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An amended Conservative Jewish Passover policy taps into the booming gluten-free market
(JTA) — Ahead of Passover 2020 — as life worldwide ground to an abrupt halt in the face of a rapidly spreading pandemic and people faced the specter of empty grocery shelves, or staying confined at home — a range of rabbis tried to make it a little easier to observe the holiday.
Long lists of foods and newly lenient guidelines from Jewish organizations circulated among people who keep kosher for Passover, explaining which foods they could purchase and eat on the holiday, given the year’s extraordinary circumstances. The message — sometimes explicit, sometimes implied — was that these special permissions applied only temporarily.
Now, one rule instituted as a COVID provision by the Conservative movement is becoming permanent: Before Passover begins, Jews may buy certified kosher products that have kosher-for-Passover ingredients and are certified gluten-free and oat-free — even if they aren’t explicitly certified kosher for Passover.
When it first appeared in 2020, that rule was written in a way that suggested it was an emergency measure, using the words “when the situation demands.” This year, that four-word phrase has been removed from the Rabbinical Assembly’s Passover guide, and the guidance has moved from a separate section into the main list of allowable products.
The edit reflects how some shifts in Jewish practice that first appeared at the outset of the pandemic, as stopgap measures, have since been normalized. It also allows — for at least a narrow set of Jews who observe Jewish ritual in accordance with the Conservative movement’s dictates — more robust and potentially less expensive options for keeping kosher during Passover.
Rabbi Aaron Alexander, chair of the Kashrut Subcommittee on the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which issues the movement’s Jewish legal rulings, said the change does not reflect a shift in the movement’s approach to Jewish law, known as halacha. Instead, he said, it reflects confidence that the Food and Drug Administration’s strict rules about how products can be labeled can be trusted when it comes to Passover observance.
“It’s not a significant change in how we understand halacha in general and how we understand the general Passover laws,” Alexander said. “It’s always been the case that there are products you can buy without a KP [symbol] before Passover, when you can be pretty sure that there’s no chametz and that any accidental admixture would be minimal.”
The requirement for foods to be certified gluten-free and oat-free, Alexander said, is “an extra line of defense” for people buying products before Passover that are not explicitly labeled kosher for Passover.
The policy shift opens new doors to kosher-keeping Jews: Rather than seeking out specialty items with Passover kosher certification, often carried only in kosher supermarkets and in major markets, they can observe Passover by taking advantage of the increasing number of products that are labeled kosher, gluten-free and oat-free, as long as the ingredients accord with Passover laws.
The gluten-free marketplace is estimated at $6 billion a year in the United States and is growing by an estimated 10% each year, according to industry trend reports. The marketplace serves people with celiac disease — whose incidence is rising — as well as people who seek to reduce or eliminate their gluten intake for perceived health reasons.
Some people with celiac disease say they look forward to Passover because more products will hit shelves that they can count on to be free of gluten. Now, Jews who follow the Conservative movement’s guidance can benefit from some of the wide array of gluten-free foods that are already available.
On Passover, five types of grain are prohibited (except for when they are used to make matzah): wheat, spelt, barley, oat and rye. By purchasing products that are certified gluten-free and oat-free, consumers can avoid buying food that contain those five ingredients.
“In an effort to definitively alert consumers to the presence of wheat gluten in packaged foods, the FDA mandates that any product including the words ‘gluten-free,’ ‘no gluten,’ ‘free of gluten,’ or ‘without gluten’ must contain less than 20 parts per million of glutinous wheat, spelt, barley, or rye,” a footnote to the guide states. “This eliminates the possibility of a gluten-free packaged food containing 4 of the 5 hametz-derived grains in any quantity that would be viable according to Jewish law.”
Alexander emphasized that the gluten-free and oat-free guidance should be seen as “a good way to figure out whether or not the products you’re getting before Passover could be problematic.” He cautioned that looking at the rest of the ingredients is crucial: Some certified gluten-free products, for example, could still be prohibited for Passover because they contain yeast.
Sarah Chandler, an ordained Hebrew priestess and Jewish educator who used to run a pickle business, already bought food with gluten-free labels during her pre-Passover shopping.
“It’s very practical, and it’s also consistent with other levels of kashrut,” Chandler told JTA regarding her pre-Passover shopping. “The fact that you and I can go to a grocery store and buy eggs — you don’t need a kosher symbol on it. We just know that it’s eggs. We’re not worried that the egg is from a bird of prey and not kosher. We can just assume that [if] it says ‘chicken eggs,’ they’re chicken eggs.”
She added, using a Hebrew term for kosher certification, “We don’t need a hechsher on it. The hechscher just means a certain level of supervision.”
