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DC’s new Jewish museum highlights Jews who shaped the nation’s capital, from a Confederate spy to RBG
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Washington, D.C.’s new Jewish museum features at least two notorious women from history.
One is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice, who was dubbed “Notorious RBG” late in her life by a cluster of fans. When the Capital Jewish Museum opens next week, it will launch with Ginsburg at its center when a traveling exhibit on her life has its final stop here.
The other is the 19th-century figure Eugenia Levy Phillips, whom the museum characterizes as “notorious” without irony.
“One of DC’s most notorious Confederate sympathizers, Eugenia Levy Phillips (1891-1902) came to town in 1853 with her congressman husband, Philip Phillips (1807-1884) of Alabama,” one of the exhibits says. “Eugenia, a spy, delivered Union military plans and maps to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.”
Another description of Levy Phillips in the museum is more straightforward: “SPIED for the CONFEDERACY,” it says below her photo.
An exhibit on Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the new Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C.;, June 1, 2023. (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Photos)
The late justice and spy are two of an assemblage of notable Jews throughout history who grace the Capital Museum, which opens next Friday in northwest Washington’s Judiciary Square neighborhood, which was a local center of Jewish life more than a century ago. Showcasing the warts-and-all history of Jews in and around the nation’s capital — both prominent officials and ordinary denizens of the city — is the point of the museum, its directors say.
“Jews are a Talmudic people, we like to argue, we like to look at different sides of a story,” Ivy Barsky, the museum’s interim executive director, said Thursday at a tour for members of the media. Sarah Leavitt, the museum curator, involved the Jewish idea of “makhloket l’shem shamayim,” Hebrew for “an argument for the sake of heaven” — in other words, for sacred purposes.
“We’re telling the story in this museum in a Jewish way,” Leavitt said. “So that it’s not just that we might not agree, but actually the disagreement is important and preserving those disagreements is important.”
Barsky, who was previously the CEO of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, said that in relating the local history of Washington’s Jews, the new museum fills a gap. Unlike many of the country’s other longstanding Jewish communities, Washington attracted Jews not because it was a port but because it was the center of government. Like the district’s broader community, Jews in the area have been prone to transitioning in and out of the city.
“Lots of our stories start in other places, with folks who end up in D.C.,” Barsky said. “This is a unique community, especially because the local business is the federal government.”
An exhibit at the new Capital Jewish Museum asks visitors, “Who are you? and features a diverse array of Jews , in Washington D.C., June 1, 2023. (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Photos)
Jews have been in Washington since it was established in 1790, and the area now includes some 300,000 Jews, according to a 2017 study. The museum chronicles that community’s expansion from the capital to the Maryland and the Virginia suburbs, driven at times by Jews joining “white flight” — when white residents left newly integrated neighborhoods — and other times by restrictions that barred Jews from certain areas.
Larger historical events have also at times played a role: The Jewish population in the city grew in the 1930s and 1940s because of the expansion of government during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and World War II.
An exhibition asks visitors “Who are you?” and features a diverse range of Washington Jews, past and present, as well as others with quirky biographies, including Tom King, a CIA spy who became a comic book writer.
The changing fortunes of American Jewry are embedded in the date the museum opens, June 9: On that date in 1876, Ulysses Grant was the first president to attend synagogue services, when he helped dedicate the new building of the Adas Israel congregation. Fourteen years earlier, as a Union general, he infamously expelled the Jews of Paducah, Kentucky, accusing them of being war speculators. President Abraham Lincoln rescinded the order, which has been described as “the most sweeping anti-Jewish regulation in all of American history,”
Esther Safran Foer, the museum’s president and the former executive director of the city’s historic Sixth & I synagogue, said Grant’s presence in 1876 in the Adas Israel building was emblematic of the upward trajectory of American Jewry. “He sat here for more than three hours in the heat, no air conditioning, and he even made a generous personal contribution,” she said.
The museum’s core is the 1876 building that Grant helped dedicate. It has since been physically moved in its entirety three times in order to preserve it, most recently in 2019 as part of the initiative to build the museum, which began in 2017. The museum’s upper floor reproduces the sanctuary, with the original pews. Its walls, however, are renovated: they display an audiovisual chronicle of the area’s Jews.
The museum’s permanent exhibition aims to traverse that history in other engaging ways as well. The same section that highlights Levy Phillips’ adventures (including her diary’s account of her arrest — “I am not in the least surprised Sir” she told the agent who had come to take her away) also mentions Rabbi Jacob Frankel, who was commissioned by Lincoln during the Civil War as the first Jewish military chaplain.
A photo of Jews and Blacks joined in a bid to desegregate a local amusement park in the early 1960s gets equal billing with one of Sam Eig, a Jewish developer who in 1942 advertised the new Maryland suburb he built as “ideally located and sensibly restricted,” a euphemism for not allowing Black people to buy property.
Interactive exhibits include a Seder table that encourages guests to debate immigration, Israel and civil rights. Parts of the museum’s exhibition recount Jewish debates over pivotal issues such as those and others, including abortion.
Ginsburg will be the museum’s first main attraction, and it makes clear she was a role model. The special exhibition on her life and career includes a glamorous photo of the two Jewish women who coined the “Notorious RBG” nickname, Shana Knizhnik and Irin Carmon. Visitors can go into a closet and don duplicates of Ginsburg’s judicial robes.
One of the first events is on July 12, when museum goers will join in fashioning the special “I Dissent” collars that Ginsburg would famously wear over her robes when she was ready to dissent from the bench.
