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A Jewish Expressionist artist’s life, preserved in a brownstone
NEW YORK — Even inside a five-story brownstone crowded with paintings, sculptures and books, no single work can fully contain the spirit of Ukrainian-born artist Ben-Zion. Still, one painting comes close: a portrait of the healer and rabbi known as Baal Shem Tov, seated calmly beneath a tree. Rendered in ochre, gray and green, the canvas draws on Jewish mysticism and the natural world, themes that pulse through Ben-Zion’s life and work.
Perfectly preserved from the years Ben-Zion lived there, from 1965 until his death in 1987, the Ben-Zion House, located in Chelsea in Manhattan, is anything but a mausoleum. Instead, it feels like a living sanctuary — one that not only celebrates the Jewish artist’s life and work, but continues to inspire the writers, poets, architects, musicians and painters who pass through its rooms.
“Through the years many artists have been in the space and have expressed their awe and inspiration,” said Tabita Shalem, the house’s curator and manager while leading a tour on a drizzly Thursday in April. “The way Ben-Zion lived was intimately connected to the work he created, and artists and creatives feel that when they are in the home and studio.”.
Shalem worked closely with Ben-Zion during the last decade of his life, helping to organize exhibitions and maintain the vast collection. She continued those efforts with his widow, Lillian Ben-Zion, until her death in 2012. Through Shalem’s stories, the house emerges not simply as an archive, but as an extension of the artist himself.
As one of “The Ten,” a cohort of artists who rejected realism in favor of experimental, expressionist work, Ben-Zion stood alongside Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and others who helped shape American Expressionism. Yet while many of his contemporaries became internationally renowned, Ben-Zion’s name lingers at the edge of obscurity — even as his work hangs in institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1948, the Jewish Museum opened in Manhattan with an exhibition devoted to Ben-Zion’s work and later mounted two more shows, including a 1959 retrospective. But as Abstract Expressionism rose to dominance, interest in his work faded.
“He wasn’t interested in abstract art,” Shalem said. “He wasn’t a joiner.”
Still, his wife and friends held firmly to their belief in the value of Ben-Zion’s work, a conviction reflected in the preservation of the house itself. Funded by a private estate, the home allows artists and visitors to continue engaging with the work of this important, though largely forgotten, Jewish artist. His legacy is also kept alive through guided tours, often organized in partnership with community groups.
Born in 1897 in Staryi Kostiantyniv, Ben-Zion grew up in an observant Jewish home. His father, Hirsh Weinman, was a cantor who, in 1909, accepted a position at the largest synagogue in Galicia. For a time, Ben-Zion considered becoming a rabbi himself.
That changed at 16, when he read about the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza for challenging rabbinic authority and questioning Jewish doctrine.
“His brain was on fire,” Shalem said. “He never went to shul again.”
Yet Ben-Zion never abandoned Judaism. After his father’s sudden death in 1920, his mother moved the family to Boston. Among the belongings he carried with him was a handwritten Purim megillah he had calligraphed at age 14.
“His Jewish identity was always a part of him. The way I think of Ben-Zion is that he was deeply rooted in Judaism, but like the branches of the trees he painted, he was free and always reaching,” Shalem said.
Feeling out of place in Boston society, Ben-Zion moved less than a year later to the Bronx, where he immersed himself in poetry, prose, painting and sculpture. The move marked the beginning of a fiercely independent artistic life, one equally nourished by Jewish tradition, philosophy and the natural world.
That reverence for nature reveals itself throughout the brownstone, from monumental canvases of golden wheat beneath cerulean skies to delicate pen-and-ink drawings of thistles and poppies. Walking through the house, lit almost entirely by natural light, it becomes clear that Ben-Zion was as much a collector as a creator.
A bowl of prehistoric tools sits atop one table. Nearby, miniature statues of prophets and Buddhas line a curio cabinet. Conglomerates gathered from rivers and streams are interspersed on shelves. And in another corner, his paint-scarred palette rises from a wooden table like a small mountain streaked with copper and turquoise. Behind a leafy plant, a Ten Commandments tablet features smooth pebbles instead of words.
