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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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The post DC’s new Jewish museum highlights Jews who shaped the nation’s capital, from a Confederate spy to RBG appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Cooking Show Competition ‘The Great Bubby Cook-Off’ Celebrates Jewish Food, Family Recipes
The four contestants on “The Great Bubby Cook-Off.” Photo: Manischewitz
An original cooking show competition that celebrates Jewish home cooking and family recipes premiered Friday on Kosher.com.
The four finalists on “The Great Bubby Cook-Off,” presented by the famous Jewish food brand Manischewitz, include a “bubby” from Delray Beach, Florida, and another from Manhattan, New York, and two contestants from Flushing, New York, and West Hartford, Connecticut, who were competing with “bubby-inspired recipes.”
The contestants were selected to compete on the show following a nationwide casting call. Home cooks submitted videos of themselves preparing their favorite Jewish dishes, including family recipes passed down through generations and personal twists on classic dishes. After online voting that was open to the public, four finalists were chosen to advance to a live cook-off in New York City in November.
The winner, to be revealed exclusively on the show, will be crowned “Bubby 2025” and receive a $5,000 cash prize, a featured appearance on the Manischewitz Food Truck as it tours the New York City area, and other prizes. The show is hosted by chef and cookbook author Naomi Nachman.
“‘The Great Bubby Cook-Off’ celebrates exactly what Kosher.com is all about — honoring tradition while inspiring a new generation of home cooks,” said Goldy Guttman, director of Kosher.com, in a released statement. “These bubby recipes carry stories, memories, and culture, and bringing them to life on screen allows us to share the heart of Jewish home cooking with audiences everywhere.”
“‘The Great Bubby Cook-Off’ is about so much more than cooking,” added Shani Seidman, chief marketing officer of Manischewitz. “It’s about honoring the women who shaped our traditions, our tables, and our memories — and celebrating the dishes that bring families together.”
More episodes of “The Great Bubby Cook-Off” will be announced throughout 2026. The show is free to watch, and an additional episode is under consideration that will include a behind-the-scenes look into the competition and judging, according to Manischewitz.
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On Instagram, ‘Rabbinic Fit Check’ is a look book for Jewish clergy
Rabbi Rafi Ellenson was getting ready for a full day of rabbinic duties in September when he jokingly asked a colleague, “What do I wear that’s appropriate both for religious school and a shiva?”
After some light-hearted deliberation, Ellenson, who works as an assistant rabbi for Congregation Shir Hadash, a Reform synagogue in Los Gatos, California, said they realized his wardrobe dilemma might deserve a spotlight on social media.
“We were like, oh, this would be a really fun idea for an Instagram account,” said Ellenson. It would show what rabbis are wearing and “the absurd things they have to do every day, dressing for 20,000 occasions and for 50,000 people.”
For help turning his idea into reality, Ellenson called Rabbi Arielle Stein, an assistant rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, whom he had met in Jerusalem in 2019.
After some deliberation, the pair created Rabbinic Fit Check, an Instagram account billed as “a style diary for the rabbinate and beyond.”
“We’re trying to show diversity of rabbis, diversity of genders, diversity of expression,” said Ellenson. “There’s no one model, and there’s no one model in the real world, so we don’t want to feature only one model on the account.”
So far, Rabbinic Fit Check has featured 57 rabbis, clergy members and students from a range of denominations and garnered over 1,300 followers. The outfits range from cozy sweaters and “sensible” office wear to zebra-print skirts and a fashion-forward Delfina Balda pant suit.
“It’s nice to see that rabbis look like more than just that old oil painting of someone in a black coat,” said Rabbi Allison Poirier of the Conservative synagogue Temple Aliyah in Needham, Massachusetts. “It’s nice to see that we’re out here as new people, as colorful people of all ages and shapes and sizes, which I think in the world I work in, most people know, but it’s just nice to uplift that.”
Indeed, a new national study of the American rabbinate released last month by the Atra Center for Rabbinic Innovation found that 51% of the rabbinical students surveyed identified as LGBTQ+. According to the Atra report, 58% of rabbis surveyed identify as women, 30% as men, and 12% as nonbinary.
But the diversification of the rabbinate has also underscored a broader trend, with rabbis more often taking on an engaged, hands-on role rather than the old model of the “sage on the stage.”
