Uncategorized
Brown University students light first Hanukkah candle in the shadow of mass shooting
(JTA) — PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — Dozens of Brown University students shielded their candles at a menorah lighting that doubled as a vigil on Sunday night as the Hanukkah arrived under a sheet of snow and a thick blanket of trauma, following a mass shooting in an economics class.
On Saturday, a gunman opened fire on a room where students had gathered to review for their final exam in Principles of Economics, Brown’s most popular class that is dominated by freshmen. He killed two students and injured nine others at the Barus and Holley engineering and physics building in Providence, Rhode Island.
The school went into lockdown for 12 hours and subsequently canceled all academic exercises for the rest of the semester. On Sunday night, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said a police investigation was ongoing and a person of interest detained earlier in the day was being released.
Yael Ranel Filus, a sophomore engineering student from Israel, goes daily to Barus and Holley and was at a nearby building when shots rang out. She said she had been in touch with fellow Israeli students, who like her were in disbelief.
“We were talking in the group channel, like, ‘Oh, we thought we left that at home. We thought we left those tragedies at home,’” Filus said. “I don’t think any of us thought we would encounter something like this here.”
Another tragedy loomed over the menorah lighting led by two rabbis, Josh Bolton and Mendel Laufer, the respective heads of Brown’s Hillel and Chabad, located on adjacent blocks at the heart of the school’s urban campus. Across the world on Sunday, at least 15 people were killed and dozens injured in a shooting attack on Jews who gathered to celebrate Hanukkah in Sydney.
Bolton said both shootings were on his mind during a speech to the crowd of students, professors and Hillel staff.
“The message of Hanukkah here is that we should increase the light,” he said. “Even in the midst of this very dark and difficult moment, together as a community, we come together and we give each other a little bit of light.”
Brown recently struck a $50 million settlement with the Trump administration over allegations of antisemitism tied to pro-Palestinian protests during the war in Gaza. It drew particular criticism for allowing students to present a proposal to divest from Israel to the school’s board of overseers, who rejected it.
The school has a Jewish president, Christina Paxson, and the highest proportion of Jewish students in the Ivy League, with particular growth in recent years among its Orthodox student population. It recently hosted a major gathering to celebrate 130 years of Jewish life that attracted alumni from around the world as well as prominent figures including Robert Kraft, founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism.
The economics class that was attacked is taught by Rachel Friedberg, a Jewish faculty member who researches the intersection of economics and Jewish studies and who has worked extensively in Israel, though she was not in the classroom at the time. Police have not indicated any antisemitic motive behind the shooting. But they also have not identified the shooter, igniting unease on campus and speculation online, particularly in the wake of the Sydney attack.
Bolton said regardless of the motive, Brown was being forced to contend with a nationwide plague.
“Whether or not the shooter was antisemitic or anti-Muslim or anti-LGBTQ or whatever, the burden of our culture is lonely, disturbed, usually young men with guns, and you can add whatever other layers of ideological hatred to it,” he said.
The Brown community was ravaged by gun violence only two years ago, when a Brown student, Hisham Awartani, was among three Palestinian students were shot over Thanksgiving break in Burlington, Vermont. Awartani was hit in the spine and paralyzed from the waist down.
The shock that ripped through Brown this weekend was familiar to Zoe Weissman, a sophomore who has lived through two school shootings in her 20 years. As a 12 year-old in Parkland, Florida, she was outside her middle school when she heard gunshots and screams from the adjacent Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed in 2018. She said the shooting left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I’m an example of how prevalent gun violence is becoming,” said Weissman. “If you look at the statistics of mass shootings, it should be physically impossible for this to have happened to me twice. And that’s a fact I used to use to comfort myself.”
Another Brown student, junior Mia Tretta, was shot in the abdomen during a 2019 attack on Saugus High School in California.
Weissman left Brown before the communal Hanukkah lighting, but she lit the first candle with a few friends at a house off-campus.
“It’s a tradition I’ve grown up with, so it’s something that makes me feel really comfortable,” she said. “It wasn’t something that I wanted to skip for the first time ever because of this.”
The shooting began in the last hour of Shabbat, when over 30 students were gathered at Hillel, many without their phones. They were ordered to shelter on the third floor with the lights off.
Bolton arrived about an hour later with water and food for the night. He wanted the group to mark havdalah, the ritual to note the end of Shabbat traditionally performed once three stars can be spotted in the sky. Bolton and the students did havdalah in a windowless room, whispering over candles in the dark.
Aaron Perrotta, a junior who was there, said that some jokes mixed in with the panic. “It was nice to have a little sense of normalcy and be able to close out Shabbat like that,” he said.
“I think a lot of us bonded and got closer together, just being in such a tight space upstairs,” said Max Zimmer, a sophomore.
Filus was blocks away from Barus and Holley at the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship on Saturday night. She and nine other students rotated sleeping shifts, as Brown’s Department of Public Safety advised having one person alert until the lockdown ended.
Filus went to the candle lighting on Olive Street after sitting with friends at the neighboring Hillel building.
