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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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At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
VIENNA — A keffiyeh was blocking my view, and it bothered me less than I would have expected.
It was around 9:45 pm, and I was standing outside Vienna’s city hall, where the city had erected a “Eurovision village.” The pan-European singing competition was taking place in the former Habsburg capital, grand architecture framing massive public viewing screens.
Security was tight. Visitors weren’t allowed to bring bags inside the area, and we were patted down by two separate guards before we were allowed to enter. In August 2024, a foiled terror attack led to the cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts, an international embarrassment authorities were keen not to repeat.
And then there were the protests over Israel’s participation.
The day before, an anti-Israel solidarity concert had featured a video call with Unorthodox author Deborah Feldman, who said she was protesting the “whitewashing” of a genocide. A separate “song protest” reportedly escalated from chants of “One love” to “Death, death IDF.” Earlier that day, demonstrators had marched along Vienna’s main shopping boulevard. By the time evening rolled around, a group of clowns had gathered outside the parliament, practicing creepy, Joker-like laughs and holding signs that said “United by Genocide,” a play on the Eurovision Song Contest’s slogan. “United by Music.”
For a contest that insists on being apolitical, Eurovision had become unmistakably political.
I didn’t care much for the music, but world events were unfolding here in Vienna, and I wanted to see them up close.
Israeli singer Noam Bettan was the third to perform. As he got on stage and started singing “Michelle,” a couple of people in the crowd I was standing in started shouting “Free Palestine” at the screen. The chants weren’t loud enough to drown out the performance
Then, someone in front of me raised a keffiyeh, stretching it between both hands and waving it in the air. It blocked my view. I considered asking him to lower it. But did I really want to risk a confrontation? Instead, I stepped sideways – slightly annoyed, but telling myself this was the price of tolerance.
Only later that night did I begin to wonder whether tolerance was, in fact, a shared value.
Back home, I watched the voting. Just before 1 a.m. the audience vote catapulted the Israeli act into the lead. In the previous two years, Israeli entries had also performed strongly with viewers, placing first and second in the public vote without winning overall. The reasons have been debated: diaspora support, savvy promotion, or simply songs that fit the Eurovision formula — catchy, theatrical, sung with a powerful voice. (Israel has won the competition four times, most recently in 2018.)
Israel’s promotional efforts have drawn criticism, but no evidence of manipulation has emerged, and the public broadcaster KAN has responded quickly to European Broadcasting Union reprimands.
It didn’t matter. Social media filled with accusations that Israel had cheated. In the arena, just before Bulgaria’s points were announced, the booing aimed at Israel’s entry grew so loud it was clearly audible on the broadcast.
Bulgaria won, Israel came in second, and I felt something close to relief. At a time when several countries had already stayed away and others were wavering, it seemed less like a celebration than a breaking point. I wouldn’t want to witness what would happen if Eurovision were to be held in Israel next year.
It had been easy to move when the keffiyeh blocked my view. One step to the side, and the problem was gone. However, there was no stepping aside from what came later. Freedom of speech is about making space, but it can also be used to close it.
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Israel’s Noam Bettan takes 2nd at Eurovision, buoyed by scrutinized public vote
(JTA) — The Israeli contestant in the Eurovision Song Contest won second place for the second year in a row, drawing a strong public vote despite protests over Israel’s inclusion in the contest.
Noam Bettan and his song “Michelle” ranked third in the public vote and eighth in the jury vote, which combined to give him second place behind the entry from Bulgaria, which won the contest for the first time.
Bettan thanked his fans in a post on Instagram after leaving the stage.
“I’m still processing everything and trying to find the words for this incredible journey. You guys are amazing and this is all because of you. I love every single one of you!” he wrote. “This is just the beginning, there are so many amazing things in the way! 🤍Am Israel Chai!!!”
Five countries boycotted the contest this year over Israel’s inclusion, citing Israel’s military operations in Gaza. After the competition, a spokesperson for VRT, Belgium’s national broadcaster, said the country was unlikely to participate next year unless the European Broadcasting Union, which runs the contest, makes “a clear statement against war and violence and for respect for human rights.” Belgium came in 21st of 25 competitors in the final.
Bettan faced a smattering of boos both during the semifinal on Tuesday and during the final on Saturday in Vienna, as well as when Israel briefly led the leaderboard during the announcement of the audience votes. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ahead of the final that he believed he had more fans than detractors and that he would focus on them.
Israel scored 220 points in the public vote after drawing a formal warning from the EBU for its campaign urging supporters to send all 10 of their votes to Bettan. Israel’s broadcaster called off the campaign after being told it was “not in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition.”
Israel also drew 123 points from national juries, more than twice what it earned last year when 22 countries awarded Israel no points at all in a result seen as driven in part by political tensions.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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It looks like a kaffiyeh, but this pro-Israel influencer wants you to wear a sudra
In a recent viral Jubilee video viewed more than 1.5 million times, pro-Israel activist Rudy Rochman sits across from a group of 20 pro-Palestinian activists, debating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Draped around his neck is a black-and-gray checkered scarf that looks almost identical to a kaffiyeh.
Look closer, and the pattern resolves into something else: tiny Stars of David clustered together, alongside Hebrew lettering spelling out Am Yisrael Chai — “the people of Israel live,” which has became a mantra after Oct. 7 and the hostage crisis. It’s not a kaffiyeh, Rochman says, but a modern twist on the sudra, a cloth head covering once worn by Jews across the Middle East — and he wants to bring it back.