Stein, who had already gone viral for her rabbinic style videos on social media and was featured in Vogue last month for her videos on clergy-friendly shoe choices, said the pair’s Instagram account has also come to serve another purpose: showing the rabbinate in a more intimate light.
“I think especially for our generation of rabbis, we’re real people, these are important ways that people can connect with us and build trust and understanding,” said Stein. “We’re not pretending that we’re somebody at work and somebody at home.”
Rabbinic Fit Check posted its inaugural outfits from Stein and Ellenson in mid-October. The pair then reached out to their colleagues for submissions, and users soon asked to be featured.
Poirier said that she had been drawn to post her style (J. Crew blazer, Birdy Grey dress, her sister’s thrifted sweater) because of the account’s “diversity and also the light-heartedness,” which she said offered a contrast to reality.
“Everything is so, so heavy right now, and a lot of our day is rightly dealing with some of the heaviness, and it’s nice to just have something that also uplifts rabbis as fun, joyful people, kind of expressing ourselves in this cute, silly way,” said Poirier.
“Rabbis are kind of in the zeitgeist in a lot of different ways, and there’s a lot to say about that both positive and negative, and certainly we’re tapping into some of that,” said Ellenson. “But I think we’re approaching an angle of we’re humans who have these cool jobs, and we want to show parts of ourselves through our clothing and express ourselves more fully and completely, and not bifurcate these two segments of our lives.”
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who wrote a history of women’s fashion, said that she viewed the Rabbinic Fit Check account as part of a “new phenomenon” in which the public image of the rabbinate was shifting. She pointed to Nobody Wants This, the Netflix show starring heartthrob Adam Brody as a young Los Angeles rabbi that first aired in September 2024. The Amazon series Transparent, Extrapolations on Apple TV+ and the 2023 film You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah all featured what Hey Alma, JTA’s sister site, called “hot rabbis.”
“It’s kind of like a sign of our times,” said Rabinovitch-Fox. “Not all of them are like Adam Brody, but I think it’s a depiction of a trend, and I think that Instagram account is part of it, like, ‘oh, look, Judaism is cool.’”
Rabbi Jamie Field, the director of education at Beth El Temple Center, a Reform synagogue in Belmont, Massachusetts, was featured on Rabbinic Fit Check shortly before her appearance on the Netflix show Squid Game: The Challenge. She said it was a “really beautiful that there is an increase in rabbinic visibility.”
“We have a really sacred responsibility to show that rabbis are real people, and that we are engaged and part of the world and being responsible for being part of that conversation, not just witnessing it through Netflix shows about rabbis,” said Field.
While Rabinovitch-Fox said religion does not always “celebrate the individual,” she added that “fashion is a really a great and simple way to make your own statement.”
“People want to find somehow to relate, and I think with this Instagram generation, fashion is something that is important to people, so it’s just another way to relate to that,” said Rabinovitch-Fox. “If you can talk with your rabbi about style, you have a cool rabbi.”
Rabbi Andrea London, the leader of Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, a Reform congregation in Evanston, Illinois, said she submitted a photo of herself and Cantor Natalie Young on Parashat Noah after Ellenson, who is a family friend, mentioned it to her in conversation. For her cameo, she wore a white button-down shirt with a gold necklace and slacks.
London, who was ordained in 1996, said that she had submitted the photo to offer the account “a little diversity of age.” She recalled that early in her career, “as a woman, you wouldn’t dare to be on the bimah without a skirt.”
“One of the things that was annoying in the rabbinate was that people would comment on my clothing a lot, and it was just tiresome and men didn’t get that,” said London. “And now, I think Rabbinic Fit Check is trying to turn it on its head, like let’s have fun with it as opposed to seeing this as somehow discriminatory or sexist in any way.”
So far, Ellenson and Stein said the response to the account from their congregants and colleagues had been positive. Looking ahead, Ellenson said they hoped to feature leaders from other faiths.
“I think it’s about joy, showcasing diversity, showcasing the personal, and showcasing that all of these pieces can be a part of cultivating rabbinic and cantorial and clerical work,” said Ellenson. “We can bring ourselves into the work, and that makes the work better when we’re being ourselves with our communities.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post On Instagram, ‘Rabbinic Fit Check’ is a look book for Jewish clergy appeared first on The Forward.
