Uncategorized
Abdul El-Sayed is courting Jewish voters — without moderating his views on Israel
Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed isn’t toning down his rhetoric to win over Jewish voters.
He’s called Israel’s action in Gaza a genocide, wants to withdraw both offensive and defensive military aid to Israel, called the Israeli government “evil” like Hamas, has rebuffed questions about whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and in an interview with the Forward, doubled down on his decision to campaign with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and his response to the attack on a Michigan syangogue in March: “Hurt people hurt people.”
Yet at a progressive synagogue and events hosted by Michigan’s Jewish Democratic caucus, El-Sayed, who is Muslim, is finding Jewish voters willing to hear him out — and a constituency of Jews who support his candidacy even when they disagree with him on Israel.
It’s a playbook New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani employed to deflect allegations of antisemitism: Don’t soften on Israel or what rhetoric crosses a line, but speak with the Jewish press, meet with Jewish organizations and demonstrate a cultural fluency with Judaism beyond the politics of the Middle East.
The race, which could determine which party controls the Senate, is also a test of Israel politics in a swing state home to the nation’s highest concentration of Arab Americans.
The three leading candidates occupy distinct positions on the issue: El-Sayed has made criticism of Israel and AIPAC a central plank of his campaign. On the other end of the spectrum, Rep. Haley Stevens describes herself as “proud pro-Israel Democrat” and is backed by AIPAC. And in the middle, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has won the endorsement of J Street, the liberal Zionist advocacy group that supports a two-state solution.
El-Sayed, who currently leads in the polls, maintains his candor has helped him build a Jewish coalition of his own.
“There’s going to be things that they disagree with, but at least they know I have the courage to say where I stand,” El-Sayed told the Forward. “I say it everywhere to everyone, and my positions are based in principle, not just political calculus.”
Jews for Abdul
While a number of Jewish organizations have expressed alarm at El-Sayed’s campaign, one synagogue welcomed him inside.
Congregation T’chiyah, a Reconstructionist synagogue outside Detroit that describes itself as progressive, hosted El-Sayed for a Passover Seder in April. Many of its congregants support El-Sayed’s campaign and are volunteering with a group dubbed “Jews for Abdul.”
One of those volunteers is Lex Eisenberg, a T’chiyah congregant who also organizes with the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.
“As progressive Jews, we’re all too familiar with the way that people who speak out for Palestinian freedom are smeared and attacked the way some are smearing Abdul right now,” Eisenberg said. “So the idea is that we want to be outwardly and publicly Jewish and supporting Abdul.”
El-Sayed’s campaign has also attracted some prominent progressive Jewish voices. Former Michigan congressman Andy Levin — who previously served as president of Congregation T’chiyah — endorsed El-Sayed alongside Bernie Sanders, the progressive Jewish senator from Vermont. (El-Sayed has called Sanders his “favorite Jewish uncle.”)
Levin, who identifies as Zionist, sees echoes of his own political battles in El-Sayed’s campaign. He lost his House election against Stevens in 2022 after AIPAC poured millions into defeating him, displeased with his support for a bill that backed a two-state solution and restricted use of U.S. taxpayer funds to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“So many young Jewish people are active in Abdul’s campaign,” Levin told the Forward. “And it’s their Judaism that leads them to that position, because their Judaism teaches them that the way to fight antisemitism isn’t to circle the wagons and shut off the world, but to build alliances with other oppressed people.”
Welcoming leftist politicians is not unusual for Congregation T’chiyah: Its rabbi, Alana Alpert, was the founding director of the progressive political advocacy group Detroit Jews for Justice, and she has been honored by Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian-American Michigan congresswoman censured by the House over her comments about Israel. (Alpert did not respond to the Forward’s request for an interview.)
“T’chiyah, of course, is a congregation that is focused on uplifting social justice around the idea of tikkun olam,” El-Sayed said.
Yet El-Sayed’s coalition also extends to those with complicated relationships to the Jewish state.
