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As ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’ ends, will its Jewish legacy be more than a punchline?
(JTA) — After five seasons, 20 Emmy awards and plenty of Jewish jokes, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” airs its final episode on Friday.
The lauded Amazon Prime show from Amy Sherman-Palladino has enveloped viewers in a shimmering, candy-colored version of New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s — a world in which “humor” has meant Jewish humor and “culture” has meant Jewish culture.
But as it comes to an end, the show’s Jewish legacy is still up for debate: Did its representation of Jews on mainstream TV make it a pioneer of the 2010s? Or did it do more harm than good in the battle for better representation, by reinforcing decades-old comedic tropes about Jews?
The comedy-drama followed the vivacious Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) on a journey from prim Upper West Side housewife — left in the lurch after her husband has an affair with his secretary — to ambitious, foul-mouthed comic fighting her way through the male-dominated standup comedy industry. Her New York Jewishness colored her jokes, her accent, her mannerisms and much of her daily life.
That’s because the whole landscape of the show was Jewish, from the well-to-do, acculturated intelligentsia (such as Midge’s parents) to the self-made garment factory owners (such as her in-laws). Even the radical Jewish comic Lenny Bruce, a countercultural icon of the midcentury, appeared as a recurring character who propels Midge’s success.
Henry Bial, a professor specializing in performance theory and Jewish popular culture at the University of Kansas, said the emergence of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in 2017 exemplified a shift to more overt portrayals of Jews on TV — especially on streaming services. Although Jewish characters featured in TV shows throughout the 20th century, such as “The Goldbergs” in the 1950s, “Rhoda” in the 1970s and “Seinfeld” in the 1990s, their Jewishness was often more coded than explicit. Network television, seeking to attract the majority of Americans coveted by advertisers, feared alienating audiences who couldn’t “relate” to ethnic and racial minorities.
“If there are only three things you can put on television at 8 o’clock on Tuesday night, then there’s a lot more incentive for networks and advertisers to stay close to the herd, because you’re competing for the same eyeballs,” said Bial. “But when people can watch whatever they want whenever they want, then it opens up for a much wider range of stories.”
Other shows such as “Transparent,” “Broad City” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which debuted in 2014 and 2015, are often cited alongside “Mrs. Maisel” as part of a new wave of Jewish representation.
Riv-Ellen Prell, a professor emerita of American studies at the University of Minnesota, argued that Midge subverts the stereotype of the “Jewish American princess.” At the start of the show, she appears to embrace that image: She is financially dependent on her father and husband and obsessive about her appearance, measuring her body every day to ensure that she doesn’t gain weight. Despite living with her husband for years, she always curls her hair, does her makeup and spritzes herself with perfume before he wakes up.
“She looks for all the world like the fantasy of a Jewish American princess,” said Prell. “And yet she is more ambitious than imaginable, she is a brilliant comic who draws on her own life. You have Amy Sherman-Palladino inventing the anti-Jewish princess.”
Bial said that Midge’s relationship with her Jewishness defies another stereotype: That identity is not a source of neurosis or self-loathing, as it often appears to be in the male archetypes of Woody Allen and Larry David, or in Rachel Bloom’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Through the spirited banter, the pointed exclamations of “oy,” the titillation over a rabbi coming for Yom Kippur break fast — Midge’s Jewishness is a source of comforting ritual, joy and celebration.
“She has anxieties and issues, but none of them are because she’s Jewish,” said Bial.
Some critics argue the show’s depiction of Jewish culture relies on shallow tropes. In a 2019 review, TV critic Paul Brownfield said “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” repurposed stereotypes to appear “retro chic.” He pointed to a consistent contrast between the Weissmans (the assimilated, cultured Jews of the Upper West Side) and the Maisels (the boorish, money-focused Jews of the Garment District), arguing that these superficial types replace an exploration of what the period was actually like for American Jews.
