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Black Jews seek renewed solidarity to fight hate after Bondi Beach
In the backlash against Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack, many American Jews put away Stars of David or avoided wearing yarmulkes in public, fearing they would be targeted in antisemitic violence. The burgeoning anti-Zionist protests on the left, coupled with emboldened right-wing antisemitism during the Trump years, shattered a sense of security that many Jews believed they had finally achieved in America.
But with antisemitism showing no sign of abating — most horrifically in the deadly Hanukkah attack at Bondi Beach in Australia on Sunday — the reticence among Jews to express their identity may be dissipating.
That renewed sense of empowerment and pride — even at some risk to personal safety — may open an opportunity to renew alliances with others committed to combating hate. Shoshana Brown, the co-founder of the Black Jewish Liberation Collective, says she would welcome the return of a Civil Rights Movement–style partnership between her Black and Jewish communities.
“The only people who reached out directly to me after Bondi Beach were two African American Muslim women who I have been doing anti-Islamophobia and anti-antisemitism work alongside of for over two years now,” Brown said.
In that time, mainstream Jewish organizations and white Jews generally (or “white-presenting,” since in recent years the idea of Jews as white is itself being re-examined) have focused on antisemitism to the exclusion of other anti-hate work, she said.
“They were all in for anti-Black racism and George Floyd and all that. But as soon as Oct. 7 happened, all the money, all the resources, everything turned to fighting antisemitism,” she said. “It’s like white Jews can’t walk and chew gum.”
Brown and other Black Jews point out that unlike their white sistren and brethren, they do not have the option of hiding their identity from those intent on spreading hate — with people who would attack Jews likely to be the same as those who would target Black people.
“I’m a woman, I’m Black, I’m an immigrant. I have an accent. Being a Jew is the least of my problems,” said longtime Boston publicist Colette Phillips.
Phillips, who converted to Judaism not long before the 2023 attack. “I wear my Magen David because I did not become Jewish to hide my Judaism,” she said using the Hebrew term for Star of David, adding, “If people have a problem with that, so be it.”
She too has noticed a re-embracing of Jewish identity, if only in a sampling of one.
“As a matter of fact, today, my fiancé — he happens to be white, Ashkenazi Jewish — wore his kippah, because, he said, ‘Look, you’re wearing your Magen David out.’”
Although there is no shortage of evidence that antisemitism has been rising in recent years, starkly in the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue murders in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally, it remains difficult to measure precisely. Even the definition of what constitutes an antisemitic attack has been fiercely debated, with some arguing that protests against Zionism or Israel’s war in Gaza are not attacks on Jews for being Jewish.
And Jews find themselves on each side of that divide, with organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace among the strongest critics of Israel.
Brown said the split is also reflected in how Jews respond to adversity, with some anti-Zionist Jews nonetheless embracing their religiosity as others sought to hide it.
“I actually have seen that part of the Jewish community dig deeper into their Jewish roots,” she said. “More people wanting to be rabbis, more people wanting to do Torah study, more people wearing a kippah, more people looking to Jewish practice in hopes of finding interpretations” supporting their activism.
If antisemitism is difficult to measure, there is one constant regardless of how much it has increased: There was never a time it did not exist in America.
The same is true of racism.
Nicky McCatty, who has experienced both racism and antisemitism as a Black Jew, was a longtime Boston area resident before moving back to his childhood home of Brooklyn at the start of the pandemic.
There, he said, he noticed white people were no longer crossing the street as he walked toward them on the sidewalk. Maybe New Yorkers weren’t as racist.
Then he realized he was now using a walker, making his six-foot frame look more like five-six — meaning he was no longer the stereotypical scary Black man.
“I might not be catching some of the stuff that I otherwise would if I still looked like a strong 50-year-old,” said McCatty, who is 73 and wears a hamsa necklace and can hardly conceal his Blackness.
Like antisemitism, racism hadn’t gone away. And he wasn’t hiding anything.