Roslyn Abt Schindler, a retired professor who taught Holocaust studies at Wayne State University, has been a member of Congregation T’chiyah for 48 of the synagogue’s 49 years. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Schindler plans to vote for El-Sayed and agrees with his characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.
But she also supports a two-state solution — a position El-Sayed has not endorsed, and one she wishes he would.
Schindler said the issues that matter most to her are affordability, campaign finance reform, environmental protection and Medicare for All. El-Sayed’s visit to her synagogue and Levin’s endorsement of him, she said, sealed the deal.
“His outreach to Jewish voters has been genuine and thoughtful,” Schindler said.
Decky Alexander, chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus — which endorsed Stevens last week — agreed that El-Sayed has engaged Michigan’s Jewish community. He participated in a candidate forum co-hosted by the Jewish caucus, and he attended the organization’s “Summer Simcha,” the caucus’ annual fundraiser that draws Jewish leaders from across the political spectrum.
Alexander said she doesn’t personally support El-Sayed, but she believes the Jewish caucus could work with him and trusts that he takes antisemitism seriously. After the recent attack on Temple Israel, El-Sayed was the first politician to text her with a message of support.
“He’s present and showing up,” Alexander said. “And not just showing up to really left-leaning communities that are Jewish, but across the board.”
‘Hurt people hurt people’
Other Jews say that outreach has done little to quell concerns about El-Sayed.
“When a public figure is struggling to affirm Israel’s right to exist, many Jews are going to see that as a challenge to Jewish self-determination, not simply a policy disagreement,” said Amy Sapeika, community director of American Jewish Committee Detroit.
The other candidates, meanwhile, have for the most part only hinted at their differences with El-Sayed when it comes to Israel and antisemitism — a polite tenor Alexander partly chalked up to a culture of “Midwest nice.”
Stevens, seen as the Democratic establishment pick, has touted her record of speaking up against antisemitism “in all its forms” and described herself as a lawmaker who is “leading on combating antisemitism in a bipartisan way.”
McMorrow has walked a middle ground, saying that Israel’s military offensive in Gaza meets the critera for genocide while also dismissing definitional debates as semantic. She has also said the Democratic Party has an antisemitism problem, citing an antisemitic slur yelled at her Jewish husband during this year’s Democratic Party convention in Detroit.
The National Jewish Democratic Council of America issued a rare dual endorsement of Stevens and McMorrow — explicitly drawing contrast with El-Sayed.
“There are two candidates who stand with our community on issues of importance to Jewish voters, and there is one who does not,” CEO Halie Soifer said in a statement.
Those tensions came to a head after a man rammed a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield in March with the stated intent of killing as many people as possible. El-Sayed issued a four-minute video condemning the attack, while also noting that the perpetrator had four family members killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, including two children.
“Hurt people hurt people,” he said.
The response drew a public rebuke from Temple Israel’s Rabbi Jen Lader, who wrote in a Free Press op-ed that El-Sayed was “suggesting that violence against a synagogue in suburban Detroit could be understood through the lens of Israeli actions,” which she deemed “offensive.”
El-Sayed rejected the premise that linking the two events amounted to excusing violence.
“It’s unserious when you want to decontextualize violence, and then say you want to stand against violence,” he told the Forward. “I will never be the kind of policymaker who doesn’t want to understand why things happened if I’m serious about stopping them from happening.”
About a month after that attack, El-Sayed hosted a campaign event with Hasan Piker — a Twitch streamer often called the “Joe Rogan of the left” who has likened liberal Zionists to “liberal Nazis,” said he doesn’t have an issue with Hezbollah, and also said that “Hamas is 1,000 times better” than Israel, among a slew of other controversial statements.
The event drew condemnation from Michigan State Hillel and the Anti-Defamation League, which called the decision to campaign with Piker “absolutely shocking.”
It also drew the most direct rebukes to date from both opposing campaigns. Stevens told Jewish Insider Piker is “the exact opposite of someone I’d be campaigning with,” and McMorrow critiqued El-Sayed for hosting the event “at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state.”
