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Book bans, Ukraine and the end of Roe: The year 2022 in Jewish ideas
(JTA) — Jewish eras can be defined by events (the fall of the Second Temple, the Inquisition, the founding of Israel) and by ideas (the rabbinic era, emancipation, post-denominationalism). A community reveals itself in the things it argues about most passionately.
It’s too early to tell what ideas will define this era, although a look back at the big debates of 2022 suggests Jews in North America will be discussing a few issues for a long time: the resurgence of antisemitism, the boundaries of free speech, the red/blue culture wars.
Below are eight of some of the key debates of the past year as (mostly) reflected in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s opinion section (which I have a hand in editing). They suggest, above all, a community anxious about its standing in the American body politic despite its strength and self-confidence.
Antisemitism and the Black-Jewish alliance
The rapper Kanye West spread canards about Jews and power. Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving shared an antisemitic film on Twitter. And comedian Dave Chappelle made light of both incidents on “Saturday Night Live,” suggesting comics like him had more to fear from cancellation than Jews did from rising antisemitism. The central roles played in these controversies by three African-American celebrities revived longstanding tensions between two communities who haven’t been able to count on their historic ties since the end of the civil rights era. The war of words was particularly vexing for Jews of color, like the rabbi known as MaNishtana and Rabbi Kendell Pinkney — who wondered whether “my mixed Jewish child will grow up in an America where she feels compelled to closet aspects of her identity because society cannot hold the wonder of her complexity.”
Jewish attitudes toward Ukraine
Russia’s war on Ukraine stirred up complex feelings among Jews. It led to an outpouring of support for the innocents caught up in or sent fleeing by Russia’s invasion, and the Jewish president who became their symbol of defiance. It reinvigorated a Jewish rescue apparatus that seemed to have been in hibernation for years. And it probed Jews’ memories of their own historic suffering in Ukraine, often at the hands of the ancestors of those now under attack.
Jews and the end of Roe v. Wade
In June the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade. It was an unthinkable outcome for liberal Jewish activists, women especially, who for 50 years and more had regarded the right to an abortion as integral to their Jewish identity and political worldview. Before the decision came down, Jewish studies scholar Michael Raucher questioned long-held Jewish organizational views that justified abortion only on the narrowest of religious grounds without acknowledging that women “have the bodily autonomy to make that decision on their own.” Conversely, Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel of America welcomed the end of Roe on behalf of his haredi Orthodox organization, writing that the rabbis “who guide us indisputably hold that, absent extraordinary circumstances, terminating a pregnancy is a grave sin.” Responding to Shafran, Daphne Lazar Price, an Orthodox Jewish feminist, argued that even in her stringently religious community, getting an abortion is a “conscious choice by women to follow their religious convictions and maintain their human dignity.”
Colleyville and synagogue safety
A police chaplain walks near the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas Jan. 15, 2022. (Andy Jacobsohn/AFP via Getty Images)
After a gunman held a rabbi and three congregants hostage at a Colleyville, Texas synagogue in January, Jewish institutions called for even tighter security at buildings that had already been hardened after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018. And yet for some, the sight of armed guards and locked doors undermines the spirit of a house of worship. Raphael Magarik of the University of Illinois Chicago argued that the Colleyville incident shouldn’t lead to an overreaction, especially when congregations are struggling to come back together after the pandemic. Rabbi Joshua Ladon warned about the “impulse to allow fear to define our actions.” Meanwhile, Jews of color said armed guards and police patrols can make them feel unsafe. In a powerful response, Mijal Bitton and Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein of the Shalom Hartman Center wrote that Jewish institutions must think in “expansive and creative ways about how to fight for our combined safety in a way that takes into account the rich ethnic and racial diversity of our communities.”