One of the tour’s highlights comes on the garden level, where visitors descend through a trapdoor and down a steep staircase into the cellar. During Ben-Zion’s lifetime, the stone-lined basement served primarily as storage for art materials. After his death, Lillian and Shalem transformed it into a gallery-like space filled with sculptures, tools and unfinished ideas.
Rows of scissors and metal implements hang against whitewashed walls. Four masks carved from tree bark rest on a wooden table nearby.
“He saw art in everything,” said Amy Levine-Kennedy, director of the Westchester Jewish Center Koslowe Gallery, which organized the private tour.
Against one wall stands an iron sculpture of a circus, while nearby the 1972 work “Apocalypse (or Devastation)” rises from the floor, reflecting Ben-Zion’s recurring fascination with destruction, memory and survival.
According to Shalem, a friend of Lillian’s who had been stationed in the South Pacific during World War II shipped crates of discarded munitions to Ben-Zion after learning of the artist’s love for forged iron. Ben-Zion transformed the remnants of war into sculpture.
Though Ben-Zion studied briefly at an art school in Vienna during World War I, he was otherwise self-taught. A voracious reader, he consumed history, poetry, philosophy, Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and art history. Today the brownstone contains hundreds of books on art, history, spirituality, archaeology, and literature. “France in the Middle Ages” and “History of the Jewish Khazans” compete for shelf space with “Van Gogh in Arles” and “Jews and Arabs.”
Beyond making art and mentoring younger artists, Ben-Zion also taught through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. At Cooper Union, where he taught from the 1930s up until the 1960s, he encouraged students to treat art not as decoration, but as a way of giving form to inner vision.
That vision lingers in the final work he created in the house. Resting on an easel on the second floor, the painting depicts a Jewish man wrapped in tefillin, his head tilted downward toward the prayer book in his hands. In broad strokes of orange, white, black, and blue, Ben-Zion distilled the themes that shaped his life: Jewish identity, learning, ritual and spiritual searching.
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Palestinian-American to challenge John Fetterman for Senate seat in 2028
(JTA) — Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian-American writer who has worked with anti-Zionists, is the first Democrat to challenge Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman in the 2028 primary.
Fetterman, who has faced sharp criticism from within the Democratic Party for his staunch support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, has yet to announce whether he plans to run in 2028. A defeat or retirement would remove one of the Democratic caucus’s most pro-Israel voices.
Moor, 42, enters the playing field with radically different positions on Israel, and on foreign policy in general, from those Fetterman has promoted. Claiming that the United States “funds wars based on corruption and lies and has turned its back on its own people,” Moor pledged on his campaign website to ensure “this never happens again.”
Moor, born in Gaza, moved as a child to Philadelphia, where he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard. He switched from finance to journalism, reporting in Beirut and Egypt for The Guardian and other outlets, and co-editing the book “After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine.” He also spent many years in Jordan, where he launched a peer-to-peer lending organization, before moving back to Philadelphia in 2021.
“A few years ago my birthplace was turned to rubble in a genocide funded by our tax dollars,” Moor stated, saying that this has occurred “with the support of politicians on both sides of the aisle who can’t find money for transit or removing asbestos from our schools.”
Moor, who has served on the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee, has never held public office. He says he is determined to address corruption, affordability, foreign policy and constitutional authority, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which first reported his candidacy.
Moor told the Inquirer that he was “not really running against Fetterman” but instead “running for the rule of law.” He acknowledged that he would face an “uphill battle” against Fetterman, who took office in January 2023.
Fetterman has irked some fellow Democrats by siding with Republicans on numerous issues, especially on Israel. He has also drawn praise from the pro-Israel community and Israel’s leadership. With Democrats securing a Senate majority of at least 54 seats, including two independents who caucus with the party, Democratic leadership will be less dependent on Fetterman’s vote when the new Congress convenes in January.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Palestinian-American to challenge John Fetterman for Senate seat in 2028 appeared first on The Forward.
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Northwestern launches civil rights investigation into club that banned pro-Israel group from its food festival
Northwestern University’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating a club that said it canceled its annual “Cultural Food Fest” after students objected to its initial inclusion of a pro-Israel student group.