“How do you bring everybody together, especially when there are difficult conversations, where there aren’t easy answers? You don’t fan the flames and stoke division just to get attention,” McMorrow said.
El-Sayed told the Forward that he would not defend Piker’s most extreme remarks but argued that politicians should engage with a broad range of people, adding that he wanted to “reach out to the 3 million people who follow him, many of whom feel locked out of our politics.”
More broadly, El-Sayed argues that his critics conflate the Israeli government with the Jewish people. He often points to his experience as a Muslim in helping him understand the experience of a religious minority, framing antisemitism and Islamophobia as related threats.
“I know intimately what it’s like to be discriminated against for how I pray, and I don’t want anybody to experience that, be it because they are Jewish or because they are Muslim, or because they don’t pray at all,” he said.
It’s difficult to gauge how El-Sayed’s messaging is landing with Jewish voters; unlike in New York City, Michigan races do not have polling by religious affiliation. In any case, he may not need Jews’ support to take office: Jewish voters make up just 1.4% percent of the electorate in the state.
Still, El-Sayed said he is looking to connect.
“I’m open to engage with any and all communities,” El-Sayed said. “As I’ve always said, if you invite me, I’m going to come.”
The post Abdul El-Sayed is courting Jewish voters — without moderating his views on Israel appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Germany has found the culprit behind a deadly antisemitic arson fire. It still hasn’t learned its lesson.
The only way out of the Jewish old-age home at Reichenbachstrasse 27 in Munich ran through a four-story wooden stairwell. On the evening of Feb. 13, 1970, someone soaked that stairwell with gasoline and set it on fire.
It became a chimney. Flames and smoke raced upward, cutting off the residents above. Firefighters rescued many of the roughly 30 people inside, but seven Jewish residents aged 59 to 71, died. 15 people were injured, four seriously. All seven victims had survived Nazi persecution. Auschwitz had been liberated just 25 years earlier.
For 56 years, no one could identify the culprit.
In August, the Munich General Prosecutor’s Office announced that it now believes a right-wing extremist started the fire. Earlier this year, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel identified him as Bernd V., providing only his first name and last initial in accordance with German privacy laws. Der Spiegel also ran a black and white police photo of the suspect. It shows a man with a broad forehead, deep-set eyes and weak chin, wearing an unsmiling, withdrawn expression. The caption read, “Raised with Love for the Führer.”
Bernd V. was 25 at the time of the arson attack and died in 2020. His death means there will be no trial, though prosecutors say the evidence now points clearly to his responsibility. They found no reliable evidence of accomplices.
After his death, a woman contacted authorities and told the police that Bernd V. and two other men had been involved in a botched burglary at a jewelry store close to the Jewish community center on the night of the attack. Bernd V. ranted to his accomplices that the Jews had everything while Germans like him had nothing and verbally threatened to set Jews on fire. Roughly 15 minutes later, the building at Reichenbachstrasse 27 was ablaze.
In April 2025, investigators in Munich reopened the case, which had been closed in 2017 for lack of evidence. Old acquaintances of Bernd V, including relatives of the woman who had provided the new statement and who corroborated her account, remembered a man with a deep hatred of Jews who was obsessed with Hitler. He played records of the Führer’s speeches and practiced shooting around Berchtesgaden, where Hitler once had an idyllic residence. As a juvenile, Bernd V. had been sentenced for blowing up two telephone booths.
More strikingly, he was not a new suspect in the arson case. A former cellmate from one of Bernd V.’s prison stints in the early 1970s told investigators that Bernd V. had boasted to him of carrying out the Reichenbachstrasse attack and described details that, according to prosecutors, were not publicly known. Prosecutors questioned Bernd V. in 1972; he denied involvement, and the case against him was dropped two years later for lack of evidence.
The Reichenbachstrasse fire changed Jewish life in Germany — and the long uncertainty about its perpetrator helped shape a comforting German story about the sources of postwar antisemitism.
