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Can this LGBTQ+ Jewish organization navigate these turbulent times?
Nonprofit Keshet has been a leading advocate for Jewish LGBTQ+ rights for nearly three decades.
This year, however, longtime CEO Idit Klein stepped down, while at about the same time, the Trump administration was ramping up its policy assault on the LGBTQ+ community. (It recently mandated that U.S. passports for transgender people must now reflect the sex on their original birth certificate, reversing a decades-old policy.)
The question was not whether Keshet would plot a path through this challenging period, though. It was how.
The organization’s latest educational offering, the Shivyon Project, offers a window into its evolving priorities, as it contends with this less-than-agreeable federal administration and, in select pockets of the country, a recrudescence of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.
Shivyon, as it’s known, provides Jewish organizations — JCCs and synagogues are Keshet’s most frequent clients — with an “action plan” aimed at improving an institution’s LGBTQ+ policies. It’s a collaborative and customizable endeavor, so the specifics can vary. “This is not one size fits all,” said Rabbi Micah Buck, Keshet’s Director of Education and Training. Once a blueprint is agreed upon, Keshet’s trained professionals provide coaching and guidance over the course of a year, by the end of which — all having gone smoothly — the plan has become reality.
Thoughtful and soft-spoken, Buck acknowledged that this was hardly a straightforward moment for the organization. “We are living in a time in which LGBTQ+ identities, especially transgender and non-binary and gender expansive identities, have become inappropriately politicized,” he told me.
Demand for Keshet’s services in general, and for Shivyon in particular, has duly shot up. “For so many LGBTQ+Jews, safety and belonging in our Jewish communities feels more urgent and needed than ever before,” said Buck.
Though Shivyon grew out of the ‘Leadership Project,’ Keshet’s first foray into general community education more than a decade ago, it is “drastically different” from any of the organization’s previous cohort-based programs, Buck said. After all, Shivyon has been rolled out against a somewhat unusual split backdrop: On the one hand, recent political turbulence; and on the other, a sustained effort by the mainstream Jewish community to embrace LGBTQ+ Jews.
“Organized segments of Jewish life have made tremendous progress celebrating LGBTQ+ identity,” Buck said. “And we are seeing greater and greater numbers of the LGBTQ+ community in positions of leadership and influence.” The non-orthodox rabbinate, for example, is often cited as both an incubator for and testament to the improving integration into mainstream Jewish life of the LGBTQ+ community; the sheer number of LGBTQ+ students attending rabbinical school has, in fact, become something of a phenomenon in its own right.
With Shivyon, then, Keshet had to strike a fine balance: gesturing sufficiently at the dangers of the current political moment, while also recognizing and incorporating into its curricula the advances of LGBTQ+ Jews during the previous decade.
One solution, Buck told me, was to talk about belonging rather than inclusion, a shift in emphasis that has shown up in ways both grand and unassuming.
Take Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Dallas, and one of Shivyon’s participating congregations. It recently became the first Conservative synagogue to march in the Dallas Pride Parade — a milestone made possible, said its executive director Katie Babin, by Shivyon’s success in making Beth Shalom’s “queer community feel fully included and embraced.”
Yet no less significant were the “small but intentional changes” Beth Shalom instituted, Babin told me over email — most notably updating the language on its membership applications. This kind of attention to the fine print is an integral part of Shivyon, too, the substance to go along with the symbolism.
Textual analysis has been Shivyon’s other calling card, Buck told me, an excellent source of community and common interest. “We can find clear indications of LGBTQ+ Jewish presence forever,” said Buck. “For so many people in our community, one of the moments that can be really beautiful is encountering that sense of: My ancestors have always been here.”
As for the present political challenges, Keshet has opted to double down on its values-based approach. “For all the weaponization of people’s identities,” Buck said, “the basics of access, dignity and celebration are not fundamentally sites of division within the Jewish community.”
The post Can this LGBTQ+ Jewish organization navigate these turbulent times? appeared first on The Forward.
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U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas
Abdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan, said in an interview aired Sunday that the Israeli government is as “evil” as Hamas, sharpening his criticism of Israel in the closely-watched Democratic primary.
“Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed told CNN congressional reporter Manu Raja on the network’s Inside Politics program. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”
El-Sayed, 41, is a physician and the son of Egyptian immigrants. He is seeking to channel the energy of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza. He is also hoping to build on the surprise success of the New York City mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in taking on the Democratic establishment.
He is locked in a dead heat with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens. The primary is set for Aug. 4.
Earlier this month, El-Sayed faced backlash for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric — including saying that Hamas “is a thousand times better” than Israel. McMorrow, who is married to a Jewish man, and Stevens, who is closely aligned with AIPAC, have both criticized El-Sayed.
In the CNN interview, El-Sayed defended his decision to campaign with Piker, framing it as an effort to reach voters who feel alienated from traditional politics. “My understanding of America is, it’s a place where we have freedom of speech,” he said.
#MISen Abdul El-Sayed on CNN Inside Politics: @mkraju: You said Israeli government is evil. Do you think they’re just as evil as Hamas?
El-Sayed: “Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil. It’s not about how evil one is versus the other. Hamas —… pic.twitter.com/4GfJ5oCtqR
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) April 19, 2026
The Michigan Senate race is shaping up as one of the starkest tests of the Democratic coalition and how the party navigates policy towards Israel in Congress amid the wars in Gaza and Iran. The state is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States.
Last week, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers, used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza; 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. It shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions of disapproval to block some weapons transfers last year.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who is Jewish, was among those who voted for the measures. In remarks as they announced their votes, Democrats highlighted their opposition to the Israeli government’s policies in the occupied West Bank, the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the war with Iran.
The post U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas appeared first on The Forward.
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NYC Mayor Mamdani Unveils Major Tax Hike on Unoccupied Luxury Real Estate
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
i24 News – NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has officially introduced a controversial new tax targeting secondary residences valued at over $5 million.
The measure, designed to tap into the city’s vast concentration of unoccupied luxury wealth, is projected to generate roughly $500 million annually for the municipal budget.
“This tax is specifically aimed at the ultra-rich,” Mamdani stated, highlighting high-profile examples such as Ken Griffin’s $238 million Midtown penthouse and Alexander Varshavsky’s $20.5 million Columbus Circle residence.
While the city has yet to finalize specific evaluation criteria or the methods for distinguishing primary from secondary homes, the proposal has already become a flashpoint for economic debate.
The move has drawn sharp condemnation from billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who argued that the policy is fundamentally flawed.
Ackman contended that owners of luxury secondary residences contribute significant capital to the local economy without utilizing costly municipal services. He warned that the tax would likely trigger a corporate and high-net-worth exodus to low-tax jurisdictions like Miami, ultimately harming the city’s tax base.
President Donald Trump also entered the fray, denouncing the policy as “totally misguided” and claiming it is “destroying New York.” Trump, whose own extensive real estate holdings in the city could be impacted, argued that such taxation serves only to drive away the international investors who fuel New York’s development.
Implementation remains a significant question mark, as the tax could potentially affect nearly 13,000 property owners, including major figures like Jeff Bezos. Financial analysts point out that many of the city’s most expensive apartments are held through complex offshore structures and shell companies, making the identification and appraisal of these properties an immense administrative challenge for the city.
As the debate intensifies, the Mamdani administration faces a difficult path ahead in balancing its “tax the rich” mandate with the practical realities of New York’s competitive global real estate market.
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Iran Rebuffs Trump Announcement of New Peace Talks, State News Agency Reports
Iran rejected new peace talks with the United States, its state news agency reported on Sunday, hours after US President Donald Trump said he was sending envoys for talks in Pakistan and would launch new strikes on Iran unless it accepts his terms.
Trump posted on Truth Social that his envoys would arrive in Pakistan on Monday evening for negotiations, a timetable that would leave only a day for talks to make progress before a two-week ceasefire ends.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” he wrote. “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”
Iran’s official IRNA news agency cited no specific source in its report that Iran had rejected the talks.
“Iran stated that its absence from the second round of talks stems from what it called Washington’s excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance, repeated contradictions, and the ongoing naval blockade, which it considers a breach of the ceasefire,” IRNA wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran’s rejection of the talks.
Earlier, a White House official said the US delegation would be headed by Vice President JD Vance, who led the war’s first peace talks a week ago, and also include Trump’s envoy Steven Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump had initially told ABC News and MS Now that Vance would not go.