Uncategorized
Alleging exclusion, Jewish faculty boycott James Madison University’s Holocaust commemoration event
(JTA) — An event that took place at a Virginia university Thursday night to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day was scheduled to feature lectures about the legacies of Auschwitz and the intersection between white supremacy and antisemitism. There was also a planned recitation of a poem and a musical performance.
Not on the docket at James Madison University: support for the event from the school’s Jewish faculty and staff.
Dozens of them announced in an open letter that they would boycott the event, titled “An Evening Conversation on the History and Legacy of the Holocaust,” citing concerns about its appropriateness. Of particular concern, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, was a planned performance by the university’s provost, a pianist, during a segment titled “Music as Refuge in the Holocaust.”
“There was no refuge for those targeted by the ‘Final Solution,’” said the open letter, which was unsigned but said it had the support of “24 of Jewish JMU Faculty, Faculty Emeriti, and Staff.”
The letter, which the school’s student newspaper The Breeze published Thursday morning, said the planning of the Holocaust event had “disrespected and disparaged Jewish individuals, dismissed Jewish participation and failed to reflect the inclusive values that JMU purports to foster.” The letter criticized the university’s decision to invite keynote speakers from other universities and the rabbi of a neighboring community to give a community address, rather than centering James Madison personnel or the local rabbi.
That rabbi, Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner of Beth El Congregation of Harrisonburg, said the event had been planned with little to no input from Jews, and that three Jews who were added to the planning committee late in the process later resigned en masse.
In an interview, Kurtz-Lendner compared the event to “a Martin Luther King observance planned by an entire committee of white people.” He said he was joining the boycott and not encouraging his congregants, who include James Madison professors, to attend. He said the rabbi listed on the original program, from a Reform synagogue about 30 miles away in Staunton, would not attend, either.
“The program looks wholly insensitive,” he said. “Instead of being a commemoration of the Holocaust, it looks like it’s turning into an opportunity for celebration.”
That idea appeared to be rooted in the inclusion of music during the event. Maura Hametz, the Jewish chair of the university’s history department, said she had successfully argued against including instrumental music during last year’s commemoration, citing prohibitions in Jewish tradition against instrumental music in times of mourning.
“Biblically we don’t use instrumental music, as Jews,” to commemorate the Holocaust, she said. “If you use the instruments, it’s a celebration.” The proposal to include a musical interlude, she said, also had a history in “medieval church music, so that doesn’t track with what is good for us.”
The belief that Holocaust commemorations cannot include music is not universally held; some commemorations have featured music written by Jewish composers as acts of resistance or remembrance. International Holocaust Remembrance Day was created by the United Nations in 2005 as a way to mourn all victims of the Holocaust, distinct from Yom HaShoah, the Jewish holiday that takes place in April and was established by the Israeli government to commemorate specifically Jewish Holocaust victims.
Still, Hametz had made the case against music last year, so when she saw that this year’s event was again scheduled to include musical selections, she said, “It did surprise me.” She ultimately decided to boycott the event and sign the open letter.
The boycott was supported by one of the university centers sponsoring the event, the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence. Its director, Taimi Castle, issued a statement to the student newspaper saying the center would “spend time reflecting on how we can support the Jewish community at JMU in addressing the harm caused by these actions.”
A James Madison University spokesperson said Thursday that the event itself was still scheduled to proceed as intended that evening. The university said it had reached out to “a spokesperson for this group” of critics and planned to hold a meeting “to gain further understanding and collectively work on a path forward.”
The episode comes amid broad questions about the role of Jews in efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in universities and workplaces. Jewish critics of the emerging field of diversity, equity and inclusion have charged that antisemitism is not always treated as similarly offensive to racism or homophobia, despite also being rooted in hatred based on identity. The Jewish open letter signers also cited a recent statewide report on antisemitism in Virginia as reason to take their concerns about Jewish representation at the university seriously.
James Madison’s Holocaust Remembrance Day event was sponsored in part by the university’s equity and inclusion office, and the associate provost for inclusive strategies and equity initiatives was scheduled to deliver opening remarks and also moderate a question-and-answer session at the event’s end.
“This event is to create an opportunity for people to learn about the lived experiences of others and honor the Holocaust Remembrance Day through educational and solemn means,” Malika Carter-Hoyt, the school’s vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, said in a statement provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The statement did not mention Jews or antisemitism.
Carter-Hoyt said she hadn’t received “any notice about these concerns” prior to the letter.
“I acknowledge the letter and express compassion toward the concerns outlined by faculty,” Carter-Hoyt said. But she also defended the planning and suggested that having Jews on the planning committee had not been a specific university priority.
“Committee members were selected based on substantive expertise and commitment to the creation of an event that properly marks the occasion,” she wrote. “No one was included or excluded explicitly based on a particular protected characteristic.”
James Madison University, located in Harrisonburg, is a public college with about 21,000 students. About 1,200 of them are Jewish, according to Hillel International, which offers some services on campus but does not have a building or rabbi there. Efforts to reach anyone affiliated with JMU Hillel were unsuccessful. The chapter’s vice president was listed as a participant on the evening’s program, scheduled to read a poem by Primo Levi, an Italian Holocaust survivor.