Bernhard Purin, the founding director of Munich’s Jewish Museum, has called the attack, quite simply, “the rupture.” Purin, who died in 2024, explained in a 2020 interview that before Feb. 13, 1970, people entered Jewish community centers much as they entered Christian ones. Afterward came police cars, cameras and heightened security, including metal detectors. Jews in Germany drew the bleak conclusion that they could only live under protection.
That security regime has become so routine here that it passes for normal. Police officers and Israeli security stand guard outside synagogues and Jewish schools. Visitors pass barriers and identity checks before entering institutions devoted to worship, education and community.
Permanent security presence has an unintended consequence: It marks official Jewish life as something fundamentally separate from ordinary life. A synagogue behind police barriers may be safer, but that fortification tells Jews and non-Jews alike that Jewish institutions are a world apart.
The attack also has another legacy. Because nobody knew who committed it, the crime gradually became evidence in a wider argument about left-wing antisemitism. In 1969, German left-wing radicals planted a bomb that failed to detonate at the Jewish community center in West Berlin on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Parts of the revolutionary left embraced an anti-Zionism that could turn antisemitic. The Red Army Faction later celebrated the Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972; German left-wing terrorists subsequently collaborated with Palestinian militants at Entebbe.
But the history of left-wing antisemitism gradually absorbed a crime for which no such attribution had been proved. It fed into the narrative that, as the political scientist Yascha Mounk put in his 2014 book Stranger in My Own Country, “since 1945, the Germans who have committed the most radical attacks on Jews were not right-wing radicals.” Many Germans found it psychologically convenient to believe that the Reichenbachstrasse victims had died at the hands of German antifascists rather than neo-Nazis.
The generation of 1968 performed an indispensable service by forcing West Germany to confront questions its parents had largely evaded: What had Germans done under Hitler? Why had former Nazis returned to positions of authority? What did Auschwitz demand of the generations that followed?
The discovery that some of those self-proclaimed antifascists themselves became antisemites produced a terrible historical irony. It also offered Germans a way to relocate antisemitism. The Jew-haters were now the rebellious children, the revolutionary leftists, the Palestinians and not necessarily the political descendants of the very people who had murdered Europe’s Jews.
Mounk himself called the radical left’s projection of fascism onto Jews and Israel a “psychological coping mechanism.” The apparent solution of the Munich case suggests a parallel mechanism in postwar Germany: antisemitism has often been easiest to recognize when it belongs to somebody else.
Today, that somebody else is frequently Muslim.
At the reopening of the Reichenbachstrasse synagogue last September, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz explicitly acknowledged that antisemitism “was never gone” from the Federal Republic. But within minutes he turned to immigrants, arguing that Germany had ignored the fact that a “considerable” number came from countries where antisemitism was effectively state doctrine. Months earlier, he had told Fox News that Germany suffered from “a kind of imported antisemitism.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jews in Germany have faced alarming hostility connected to Israel and Gaza, including from Islamist and radical anti-Zionist milieus. But that’s only part of the story. Germany’s principal civil-society monitoring network for antisemitism, RIAS, recorded 8,725 antisemitic incidents in 2025. It linked 807 of them to right-wing extremism, the highest number in that category since nationwide monitoring began. And Germany now has a far-right party of enormous electoral strength whose leading figures have repeatedly tested the boundaries of the country’s postwar taboos.
That party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is currently polling around 41% in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of next month’s state election. One of its most prominent politicians, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted for using the banned slogan of Hitler’s SA.
Fifty-six years after seven Jews died in a burning building, prosecutors now believe the likeliest perpetrator was a German neo-Nazi whose fanatical hatred had been visible for years. That finding comes too late to punish him. It does not come too late to unsettle the story Germans have often told themselves about the crime.
And the other legacy of that night remains all around us. The rupture of 1970 has never fully healed. German Jews still worship, study and gather behind cameras, guards and police barricades: constant reminders that Jewish life here is somehow separate.