Chandler is a vegetarian and eats a variety of nut butters, which are often expensive. Recently, she bought a jar of gluten-free cashew butter that was on sale for $6 instead of its regular price $12. (A jar of almond butter by a kosher brand marketed for Passover can run around $18.) Because it’s still unopened and the ingredients are kosher for Passover, she plans to eat it during the holiday.
Kosher-keeping Jews with gluten intolerance and celiac disease have especially found a lifeline in the growing marketplace of gluten-free food.
Lisa Goldman, also known as the “Gluten Free Jewish Momma,” is an Orlando-based advocate for the gluten intolerant on behalf of her now-grown daughter, who was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2012.
“My daughter was crying over not being able to have matzah balls because matzah [is] very high in wheat,” Goldman recalled. “So it was so exciting when all of the Jewish brands started to come out with a gluten-free version of many of their products.”
By the Way Bakery, a kosher, gluten-free and dairy-free bakery in New York City founded in 2011 by Helene Godin, may be a destination where Jewish shoppers who abide by the Conservative ruling could get food for the holiday. It is offering multiple Passover items this year, though the menu isn’t certified kosher for Passover.
By the Way Bakery is certified kosher, and its individual products that are sold in Whole Foods are in the process of being certified gluten-free.
“I’m really careful with the word ‘certified,’” Godin told JTA. “We are not certified with respect to Passover. I can tell you what is in [our products]. We’re very transparent. If you go to our website and you go to the FAQ section, there’s a link to our ingredient summary. And we list everything that’s in every product.”
Some of the items on this year’s Passover menu include an orange almond cake that Godin calls “the little black dress of desserts” because it goes with everything, and a chocolate truffle torte. By the Way Bakery’s cakes and cookies are made with wheat flour alternatives, many of which fall into the category of kitniyot, or foods such as legumes, corn, and rice that some Jews, including many Ashkenazim, avoid eating on Passover. Sephardic Jews traditionally eat kitniyot on the holiday and the Conservative Movement began permitting the consumption of kitniyot during Passover in 2016.
“There are people who say, ‘You’re not kosher enough,’” Godin said. “And there are people who say, ‘Oh, I’ll eat that.’”
Another popular gluten-free kosher bakery, Modern Bread and Bagel, is offering non-kitniyot foods for Passover. Like By the Way Bakery, Modern Bread and Bagel is not certified kosher for Passover, but all of its kitchen’s ingredients are kosher for Passover.
Godin says her company gains new customers every Passover, but this year has been an especially busy time. The number of orders for the orange almond cake, which has not been on the menu in several years, was three or four times larger than what she expected.
“Our projections were that we would be up 20% over last year. And we’ve well exceeded that,” she said. “Post-COVID, people just want to celebrate and get together.”
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Israelis are experiencing a new kind of international boycott
Israelis are not facing formal sanctions from Western corporations. No international business coalition has announced a boycott. No major bank or airline has openly declared that Israeli customers are unwelcome.
Yet many Israelis are increasingly encountering something quieter and more difficult to define: a new norm of friction and the sense that when systems fail for Israelis, nobody feels much urgency to fix them.
Consider a recent experience I had with the United Kingdom’s NatWest bank.
When NatWest stopped sending authentication texts to Israeli phone numbers in the spring, I assumed it was just a technical error. Banks malfunction. Security systems fail. But then the bank’s mobile app stopped properly recognizing my Israeli number — despite that number having functioned perfectly well beforehand. Customer service representatives offered contradictory explanations. The fallback solution was supposed to be a physical card reader for secure logins. I requested one repeatedly. Nothing arrived for months. Then, in early May, a representative informed me that NatWest apparently was not mailing card readers to Israel, either.
On a visit to London, I went to a branch, where they offered no explanations; they put me on the phone with customer service, where the agent repeated that they were no longer engaging in contact with Israeli phone numbers or addresses, due to “war tensions.” So I emailed every executive I could find to ask, directly, if the bank was boycotting Israel.
After lengthy exchanges, I was told that Israeli access was removed earlier in the year. The bank insisted the restrictions were not political and not specific to Israel, but rather part of broader fraud prevention measures. So I asked which other countries were affected. This, the bank refused to answer.
On its own, this could still be dismissed as another case of corporate opacity mixed with bureaucratic risk aversion. (Eventually, a physical card reader did make its way to me, still with no clear explanation for the delay.) But it was not the first strange interaction I had experienced.
In early 2024, I ordered a novel from Amazon. The book arrived at my home in Tel Aviv damaged and obviously used, despite being sold as new. Customer service initially handled the issue professionally, immediately agreeing to replace the order. Then I provided my address. There was silence.
“I see this address is not on the map,” the representative finally said. “I only see Palestine.” Then the line disconnected.
