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A Michigan middle school dean resigned after receiving an antisemitic death threat
(JTA) – A newly hired dean of students for a Michigan middle school resigned after only nine school days on the job after receiving an anonymous antisemitic death threat.
The threat sent the district into lockdown and contributed to the decision to cancel classes during the first week of the year.
Michael Woodberg was hired by Richmond Community Schools, a rural district north of Detroit, in December. But in early January the district received a series of disturbing and violent threats directed at staff. The first one, on Jan. 3, took the form of a physical note discovered in one of the district’s buildings, targeting Woodberg specifically with antisemitic language and including details about his family and personal information.
District superintendent Brian Walmsley closed schools for the first week of the winter semester in response, alerting parents to the nature of the antisemitic threat, as well as to another threat made by email against a different administrator on Jan. 8. When the district reopened without Woodberg, local police were a heavy presence.
“The Dean of Students position was, as Mr. Woodberg stated, ‘a dream job,’” Walmsley wrote in an email to parents on Jan. 8. “He was excited for his first administrative experience and [to] work with outstanding administrators, teachers, and support staff – all dedicated to the success of students.
“As you can imagine, the threat affected Mr. Woodberg and his family and permanently changed the way they operate and view the environment around them,” the letter continued. “While Mr. Woodberg is going to be missed, I support the decision he made for his family and himself and wish him nothing but health, happiness, and success in his future endeavors.”
In an earlier letter to parents, Walmsley had said that he had already intended to close school for the first week of classes anyway, due to district staffing shortages, but that the threat gave additional cause to do so.
Walmsley did not respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment. Woodberg, who previously worked at West Bloomfield School District in a heavily Jewish Detroit suburb, declined to comment to the Detroit Jewish News.
The incident was condemned by Detroit Jewish federation CEO Steven Ingber, who told the Jewish News, “The recent incident at Richmond Community Schools is deeply disturbing and yet another reminder of the prevalence of antisemitism in our society today.” The federation has been in touch with the district, Ingber said.
The mayor of Richmond also condemned the threats this week during a city council meeting, while praising ongoing police efforts to identify the culprit. “These threats are not reflective of the Richmond community,” Mayor Tim Rix said, according to local reports. “We have a great community made up of residents, families, businesses, schools and organizations which all work together to make Richmond a place we all call our hometown. The actions of one or a few will not drag our community down.”
Two days after Walmsley alerted parents to the antisemitic threat, he told them a third threat had been made in the district, this one a shooting threat made on behalf of a middle school student. The district closed school for an additional day in response to the threat. Richmond is 30 miles east of Oxford High School, where a student shooter armed with his parents’ gun murdered four classmates and injured seven others in 2021.
Elsewhere in the Detroit area last month, local law enforcement were criticized for failing to immediately arrest a man who had videotaped himself making antisemitic threats outside a synagogue preschool.
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Rubio Says Israeli Strike on Gaza Didn’t Violate Ceasefire
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press following his meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (not pictured) at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Oct/ 23, 2025. Photo: Fadel Senna/Pool via REUTERS
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Washington does not view a strike that Israel said targeted a member of a Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza as a violation of a US-backed ceasefire.
Israel said it struck a member of the Islamic Jihad group on Saturday, accusing the individual of planning to attack Israeli troops. Islamic Jihad denied it was planning an attack.
Speaking aboard President Donald Trump’s plane during a trip to Asia, Rubio said: “We don’t view that as a violation of the ceasefire.”
The US top diplomat added that Israel has not surrendered its right to self-defense as part of the agreement brokered by Washington, Egypt, and Qatar that saw the main terrorist faction in Gaza, Hamas, release the remaining living hostages held in Gaza this month.
“They have the right if there’s an imminent threat to Israel, and all the mediators agree with that,” Rubio said.
Rubio said the ceasefire in Gaza, which remains in force between Israel and Hamas just over two years since the war began, was based on obligations on both sides, reiterating that Hamas needs to speed up the return of the remains of hostages who died in captivity.
Israel’s Saturday strike came shortly after Rubio departed Israel after a visit aimed at shoring up the ceasefire.
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Pope Leo to Visit Eight Cities in Turkey, Lebanon on First Trip Abroad as Pontiff
Pope Leo XIV arrives to lead the Mass for the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, Oct. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Leo will visit eight towns and cities in Turkey and Lebanon later this year, the Vatican said on Monday, his first trip outside Italy as pontiff, and he is expected to make appeals for peace across the region.