Anti-Zionism, antisemitism and “Jew-free zones”
When nine student groups at UC Berkeley’s law school adopted by-laws saying that they will not invite speakers who support Zionism, the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles ran an op-ed with the provocative headline, “Berkeley Develops Jewish Free Zones.” In the essay, Kenneth L. Marcus, who heads the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, argued that “Zionism is an integral aspect of the identity of many Jews,” and that the bylaws act as “racially restrictive covenants,” precluding Jewish participation. Defenders of the pro-Palestinian students countered that groups often invite only like-minded speakers, and that while being Jewish is an identity, Zionism is a political viewpoint. Faculty, politicians and activists weighed in on both sides of what has become a central debate on campuses and beyond: When does anti-Zionism become antisemitism, and how do you balance free speech rights against the claims by some students that their personal safety hangs in the balance?
“Maus” and school book bans
A Tennessee school board voted to remove “Maus” — Art Speigelman’s epic cartoon memoir about the Holocaust — from middle-school classrooms. (JTA photo)
Caught up in an epidemic of book-banning were Jewish books for children and young adults, a list that includes “The Purim Superhero,” “Family Fletcher” and “Chik Chak Shabbat.” A Texas school board removed a 2018 graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. But perhaps the highest profile case of a Jewish-interest book being banned came when a Tennessee school board voted to remove “Maus” — Art Speigelman’s epic cartoon memoir about the Holocaust — from middle-school classrooms, citing its use of profanity, nudity and depictions of “killing kids.” Coverage of the ban misleadingly depicted “Maus” as an introduction to the Shoah for young adults, while Speigelman recently noted that he had become a reluctant “metonym” for the book-banning issue. Jennifer Caplan explained why the book is indispensable: “‘Maus’ forces the reader to bear witness in a way no written account can, and the [illustrations] are especially good at forcing the eye to see what the mind prefers to glide past.”
Artificial intelligence and real-life dilemmas
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become a fact of corporate life, with computing advances that power robotic automation, computer vision and natural-language text generation. But what captured the public imagination — and dread — this year were sites like Dall-E, which threatened the livelihood of graphic designers by generating original, credible illustrations with no more than a simple prompt, and ChatGPT, which is able to expound cogently and humanly on practically any topic. Beyond everyday ethical dilemmas (“Can I write my book report using ChatGPT?”) AI raised profound questions about what it means to be human. “Rabbis have historically been very open to the idea of nonhuman sentience and have tended to see parallels between humans and nonhumans as an excuse to treat nonhumans better,” wrote David Zvi Kalman in an essay on the prospect of creating artificial life. Similarly, Mois Navon suggested in JTA that “if a machine is sentient, it is no longer an inanimate object with no moral status or ‘rights’ … but rather an animate being with the status of a ‘moral patient’ to whom we owe consideration.
A Pulitzer for “The Netanyahus”
Author Joshua Cohen won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel “The Netanyahus.” (Roberto Serra—Iguana Press/Getty Images)
Joshua Cohen was the somewhat surprising winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel “The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.” Or maybe not so surprising: The book is a fictionalized treatment of a real-life visit in the late 1950s by the Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu for a job interview at a university very much like Cornell. With Benzion’s son Benjamin angling for an ultimately successful return to office in real life, a satire about Jewish power, right-wing Zionism and Israeli self-regard might have seemed to the judges very much of the moment. As critic Adam Kirsch wrote in a JTA essay, Cohen concludes that both American and Israeli Jewish identities “are absurd, crying out for the kind of satire that can only come from intimate knowledge.” Others weren’t amused. Jewish Currents criticized the novel for being derivative of both Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, and the Jewish Review of Books said that the novel includes “a capsule history of Zionism that is so blatant a distortion that I just gave up.”
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The post Book bans, Ukraine and the end of Roe: The year 2022 in Jewish ideas appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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IDF Unveils AI-Powered Robotic Warfare System, Breakthrough Artillery Against Hezbollah
Smoke rises from a village in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army operates in it as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Gil Eliyahu
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has introduced cutting-edge battlefield technology while fighting Hezbollah over the past several weeks, deploying fleets of explosive robots and game-changing artillery to accelerate the destruction of the Iran-backed group’s terrorist infrastructure across southern Lebanon.
With the goal of minimizing risks to troops, the IDF plans to deploy robots on high-risk missions to detonate large, strategic infrastructure in areas previously beyond the reach of ground forces, marking a significant expansion in its use of autonomous battlefield systems. Some of this technology has already been in use but will only escalate.