Jonathan Edelman, the museum’s collections curator, described one prized collection — items he persuaded disability rights advocate Judy Heumann to donate before she died in March.
“Judy’s is a Washington story,” he said. “She came to this city first as an outsider as a protester protesting for disability rights. And then she came back to the city as an insider working within the government to make change both in D.C. government and in the federal government.”
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US Says It Hit Colombian Rebel Vessel as Trump Calls Petro ‘Illegal Drug Leader’
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US forces attacked a vessel associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, the same day President Donald Trump called Colombian President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader” and said payments to the South American nation would cease.
Trump‘s comments marked a new low in relations between Bogota and Washington, which have frayed since Trump returned to office in January and since his administration launched a series of strikes on vessels allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean.
Hegseth wrote on X that the Pentagon had destroyed a vessel and killed three people on Friday “in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” which includes the Caribbean.
He said the ship was affiliated with the leftist rebel group National Liberation Army and was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, without offering evidence to back the claim.
The Pentagon said it had nothing to add beyond Hegseth’s initial post.
COLOMBIA CONDEMNS TRUMP‘S REMARKS
Colombia’s Foreign Ministry condemned Trump‘s remarks as offensive and a direct threat to its sovereignty, and vowed to seek international support in defense of Petro and the country’s autonomy.
“These accusations represent an extremely serious act and undermine the dignity of the president of Colombians,” it said in a statement.
The post from Hegseth came hours after Trump lambasted Petro on social media and said the United States would stop large-scale payments and subsidies to Colombia.
“President Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc,” Trump wrote.
Reuters could not immediately establish which payments Trump was referring to. Colombia was once among the largest recipients of US aid in the Western Hemisphere, but the flow of money was suddenly curtailed this year by the shuttering of USAID, the US government’s humanitarian assistance arm.
The US State Department referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a query.
FRAUGHT RELATIONS
Last month the United States revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and urged US soldiers to disobey Trump‘s orders.
The US administration’s deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean have also outraged Colombians. Many legal experts and human rights activists have condemned the extraordinary series of military actions, with Amnesty International describing it as murder on the high seas.
Earlier this month, Petro said one of the strikes hit a Colombian vessel, an allegation the Trump administration denied.
Petro condemned the most recent bombing, saying the boat belonged to a “humble family,” not the National Liberation Army. He also hit back at Trump‘s remarks.
“Mr. Trump, Colombia has never been rude to the United States… but you are rude and ignorant to Colombia,” Petro responded on X. “Since I am not a businessman, I am even less a drug trafficker. There is no greed in my heart.”
Colombia is fighting its own longstanding drug problems. Last year, Petro pledged to tame coca-growing regions in the country with massive social and military intervention, but the strategy has brought little success.
In September, Trump designated countries such as Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia and Venezuela among those the United States believes to have “failed demonstrably” in upholding counter-narcotics agreements during the past year.
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Trump Urged Zelensky to Cut a Deal with Putin or Risk Facing Destruction, FT Reports
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) over lunch in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
US President Donald Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russia’s terms for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine in a White House meeting on Friday, warning that President Vladimir Putin threatened to “destroy” Ukraine if it didn’t comply, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
During the meeting, Trump insisted Zelensky surrender the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia, repeatedly echoing talking points the Russian president had made in their call a day earlier, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Ukraine ultimately managed to swing Trump back to endorsing a freeze of the current front lines, the FT said. Trump said after the meeting that the two sides should stop the war at the battle line; Zelensky said that was an important point.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the FT report.
Zelensky arrived at the White House on Friday looking for weapons to keep fighting his country’s war, but met an American president who appeared more intent on brokering a peace deal.
In Thursday’s call with Trump, Putin had offered some small areas of the two southern frontline regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for the much larger parts of the Donbas now under Ukrainian control, the FT report added.
That is less than his original 2024 demand for Kyiv to cede the entirety of Donbas plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, an area of nearly 20,000 square km.
Zelensky’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside business hours on whether Trump had pressured Zelensky to accept peace on Russia’s terms.
Trump and Putin agreed on Thursday to hold a second summit on the war in Ukraine within the next two weeks, provisionally in Budapest, following an August 15 meeting in Alaska that failed to produce a breakthrough.
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Israel Identifies Sonthaya Oakkharasri as Returned Deceased Hostage from Hamas
Sonthaya Oakkharasri. Photo: Courtesy via i24 News.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Sunday that the additional deceased abductee returned by Hamas has been identified as Sonthaya Oakkharasri, a Thai citizen who was 30 years old at the time of his death.
Following a thorough identification process conducted by the National Center for Forensic Medicine, in coordination with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, IDF representatives informed the Oakkharasri family that their loved one has been returned to Israel and formally identified.
According to intelligence and available information, Sonthaya Oakkharasri was abducted from the Kibbutz Be’eri orchards on October 7, 2023, and was subsequently murdered by the Hamas terrorist organization.
His body was taken to the Gaza Strip and pronounced dead on May 16, 2024.
The IDF expressed its deep condolences to the Oakkharasri family and reaffirmed its ongoing efforts to secure the return of all deceased abductees. Officials emphasized that Hamas is obligated to fulfill its part of the agreement and return the remaining bodies to their families for proper burial.
The Government of Israel also conveyed its sorrow, extending condolences to the Oakkharasri family, the Thai people, and all families of fallen abductees. Israeli authorities reiterated their commitment to working tirelessly to ensure that every fallen abductee is returned, stating: “We will not compromise on this and will spare no effort until we return all of the fallen abductees, down to the last one.”