(New York Jewish Week) — Greenpoint, Brooklyn is known for many things: its extensive waterfront, a tight-knit Polish community and a vibrant arts scene.

One thing it’s not known for: a thriving Jewish community. But that’s rapidly changing.

The Greenpoint Shul — North Brooklyn’s only non-Haredi, brick-and-mortar synagogue — is today home to some 100 member families. That’s twice as many members as just 16 months ago, according to Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, who has led the community since August 2024.

The congregation is looking to future generations, too: This school year, the Orthodox congregation officially added a Hebrew school serving some 30 children in grades kindergarten through 8. The school provides Jewish families an alternative to the only other option in the area, the Hebrew school that’s run by Chabad of North Brooklyn in nearby Williamsburg.

“I know the power and importance of having a youth department and it being a core pillar of building a thriving and growing community,” said Rothstein, who was previously the youth director at Young Israel of Stamford, Connecticut before assuming the helm of the Greenpoint Shul.

The Hebrew school was initially founded in 2019 by Yoni Kretzmer and his wife, artist Avital Burg, who are members of the synagogue and the parents of three children ages 8, 4 and 2. For five years, the school operated independently but borrowed the space inside the synagogue. As of this academic year, the school was officially “adopted” by the shul, which did not have a Hebrew school of its own.

“We saw that there’s nothing happening in North Brooklyn,” Yoni Kretzmer, who moved to Greenpoint from Israel with his wife in 2015, said of the local Jewish education scene. “So that was basically it — we started because we thought it was possible.”

Six years later, Kretzmer is now employed by the Greenpoint Shul, where one benefit he has seen so far is getting to exchange ideas with the rabbinic leadership team. He no longer has to independently collect tuition from parents, and he can provide students with supplies and snacks directly purchased from the synagogue budget.

“The way that we can present it now is as part of a much larger structure,” Kretzmer said. “When people [are] joining, they’re not only feeling that we’re using the shul, but that they’re part of a community center in the fullest meaning of the word.”

He added, “Now I can really be a teacher and the organizer, but I don’t have to be the accountant.”

With a focus on Torah and art, the school opened with about a dozen students — split into two groups, with Kretzmer teaching the older students, and Burg teaching the younger students — and grew via word of mouth. “It was mainly parents who brought other parents,” Kretzmer said. “So the connections were kind of within the neighborhood, of people who knew each other.”

The new school bucks multiple trends. Across the country, supplementary Jewish school enrollment is down by nearly half over the last two decades, a recent study found, and many of those that remain have reduced the number of days they operate. The Greenpoint Shul’s school holds classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though different children attend each day.

While enrollment declined early in the pandemic, “once it was deemed safe to return, then it really started growing,” said Kretzmer, who is now the youth director at Greenpoint Shul.

One recent arrival is Andrew Altfest, who moved to nearby Williamsburg in 2014 and enrolled his 5-year-old son, Alden, last year.

“We really like the values that are being taught,” said Altfest, a financial advisor who grew up Reform. “Those values, they range from everything: learning Torah stories, Jewish culture, ethics. And we value the diversity of the families of the kids that are there.”

Like so many parts of Brooklyn, Greenpoint has seen a wave of gentrification and development in recent decades. In Greenpoint, this change was spurred, in part, by a massive rezoning along the neighborhood’s once-derelict waterfront in 2005. While there is no reliable data on the neighborhood’s Jewish population — studies often lump Greenpoint with Williamsburg, which is home to a sizable Hasidic community — locals believe the number of Jews in Greenpoint has grown in recent years.

“Greenpoint is not a famously Jewish neighborhood in New York City,” said Greenpoint Shul president Daphne Lasky. “I think there are other things other than Jewish community that sometimes draw people to Greenpoint: the waterfront location, the scale of the buildings. There’s so much creative energy in the neighborhood. But then you end up with Jewish families who have those interests and they also want to come together around their Jewish life as well.”

As such, other Jewish institutions have grown to meet the needs of the area’s Jewish community. The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life, a Jewish cultural and events hub funded by UJA-Federartion of New York, was founded in 2022 expressly to serve Jews in both central and northern Brooklyn.