According to Israeli officials, this newly introduced technology is designed to scan vast areas using intelligence data, locate Hezbollah infrastructure both above and below ground, and systematically dismantle networks built over decades within Shiite villages, forests, and dense terrain.
The IDF expects this sustained military engineering effort to drain Hezbollah’s extensive financial investments and push threats farther from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
Given Lebanon’s rugged, mountainous terrain in the area, the natural landscape severely limits the movement of heavy engineering equipment, forcing troops to rely on complex field improvisations amid dense vegetation and terrain that conceals militant infrastructure.
The IDF has previously used robotic systems during the war in Gaza, providing ground forces with a strategic edge while reducing exposure to danger, including deploying them to explore Hamas tunnels and enhance the detection and tracking of armed operatives.
Robotic systems not only reduce the danger to troops but also help offset manpower shortages and enable operations in especially challenging environments, including tunnel networks, densely populated urban areas, and other locations that are difficult for ground forces to reach.
The IDF has further expanded its arsenal with the introduction of the “Ro’em” self-propelled howitzer battery developed by Elbit Systems, a platform that leverages advanced technology and artificial intelligence to deliver quicker and more accurate firepower.
Fully automatic, the self-propelled howitzer can fire between six and eight rounds per minute at ranges of up to 40 kilometers.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the terrorist group opened fire in support of Iran two days after the start of the joint US-Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime. Since then, Israeli troops have created a “buffer zone” that extends 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) into Lebanon. According to Israeli officials the purpose of the zone is to protect northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of rockets and drones during the war.
The US mediated a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon last week. The deal was separate from Washington’s efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran, though Tehran had pushed for Lebanon to be included in any broader framework for stopping hostilities.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced a three-week extension of the truce, which was due to expire on Sunday, to allow more time for negotiations and diplomatic efforts.
Even though the US-backed ceasefire has sharply reduced violence, negotiations and prospects for lasting peace remain fragile, with Israeli forces still positioned in southern Lebanon to maintain its buffer zone and dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure.
For its part, Hezbollah, an internationally designated terrorist group that openly seeks Israel’s destruction, maintains it has “the right to resist” what it calls occupying forces, while rejecting any direct negotiations between the two countries.
Even with the truce in place, Israel has warned Lebanese citizens against returning to their homes at this stage, with officials saying that Hezbollah could seek to exploit the situation to reestablish its terrorist infrastructure under civilian cover.
The Lebanese government has now opened direct contacts with Israel despite strong objections from Hezbollah — which was established by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 1982.
With negotiations now underway toward a potential longer-term arrangement, Israel has said its position rests on two core demands: the full disarmament of the Iran-backed terrorist group and a “sustainable” security-based peace framework.
Lebanon has demanded an Israeli withdrawal from the south, the return of Lebanese detainees held in Israel, and the delineation of the land border.
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Antisemitic Incidents Hit Record High in Austria as New Report Warns of Rising Hostility Against Jews
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Vienna. Photo: Reuters/Andreas Stroh
Antisemitism in Austria remained at alarmingly high levels last year, reaching its highest point since records began, according to newly released data that highlighted a persistently hostile environment for Jews and Israelis across Europe, marked by harassment, vandalism, and targeted attacks.
On Thursday, the Antisemitism Reporting Center of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG) — the official body tracking antisemitic incidents against Austria’s Jewish community — released its annual report documenting 1,532 cases in 2025, the highest figure on record.
IKG Secretary General Benjamin Nägele warned that these figures signaled a sustained and deeply alarming surge in antisemitic incidents since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“The unrestrained antisemitism that has taken hold since Oct. 7, 2023, has become a constant presence in the daily lives of many Jews,” Nägele said in a statement.
Among the reported cases were 19 physical attacks, 27 threats, 205 incidents of property damage, 439 mass mailings, and 842 instances of offensive behavior, averaging 4.2 incidents per day — slightly higher than 4.13 in 2024.
While the data reflected a decline from the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, with incidents peaking at 8.13 per day in 2023, the figures remained far above pre-war levels, which averaged just 1.55 incidents daily.