“However ‘Jewish’ Sherman-Palladino wants the show to be, ‘Maisel’ fails to grapple with the realities of the moment in Jewish American history it portrays,” Brownfield wrote. “Which is ultimately what leaves me queasy about its tone — the shtick, the stereotypes, the comforting self-parody.”
Meanwhile, Andy Samberg took a jab while co-hosting the 2019 Golden Globes with Sandra Oh. “It’s the show that makes audiences sit up and say, ‘Wait, is this antisemitic?’” he joked.
Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle, shown in a synagogue scene, are two of the show’s non-Jewish actors. (Nicole Rivelli/Amazon Studios)
Others have criticized the show’s casting: Its titular heroine, her parents Abe and Rose Weissman (Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle) and Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) are all played by non-Jews. A debate over the casting of non-Jewish actors in Jewish roles has heated up in recent years, taking aim not only at Brosnahan as Midge Maisel, but also at Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsberg in “On The Basis of Sex,” Helen Mirren as Golda Meir in “Golda” and Gaby Hoffmann and Jay Duplass as the Pfefferman siblings in “Transparent.” Comedian Sarah Silverman popularized the term “Jewface” to critique the trend.
“Watching a gentile actor portraying, like, a Jew-y Jew is just — agh — feels, like, embarrassing and cringey,” Silverman said on her podcast in 2021.
Midge’s rise as a comedian is interlocked with her ally and one-time fling, the fictionalized Lenny Bruce. His character has a softened glow in the show, but in reality, Bruce was branded a “sick comic” for his scathing satire that railed against conservatism, racism and moral hypocrisy. Between 1961 and 1964, he was charged with violating obscenity laws in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, and he was deported from England. At his Los Angeles trial in 1963, Bruce was accused of using the Yiddish word “shmuck,” taken as an obscenity to mean “penis.” He incorporated the charge into his standup, explaining that the colloquial Jewish meaning of “schmuck” was “fool.”
Driven to pennilessness by relentless prosecution, police harassment and blacklisting from most clubs across the country, he died of a morphine overdose in 1966 at 40 years old. The real Lenny Bruce’s tragedy lends a shadow to the fictional Midge Maisel’s triumphs.
The United States that he struggled with until his death also looks comparatively rosy through the lens of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” whose protagonist battles misogyny but takes little interest in other societal evils — including still-rampant antisemitism. Some critics have noted that she is oblivious to segregated facilities when she tours with Black singer Shy Baldwin, then nearly outs him as gay during her set.
“‘Mrs. Maisel’ takes place in a supersaturated fantasy 1958 New York, one where antisemitism, racism, homophobia and even sexism are barely a whisper,” Rokhl Kafrissen wrote in 2018.
Reflecting on the criticism that had piled up by 2020, Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel Palladino, also an executive producer and a lead writer for the show, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that trying to appease every Jewish viewer was a futile exercise.
“We knew that if we show a Jewish family at temple — if we show them and talk about Yom Kippur and all those kinds of things — there are going to be people who are going to nitpick at specifics that maybe we didn’t get exactly right,” said Palladino, who is not Jewish. “But a lot of the feedback that we’ve gotten has been ‘Thank you. Thank you for leaning into it and showing Jews being Jewish, as opposed to just name checking them as Jewish.’”
Sherman-Palladino added: “[T]here are many different kinds of Jews! To say, ‘oh, Jewish stereotypes,’ well, what are you talking about? Because we have an educated Jew, we have a woman who was happy to be a mother, we have another woman striking out as a stand up comic, and, you know, Susie Myerson’s [Alex Borstein’s character] a Jew! We’ve got a broad range of Jews in there.”
However “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is assessed in the future, it will remain significant for thrusting a new kind of Jewish heroine into the mainstream consciousness, said Bial.
“Because of its popularity, its longevity and frankly its quality, it’s going to be the example,” Bial said. “In the history of Jews and TV, this is going to be the chapter for the late 2010s and early 2020s — you have to mention ‘Mrs. Maisel.’ It is very clearly a landmark in Jewish representation, particularly for Jewish women.”
