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A revived Jewish Museum spotlights the story of Jewish endurance
The object that best explains the Jewish Museum’s new core exhibition isn’t actually there.
Printed on the wall is a photographed section of the first century Arch of Titus, depicting the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Among the plunder looted by the Romans was the Temple’s seven-branched menorah. This image, carved by conquerors, speaks to a lost homeland and culture. Or it might have, had Jews not proven supremely adaptable.
The rest of the exhibit’s 200 items, ranging from antiquity to this decade, are a testament to how Jews, experiencing millennia of diaspora, suffered, thrived and engaged with their neighbors. As Jewish Museum director James S. Snyder told me, his approach is not to present Jews as separate and elevated, but as a people deeply enmeshed in their global communities, resonating with them while maintaining their sense of self.
The $14.5 million renovation of the third and fourth floors in the Central Park-facing, neo-Gothic mansion built for the German-American Warburg family in 1908, can’t help but tell that story.
Titled “Identity, Culture and Community: Stories from the Collection,” the exhibit is organized thematically and roughly chronologically, beginning with a gallery of Judaica: a handsome Torah ark from Urbino, inscribed in Hebrew and decorated with Italianate flourishes. A Torah scroll destroyed by the British in the American Revolution holds pride of place, while an adjoining gallery, inspired by the forthcoming 250th Anniversary of the United States, boasts personal artifacts like the mezuzah of Continental Army financier Haym Salomon.
Moving away from Torah finials and portraits of prominent Jews, there’s a section dedicated to persecution and remembrance. Hanging there is a selection of intimate portraits by Gertrud Kauders, whose paintings were discovered in the walls of a home outside Prague during a 2018 home renovation. Kauders, an assimilated Czech Jew who was murdered in 1942 in Majdanek, hid them before her deportation.
While this work was discovered decades after her death, it’s in the company of some notable names, and not all of them Jewish. A 1936 Alice Neel painting of a New York City Communist rally, illustrating her friend, the artist Sid Gotcliffe, holding a placard reading “Nazis Murder Jews,” appears alongside an apocalyptic, modernist cityscape by Abraham Manievich. Manievich’s 1919 depiction of the destruction of the Kiev ghetto, a literal scapegoat foregrounded in the rubble, seems to prefigure Picasso’s Guernica in an expressionist mode.
European Jews were not immune to the modernism sweeping over Europe, and used its fractured forms to comment on their people’s persecution. A late figurative drawing of severed limbs by Mark Rothko, from his crucifixion series in the early 1940s, makes a wry comment on Christian hegemony and Hitler’s campaign of annihilation. (Marc Chagall, who produced a similar series, is across the way, appearing to pee on his native Vitebsk, which he left for Paris.)
A charm bracelet produced in Terezin, whose individual pieces are identifiable on a touch screen, shows how production didn’t stop in the Holocaust. Hadar Gad’s notebook, imagining the obliteration of her grandmother’s hometown in Poland, and produced after Oct. 7, reveal the Shoah’s continued resonances today. Dor Guez, son of a Palestinian Christian mother and North African Jewish father, makes use of his family’s quotidian possessions to tell their post-World War II immigration story. Other other artists make use of suitcase imagery.
From commentaries on displacement, there next emerges a reclamation of ritual objects within the context of a dominant culture: a Bauhaus-inspired menorah, a mid-century modern Torah crown forged with looping silver threads. Women artists, like Lee Krasner, gravitate toward abstraction. A stretch devoted to women modernists focuses on intersectionality. There are Miriam cups, a feminist inclusion to the Seder ceremony, and artist Gil Yefman’s kippah, topped by a dark nipple to signify the feminine nature of God.
Two thousand years after the sack of Jerusalem, contemporary artists are still grappling with how to express their Jewishness alongside compounding, modern identities. Candace Breitz’s video installation registers her discomfort, as a white woman chosen to represent South Africa at the 57th Venice Biennial, and so features a diverse and representative group of artists, saying “I am Candace Breitz.” A piece by Izhar Patkin, inspired by motifs on Persian rugs, faces a carpet from the 1890s with the likeness of Moses and Aaron, which the Shah of Iran is believed to have commissioned for his Jewish doctor.
Coinciding with the new core exhibit is a second floor show spotlighting the early works by Anish Kapoor, the Indian-born British artist, whose father was Hindu and whose mother was from the Iraqi Jewish community. (In a press conference, Kapoor downplayed how his background shaped the art.) But the overall theme carries onto the new fourth floor learning center.
Replicas of objects — a mosaic floor tile, a ceramic turkey menorah from 2013’s “Thankgivukkah,” an ancient bull figurine that is remarkably Aardman-esque — are available to touch to teach visitors about materials artists use. A 50-foot glass vitrine, with 130 menorahs from around the globe, most crafted by non-Jewish artisans, look out onto the modernist art on the floor below. The display is not about Hanukkah, but the significance of light in all cultures.
Even in a section devoted to largely pre-diaspora archaeology, where families can dig through foam rubble for potsherds, a touchscreen invites the visitor to read about “interactions among peoples.”
Imperial coins and helmets of Hellenic occupiers are on view. So too, are ritual objects from other Levantine groups, some several thousand years old, up to a 20th-Century bridal pin from Baghdad. The Jewish story, these objects insist, can’t be understood in isolation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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