IKG President Oskar Deutsch said the findings underscored the ongoing strain on Jewish life in Austria, pointing to the community’s continued dependence on robust security arrangements.
“Jewish life is only possible thanks to extensive security measures. The Jewish community spends more than five million euros annually on security — resources that are urgently needed elsewhere, such as education, youth work, and cultural life,” Deutsch said in a statement.
According to the report, these trends also reflect a growing normalization of inciting rhetoric that trivializes the Holocaust, equates Israel with Nazi Germany, and frames Palestinians as “the new Jews,” further intensifying an already hostile environment for Jewish communities in Austria.
Johannan Edelman, head of the Antisemitism Reporting Center, said that this “atmospheric antisemitism” fosters growing indifference and numbness toward antisemitic agitation, reflected in a declining willingness to report such incidents.
Edelman also warned that such a hostile environment risked gradually pushing Jewish life out of the public sphere, forcing many Jews to conceal their identities.
The newly released report showed that the most prevalent form of antisemitism in Austria was Israel-related antisemitism, accounting for 1,186 cases (77.4 percent), a dramatic rise from 21 percent in 2020.
However, Holocaust relativization and denial rose sharply to 40.8 percent from 28.7 percent in 2024, while antisemitic “othering” increased to 49 percent from 32 percent, both marking significant gains.
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Israel Votes in Favor of Iran Joining International Cheer Union: ‘The Iranian People Are Not Enemies’
Ludmila Yasinska, far right, posing with members of the Israeli Cheer Union competing at the 2026 ICU World Cheerleading Championships in Orlando, Florida. Photo: Provided
Israel’s representative at the International Cheer Union (ICU) General Meeting in Orlando, Florida, this week voted in favor of Iran becoming a member nation of the organization.
Ludmila Yasinska, president of the Israeli Cheer Union, attended the annual meeting in-person and voted for Iran joining the ICU, the official world governing body for cheerleading.
The decision was approved, and a total of five applicant countries have newly joined the organization: Iran, Sint Maarten, Iceland, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone. The ICU now has 126 national federation members across all continents, and each receives one vote for all General Meeting voting processes.
“The vote in favor of Iran’s participation in international competitions expresses a clear distinction between the Iranian people and the terrorist regime,” Yasinska told The Algemeiner. “It is a values-based position that sees the Iranian people not as enemies, but as human beings who seek to take part in the international arena, to compete, and to be partners in an open and fair world. It is also a statement of hope — that despite the complex reality, there is room to distinguish between citizens and leadership, and to extend a hand toward a different future.”
“May the day come when we can stand side by side and cheer together,” she added.
According to experts, the vast majority of the Iranian people oppose the authoritarian, Islamist regime that has ruled the country since 1979. In January, the regime’s security forces killed and imprisoned tens of thousands of civilians to crush anti-government protests that erupted across Iran.
The ICU General Meeting took place before the start of the 2026 ICU World Cheerleading Championships. This year, Israel competed in the international competition for the first time ever. The championships started on Wednesday and concluded on Friday.
“It was an amazing feeling and a great source of pride to represent Israel on the world stage,” Yasinska told The Algemeiner. “Despite all the difficult times and the situation in Israel before the championship, we never stopped believing or working toward this moment.”
The competition occurred amid a ceasefire pausing the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, whose leaders regularly call for Israel’s destruction. Before the temporary truce went into effect, Israelis spent weeks running to bomb shelters as the Iranian regime launched barrages of ballistic missiles at the Jewish state. Iran’s chief terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, also fired rockets at northern Israel from Lebanon.
“There were times when we had to train on Zoom because we could not leave our homes. We also had one intensive week where some of our girls from the north stayed in our homes, just so we could have the opportunity to train together as one team,” Yasinska explained. “After all of this hard preparation, sacrifice, and determination, to finally represent our country was incredibly emotional and meaningful. It is a huge honor for us, and it was very important to show the world that Israel is on the international map of this sport — standing strong, competing proudly, and doing the very best we can.”
In 2021, the ICU was granted full recognition by the International Olympic Committee.