Two rabbis-to-be tie the knot at a fun-filled California wedding
(JTA) — Zoe Dressner and Margeaux Wolberg had just one month free between graduating from college and when they were due in Jerusalem to begin rabbinical school. So, they figured, in addition to packing, finding an apartment and nailing down the logistics of a 6,000-mile move, why not get married?
At 23 and 22, respectively, the women are much younger than the average college-educated brides — but the decision to marry felt like a natural step in the relationship that began just months into college, accelerated because of the pandemic and, they knew, was headed for a shared destination in the rabbinate.
“The only questions left were do we go directly after college or take a year off, and which school do we apply to,” said Dressner. “Luckily, we both felt really attached to the Reform movement, which meant we were both set on attending Hebrew Union College. We’re lucky that it worked out.”
They had been together for less than a year when all colleges and universities in the United States shuttered their campuses because of the descending pandemic.
“We lived with my family and her family. We weren’t in college with our friends anymore,” Dressner said. “We figured that if this is working, then it must be legit, and it was.”
Their love story traversed three of Judaism’s denominations. Both women were first-year students in the joint program between Columbia University and List College, the undergraduate school of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary,when Dressner asked her classmates in an introductory Bible class whether anyone would like to check out a Reconstructionist Shabbat service. She got only one taker: Wolberg.
One feature of the wedding stood out: a bouncy house. “I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone,” Dressner said. (Courtesy)
The next morning, on a cold January day, they walked from Morningside Heights to the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, commonly known as SAJ, a Reconstructionist synagogue about two miles south of the JTS campus, and back. As they chatted, they learned they had something in common that was relatively rare for students at List College: Their Jewish passion had been stoked in the Reform movement, through their synagogues and the NFTY youth group — Wolberg in San Francisco and Dressner in East Brunswick, New Jersey.
Three months after their Shabbat morning stroll, the two women opened up to each other that their new friendship was turning into something more.
Neither had ever dated another woman. In fact, Dressner was the first person Wolberg ever dated at all.
“She was my first kiss,” Wolberg said. “And now we’re married.”
Once they planned to wed, they decided it would mostly fall on Wolberg to plan the wedding, while Dressner would plan the proposal. Back in New York, on Dec. 23, 2021, Dressner’s itinerary took them from a light show at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden to sipping warm cider on a rooftop bar to dinner at a kosher steakhouse. They also exchanged rings.
“We started the day by walking around Morningside Heights and recalling special memories together: dates, places we’d lived, etc.” Wolberg said. “I wasn’t surprised that we were getting engaged that day, but the whole day’s plan was a surprise.”
Their wedding similarly packed a lot into a short time. After heading to Calfornia from New York, they had a five-day window in which to marry before leaving for Israel. They set their sights on Sunday, June 12, but their preferred venue could accommodate them only on June 10, the Friday before.
The pair married amid the redwood trees at Old Mill Park in Marin County, holding a daytime reception that reflected a slew of their passions: Mediterranean food, progressive politics (informational posters about same-sex marriage and gun control) and Tevas, the outdoor sandals that both nature enthusiasts have long favored.
Dressner and Wolberg married amid the redwood trees at Old Mill Park in Marin County, California. (Hellena Cedeño Photography)
Then the couple headed to Kabbalat Shabbat services at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El. (Beth Singer, Emanu-El’s rabbi, had performed their wedding ceremony after another rabbi and cantor had to cancel.) A catered dinner followed, at which their grandparents and siblings recited the sheva brachot, the blessings said during the first week of a marriage. They went back Saturday morning for services, then headed to Wolberg’s parents’ house for a family lunch. That night, they held a party for their friends.
The couple said they appreciated that Shabbat services became a continuation of their celebration. They also said that one feature of the wedding stood out: the bouncy house.
That was Dressner’s idea. Given their ages, she said, she thought, “Why not?”
But although some of their parents were initially skeptical about it, most of the guests partook. And one could also see the massive inflatable slide that the couple zoomed down together as a metaphor for their relationship.
“I’m much more reserved personality-wise, and sometimes I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone,” Dressner said. “I learn a lot from the wonderful way Margeaux approaches the world so differently.”