“We feel there’s a really significant demand,” said Neighborhood director Rebecca Guber. “Part of it, which is kind of hard to wrap your head around, is that in North Brooklyn, the only Jewish infrastructure is Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, and that’s just not serving all members of the community.”

For now, at least, The Neighborhood does not have a physical space.

The Greenpoint Shul, meanwhile, has a long history in the neighborhood. Founded at the turn of the last century by German-Jewish immigrants as Congregation Ahavas Israel, the synagogue is in a landmarked Romanesque Revival building at 108 Noble Street whose cornerstone was laid in 1903. Today’s Greenpoint Shul is the result of multiple mergers between two neighboring Reform congregations and one Orthodox synagogue. Its prayer service is Orthodox; women sit upstairs in the balcony while men sit downstairs for prayer services. But the community is multicultural, multiracial and welcoming of all backgrounds, including many members who have recently converted to Judaism. While Orthodox families are likely to send their children to day schools and yeshivas, the Hebrew school is geared toward “children of all ages and backgrounds,” according to its web site.

“The congregation has gone through a lot of changes and growth — and shrinking and growing again — over the last 140 years,” Lasky said. “In particular, in the last 25 years or so, as Greenpoint has had its own renaissance as a neighborhood, there’s been more and more families moving into the neighborhood that need Jewish education for their children and Jewish connection for their children.”

Because of the new, formal relationship between the school and the shul, Rothstein said he’s already seen interest from prospective parents who would like to enroll their kids in the program next year. But the growth of a community isn’t just measured in sheer numbers — Rothstein added that, as a result of the Hebrew school, youth attendance at recent Sukkot and holiday events increased this year.

“We’ve seen, already, crossover, where it’s a pipeline to deeper engagement,” Rothstein said.

The post As Greenpoint’s Jewish community grows, so does this shul’s Hebrew school appeared first on The Forward.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, confirmed that most of Iran’s enriched uranium survived the 12-day war with Israel in June and remains stored in damaged nuclear facilities, contradicting earlier reports of the strikes’ impact.

In an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said the agency’s new findings indicate that “the majority” of Iran’s enriched uranium “remains in the nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Fordow, and some in Natanz.”

Earlier this year, Israel, with support from the United States, carried out a large-scale military strike against the Islamist regime in Tehran, targeting three critical nuclear enrichment sites, including the heavily fortified Fordow facility.

According to Grossi, the three facilities were “massively damaged” in the strikes, restricting the IAEA’s access to them — and the enriched uranium inside — without “Iran’s full cooperation.”

“This will only happen if Iran sees it as a national interest,” he told NZZ.

However, Grossi’s latest assessment appears to somewhat contradict earlier reports from the White House, which claimed Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated” and its nuclear program set back by years. US and Israeli intelligence reports have indicated the Iranian program could be set back anywhere from one or two to “several” years.

After the 12-day war with Israel, Iran halted its cooperation with the IAEA, accusing the agency of failing to firmly condemn the Israeli and US strikes.

On Monday, Tehran confirmed it ended the cooperation deal signed with the IAEA in September — which had allowed the agency to resume inspections of its nuclear sites — after Western powers reinstated UN sanctions last month.

This past weekend, Iranian officials also announced that the country is no longer party to the 2015 nuclear deal, under which economic sanctions were lifted in exchange for limits on Tehran’s nuclear program, following the deal’s expiration on Saturday.

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, “all provisions [of the 2015 nuclear deal], including the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and the related mechanisms, are now considered terminated.”

Still, the regime emphasized that the country “firmly expresses its commitment to diplomacy.”

After several rounds of nuclear talks failed to yield any results, Britain, Germany, and France activated the so-called “snapback” mechanism, leading to the reimposition of UN sanctions.

However, the three European powers — all parties to the 2015 nuclear deal — announced last week that they would still pursue efforts to restart talks aimed at finding a “comprehensive, durable, and verifiable agreement.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected such efforts, saying that Tehran did “not see any reason to negotiate” with Western powers once sanctions were reimposed

Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei mocked US President Donald Trump for claiming that he had destroyed the country’s nuclear facilities with his airstrike campaign in June.

“The US president proudly says they bombed and destroyed Iran’s nuclear industry. Very well, keep dreaming!” the Iranian leader said on Monday.