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Reshaping the Diaspora: Israeli Migration Is Changing Jewish Life Across Europe
Pro-Israel demonstrators gathered at Bebelplatz in central Berlin on Nov. 30, 2025, before marching toward the Brandenburg Gate. Participants held Israeli flags and signs condemning rising antisemitism in Germany. Photo: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Even as antisemitic incidents across Europe reach levels unseen in decades following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Jews and Israelis continue to move to the very cities where Jewish identity feels most fraught — creating an unlikely, though often uneven, pattern of demographic renewal at the heart of today’s Jewish diaspora. It is a quiet shift that persists against all odds: growth where fear might suggest retreat.
Despite an increasingly hostile social and political climate, Jewish life in much of Europe is not shrinking. In some places, it is holding steady — and in others, growing. Indeed, according to recent demographic reports, Israeli immigrant communities in Europe are among the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the world.
In Berlin, Hebrew can be heard on park benches and in co-working spaces. In Amsterdam, Jewish schools report steady enrollment and new Hebrew-speaking parents arriving each semester. In London cafés, Israeli students trade WhatsApp groups for housing and internships, while British Jewish institutions describe newcomers who arrive anxious but eager to build communities. Meanwhile, new Chabad houses continue to open across the continent.
Today, Europe is home to nearly 30 percent of all Israelis living outside the country — roughly 190,000 to 200,000 people — with their population steadily increasing across the continent, according to a report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).
JPR data shows that Israel-born Jews now make up nearly 50 percent of the Jewish population in Norway, 41 percent in Finland, and over 20 percent in Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain, and Denmark.
Over the past decade, the number of Israeli-born Jews has grown significantly in Baltic countries (135 percent), in Ireland (95 percent), in Bulgaria (78 percent), in the Czech Republic (74 percent), in Spain (39 percent), in the Netherlands (36 percent), in Germany (34 percent), and in the UK (27 percent).
Europe today is witnessing both rising antisemitism and a growing presence of Israelis — a dynamic that upends long-held assumptions about Jewish life on the continent and challenges popular narratives about Jewish “safety” and migration in the post-Oct. 7 era. Demographers, Jewish leaders, and recent residents describe a moment defined not by disappearance, but by movement, recalibration, and — in some places — cautious renewal.
“You can really see the growth in recent years,” said Shai Dotish, who lives in Berlin and serves as the director of community development at Israeli Community Europe (ICE) — a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Israeli immigrants in 16 cities across the continent. “Our Shabbat dinners keep getting bigger, services are fuller, events are livelier. You can feel a vibrant, thriving Jewish life across the cities we serve.”
A Post–Oct. 7 Europe Transformed
The paradox is clear: antisemitism has reached levels not seen in decades, yet European Jewish communities are being stabilized — and in some cases subtly grown — by Israeli arrivals. Europe today hosts more Israel-born Jews than ever before, and many are arriving even as hostility rises.
“There’s no denying the risk and rising antisemitism, but Jewish life isn’t shrinking — it’s growing,” Doitsh told The Algemeiner, adding that ICE is even opening new centers in other European countries to meet higher demand for community services.
This quiet influx is unfolding against one of the most challenging climates European Jews have faced in the 21st century.
Governments and Jewish security organizations across the continent have documented a dramatic rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Germany recorded more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents in 2024 — nearly double pre-Oct. 7 levels. While Germany’s Jewish population has grown in some urban centers, the rise in antisemitic crimes has prompted heightened security in schools, synagogues, and community hubs.
In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST) — a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters — recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents from January to June this year. This was the second-highest number of antisemitic crimes ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following 2,019 incidents in the first half of 2024.
Last month, hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators gathered outside St. John’s Woods Synagogue in London to protest the war in Gaza. In widely circulated social media videos, protesters are seen chanting, “We don’t want no two states, Palestine 48,” and “From the river to the sea, Zionism is f– treif.”