Meanwhile, Wolberg said that among the traits she loves most about her partner is that she has long considered herself a bit of an eccentric (her love of Renaissance music was part of what endeared her to Dressner), and thought it might be difficult to find someone who would put up with her many quirks.
“Zoe wholeheartedly accepts me,” she said. “My quirks are the things she loves the most. She’s not just putting up with me, but really loves all of me for exactly who I am.”
This story is part of JTA’s Mazels series, which profiles unique and noteworthy Jewish life events from births to b’nai mitzvah to weddings and everything in between.
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Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America
(JTA) — The FBI accused an 18-year-old man of buying an AK-47 assault rifle with plans to commit a mass shooting in support of ISIS at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the largest indoor shopping mall in North America.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, Minnesota, was charged on Wednesday with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism, according to a federal complaint filed on Wednesday.
Mohamud’s attorney did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Mohamud wanted to attack the Mall of America because he believed its owners to be Jewish, the FBI said in a statement. He planned to kill between 30 and 60 people, according to messages he exchanged with a confidential source, according to the complaint.
Mall of America is owned and operated by Triple Five Group, controlled by the Ghermezian family, a Canadian family of Iranian Jewish origin.
Messages sent in September 2026 included a video in which Mohamud pledged allegiance to ISIS, the complaint said. He planned his attack for Oct. 24 because he expected a crowd at the Hmong Arts Celebration scheduled for that day.
The complaint said an undercover FBI agent sold an AK-47 rendered inoperable, four 30-round magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition to Mohamud for $600 on Oct. 6. During the sale, Mohamud confirmed his plans to commit a mass shooting. Mohamud was arrested shortly after the sale.
The complaint said Mohamud wanted to commit an attack similar to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in which 49 victims were killed; the Bondi Beach mass-shooting in Sydney last December, during which 15 victims were killed during a Hanukkah celebration; and a New Orleans truck-ramming attack that killed 14 victims in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025.
The investigation into Mohamud began around December 2024, when he messaged the confidential source on multiple social media platforms, according to the complaint, detailing his desire to travel to Somalia to join a group that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. If travel was not possible due to financial constraints, he said would move forward with an attack in Minnesota.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America appeared first on The Forward.
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Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say
(JTA) — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was asked multiple times by a debate moderator on Thursday which country he considers a bigger threat to the U.S.: Iran or Israel.
Each time, he parried.
“That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” said El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
“I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight,” he added, describing both as “kind of dangerous.” Another attempt yielded a similar response, with El-Sayed denouncing “one at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
El-Sayed, a former county health official, was responding to a question repeatedly posed by WOOD TV8 political reporter Rick Albin, in a debate against his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. The two candidates hurled insults at each other during the hourlong discussion, often returning to issues related to Israel and the Middle East.
After making criticism of Israel a top issue in his primary campaign, El-Sayed eked out a victory against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in that early August race. Although he has earned the support of many democratic socialists, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed has stated that he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Rogers, on the other hand, has the official endorsement of President Donald Trump. However, the candidate has been distancing himself from the president, including by criticizing the trade war with Canada.
Results of a CBS News poll published earlier this week showed El-Sayed leading Rogers, by 45.6% to 41.4%, with a 3.8% margin of error. A Quantus Insights poll released on Wednesday, meanwhile, gave El-Sayed a slightly narrower lead, with 47.6% to Rogers’s 46.5%, and a 7.8% margin of error.
While El-Sayed has been meeting with Jewish voters and leaders, he has not budged on certain issues of concern to many Jewish voters. For example, he has indicated only a willingness to recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state if Israelis and Palestinians jointly agree to it..
Liberal Michigan rabbis last month signed a petition from the Zioness Action Fund, a progressive Zionist group, calling upon the Democratic Party to agree to “nonnegotiable” principles related to Jewish safety and Israel. A separate cohort of Michigan Jewish leaders urged community members to reject El-Sayed entirely.
Rogers and his representatives in August indicated that they would like AIPAC to refrain from spending directly on him in the general election, according to media reports. Asked about this at the Thursday debate, he said he’d welcome “anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country.”