The challenge is not only to safeguard Jewish life, but to stop treating permanent protection as its natural condition. That requires Germany to confront antisemitism wherever it appears, including on a resurgent far right whose danger is easier to minimize when attention is fixed elsewhere.
The post Germany has found the culprit behind a deadly antisemitic arson fire. It still hasn’t learned its lesson. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Emil Kalin wins Mendele Prize for Yiddish Literature 2026
דער תּּל-אָבֿיבֿער שטאָטראַט האָט די וואָך אַנאָנסירט, אַז דער ייִדישער שרײַבער עמיל קאַלין האָט זוכה געווען צו באַקומען דעם מענדעלע-פּּריז פֿאַר ייִדישער ליטעראַטור. דעם פּרײַז טיילט די שטאָט אויס יעדע פֿיר יאָר פֿאַר בעלעטריסטיק, ליטעראַטור־קריטיק אָדער אַנדערע בײַטראָגן צו דער ייִדיש־ליטעראַטור.
דעם פּריז האָט מען אים געגעבן אין שײַכות מיט זײַן לעצטן ראָמאַן, „צוזאַמענבראָך“ (2025), וועגן אַ געוועזענעם חרדישן ייִד פֿון ירושלים, וואָס פֿאַרלאָזט זײַן פֿרוי און קינד און לאָזט זיך גיין אויף אַ קאָמפּליצירטן גײַסטיקן דרך. דאָס בוך איז דערשינען אין פֿאַרלאַג ייִדיש-בראַנזשע און לייוויק-פֿאַרלאַג, מיט דער שטיצע פֿון דער „נאַציאָנאַלער אינסטאַנץ פֿאַר ייִדישער קולטור“. מע קאָן עס קויפן דורך leyvik.org.
נישט לאַנג נאָך דער פּובליקאַציע פֿונעם ראָמאַן האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס־רעצענזענט מיכאל קרוטיקאָוו געשריבן וועגן דעם בוך, און בפֿרט וועגן דעם הויפּט־פּערסאָנאַזש, הערש, אַזוי:
קאַלין שילדערט סײַ מענטשן און סײַ לאַנדשאַפֿטן אָן קײן שום באַפּוצונג. ער איז אַ מײַסטער פֿון מעטאַפֿאָרישן אימאַזש, װאָס שאַפֿט אַ געהעריקע שטימונג. די שטאָט תּל־אָבֿיבֿ איז אַ מין לעבעדיקע, פֿיבערדיקע חיה, װאָס כאַפּט הערשן פֿעסט אַרום „מיט בײדע שװיציקע הענט.“ די אױטאָבוסן זײַנען „אומגעלומפּערטע יבשה־שיפֿן, װאָס שנײַדן זיך קױם דורך אַ װעג אין דער ברױזנדיקער באַװעגונג.“ ער אַנטלױפֿט קײן ירושלים מיט אַ האָפֿענונג, „אַז ירושלים װעט מיך דערהײבן מיט זיך, אָבער דאָס פֿאַרקערטע איז געשען: ירושלים האָט מיך דערנידערט, אַראָפּגעשלעפּט מיט זיך אין בלאָטע.״
די דרײַ ריכטער פֿונעם פּריז־קאָמיטעט — דבֿ־בער קאָטלערמאַן, דניאל גלאַי און נירה תּובֿל — האָבן געזאָגט, אַז קאַלינס בוך איז נישט בלויז זייער גוט געשריבן, נאָר איז אויך איינער פֿון די גאָר ווייניק מאָדערנע ראָמאַנען אויף ייִדיש, וואָס באַהאַנדלען טעמעס פֿון דער הײַנטיקער ישׂראלדיקער געזעלשאַפֿט.
אַחוץ „צוזאַמענבראָך“ האָט קאַלין אַרויסגעגעבן צוויי אַנדערע ראָמאַנען, און הײַיאָר וועט דערשײַנען זײַן פֿערטער. די אויסטיילונג וועט פֿאָרקומען דעם 1טן דעצעמבער 2026 אין עינבֿ-זאַל, וווּ עס וועט אויך בײַזײַן דער תּל-אָבֿיבֿער בירגער-מײַסטער רון חולדאי.