The school also does not have a Jewish studies department, despite what Hametz said had been extensive lobbying by faculty members to establish one. Alan Berger, who launched Jewish studies departments at Syracuse and Florida Atlantic universities, was billed as a keynote speaker at the event Thursday.
James Madison’s provost Heather Coltman, who was scheduled to play piano at the Holocaust memorial event and also previously worked at Florida Atlantic University, has an uneasy relationship with the school’s faculty. This week the faculty senate sought to condemn her for reportedly retaliating against the authors of a report on transparency at the school.
While there are courses taught on Jewish topics, the lack of a separate department means that Jewish representation on campus is limited, Hametz said.
“There is no spokesperson here for the Jewish community,” she said. “There’s no central voice to say, ‘Hey, why is this happening? How is it possible that you go ahead with a Holocaust event with no Jewish people on the committee?’”
—
The post Alleging exclusion, Jewish faculty boycott James Madison University’s Holocaust commemoration event appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Can Manischewitz make matzo ball soup hot again?
Last weekend, I was walking through Lower Manhattan, when I strolled past something confusing. Several women in matching baby blue leggings and puffer coats were dancing to pop music in a small park outside the Soho Apple store, surrounded by ice blocks with something — it was hard to tell what — frozen inside them. As I got closer, I realized that they were handing out some kind of greens-boosted energy drink. The set-up was a made-for-Instagram PR stunt.
The whole point of the event seemed to be to cultivate a cool Manhattanite sheen for the brand. People were taking cans of the beverage, because why not — it was free! No one, however, was hanging out and dancing with the paid promoters, who were dancing conspicuously alone. The drink, which was gross, piled up in nearby municipal trashcans. The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth, and not just from the fake sweetener in the beverage. Do these stunts sell energy drinks? Do they sell anything at all?
These questions were front of mind when I showed up at an art exhibit at a gallery on the Lower East Side. The art show was called SOUP, and it was hosted by Manischewitz to mark the launch of, yes, a line of jarred soups.
When I walked in, there was a solid crowd mingling in the gallery. Photos from Manischewitz’s newest ad campaign from Ohad Romano — a delightfully campy set of family photos featuring, of course, jars of soup — hung on one wall, opposite the soup-free work of two other Jewish artists, psychedelic scenes by Dan Weinstein and colorful objects from Rosemarie Gleiser.
Orange-aproned waiters passed around teacups full of soup and a bartender made gin and tonics featuring Cel-Ray and spritzes with Manischewitz wine. (The wine is owned by a different company than the food products, so was unrelated to the event.) There was a line in the back room to get Manischewitz-themed patches sewn onto Manischewitz-branded hats. A baby on a woman’s hip giggled. A man in a sharp suit, cravat and kippah laughed with a group of friends as they all sipped chicken soup with matzo ball floaters.
But what did any of it have to do with actually selling soup?
Talia Sabag, a marketing manager at Manischewitz, told me that the art show was part of the rebrand that the company has been rolling out over the past few years. Their boxes of matzo went from a bookish off-white to a bright orange, with scribbled illustrations of little figures carrying bowls of soup across the box that look like they should have walked out of the Jewish Almanac. The company told The New York Times, in 2024, that the rebranding effort was to refresh the brand, but also to target a new base of “culturally curious” consumers. In short, they wanted to sell kosher products to everyone, not just Jews.
Nearly everyone at the art show’s opening, however, seemed to be Jewish. More relevantly, the show was only planned to be up for six days.
While I sipped my teacup of soup, I asked Sabag what the show was meant to achieve for the brand. At first, she stuck to the message, arguing that the show was exactly what it said it was: an art show about soup.
“We want to celebrate the interwoven ways cuisine plays a role in communicating Jewish culture to ourselves and to the world,” she said with a bright smile, all symbolized by “the warmth of soup!”
Eventually, though, we got down to it: “A lot of studies do show that Gen Z does buy products based on that coolness factor,” Sabag told me. (She mentioned Nutter Butter as an example; the cookie started posting surreal, apocalyptic memes and saw their sales spike as a result.) In the words of the Gen Z buyers the brand is trying to attract, the art show is aura farming.
But is it possible to make Manischewitz cool? The brand is so iconic, so central to American Judaism, that it almost feels like asking whether it’s possible to make Judaism itself cool. Whether or not Judaism needs help in that arena is an open question, but plenty of people and brands have been trying to boost its coolness factor, whether it’s handbag designer Susan Alexandra’s glitzy launch party for her line of Judaica or the transgressive Bushwick burlesque show, Sinner’s Shabbat.
“We want to open up the conversation to the younger generations of course,” Sabag said. “But we’re not neglecting our core audience: our bubbes.” That means balancing nostalgia and hipness.
It’s almost impossible to purposefully construct coolness; by its nature, it resists trying. Usually, trying to be cool can only backfire, like the event with the energy drink dancers.