France presents a similar pattern. According to the French Interior Ministry, the first six months of 2025 saw more than 640 antisemitic incidents, a 27.5 percent decline from the same period in 2024, but a 112.5 percent increase compared to the first half of 2023, before the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel.
Across the country, Jewish families have reported removing mezuzot, changing children’s school routes, and avoiding synagogues unless armed security is present.
In France, rising antisemitism and economic factors have led to slight declines in the number of Jewish households, particularly in Paris and Marseille. While French Jews continue to live, work, and participate in communal life, emigration to Israel and other European countries slightly outpaces arrivals.
Smaller European nations — including Spain, Belgium, and Central/Eastern European states — have seen modest Israeli migration, sometimes doubling small local communities.
Amid this increasingly fraught climate, Doitsh said a real sense of vulnerability persists, affecting people’s daily lives as community members and families take new precautions about where they go and what they wear.
For the first time in years, ICE-sponsored events across multiple countries have even had to introduce security. He also noted that organizers are changing event locations and keeping addresses private.
“The community is now dealing not only with antisemitism but with violence, hostility, and open hatred. Many people feel unsafe in their daily lives,” Dotish said.
Yet fear has had a counterintuitive effect: strengthening community life.
“Antisemitism has reinforced community ties,” said Professor Sergio DellaPergola, chairman of JPR’s European Demography Unit and a leading scholar of Jewish population studies. “People seek solidarity and connection. When they feel vulnerable, they look for their own community.”
The Truth Behind the Numbers: An Uneven Trend
Though Israeli-born Jewish communities in Europe have grown substantially in recent years, the trend remains complex and uneven throughout the region.
“This is not a moment of large waves of Jewish migration,” Dr. Daniel Staetsky, senior research fellow at JPR, told The Algemeiner. “What we are observing are moderate but meaningful movements, and they vary significantly by country.”
While the total Jewish population in Europe may not be growing substantially in absolute number, its composition is changing dramatically. This shift reflects two interconnected trends: the demographic decline of native European Jews and the rising number of Israeli Jews relocating to the continent. Even modest arrivals can have a significant impact against the backdrop of an aging Jewish population.
“In Western Europe, immigration from Israel has helped stabilize Jewish populations and, in some cases, create slight increases,” DellaPergola told The Algemeiner. “But these increases occur against a background of demographic decline, especially in countries like Germany and Italy, where fertility is very low.”
In other words, Israeli immigration helps keep European Jewish populations stable, masking the underlying decline of “native” communities where low fertility would otherwise shrink the absolute number of Jews.
Western European nations such as Germany and the Netherlands have seen their Jewish numbers bolstered in recent years by Israelis seeking economic opportunities, academic programs, and, paradoxically, a sense of stability.
In Germany, Israeli arrivals are concentrated in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich. Hebrew-language classes and Jewish cultural programming have expanded, stabilizing what would otherwise be a declining population due to low fertility. Security concerns remain elevated, but the communities themselves report renewed energy.
In the Netherlands, slow but steady Israeli immigration helps counterbalance demographic decline. Amsterdam schools, synagogues, and youth programs increasingly rely on this influx.
“Immigration from Israel has played a stabilizing role for countries like the Netherlands,” Staetsky said. “It is not large enough to reverse aging or lower fertility, but it slows decline and creates demographic balance.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s Jewish community has remained largely steady at around 313,000, compared with approximately 300,000–320,000 a decade ago.
According to a 2018 JPR study, high birthrates among Haredi Orthodox Jews are responsible for the recent growth in the number of British Jews after decades of decline. Births in the British Jewish community have reportedly exceeded deaths every year since 2006, implying “Jewish demographic growth in the United Kingdom.”
France’s Jewish population, at roughly 438,500 today, was estimated to be over 500,000 in the mid-2010s — a gradual decline tied in part to emigration and rising antisemitism.