An alarming interaction, but the representative was expressing a personal political view, not enforcing corporate policy. What proved more revealing was Amazon’s institutional indifference afterward. Despite repeated inquiries to the company’s press office, I never received a clear decrial of the customer service representative’s actions. The issue simply disappeared into a bureaucratic void.
That sorry episode was felicitous in a way: It inspired my first op-ed for the Forward.
Then came British Airways.
After BA canceled flights between Tel Aviv and London in 2025 following a Houthi missile strike near Ben-Gurion Airport, my wife and I scrambled to reconstruct an itinerary at enormous personal expense. Wars disrupt aviation. That part was understandable.
What followed afterward was not. Months passed in a maze of contradictory responses, partial refunds, bureaucratic evasions and compensation offers so absurd that they bordered on parody. Only after I contacted the airline’s press office identifying myself as a journalist did the company suddenly rediscover the ability to communicate. Even then, the process remained exhausting and opaque. We were compensated perhaps a third the value of the ticket lost, with no apology whatsoever.
None of these incidents independently prove anti-Israel discrimination. Banks mistreat customers. Airlines fail passengers. Customer service departments malfunction. Yet together they illustrate a kind of new atmosphere for Israelis.
The most profound sign of that atmosphere has come in academia. As a new report by the Technion documents, what was once an academic boycott of Israel evolved from highly visible protests toward a more diffuse climate of exclusion.
Jewish students in Sweden reported hiding their identities in academic environments. British surveys found that roughly one in five students said they would not want to live with a Jewish roommate. Canadian campus activism increasingly moved from symbolic rhetoric toward operational demands for universities to sever ties with Israeli institutions and withdraw investments.
My friend Bar Harel experienced this personally at Portugal’s University of Coimbra. After complaining about antisemitic graffiti, pro-Hamas and Hezbollah imagery, and slogans such as “No Jews wanted” around campus, Harel became a target. He was threatened online, publicly vilified, physically assaulted near campus and told his family “should burn in a second Holocaust.”
University authorities largely deflected responsibility. Only after he fled Portugal at the advice of Israeli and American diplomats did the state ombudsman finally issue a report that said the university had adopted a “posture of fundamental passivity” in response to his harassment, failing to investigate despite clear evidence.
In business and academia alike, organizations don’t need to announce formal sanctions to change Israeli experience. They simply begin treating Israel operationally troublesome.
Does all this come from antisemitism — or is it a form of quiet protest against Israel’s brutality during the past years’ wars, or the indefensible situation in the West Bank? Does it relate to the current right-wing government — and if so, is it fixable should the moderate opposition return to power?
I do not have definitive answers, and there’s probably a mix of reasons. But it is clear that Israelis are losing the global narrative with astounding speed, and unless this is countered, more formal boycotts are on the way.
The post Israelis are experiencing a new kind of international boycott appeared first on The Forward.
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Graham Platner drops out of Maine Senate race, citing push to ‘end the genocide’ in parting message
(JTA) — Maine Democrat Graham Platner announced Wednesday evening that he will drop out of the U.S. Senate race following new allegations that he had committed sexual assault.
“We believe that for the movement to continue, it can’t be me, and for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” he said.
Platner’s withdrawal came two days after Politico reported that a former girlfriend had accused him of entering her home uninvited about five years ago and forcing her to have sex with him.
“All we were asking for was healthcare, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas,” Platner said in a Facebook address announcing his exit. He denied the allegations against him in the address, adding that a “corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner.”
The allegations were the latest in a series of controversies that have hit Platner’s campaign, including his since-covered-up Nazi tattoo, unearthed Reddit posts and other reports about his behavior toward women.
Platner, who won his Democratic primary in June on an anti-Israel progressive platform, denied the fresh allegations, telling Politico that “any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”
But the report prompted a rapid collapse in support for Platner among Democratic leaders, progressive allies and organizations that had backed his bid to beat GOP Sen. Susan Collins. It also sparked a scramble among Maine Democrats to find a different nominee ahead of the July 27 deadline for a replacement to appear on the ballot.
On Wednesday, the Maine Democratic Party announced that they had voted to hold a nominating convention to fill Platner’s vacancy.
“There is an unprecedented amount of energy and enthusiasm among Maine Democrats, driven in part by many of the dedicated volunteers and supporters who were inspired by Graham Platner’s campaign,” the party said in a statement. “We look forward to coming together and harnessing that energy around our new nominee as we work to defeat Susan Collins in November.”
The state Democratic Party leadership called on Platner to withdraw as the Democratic nominee on Monday, adding that the party needed to “refocus this campaign” on the fight against GOP Sen. Susan Collins. The seat is key to Democratic hopes of taking back the Senate.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of Platner’s most high-profile supporters, as well as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also called for Platner to step aside on Tuesday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who initially backed Platner’s opponent before she dropped out, had said in a joint statement with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee “will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”
The post Graham Platner drops out of Maine Senate race, citing push to ‘end the genocide’ in parting message appeared first on The Forward.