But I have to admit: The art show was kind of cool. It nailed its aesthetic, embracing the absurdity and surrealism of a moment in which a historic, grandmotherly brand like Manischewitz would be running an aura farming event, tonally a perfect fit for an irony-pilled era. Yet it also took itself seriously in the right ways; it was, ultimately, an actual art show with Jewish artists’ work in a neighborhood with deep Jewish roots, serving historic Jewish food. It felt genuine and rooted even as it was irreverent. Every detail was thoughtful. The drinks were actually good. The soup was exactly the same as ever.
The truth is, Manischewitz’s rebrand is cool because Manischewitz has always been cool. So has Judaism.
The post Can Manischewitz make matzo ball soup hot again? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Thousands Protest Over Israeli President Herzog’s Visit to Australia in Wake of Bondi Massacre
Demonstrators gather at Town Hall Square to protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s state visit to Australia following a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, 2025, in Sydney, Australia, Feb. 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Thousands gathered across Australia on Monday to protest over the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is on a multi-city trip aimed at expressing solidarity with Australia‘s Jewish community following a deadly mass shooting last year.
Herzog is visiting Australia this week following an invitation from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 shooting at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15.
The visit has attracted the ire of some people in Australia, who accuse Herzog of being complicit in civilian deaths in Gaza. Anti-Israel groups have organized protests in cities and towns across the country on Monday evening.
In Sydney, thousands gathered in a square in the city’s central business district, listening to speeches and shouting pro-Palestinian slogans.
“The Bondi massacre was terrible but from our Australian leadership there’s been no acknowledgment of the Palestinian people and the Gazans,” said Jackson Elliott, a 30-year-old protestor from Sydney.
“Herzog has dodged all the questions about the occupation and says this visit is about Australia and Israeli relations but he is complicit.”
There was a heavy police presence with a helicopter circling overhead and officers patrolling on horseback.
Police used pepper spray and tear gas to push back groups of people who were trying to breach the line and march ahead. Several protesters were arrested as they clashed with police.
Authorities in Sydney declared Herzog’s visit a major event and were authorized to use rarely invoked powers during the visit, including the ability to separate and move crowds, restrict their entry to certain areas, direct people to leave, and search vehicles.
On Monday in a Sydney court, the Palestine Action Group – which organized the protest – failed to legally challenge the restrictions on the demonstration.
PRESIDENT COMMEMORATES LIVES LOST
Meanwhile, thousands of Jewish community members, government officials, and opposition party politicians welcomed Herzog at an event, more than a kilometer away from the protests, honoring the victims of the Bondi attack.
“We all remember the boycotts, the threats, the colleagues who turned their backs on their Jewish friends … that was the prelude to Bondi,” he told a large crowd at Sydney’s International Convention Centre, according to an ABC News report.
Herzog began his visit earlier on Monday at Bondi Beach, where he laid a wreath at a memorial for the victims of the attack. He also met survivors and the families of 15 people killed in the shooting.
“This was also an attack on all Australians. They attacked the values that our democracies treasure, the sanctity of human life, the freedom of religion, tolerance, dignity, and respect,” Herzog said in remarks at the site.
In a statement, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-Chief Executive Alex Ryvchin said Herzog’s visit “will lift the spirits of a pained community.”
Uncategorized
Saudi Arabia Wealth Fund Set to Announce Strategy Revamp, Sources Say
A billboard at the site of New Murabba shows The Mukaab, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Benmansour
Saudi Arabia‘s $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) plans to announce a new five-year strategy this week, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said, in the biggest reset yet of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic transformation plan.
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund soft-launched its new 2026-2030 strategy with key investors and strategic partners on Monday on the sidelines of a conference in Riyadh, the two people and another familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The new blueprint will emphasize sectors including industry, minerals, artificial intelligence, and tourism, while scaling back and in some cases reconfiguring expensive mega projects such as The Line, a futuristic mirrored city, the sources said.
All three sources declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
One said the new roadmap will place greater emphasis on attracting capital from major global asset managers, reflecting mounting fiscal pressures as oil prices remain well below levels needed to fund the kingdom’s ambitious transformation agenda.
The shift marks the most significant recalibration to date of bin Salman’s Vision 2030, which for nearly a decade has prominently featured mega futuristic developments. The kingdom is currently reviewing several of the mega projects.
Many of these, including The Line, which extends 170 km (106 miles) into the desert, and the planned Trojena winter sports hub, have faced delays and ballooning costs. The latest to be suspended was a cube-shaped skyscraper in Riyadh.
Last month, Saudi Economy Minister Faisal al-Ibrahim told Reuters: “We’re very transparent. We’re not going to shy away from saying we had to shift this project, delay it, re-scope it,” without mentioning specific projects.
Under the new strategy, NEOM will shift away from its earlier emphasis on tourism and futuristic urban design toward renewable energy and industrial development, including green hydrogen, solar and wind projects, and data centers that benefit from their proximity to the sea for cooling, the people said.
The Line was not on display in the venue at Monday’s opening day of the private sector forum, while NEOM’s video displays underscored the new direction, focusing on energy and industrial initiatives rather than the high‑profile real estate and tourism concepts once billed as being at its core.
PIF’s updated focus echoes details previously reported by Reuters, including a broader shift toward logistics, mining, and advanced manufacturing, as well as clean energy and religious tourism.