El-Sayed condemned the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, but added that “hurt people hurt people,” which critics interpreted as justifying the attacker’s actions. He later apologized for those remarks.
Rogers has repeatedly slammed his opponent for taking funds from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Unity & Justice Fund super PAC and other groups and individuals.
El-Sayed, on the other hand, accused Rogers on Thursday of accepting corporate PAC money and labeled him the “guy who’s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp.”
The two candidates criticized each other’s policies and interrupted each other so often that Albin, the moderator, needed to step in.
“We’ve got dozens of questions we want to get to,” Albin said. “You can’t litigate all of these with 14 different rebuttals.”
Even prior to a pause for ads, Albin announced that the station is going “to take a break from this pleasant conversation.” When they returned, he declared that “in 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial, but it did.”
The candidates continued to clash over Iran, with El-Sayed accusing the U.S. government of teaching “the Iranian regime that they had a choke [hold] on the Strait of Hormuz.”
“That’s the kind of policy you’re going to get from a guy who wants to be a sock puppet for the Trump administration,” El-Sayed added.
Rogers, meanwhile, claimed that the U.S. had set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least 20 years, adding that “this would be the time to wrap it up.”
As for Israel, Rogers said he supports “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.” The only way Israel could lose his support, Rogers stated, would be if the country talked about using nuclear weapons.
Israel is widely assessed to possess an arsenal of approximately 90 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.
Albin then turned to El-Sayed, noting the politician’s opposition to direct U.S. military funding for Israel. He asked, however, whether that position could change “if Israel were attacked tomorrow by Iran or another state actor.”
“I want our tax dollars spent here,” El-Sayed responded. “Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran, and of course, my colleague, who thinks there’s a war for everything, went right along with it.”
When Albin pushed again for a yes or no answer, El-Sayed replied that he doesn’t want the U.S. “buying weapons for other countries.”
Toward the end of the discussion related to the Middle East, Rogers recognized the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. He blasted his opponent for failing “to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders.”
To this accusation, El-Sayed responded, “I’ve condemned that. I didn’t turn it into theater like you did.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say appeared first on The Forward.
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Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts
(JTA) — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger Rep. Mike Collins clashed over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, U.S. weapons sales to Israel and the war in Iran during Thursday’s debate in Georgia’s closely watched Senate race.
The race could help determine control of the Senate, with implications for U.S. policy toward Israel.
The incumbent Ossoff, who is Jewish, has long supported Israel’s security, but over the last two years he has criticized its conduct in the Gaza war and voted to block some U.S. arms sales to the country.
A day after the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, Ossoff was asked whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, whether he was concerned about growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party and whether he would support a proposed $2.8 billion U.S. weapons package for Israel.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff responded. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family.
“I also care about innocent Palestinian life,” Ossoff continued, “and make no apology for my votes.”
Collins accused Ossoff of having aligned himself with anti-Israel figures including Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Imagine being a U.S. senator, and out there recruiting, endorsing, and supporting these people that want to see Israel wiped off the map,” Collins said. “They would rather be for Iran than for Israel — now that’s who Jon Ossoff is supporting.”
Piker had previously called Ossoff a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He subsequently disavowed Ossoff after the senator condemned antisemitic comments, Jewish Insider reported in August.
During the hourlong debate, Ossoff repeatedly condemned the U.S. war in Iran while highlighting Collins’ support for it. At least three times Ossoff called the war in Iran a “disaster” or “disastrous,” and he blamed the war for rising gas prices in the state of Georgia.
Collins, on the other hand, said he supported the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “The president had every right to go in there and make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” Collins said. “The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], they had already sounded the bells, the alarms that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon. And the thing is, Iran doesn’t only want to decimate and kill Israel, they want us as well.”
The evening was not without its personal attacks. Collins described Ossoff as “a radical” and a “trust-fund kid who has never had a job in his life,” while Ossoff repeatedly spotlighted the alleged ties between Collins and white nationalists. A recent report alleged that Collins’ former aides were involved with antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.
Ossoff leads Collins by about nine percentage points in FiftyPlusOne’s polling average as of Oct. 9.
The candidates are scheduled for a second debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club on Oct. 13.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts appeared first on The Forward.
