LOS ANGELES — Nithya Raman went into a Jewish community-hosted mayoral candidate forum Tuesday hoping to win over voters concerned about her stance on Israel and her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.

But Raman’s reiteration that the war in Gaza amounted to genocide produced waves of groans in the Skirball Cultural Center crowd before incumbent Mayor Karen Bass took the stage and rejected that claim.

Tuesday’s forum, in which the candidates took turns fielding questions from Spectrum news anchor Alex Cohen, began when Raman’s campaign in a far more comfortable position than it was when the event was first announced. With five weeks remaining before the election, a poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times showed Raman surging ahead of Bass, 39% to 28%, with a third of voters undecided.

Raman, who has broken with DSA on municipal issues and on foreign policy in her two terms on L.A. city council, has not made Israel a focal point in her campaign. And she has made a concerted effort to develop stronger relationships in the Jewish community throughout the campaign.

But on stage, flanked by American and Israeli flags, Raman seemed unable to navigate her way out of the Middle East, as Cohen dove almost immediately into the questions many voters had come to hear Raman answer — about Gaza, socialism and an interview she did in May with Hasan Piker, a socialist streamer whose anti-Israel rhetoric has often drawn accusations of antisemitism.

Raman said Tuesday that while she recognized that genocide is “a deeply painful word,” she used it because she “felt compelled to speak out about issues that we saw, the images that are coming, the targeting of hospitals, the deaths of children.”

When it was Bass’ turn to be interviewed, she said flatly that she did not believe the war was a genocide.

Alex Cohen pushed Nithya Raman to say why she believed it was a genocide.

Raman said she recognized it was a deeply painful word, but felt compelled to speak out about the images she saw—“the targeting of hospitals, the deaths of children.”

The remark drew an audible reaction. https://t.co/JZliCkauvj pic.twitter.com/SGWZIQEgkT

— Louis Keene (@thislouis) September 30, 2026

The forum, hosted by Jewish Federation Los Angeles and co-sponsored by a slew of other community organizations, underscored Israel’s importance to Jewish voters even in elections for positions that do not deal heavily with foreign policy. And it may also have exposed a growing divide about Israel between LA’s Jewish mainstream and the city’s broader electorate.

The federation’s CEO, Rabbi Noah Farkas, said Tuesday that calling the war a genocide crosses a “red line” for elected officials, but that the organization would work with whoever became mayor.

“When a candidate describes what’s happening in Gaza as a genocide, it causes pain,” Farkas said. “Some of that pain is in this room, and some of that pain is on our streets, where Jews are often accused, indicted, and convicted for actions of the Israeli government whether they agree with them or not.”

Raman on Piker

Raman’s primary focus as a candidate has been on local issues like homelessness, housing and street safety. But many of Tuesday’s attendees — including a few hundred VIPs from the event’s sponsors — seemed most interested in Raman’s answers on her DSA membership, her interview with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, and her remarks calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.

Piker has often been accused of antisemitism for equating Zionists with Nazis and suggesting that the Oct. 7 attacks were justified. (Piker has vehemently rejected the accusation.)

Raman defended her appearance on Piker’s stream, saying she had pushed back on some of his positions and that her responsibility as a candidate was to reach as many voters as possible.

“I wish that Kamala Harris had gone on Joe Rogan, for example, when she was running for office,” she said.

When Cohen asked Raman, who is Indian American, if she would have appeared with a streamer notorious for hateful remarks about that or any other minority group, Raman said, “I would hope so,” eliciting murmurs in the crowd. “But my hope is that I would apply the same principles, no matter the streamer or podcaster or platform was, and that I would be able to go and speak in different audiences and present myself honestly in full in those places,” she added.

The ‘g’ word

Cohen then turned to the question of genocide.

Raman said at a Muslim Policy Action Conference forum last month that “our tax dollars should not be going to funding a genocide.”

When Cohen asked her why she felt Israel’s actions rose to that level, Raman said she recognized that it was a painful word for many Jewish Angelenos and that it had important historical context.

She noted that she had been the first city council member to condemn the attacks on Oct. 7, and reiterated that her ambition was to be the mayor of the city and her goal was to make sure all of its residents were safe regardless of their opinions on foreign policy.