“It’s a safe space,” she said. “I don’t really want to be alone right now. I don’t want to be in my room.”
The post Brown University students light first Hanukkah candle in the shadow of mass shooting appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case
(JTA) — The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction for the man convicted of killing Etan Patz, the 6-year-old Jewish boy whose 1979 disappearance riveted the nation.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices reimposed the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Patz in 2017 and was serving a 25-year sentence until a New York federal appeals court ruled last year that he was entitled to a retrial.
The justices granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who urged them to overturn the decision last year, writing in an unsigned opinion that the lower court “exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief.”
“Today the Supreme Court agreed with the findings of multiple lower courts and upheld the trial conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the horrific murder of Etan Patz, which changed a generation of New Yorkers,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement Monday. “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction.”
Harvey Fishbein, a lawyer for Hernandez, told the The New York Times Monday that the Supreme Court’s order meant Hernandez would not get a new trial, adding that his team was “terribly disappointed.”
“We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” Fishbein said.
Patz vanished in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop in New York City for the first time. The 6-year-old became one of the first missing children whose photograph appeared on milk cartons nationwide, but despite years of searches and public appeals, he was never found.
Patz’s parents, Julie and Stan, spent decades seeking an arrest for his disappearance, helping to establish a national missing-children hotline. The anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, May 25, also became National Missing Children’s Day.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies criticize his use of ‘monsters’ to describe AIPAC
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday defended his use of the word “monsters” to describe AIPAC at a rally Friday for progressive candidates, as some of his Jewish supporters expressed concern that the term may connote an antisemitic trope.
The war of words came as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is increasingly a target of the progressive movement — including in acts of attempted violence — and as progressive Jews have accused some Israeli right-wing figures of dehumanizing liberal pro-Israel lobbying groups.
“Calling AIPAC and its backers ‘monsters’ casts them as less than human, rather than as human beings who are one’s political opponents,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, wrote in a Substack post Monday.
“I was taken aback,” Rabbi Misha Shulman, a Mamdani supporter who leads the progressive Brooklyn synagogue The New Shul, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the mayor’s comments. “I didn’t like those remarks. It was a little bit of a flag for me.”
At a press conference, Mamdani said he had been quoting Italian anti-fascist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, whose quote ending “Now is the time of monsters” the mayor had cited at the top of his speech. The rally was intended to boost the mayor’s preferred progressive candidates, including Jewish congressional candidate Brad Lander, ahead of New York’s closely watched Tuesday primaries.
“I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world,” Mamdani told a reporter who asked about the word. He continued, “My use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in this city, all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.” He did not explain how he saw AIPAC as connected to poverty in New York.
Mamdani insisted he was referring to “not solely AIPAC,” but he singled out the organization again in his Monday remarks to reporters, saying the lobbying group was backing “a status quo for immorality.”
During the rally last week, Mamdani had stated that Gramsci’s “monsters take many forms today,” including “AIPAC, for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s wars.” He added that AIPAC’s “goal” is “to turn us against one another.”
For some of the progressive Jews who have supported the mayor, his comments sounded alarms about the use of dehumanizing or sinister rhetoric to describe Jewish groups.
But Shulman said it was actually Mamdani’s remarks in the same speech painting AIPAC as a “dark money” group that was most alarming to him. AIPAC, a lobbying organization that also operates a political spending arm, does not conceal its donors, unlike the traditional profile of a so-called “dark money” campaign finance operation.
“For me, the question of dark money was the tougher knot,” Shulman said, calling Mamdani’s remarks a “tactical mistake.” In the context of rising antisemitism, he added, “For a left-wing leader to use that phrase, and invite traditional antisemitism into this conversation in that way, was not smart.”
Shulman is a member of Israelis For Peace, a New York-based ad-hoc group of progressive Israelis who broadly back Mamdani. While not speaking on behalf of the group, he told JTA their internal group chat lit up with debates over the appropriateness of Mamdani’s speech.
Jacobs of T’ruah said Mamdani’s remarks were part of what she described as a “disturbing trend” of recent left-wing attacks on the lobbying group, including Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner accusing his GOP opponent of being “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu” because of AIPAC’s donations to her campaign.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has aspirations of higher office, also recently became the first sitting member of Congress to sign a pledge from Track AIPAC, a purported AIPAC watchdog that also targets donations from more liberal pro-Israel groups, including J Street.
Over the weekend, a cafe posted on Instagram that it had rejected a payment from liberal Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman, whom Lander is challenging in the primary, because the money was “probably coming from AIPAC.” (Goldman has been endorsed by both AIPAC and J Street.)
While noting that AIPAC “absolutely deserves to be criticized, sidelined, and rejected for its decades of negative influence on American foreign policy,” Jacobs wrote that such critiques should be done “without dehumanizing language, and without hinting at a grand Jewish conspiracy.”
Such pushback from Jews who have worked with Mamdani is rare. JTA reached out to representatives for several of the mayor’s most visible Jewish allies on Monday, including Lander and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke at the same rally. Sanders also criticized AIPAC. Neither returned requests for comment by press time. On social media after the rally, Lander celebrated the event, calling it “a tremendous honor” to rally alongside Mamdani.