Eastern European Jewish communities, particularly in the Baltics, are also shrinking due to low fertility and ongoing migration, as increasing numbers make aliyah to Israel.
DellaPergola told The Algemeiner that this trend reflects long-term structural factors rather than a sudden ideological shift.
“There is a dynamic flow,” he said. “Many Israelis move to Europe, but simultaneously many European [Jews] move to Israel. You have arrivals and departures, and the result in most countries is relative stability.”
However, DellaPergola also acknowledged that the war in Israel has dramatically altered migration patterns.
In 2024, approximately 80,000 Israelis left the country while only 24,000 returned, creating an unprecedented negative migration balance of almost 58,000 people, according to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics.
“I expect this trend to continue into 2025, marking a second consecutive year of negative migration, something unprecedented,” DellaPergola said.
Some of these emigrants may be responsible for the recent growth of Israeli communities in Europe, according to Staetsky.
Earlier this year, a study by the Israel Democracy Institute found that over one in four Israelis are contemplating leaving the country, pointing to the high cost of living, security and political concerns, and “the lack of a good future for my children” as key factors. Of those considering emigration, the European Union is the top destination (43 percent), surpassing North America and Canada (27 percent).
A Demographic Paradox
Staetsky emphasized that most Jewish migration today is not driven by ideology or fear alone.
“Migration trends reflect a balance of economic and social considerations,” he told The Algemeiner. “People move where they believe opportunity is strongest.”
Europe’s future as a Jewish center is far from assured. Fertility rates across the continent remain low. Political volatility is rising. Trust in public institutions varies sharply by country. For many Israeli families abroad, Europe is not necessarily a permanent destination but part of a global career trajectory.
This uncertainty is not abstract. For some Israelis living in Europe, it has become deeply personal. Take the case of Benjamin Birley — an Israeli Jew living in Rome and a social media influencer — whose experience lays bare the strain many Jews say they now feel in their everyday lives.
Birley came to Italy to pursue a doctoral degree and has spent the past several years there. But he says the climate has shifted sharply, with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict seeping into daily interactions in ways he describes as “unbearable.” Even though he must return to finish his program, he has decided to leave Europe temporarily and go back to Israel “to get some fresh air and breathe.”
“Italy in general has a lot of anti-Israel sentiment,” Birley told The Algemeiner. “There is just a relentless Palestinianism that is always in the media, in the culture, in your local café.”
“If you’re Jewish or Israeli and you’re openly Jewish or Israeli in Italy, you have to be prepared for endless conversations and debate and hostility with random people who literally have no idea what they’re speaking about. And for me that was just not a sustainable way to live,” he said.
DellaPergola cautioned against long-term predictions. “I believe it is not worth making projections given the difficult and uncertain times European Jewish communities are experiencing,” he said.
If there is a takeaway, it is not a grand demographic narrative but a more complex and human one: Israelis and Jews are weighing fear against opportunity, identity against mobility, history against present-day realities. They are choosing Europe not because it is uniquely safe, but because it still offers possibility — even amid threat.
The story of Jews in Europe after Oct. 7 is not retreat. It is one of presence and a quiet reshaping of diaspora patterns in a world where the old certainties no longer hold.
While Europe’s Jewish future remains uncertain, it is being rewritten, not erased.
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Students Form ‘Human Swastika’ at California High School, Post Image With Hitler Quote
Students forming “human swastika.” Photo: Screenshot.
Eight students at Branham High School in the city of San Jose came together last week to form what police described as a “human swastika” on the campus’ football field in another disturbing antisemitic incident at a California K-12 school.
The students captured the moment in a photograph and later posted it to social media, captioning it with a quote by Adolf Hitler.
Authorities in San Jose have launched a hate crime investigation into the incident, according to local media outlets.
School officials denounced the students’ actions.