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Rahm Emanuel: Democrats who support Israel can still lead the party to the White House
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Pausing as he looked out at the packed hall at Tel Aviv University, Rahm Emanuel offered his audience a warning about what he was about to say.
“Hold your applause, because you may not like this,” he said, before laying out his proposal for U.S. sanctions targeting Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and property, Israeli officials who voice support for that violence, and companies and banks that support “illegal settlements.”
The crowd applauded anyway — three separate times.
Under a 2017 law, Israel bars foreign nationals who publicly call for boycotts of Israel or its settlements from entering the country. Emanuel issued his call for sanctions from a stage in Tel Aviv, a measure of how far Democratic politics on Israel have shifted since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Widely viewed as a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, Emanuel, a former congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan, and one of the most prominent Jewish figures in American politics, arrived in Israel on Sunday. His speech Wednesday afternoon, billed as “An Honest Conversation: The U.S.-Israel Relationship, Where It Stands Today and The Road Ahead,” was the keynote of the visit, and was meant to signal the need for a “fundamentally new and different approach” to the U.S.-Israel alliance, as he put it.
Whether Emanuel’s critique will land with the Israeli establishment, or with the ruling coalition, remains to be seen. Emanuel made a point of avoiding Israel’s elected officials during his visit, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he did not want to interfere with elections set for the fall. He did meet with President Isaac Herzog, who is appointed by the government, as well as visit hospitals in Tel Aviv and Nablus that partner with each other.
But it was clear that it was resonating with attendees. Moti Porath told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believed Emanuel correctly diagnosed the ailment at the heart of the Israeli government, a leader who has become an outcast abroad but remains too skilled a politician to easily dislodge.
Porath, who splits his time between Newton, Massachusetts, and Tel Aviv, and who attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the same time as Netanyahu, said he recognizes the prime minister as a singularly talented political operator. “He’s a fantastic politician,” Porath said. “Maybe he’s a manipulator.”
To the attendees who spoke with JTA, Emanuel’s message was not anti-Israel but pro-Israel, in Porath’s telling, what a good friend is obligated to do when the other is acting out of line. Emanuel put it similarly from the stage, “True friends tell each other the truth.”
Porath said he hopes the United States and Israel can once again find “a common political vision,” but that doing so will require tough love from America’s next president.
The event was hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of the United States and moderated by its founding director, Yoav Fromer, alongside Yael Sternhell, the professor who heads the university’s American studies program. Organizers solicited questions from students in advance and said more than 100 were submitted.
But with a university audience likely to skew liberal, attendee Yoam Barash said the program would have benefited from a right-wing voice to push back on Emanuel’s comments, since most Israeli voters lean right. A February poll by the Midgam Institute for Israel’s Channel 12 news found 68% of veteran voters and 75% of those voting for the first time identify as right-wing. “Why didn’t they bring somebody from the right?” Barash asked.
Barash is the uncle of Daniel Barash, a managing director at the public affairs firm SKDK who helped organize the event He attended with Hannah Winkler, a friend from his army days and now a doctor in the Tel Aviv area. She said she pins her hope not on the U.S.-Israel alliance but on a left-wing victory in the upcoming elections. “Without that, I have no hope,” she said.
Told that some attendees had wanted a more politically diverse lineup, Fromer defended the format. “This is academia,” he said. “The goals here are very different than they would be on a political panel.”
At the same time, Fromer echoed the attendees’ view that Emanuel’s message was that of a friend rather than an adversary. “To say to someone, look, I’m trying to save you, if you don’t change your behavior, you’re going to self-destruct — that’s someone who cares,” he said.
The stakes, in his telling, are high for Israel and for the university. “Israelis have become pariahs. We used to be admired, the most admired,” he said, echoing Emanuel’s own warning from the stage that Israel’s leadership has turned it into a “territorial pariah.”
The damage is not merely reputational, he argued. “It’s not just feeling bad. It has practical implications,” he said, speculating about investment and capital that will stop flowing, students and tourists who will stop coming, Israelis who will lose their jobs.
During the anti-Israel protests that swept U.S. campuses in 2023 and 2024, ties with Israeli universities, including Tel Aviv University, were frequent targets of divestment demands. Emanuel himself warned in his speech that Israel’s scientists face exclusion from international research networks and that its artists and academics are being shut out of exhibits and conferences.
Inside the hall, at least, the message was received. “Most of the people in this room are quite sympathetic to what you have to say,” Barash told Emanuel on stage. “That is not the case across Israel.”
The post Rahm Emanuel: Democrats who support Israel can still lead the party to the White House appeared first on The Forward.