Spoon University Northwestern, a student-run food magazine, wrote in an email to students that it was calling off its Nov. 6 food festival because of concerns about the participation of Wildcats for Israel, a club housed within Hillel that describes itself as focused on Israeli culture and society.
“There’s been a lot of disappointment expressed in and around Hillel today,” Michael Simon, executive director of Northwestern Hillel, told the Forward on Friday. “What should be an opportunity for connecting across differences and having really positive engagement got turned into a sort of political catfight.”
Students involved with Wildcats for Israel were initially “really excited” to participate in the fest, Simon said.
But amid student backlash, Spoon reversed course and disinvited Wildcats for Israel, Simon said. In a statement posted to Instagram, Spoon cited “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” to explain the group’s removal.
Yet even that exclusion was not enough for some student organizations. Northwestern’s Asian Pacific American Coalition; Alianza, the Latinx student alliance; and the Middle Eastern North African Student Association, issued a joint statement saying that they were withdrawing from the fest because of the original inclusion of Wildcats for Israel.
“A ‘culture’ born from the active land theft and genocide of Palestinians should not be recognized,” the student groups wrote on Instagram.
Spoon then cancelled the event altogether.
Now, Spoon’s status as an officially registered student organization has been frozen while the investigation into allegations of discrimination is being conducted, a Northwestern spokesperson wrote in an email to the Forward.
The investigation comes as Northwestern faces additional obligations to address and report allegations of antisemitism as part of its $75 million settlement with the Trump administration in November 2025. As part of the agreement, the university pledged that its Office of Civil Rights would publish annual reports with data about complaints of antisemitism, including investigative and disciplinary actions taken.
Spoon did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
In its email to students, Spoon said Wildcats for Israel was removed because of its status as “a political action group, not a cultural organization.”
Simon pushed back on that characterization of the club. “They’re not engaged in political advocacy or political work, certainly not in their current iteration,” Simon said. “They’re really focused on doing cultural and educational programming, connecting with Israel and with the Israeli people.”
The idea that Wildcats for Israel is considered political, while other student organizations opposing Israel are not, “appears to be a real double standard,” Simon said.
Still, Simon said the cancellation did not prevent Wildcats for Israel from having its own cultural food event — inviting students to the Hillel building on Friday to talk about what had happened over slushies in two flavors popular in Israel, limonana and iced cafe.
“They’re really turning to a place of being in community and supporting one another,” Simon said.
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Israel’s love affair with Trump may be over – with no other suitor in sight
Israelis were among the few groups outside America who genuinely liked Donald Trump, and they had persuaded themselves that the feeling was mutual. Now, as the American president pledges to terminate military assistance and blames Israel’s unpopularity for the Republicans’ electoral humiliation, they are confronting the possibility that their greatest supposed friend may become one of their gravest strategic liabilities.
In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries, 69% of Israelis expressed confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. Israelis saw a champion where much of the democratic world saw a menace.
Israelis, who tend to be more direct and plainspoken than other Western societies, were less inclined to be scandalized by Trump’s personal shortcomings. But mainly it was policy that made him so popular: Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and cultivated a conspicuously warm relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his increasing toxicity around the world. Trump opposed Hamas and ultimately joined Israel in attacking the Iranian regime.
Still, warning signs were there – in the displays of U.S. dominance over decisions in the 2025 and 2026 Iran confrontations and in the Election Day announcement last week that Trump plans to terminate roughly $4 billion in annual military assistance to Israel this year.
The announcement threatened a cornerstone of Israeli security planning established under Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated a 10-year, $38 billion assistance agreement extending through 2028.
The precise legal and financial consequences remain uncertain, not least because Congress controls appropriations. But the political significance is unmistakable: The president whom Israelis regarded as their most dependable protector was proposing to dismantle an arrangement that even administrations regarded as unfriendly to Netanyahu had sustained.
Moreover, the aid is far more than a gift. Its greatest value is not financial but geopolitical: the unmistakable message to Israel’s enemies that Washington stands behind it.
As the dismal election results became clear, Vice President JD Vance highlighted a supposed demand among disaffected Republican voters to “change our relationship to Israel,” placing the alliance itself among the issues requiring political reassessment.
In Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview, Trump went further, identifying what he called a “great dislike” for Israel as one factor in the Republican electoral defeat.