עמיל קאַלין איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין 1982 אין בוקאַרעשט, און האָט מיט זײַן משפּחה עולה געווען קיין ישׂראל אין עלטער פֿון 7 יאָר.
ער האָט פֿאַרענדיקט זײַנע הויכע לימודים אינעם העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט אין ירושלים, און האָט לאַנגע יאָרן געאַרבעט אין הײַטעק. הײַנט לערנט ער פּסיכאָלאָגיע אינעם תּל-אָבֿיבֿער אוניווערסיטעט.
קאַלין האָט אויך איבערגעזעצט אויף ייִדיש דאָס דײַטשישע בוך „דער גאַנג פֿון די הינט“, וואָס איז אַרויס דורכן פֿאַרלאַג „אָלניאַנסקי טעקסט“. זײַנע אַנדערע ביכער זײַנען אַרויס דורך די פֿאַרלאַגן „ייִדיש בראַנזשע“ און „ה. לייוויק“.
זײַנע קירצערע ווערק קען מען לייענען אינעם דיגיטאַלישן זשורנאַל „ייִדיש בראַנזשע“, רעדאַקטירט פֿון באָריס סאַנדלער.
אין יאָר 2025 איז ער פֿאַרבעטן געוואָרן אויף אַ טור אין אַכט שטעט אין דײַטשלאַנד, כּדי פֿאָרצושטעלן דאָס בוך „צוזאַמענברוך“.
ער וווינט אין תּל־אָבֿיבֿ מיט זײַן פֿרוי שבֿע כּהן און זייערע דרײַ קינדער.
The post Emil Kalin wins Mendele Prize for Yiddish Literature 2026 appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, citing ethical objections
(JTA) — A Belgian union has threatened to strike against Brussels Airlines for compelling staff to work on flights to Israel, saying that anyone with “safety or conscientious objections” should be able to refuse.
ACV Puls, Belgium’s largest trade union, said on Tuesday that the company was breaking previous agreements to rely on volunteers for flights to Tel Aviv. The airline resumed flights to Tel Aviv on August 3, following a five-month pause because of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, and its first flights were operated with volunteers.
“Serious concerns exist among the staff regarding both physical safety and the mental and ethical impact of these flights,” ACV Puls spokesperson Jolinde Defieuw said in a statement. She added that making staffing mandatory was “particularly serious in the context of the ongoing war and the genocide in Gaza.”
ACV Puls, which represents aviation employees including pilots, cabin crews and ground staff in Belgium, said that a strike could follow if Brussels Airlines does not reverse its decision to resume regular staffing. The union argued that flying to Israel could not be deemed sufficiently safe, citing Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which advises against “all non-essential travel to Israel and Jerusalem.”
They also said that workers should be able to decline the flights for ethical reasons. Those who have “safety or conscientious objections must be able to refuse these flights without financial, professional, or disciplinary consequences,” said the union.
Nico Cardone, a spokesperson for Brussels Airlines, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that safety was the company’s “highest priority, whether we operate with volunteers or not.” He added that the airline was “not a political party” and made decisions about flight operations based on safety and demand.
“We do not engage in political discussions about the governments of certain destinations, and we ask our staff to uphold this same professional standard,” said Cardone.
ACV Puls said the airline was compelling crews to work because it had not found enough volunteers. Cardone disputed that, saying the airline always aimed to return to regular crew scheduling over time.
Along with threatening a strike, the union called on the Belgian government to weigh in. ACV Puls said the government should take a stance on the availability of commercial flights to Israel “despite the ongoing war, the massive civilian casualties, and the serious accusations of war crimes and human rights violations against the Palestinian population.”
Belgium has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and Israeli settlements in the West Bank since 2023. Earlier this year, Belgium banned aircraft carrying military equipment bound for Israel from crossing its airspace. The government in July approved a ban on goods imported from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, citing ethical objections appeared first on The Forward.