The post Black Jews seek renewed solidarity to fight hate after Bondi Beach appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Expands US Travel Ban to Include Syria, Palestinian Territories Due to Security Concerns
US President Donald Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, Washington, DC, US, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced sweeping new restrictions that will bar individuals with Palestinian Authority–issued travel documents along with all Syrian nationals from entering the United States, citing persistent security, vetting, and identity-verification failures.
The White House released a fact sheet explaining that nationals from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and South Sudan will also be denied entry. Trump administration officials framed the move as a response to what they described as systemic deficiencies in governance, cooperation, and counterterrorism controls.
“The restrictions and limitations imposed by the proclamation are necessary to prevent the entry of foreign nationals about whom the United States lacks sufficient information to assess the risks they pose, garner cooperation from foreign governments, enforce our immigration laws, and advance other important foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism objectives,” the fact sheet said.
The proclamation places Palestinian Authority travel papers in the same category as documents issued by states deemed unable or unwilling to meet minimum US security standards.
“Several US-designated terrorist groups operate actively in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and have murdered American citizens. Also, the recent war in these areas likely resulted in compromised vetting and screening abilities,” the fact sheet provided by the administration read.
In explaining its decision, the White House cited the “weak or nonexistent control exercised over these areas” by the Palestinian Authority, arguing that governmental failure to mitigate terrorist threats in these areas have made it impossible to ensure that civilians in the West Bank are “properly vetted and approved for entry into the United States.”
The administration said the decision reflects long-standing concerns raised by US security agencies regarding the lack of reliable civil registries, inconsistent identity verification, and the presence of terrorist networks operating in areas under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. The restrictions are based on documentation and vetting standards rather than ethnicity or religion, underscoring that lawful permanent residents and certain narrowly defined exceptions remain in place.
In addition, the administration has placed an expansive travel ban on Syria, noting that the country is “emerging from a protracted period of civil unrest and internal strife.” The administration also said that the country possesses a high visa overstay rate.
“While the country is working to address its security challenges in close coordination with the United States, Syria still lacks an adequate central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures,” the administration wrote.
The White House has signaled a cautious warming in its relationship with Syria’s new leadership, marked by increased diplomatic engagement. In November, Trump hosted the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, DC, vowing to help Syria as the war-ravaged country struggles to come out of decades of international isolation.
“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful,” Trump told reporters after his White House meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who until recently was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head.
Sharaa led Islamist rebel forces that toppled longtime Syrian autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran, last year. Since taking power, he has sought to depict himself as a moderate leader who wants to unify his country and attract foreign investment to rebuild it after years of civil war. Many foreign leaders and experts have been skeptical of Sharaa, however, questioning whether he is still a jihadist trying to disguise his extremism.
The US has moved to lift many crippling sanctions it had imposed on Syria for years when Assad was in power.
In June, Trump had announced that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from visiting the US and those from seven others would face restrictions. The expansion of the policy announced on Tuesday will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
The White House framed the travel ban expansion as part of the administration’s broader efforts to secure the nation’s borders and minimize threats from malicious foreign actors.
“It is the president’s duty to take action to ensure that those seeking to enter our country will not harm the American people,” the fact sheet read
The administration also emphasized the legality of the act, citing Supreme Court precedent which upheld previous travel bans, ruling that it “is squarely within the scope of presidential authority.”
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At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump said Congress “is becoming antisemitic” and warned about what he said was the fading influence of the “Jewish lobby” and “Israeli lobby” in an address to his Jewish supporters at a White House celebration marking the third night of Hanukkah.
During his remarks, the president also honored the victims of the recent Hanukkah terrorist attack in Australia and joked with his largest Jewish benefactor about her bankrolling a third presidential run prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
“My father would tell me, the most powerful lobby that there is in this country is the Jewish lobby. It is the Israeli lobby,” Trump mused. “It is not that way anymore. You have a lot of people in your way. They don’t want to help Israel.”
Trump celebrated his own Israel policies, including a recent ceasefire agreement brokered with Hamas that returned Israeli hostages from Gaza but has not ended violence in the region. He has vowed to move the ceasefire into its second phase, accounting for Gaza’s postwar governance, in early 2026.