Trump certainly has a point. A 2026 Pew survey found that 60% of Americans viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 42% in 2022, including 57% of Republicans under 50. Gallup found that, for the first time in its 25-year tracking, Americans were no longer more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians: 36% favored Israelis, compared with 41% for Palestinians. The longstanding bipartisan consensus is unraveling. Among younger Americans, the situation is even worse.
Whether the reason is a global propaganda campaign against Zionism, social media manipulation, Netanyahu and his noxious far-right allies, or Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank are almost beside the point – the collapse in Western and U.S. opinion is undeniable.
Trump also asserted that “those countries that we’ve protected” from Iran – meaning Israel – “wouldn’t exist” without the U.S. and “are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war,” which was another major surprise and mystery that caught Israelis off-guard.
Whether this implies a demand that Israel reimburse the United States, and for precisely what, remains unclear. What is clear is that Trump has begun discussing a relationship Israelis considered existential in the language of electoral liabilities and financial transactions.
Writing in Maariv on Monday, veteran Washington correspondent Shlomo Shamir reported that senior Washington commentators described Netanyahu as having become effectively persona non grata in Trump’s inner circle – and that Trump’s seeming affinity for Netanyahu was “more a media relationship than a genuine friendship.”
The change in atmosphere in Israel has been extraordinary.
On Monday, Israeli television seemed preoccupied with little beyond the coalition negotiations following Israel’s election and the growing fear that the country might lose its most important international relationship.
Appearing on Channel 13, I argued that another Netanyahu government would have faced economic sanctions from Europe and even serious discussion of an American weapons embargo. This provoked very little disagreement.
“Netanyahu put all his chips on Trump, and it’s falling apart,” observed anchor Daniel Zilberstein. “It wasn’t only him, but the entire system,” replied Omri Rolls, an expert in monitoring and countering anti-Israel propaganda. “We put all our attention on the United States. Europe, we’ve completely given up on. All over the world, important elements are simply not on Israel’s agenda.”
The alarm was loud and clear this week across the Israeli political and diplomatic establishment.
Tovah Herzl, a former Israeli diplomat who served in Washington as liaison to Congress, captured the predicament in the title of her article in Maariv: “Netanyahu Bet on Trump — and Israel Could Lose Far More Than Money.”
“Israelis are unaware of the depth of the hole into which the country has fallen,” wrote Yedidia Stern, a leading expert on Israel-U.S. relations, in Ynet. “The hourglass has been turned over: we have two years to regain the legitimacy that has been lost” before a Democrat potentially wins the White House.
Ashley Perry, a former senior Israeli government adviser, wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel must urgently start arguing its case – “consistently demonstrating what Americans gain” in intelligence cooperation, joint defense development, investment, trade and Israeli contributions to scientific and technological progress.
Beyond all that, there is a general understanding that Israel will need some real policy changes – for example, cracking down on Jewish extremists in the West Bank. And it will need to court the U.S. Democrats and the Europeans once more – as it did decades ago.
There is a grim lesson at play, and it has more to do with morality than ethics.
Israelis are people badly traumatized by the conflicts that implacable enemies have forced on them. Over the decades, however, they took some pride nonetheless in what they believed was a moral high ground. It’s safe to say this has eroded, at least somewhat.
In a reflection of that erosion, one of Trump’s greatest attractions to Israelis – sadly enough – was his indifference to Palestinian human rights, an issue that had long complicated Israel’s relations with more conventional Western leaders. Trump was clearly untroubled by the West Bank occupation, the expansion of settlements or the absence of a credible political horizon for millions of Palestinians. In February 2025, he even proposed removing Gaza’s Palestinian population in its entirety and placing the territory under American control, a scheme whose breathtaking implications seemed scarcely to concern him.
Many Israelis overlooked the dark aspects of such absurdities, seeing only evidence of exceptional friendship. They overlooked the possibility that a president so utterly uninterested in Palestinian rights might also prove indifferent to Israeli interests whenever they ceased to coincide with his own.
They celebrated his willingness to discard diplomatic conventions – or even basic human decency – when it worked in their favor. They are discovering now that sometimes cliches are true: What goes around comes around.
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