Khamenei also dismissed Trump’s proposal to resume nuclear negotiations, insisting that Iran had no interest in engaging under such conditions.

“Trump says he is a dealmaker, but if a deal is accompanied by coercion and its outcome is predetermined, it is not a deal but rather an imposition and bullying,” Khamenei said.

“What does it have to do with America whether Iran has nuclear facilities or not? These interventions are inappropriate, wrong, and coercive,” he continued.

Despite Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes rather than weapons development, Western powers have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”

People walk on the campus of Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban

Northwestern University in Illinois is being sued for teaching its students and staff not to indulge or promote antisemitism, according to a new lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The action comes several weeks after the university paused course enrollment for an unspecified number of students who refused to participate in anti-discrimination seminars which emphasized antisemitism prevention. In a statement to The Algemeiner, Northwestern said the students had advanced notice that their declining to complete the course, as well as other “mandatory student trainings,” in a manner consistent with “the policy on Discrimination, Harassment, and Sexual Misconduct,” would precipitate “action, including a registration hold.”

CAIR, acting on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group, argues that the course violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and accuses Northwestern University of holding it as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”

The argument castigates a training video featured in the course while appearing to suggest that the behavior perpetrated by anti-Israel activists that Jewish civil rights groups have aimed to stop — such as beating up Jewish students, calling for their deaths, and advocating the destruction of their ancient homeland by terrorists — is inherent to both Palestinian and Arab culture.

“Northwestern coerced many of its students into … watching the JUF video by placing a hold on the registration of students who did not,” the suit states, disparaging the group which produced the video, Jewish United Fund, as being founded to promote censorship. “These policies and practices discriminate against the university’s Palestinian and other Arab students by branding their ethnic and religious identities, cultures, and advocacy for the rights of their national group as antisemitic and subject to discipline.”

On Monday Jewish civil rights advocates said that CAIR’s lawsuit is meritless, arguing it undermines the spirit of the Civil Rights Act.

“CAIR’s lawsuit is not a civil rights case. On the contrary, it’s an attack on civil rights enforcement,” said Lisa Fields, national chair of Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) and parent of a Northwestern student. “Northwestern’s antisemitism training was developed to protect Jewish students after years of escalating harassment. The complaint – which argues that teaching students about antisemitism violates the Civil Rights Act – illustrates how litigation is being used to intimidate universities into silence.”

She added, “This is precisely why Northwestern needs independent federal oversight. Jewish students deserve safety and equal protection, not legal challenges that undermine the fight against antisemitism.”

“The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Graduate Workers for Palestine at Northwestern University, which alleges that mandatory antisemitism training constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” said StopAntisemitism, a civil rights nonprofit. “We wish we were kidding.”

CAIR’s activity in the US has prompted a storm of controversy, as previously reported by The Algemeiner. In September, US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) exposed materials which CAIR distributes in its local activism — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — to spread its beliefs. Some of it attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.

Additionally, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CAIR’s chapter in Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians. In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”

Northwestern University’s handling of antisemitism after Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel continues to be investigated by the federal government, which recently impounded $790 million worth of taxpayer funds previously appropriated to it, for potential civil rights violations. In response to public concern, Northwestern earlier this year issued a report detailing its enactment of a checklist of policies it said has meaningfully addressed campus antisemitism.

“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the university said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”

Northwestern added that it adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and instituted the “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions for “all students, faculty, and staff” that CAIR aims to abolish.

Jewish Northwestern students continue to report experiencing antisemitism at alarming rates. According to a Spring Campus Poll conducted by The Daily Northwestern, the school’s official campus newspaper, 58 percent of Jewish students reported being subjected to antisemitism or knowing someone who has. An even higher 63.1 percent said antisemitism remains a “somewhat or very serious problem.”

At the time, Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a coalition of hundreds of organizations that fight anti-Jewish bigotry around the world, charged that the results show that the university has more to do to establish equality for all students.

“Yes, the university has reformed policies, implemented trainings, and adopted new definitions. It has pledged transparency and accountability — and some of those measures are meaningful,” the organization said. “But the reality remains: Jewish students continue to feel unsafe, and a majority still see antisemitism as a serious, unresolved issue.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.