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UNRWA vs. UNHCR: How the UN Created a Permanent Refugee Class
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
For more than 70 years, the United Nations has administered two refugee systems operating under the same flag but guided by fundamentally different moral compasses. One system exists to end refugeehood. The other exists to preserve it.
The contrast between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is not a technical footnote in international policy. It is one of the central reasons the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains frozen in place.
The events of October 7 brutally exposed what many have warned about for decades: UNRWA is no longer a humanitarian agency in any meaningful sense. It is a political instrument that has helped entrench radicalization, prolong suffering, and ultimately enable war.
UNHCR, established in 1950, was designed with a clear mission: provide temporary protection and pursue durable solutions. Its success is measured by how many refugees stop being refugees.
Over the decades, UNHCR has helped tens of millions of people rebuild their lives; Europeans after World War II, Vietnamese people, Balkan refugees, Rwandans, Syrians, Afghans, and most recently Ukrainians. Resettlement, integration, and naturalization are not failures under UNHCR’s framework; they are the goal.
UNRWA, created a year earlier for a single refugee population, operates on the opposite logic. Its mandate does not aim to resolve refugeehood but to maintain it indefinitely.
Palestinians are the only group in the world whose refugee status is automatically inherited, generation after generation, regardless of citizenship, residence, or living conditions.
The numbers tell the story. Roughly 700,000 Arabs were displaced during the 1948 war launched by Arab states against the newly declared State of Israel. Today, UNRWA claims nearly six million Palestinian refugees. Refugee populations are supposed to shrink as lives stabilize. This one grows exponentially. That is not humanitarian failure, it is institutional design.
This design has consequences. When refugeehood becomes an inherited political identity rather than a temporary legal status, grievance replaces hope. Dependency replaces empowerment. Conflict becomes a resource to be managed rather than a tragedy to be ended.
UNRWA’s budget, influence, and relevance depend on the persistence of the conflict. Peace would render it obsolete. Integration would reduce its scope. Resolution would end its mandate.
Nowhere is this more evident than in education. UNRWA operates hundreds of schools, shaping the worldview of generations of Palestinian children. Education should be a bridge to coexistence.
Instead, repeated investigations and reports have documented curricula that erase Israel from maps, glorify “martyrdom,” deny Jewish historical ties to the land, and frame violence as both justified and inevitable. Antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories have surfaced again and again. This is not accidental oversight. It is tolerated, minimized, and excused as “context.”
The moral collapse of this system was laid bare after October 7. In the aftermath of Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians, evidence emerged that UNRWA employees were directly involved in the attack. Others were found to have celebrated the killings. Weapons were discovered in or near UNRWA facilities. Terror tunnels were uncovered beneath UNRWA schools. Hostages were reportedly hidden or moved through civilian areas linked to UNRWA infrastructure. This was not infiltration from the outside. It was contamination from within.
If UNHCR staff had participated in mass murder or aided a terrorist organization, the agency would have been dismantled immediately. Yet UNRWA survived on explanations, damage control, and the insistence that the problem lay with a few individuals rather than a compromised system. That argument no longer holds.
The tragedy is that Palestinians themselves have paid the highest price for this failure. UNRWA did not prepare Gazans for self-governance or peace. Hamas prepared Palestinians for war, and UNRWA looked away.
October 7 was not an aberration. It was the inevitable result of a system that monetized suffering and normalized extremism for decades.
The solution is not complicated, but it requires moral clarity. Palestinians deserve the same humanitarian standards applied to every other refugee population on earth. That means ending UNRWA’s exceptional status and transferring responsibility to UNHCR. It means redefining refugeehood as a temporary condition, not a hereditary identity. It means de-radicalizing education, dismantling terror infrastructure, and replacing grievance with opportunity.
One world cannot operate two refugee systems and still claim moral credibility. One system resolves crises. The other perpetuates them.
If the international community truly cares about peace, dignity, and human rights, both Israeli and Palestinian, it must finally acknowledge that UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.
Sabine Sterk is CEO of the foundation, “Time To Stand Up For Israel.”