“Our message to the community is clear: this was a disturbing and unacceptable act of antisemitism,” Branham High School principal Beth Silbergeld said in a statement. “Many in our community were rightly appalled by the image. Personally, I am horrified by this act. Professionally, I am confident that our school community can learn from this moment and emerge stronger and more united.”
According to the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), which supports the local Jewish community,
“This incident did not occur in isolation,” BAJC spokesperson Tali Klima told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “Over the past two years, we have seen a troubling pattern in which Jews are increasingly demonized and targeted. While the circumstances differ from those of Nazi Germany, the common thread is the deliberate spread of harmful narratives.”
Klima continued, “The fact that eight students felt emboldened to engage in this hateful behavior on campus (and then post publicly) reflects an educational environment that has allowed extremist political agendas which are blatantly antisemitic into our schools. The district and state must take decisive action to restore a climate of tolerance, respect, and inclusion for Jewish students and the broader community.”
California’s state government recently approved legislation for combating K-12 antisemitism which called for establishing a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools, appointing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and barring antisemitic materials from the classroom.
State lawmakers introduced the measure, also known as Assembly Bill (AB) 715, in the California legislature following a rise in antisemitic incidents, including vandalism and assault. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints about discrimination and tacitly approved hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School (BUSD), for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In September 2023, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Hitler.
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the ADL. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
California is not alone in dealing with the issue. Pennsylvania has a significant K-12 antisemitism problem as well, a fact acknowledged recently by a surrogate of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro following Congress announcing an investigation into antisemitism in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and a disturbing anti-Israel statement at a high school in the Wissahickon School District.
“Governor Shapiro takes a back seat to no one on these issues, and as he has repeatedly spoken out about antisemitism, and this kind of hateful rhetoric is unacceptable and has no place in Pennsylvania — especially not in our classrooms,” Rosie Lapowsky, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital. “This is a matter the governor has made clear the district needs to take very seriously.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Groups Slam Basque Government for Honoring Anti-Israel UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Jewish communities in Spain and France have condemned the Basque government’s decision to award UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese a human rights honor, citing her long record of making antisemitic remarks, promoting anti-Jewish hatred, and seemingly legitimizing Hamas’s terrorist attacks on the Jewish state.
Last week, the government of the Basque Region in northern Spain announced that Albanese will receive the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Award, named after French Jewish human rights and Zionist activist René Cassin – author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Through her work at the United Nations, Francesca Albanese has played a key role in exposing human rights violations, challenging impunity, and advocating for the effective enforcement of international norms that protect people in conflict and occupied territories,” the announcement read.
Albanese’s work “is marked by legal rigor, independent judgment, and a strong ethical commitment that should guide all those working to uphold human rights on the international stage,” it continued.
In a joint statement on Monday, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) denounced the decision, arguing it undermines the principles that Cassin stood for.
“René Cassin, author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and fervent defender of justice, held an unwavering commitment to peace, human dignity, and the right of the Jewish people to live in security,” the statement read.
“Awarding this prize to Ms. Albanese constitutes a distortion of Cassin’s legacy and a serious misunderstanding of the values of human rights,” it continued.
Communiqué conjoint – La Fédération des Communautés Juives d’Espagne @fcjecom et le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (Crif) expriment leur profond désaccord avec l’attribution, par le Gouvernement basque, du Prix René Cassin 2025 des droits de l’Homme à…
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) December 5, 2025
Albanese is set to receive the award at a ceremony on Wednesday in Bilbao, a city in northern Spain.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) also condemned the Spanish government’s decision, voicing support for the Jewish communities in Spain and France and calling the move “deeply troubling.”
“Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric,” WJC posted on X.
The Basque Government’s decision to award the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Prize to Francesca Albanese is deeply troubling. Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric.
We support… https://t.co/ZT5QfOgzpa
— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) December 5, 2025
Despite objections from several governments including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as numerous NGOs, Albanese was reappointed earlier this year for a three-year term amid concerns about her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.
She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the UN launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”