Leo, the first US pope, will visit Turkey from Nov. 27 to 30 and then will be in Lebanon from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2.
Leo‘s predecessor Pope Francis had planned to visit both countries but was unable to go because of his worsening health. Francis died on April 21, and Leo was elected as the new pope on May 8 by the world’s cardinals.
A central part of the visit to Turkey will be several joint events with Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, who is based in Istanbul.
They will celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of a major early Church council, which took place in Nicaea, now called Iznik.
“It is profoundly symbolical that Pope Leo … will visit [the patriarch] on his first official journey,” Rev. John Chryssavgis, an adviser to Bartholomew, told Reuters.
Leo will also meet Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in the capital Ankara, visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and will celebrate a Catholic Mass at Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena.
In Lebanon, the pope will meet President Joseph Aoun in Beirut, will host an inter-religious meeting, and will lead an outdoor Mass on the Beirut waterfront.
The pope will also pray at the site of the 2020 chemical explosion at the Beirut port that killed 200 people and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Traveling abroad has become a major part of the modern papacy, with popes seeking to meet local Catholics, spread the faith, and conduct international diplomacy.
A new pope‘s first travels are usually seen as an indication of the issues the pontiff wants to highlight during his reign.
Both Turkey and Lebanon are majority Muslim countries, and Francis put a strong focus on Muslim-Catholic dialogue during a 12-year reign that included 47 trips abroad.
The official motto of Leo‘s Lebanon trip is “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
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Israel Won’t Accept Turkish Armed Forces in Gaza, Foreign Minister Says
A drone view shows tents used by displaced Palestinians amid destroyed buildings, following the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, Oct. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Israel won’t accept the presence of Turkish armed forces in Gaza under a US plan to end war in the Palestinian territory for good, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday.
US President Donald Trump’s plan includes an international force in Gaza to help secure a fragile ceasefire which began this month, halting two years of war between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
But it remains unclear whether Arab and other states will be ready to commit troops to the international force. “Countries that want or are ready to send armed forces should be at least fair to Israel,” Saar said at a news conference in Budapest.
Once warm Turkish-Israeli relations soured drastically during the Gaza war, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan lambasting Israel‘s air and ground campaign in the Palestinian enclave and even threatening an invasion of the Jewish state.
“Turkey, led by Erdogan, led a hostile approach against Israel,” Saar said, speaking alongside his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto. “So, it is not reasonable for us to let their armed forces enter the Gaza Strip and we will not agree to that, and we said it to our American friends,” Saar said.
While the Trump administration has ruled out sending US soldiers into the Gaza Strip, it has been speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to contribute to the multinational force.
Last week Netanyahu hinted that he would be strongly opposed to any role for Turkish security forces in Gaza. On Sunday, he said Israel would decide which foreign forces to allow in Gaza.
“We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate,” Netanyahu said.
“This is, of course, acceptable to the United States as well, as its most senior representatives have expressed in recent days,” he told a session of his cabinet.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on a visit to Israel aimed at shoring up the truce, said on Friday the international force would have to be made up of “countries that Israel‘s comfortable with.” He made no comment on Turkish involvement.
Rubio added that Gaza’s future governance still needed to be worked out among Israel and partner nations but could not include Hamas.
Rubio later said that US officials were receiving input on a possible UN resolution or international agreement to authorize the multinational force in Gaza and would discuss the issue in Qatar, a key Gulf mediator on Gaza, on Sunday.
Turkey and Qatar are both key, long-time backers of Hamas.
A major challenge to Trump’s plan is that Hamas has balked at disarming. Since the ceasefire took hold two weeks ago as the first stage of Trump’s 20-point plan, Hamas has waged a violent crackdown on clans that have tested its grip on power.
At the same time, the remains of 13 deceased hostages remain in Gaza with Hamas citing obstacles to locating them in the pervasive rubble left by the fighting.
An Israeli government spokesperson said on Sunday Hamas, which released the remaining 20 living hostages it took in its Oct. 7, 2023, assault, knew where the bodies were.
“Israel is aware that Hamas knows where our deceased hostages are, in fact, located. If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages,” the spokesperson said.
Israel had, however, allowed the entry of an Egyptian technical team to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies. She said the team would use excavator machines and trucks for the search beyond the so-called yellow line in Gaza behind which Israeli troops have initially pulled back under Trump’s plan.
Netanyahu began the cabinet session by stressing Israel was an independent country, rejecting the notion that “the American administration controls me and dictates Israel‘s security policy.” Israel and the US, he said, are a “partnership.”