IfNotNow and Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, two Jewish activist groups that endorsed Mamdani, similarly did not respond to requests for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Rep. Jerry Nadler, the retiring liberal Jewish Democrat who had endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral bid, also did not respond by press time.
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that positions itself as a foil to AIPAC, declined to comment on Mamdani’s remarks. Last month, hundreds of Jewish leaders criticized Yehuda Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, after Leiter called J Street a “cancer within the Jewish community.” Nadler was among the signatories of an open letter that said Leiter “dehumanizes fellow Jews.”
Centrist Jewish groups and figures, already no fans of Mamdani, also bashed his AIPAC comments. “Referring to fellow New Yorkers as ‘monsters’ is outrageous and dangerous, and the impact of your words extends far beyond politics,” American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch wrote on X, addressing Mamdani.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat representing New Jersey, wrote, “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books.”
Both posts were reposted by AIPAC, which otherwise did not comment.
The post Some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies criticize his use of ‘monsters’ to describe AIPAC appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
U.K. PM Starmer leaves behind mixed record on antisemitism
(JTA) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who resigned the premiership on Monday, leaves behind a mixed record on fighting antisemitism in the Labour Party that Jewish organizations say will help shape their expectations for his successor.
Starmer announced that he was stepping down outside 10 Downing Street in the morning local time. He made the decision in the wake of mounting pressure from Labour members of Parliament and waning political support after the party’s devastating losses in the May 7 local elections and the success of political rival Andy Burnham in Manchester’s parliamentary election last week.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, has emerged as the leading contender after winning a Manchester-area by-election on Friday with 55% of the vote. Burnham has sought to position himself prominently on antisemitism and relations with the Jewish community in his bid to take over from Starmer.
In a post on X, Burnham thanked Starmer for his leadership and said the PM’s decision to resign “marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way. I will put myself forward as part of this process.”
Starmer confirmed he would remain on as caretaker prime minister until a successor was chosen.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” he said. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”
The Jewish Labour Movement thanked Starmer in a post on X, noting that two years ago he inherited the party “at its lowest point” from former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, when it was “institutionally antisemitic.” It added, under Starmer, “our party has a clean bill of health on antisemitism.”
However, Starmer’s tenure was still met with plenty of criticism from the Jewish community over his handling of antisemitism, particularly in light of ongoing antisemitic attacks in the country. In recent months alone, four Hatzola ambulances were lit on fire; there were attempted attacks on three synagogues; two Jewish men in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green were stabbed. Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with the incidents.
Starmer entered office in July 2024, leading his country’s thorny relationship with Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack against the Jewish and the Gaza war that followed. He angered Israel with steps such as recognizing Palestine as a state and promising to uphold the International Court of Justice’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.
With Starmer’s upcoming departure, focus has shifted to the contest to replace him, bringing renewed scrutiny to candidates’ positions on antisemitism, relations with the Jewish community, and Israel.
Starmer said he would give his successor his “full and unequivocal support,” adding that nominations would open on July 9 and conclude before the parliamentary summer recess on July 16.
Board of Deputies of British Jews President Phil Roseneberg posted on X, “When he took on the leadership of the Labour Party the first thing @Keir_Starmer said he would do is ‘tear out the poison of antisemitism by its roots’. His subsequent actions were transformative within the Party.”
He praised Starmer’s government for providing “unprecedented security funding,” and introducing legislation to proscribe the IRGC.
Burnham, for his part, has spoken out against antisemitism in the wake of violence attacks. Following the October 2025 Yom Kippur attack at the Heaton Park Congregation synagogue in Manchester, in which two people were killed, Burnham said in an official release, “Tonight, our first thoughts are with the families of those who have died, those injured and those traumatised by this – a horrific antisemitic attack on our Jewish friends and neighbours. We condemn it outright.”
He also wrote in a post on X on the same day, “Today we have witnessed a vile attack on our Jewish community on its holiest day. We condemn whoever is responsible and will do everything within our power to keep people safe.”
His positions on Israel and Gaza have also come under scrutiny. In a June 4 interview with The Guardian, Burnham did not invoke the term “genocide” in relation to the war in Gaza, but did say, “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester.”
He added, “But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.”
Additionally, 10 days after the Oct. 7 attacks, Burnham called for a ceasefire in a joint statement with 10 Greater Manchester leaders. The statement read in part, “We condemn unreservedly the appalling terror attacks on innocent civilians in Israel by Hamas on 7th October.”
The statement also noted that Israel has the right to take “targeted action within international law” to defend itself and to rescue its hostages, but added, “We also have profound concerns about the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.”
Referencing his expected leadership bid, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the Jewish News on June 17 that Burnham had a few weeks earlier met with Jewish communal leaders in Greater Manchester.
When it comes to Israel, Nandy said Burnham “believes in justice, so he’s acutely aware of the need for a safe homeland for Jewish people, you know, and the particularly unique historical reasons why Israel came into existence.”
The post U.K. PM Starmer leaves behind mixed record on antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