He also warned the room, “You have a Congress in particular which is becoming antisemitic.” He singled out “AOC plus three” — a reference to the progressive House “Squad” led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom Trump says “hates Jewish people.”
Trump also blamed universities for inculcating anti-Israel sentiment, and predicted that Harvard, with which his administration has been embroiled in lengthy settlement talks over antisemitism-related fines, “will pay a lot of money.”
Trump’s audience included Jewish Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Holocaust survivors, and conservative pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson. He brought Adelson to the podium with him, calling her his “number one” financial supporter.
Adelson, in turn, implied that she and pro-Israel legal scholar Alan Dershowitz believed there would be a way to keep Trump in power beyond his two-term limit.
“I met Alan Dershovitz, and he said, ‘The legal thing, about four more years,’ and I said, ‘Alan, I agree with you.’ So, we can do it. Think about it,” Adelson told a smiling Trump as attendees chanted, “Four more years!”
“She said, ‘Think about it, I’ll give you another $250 million,’” Trump quipped.
Early in his remarks, Trump turned to the Bondi Beach massacre at a Chabad-hosted menorah lighting. “Let me take a moment to send the love and prayers to the entire nation, to the people, of Australia and especially all those affected by the horrific and antisemitic terrorist attack — and that is exactly what it is, antisemitic — that took place on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney,” he said. “What a terrible thing. We don’t learn.”
He also reflected on the meaning of the holiday.
“Against overwhelming odds, a small band of Jewish fighters rose up to defend the Jewish people’s right to worship freely,” Trump said. “The miracle of Hanukkah has reminded us of God’s love for the Jewish people, as well as their enduring resilience and faith in the face of centuries of persecution, centuries. And it continues.”
Absent from the Hanukkah party was the White House’s own, first menorah, added to its collection in 2022 under President Biden.
The post At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Australia’s Yiddish community is thriving, not reviving
As a professional translator of Yiddish literature, I was surprised by the characterization of the Australian Jewish community’s connection to the Yiddish language in the recent Forward piece “Australia’s Jewish community is defined by Holocaust survivors, Yiddishkeit and immigrants.”
Australia’s Jewish community has indeed been shaped by the Yiddish language. This is why, when I was a Yiddish Book Center translation fellow, I used the small travel stipend that came with the fellowship to visit Melbourne, the center of Australian Yiddishkayt.
What I was surprised by in the Forward‘s article, (which cites a Vice article from 2019 as its source) was the characterization of Yiddishkayt in Australia as a “revival,” with “young people who view it as a ‘language of protest’ leading the charge.”
What is remarkable about the Melbourne Jewish community’s connection to the Yiddish language is not that it has been revived, but rather that it has been sustained, for over a hundred years, thanks in large part to the role the Jewish Labor Bund has played in shaping the Jewish community of Melbourne. The Kadimah Jewish Cultural Center and Yiddish Library has a name that literally means “forward” in Yiddish and Hebrew. They have been leading the charge for 110 years. The particular young people mentioned in the Forward‘s article are new arrivals.
One might think, reading this piece, that teaching Yiddish as a subject at Sholem Aleichem College was a recent development, rather than the central reason for the founding of the school over 40 years ago, with earlier Bundist-modeled Yiddish-language Sunday schools preceding it.
In addition to Sholem Aleichem college, there is also the SKIF youth group, which Melbournian Bundist families have been sending their children to since 1950. When I visited Melbourne in 2019, I attended SKIF’s annual Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Commemoration, which featured children and teenagers reciting poetry and texts from the Warsaw Ghetto in the original Yiddish, a sharp contrast to the recent Yiddish learners profiled in the Vice article the Forward piece linked to, one of whom had only recently learned that bagel was a Yiddish word.
This is not to shame newer learners of Yiddish. We all have to start somewhere. I welcome everyone, Jewish and not, who decides to learn, but Yiddish is not only a language of protest. It is first and foremost a language of life, one that I hope will continue to be sustained in Australia following this horrific attack.
The post Australia’s Yiddish community is thriving, not reviving appeared first on The Forward.