Since the Gaza War, the kaffiyeh has become an increasingly visible symbol of pro-Palestinian activism. Now, Rochman is part of a small but growing effort to revive the sudra as a marker of Jewish identity rooted in the Middle East. He runs the company My Sudra, promoting and selling the garment online. It has been embraced by a niche but visible group of young pro-Israel influencers.
Rochman, a 32-year-old Jew of Moroccan and Algerian descent, said he and his family wore sudras during celebrations like bar mitzvahs and weddings. In old family albums, Rochman says most photos of his grandfather and great-grandfather show them donning the garment in Morocco.
As a child, Rochman understood the head covering as Middle Eastern rather than distinctly Jewish. Once he learned about its connection to Judaism, he set out to revive it, beginning to create sudras in 2016 while a student at Columbia University.
The term sudra appears in rabbinic literature, including the Mishnah and Talmud, as a general term for a cloth typically worn as the religiously prescribed head covering, though some sources describe Jews wearing it around their necks. Experts say Jews across the Middle East wore sudras, likely before the Middle Ages, with styles varying by region and period.
From the Middle Ages into the modern era, Jews in the Middle East, classified as dhimmis, sometimes faced legal restrictions on dress. One notable prohibition during certain periods was the wearing of a headscarf or turban by Jews, including the sudra.
“This form of headgear by Jewish men was not tolerated in many communities,” said Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, a textile historian specializing in Middle Eastern dress. “Men could wear the kippah, but nothing significant in public on the head.”
Over time, she said, those constraints contributed to the fading of the custom.
“For me, it’s about reviving an aspect of our culture that was beaten out of us by force,” said Rochman. “It’s not like we consciously made a decision. ‘Hey, we want to stop wearing sudras.’ We were forced to stop wearing it.”
Historically, sudras did not usually feature identifiably Jewish symbols. The Kurdish sudra is an exception, incorporating circles and dots with religious meaning. Even in Rochman’s own family photos, his ancestors typically wore plain white sudras.
Rochman, however, has deliberately added Jewish symbols to make the garment legibly Jewish to contemporary eyes.
Rochman sells sudras in various colors, including a black and white version that looks exceptionally similar to the Palestinian version of the kaffiyeh. Instead of the pattern of zig-zag stripes and criss-crossed squares that can be found on that kaffiyeh, Rochman’s sudra has stars of David juxtaposed to create a similar checkered pattern, as well as Jewish symbols like the menorah, along with the phrase Am Yisrael Chai.
The resemblance to the kaffiyeh is not accidental.
The kaffiyeh is widely seen today as a symbol of Palestinian identity and resistance, but it did not always carry that meaning.
According to Vogelsang, “The kaffiyeh is basically regarded as a 19th-century development worn by farmers in Syria,” she said. “The Jordanian army later adopted it as part of their uniforms.”
Vogelsang says its political symbolism developed in the 20th century, particularly through its association with Palestinian nationalism and figures such as PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who popularized the black-and-white kaffiyeh widely worn today.
Some say the patterns on the Palestinian black-and-white kaffiyeh represent different aspects of Palestinian culture. The criss-cross lines represent the Palestinian ties to the Mediterranean Sea because of their resemblance to fishnets; the black stripes symbolize trade routes through Palestine; and the curved lines are said to symbolize olive trees.
But Vogelsang and other experts say that this symbolism is a modern interpretation of older patterns. “They didn’t have these meanings. The Palestinian community has given them these meanings,” she said.
Patterns like checks and stripes were often used for garments in the Middle East, not because of any particular symbolism, but because “they are just an easy, convenient design to make,” said Vogelsang. Both Jews and Muslims used whichever fabrics were locally available, often checkered and striped patterns commonly associated with the modern-day kaffiyeh.
In a similar way, Rochman’s sudra takes on explicit political meaning through the inclusion of the phrase Am Yisrael Chai, popularized in the 1960s as a rallying cry for Soviet Jewry and now widely used at pro-Israel demonstrations. In that sense, his garment does not just revive a historical practice, but imbues it with ideological significance.
“Being a Zionist outwardly was kind of seen as excessive before Oct. 7, but after Oct. 7 it became something that was cool again,” Rochman said, adding that interest in — and sales of — his sudras increased following the attacks and the war in Gaza that followed.
I asked Rochman if he’s ever worried about being mistaken for wearing a kaffiyeh or accused of cultural appropriation. Dozens of Reddit threads are dedicated to the topic online. In the Jubilee video, one Palestinian activist tells him, “Are you going to pretend that the kaffiyeh you’re wearing is not a culturally appropriated kaffiyeh? And you just added the Hebrew and all of that to it.”
But he is not particularly bothered by either accusation.
“I look at it as just an opportunity to tell that person, whether a Jew or not a Jew, that doesn’t know anything about a part of Jewish culture, who we are and what we are.”
And while Rochman’s main goal is to help younger generations of Jews understand a part of their history that has faded, he hopes that more Jews wearing the sudra will also foster a greater understanding of Jewish history in the Middle East.
“We need to know where we’re from,” Rochman said. “And if it helps us connect with other Middle Eastern peoples, that’s amazing too.”
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