“This city has to be a place where you can feel free to express those views, where you can feel free to worship as you wish, or you can be visibly Jewish and not feel unsafe,” she said. “The city must be one that is safe for every single resident in it.

She also acknowledged that some of the recent rise in antisemitism had come from the political left. As a progressive elected official, she said, “I never want progressive politics to be conflated with antisemitism. And so I will work harder to ensure that this city is safe for you.”

As she rejected the genocide term, Bass touted her deep history in the Jewish community, then pivoted to a longer response about the need to increase the size of the police force.

DSA and BDS

After Cohen concluded her interview, Raman continued to face more questions related to Israel from the event’s co-sponsors. A board member of the local American Jewish Committee chapter asked Raman where she stood on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which is endorsed by DSA.

Like many of the other Israel-related questions, Raman does not have a stated campaign position on BDS. And her response did not diverge from previous answers to the same question.

Massive groans in the Skirball auditorium when Nithya Raman defends BDS as a “legitimate form of protest.”

Question from @AJCGlobal. pic.twitter.com/W2Uml0lPMI

— Louis Keene (@thislouis) September 30, 2026

She prefaced by stating that BDS is a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” — and was immediately drowned out by audience displeasure — but that it was not part of her campaign platform. The answer drew perhaps the largest negative response of the night. (Bass later said she does not support BDS.)

The hostility towards Raman’s responses recalled a forum for California Senate candidates in the same room earlier this year, in which the lone Republican on stage, Steve Hilton, drew the largest cheers.

Outreach efforts

Still, the boos cut against an image Raman has sought to cultivate in recent weeks as a friend of the Jewish community. On Rosh Hashanah, Raman made a cameo at IKAR — a prominent non-denominational synagogue that counts former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti among its members. She also has dropped into backyard dwellings in Westwood and Beverlywood to engage Jewish voters during Sukkot.

Many of her skeptics may see in the two-term city councilwoman an echo of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on a promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and drew heavily on local DSA membership to turn out voters. Since defeating a conventionally pro-Israel Democrat in former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani has continued to criticize Israel from City Hall.

Raman’s defenders are quick to reject those comparisons. Raman, unlike Mamdani, does not mention Israel on her website or harp on it on the campaign trail. She did not volunteer her opinion about genocide — she shared it only after being asked. And her remarks about Israel in the past — including defending its right to exist — have not only shown her willingness to break with DSA, they have come at a real political cost.

Her pursuit of an endorsement from Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles in 2024 earned her the censure of the organization’s LA chapter. With Raman in a close race for the second spot in the top-two primary, DSA chose not to endorse a candidate.

She told Piker she would not seek the DFI-LA endorsement again. But she has not campaigned with Piker like other candidates, including Huang and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Meanwhile, Bass — who entered the race as an unpopular incumbent due to her handling of the city’s 2025 wildfires — has seen her support continue to flag after a warehouse fire that burned for two weeks spewed toxic chemicals on the city’s east side.

Nevertheless, the DSA affiliation and genocide accusation are disqualifying for some Jewish Angelenos — including Democrats.

Farkas declined to say whether Raman could have said anything to reassure those voters. The federation’s job, he said, was to call balls and strikes.

“It’s really up to each candidate to decide how they’re going to respond to those things,” he said, “and make definitive, executive-level statements that show that they’re the leader of this city and not just being reactive to things on the ground.”

The post At L.A. Jewish community forum, Nithya Raman encounters tough questions on Israel — and a hostile audience appeared first on The Forward.

From the beginning, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil denied claims that the protests at Columbia University after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel were antisemitic.

In his book, No Land to Stand On, released Tuesday, he stands by that.

Khalil, who became the face of the anti-Israel campus movement after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025, reiterates his anti-Zionist stance in the book while detailing “a life of exile, refuge, and resistance.”

Recounting the endless interviews with journalists that made him the face of a campus movement, he writes that the question of whether the protests were antisemitic kept coming up.

“I explained, repeatedly, that the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism was a strategy to stifle righteous criticism of Israel,” writes Khalil, who added that many Jewish students were involved in the protests. “Such weaponization of antisemitism was designed to place a state and its crimes beyond criticism by wrapping them in the protections owed to a faith and its people.”

The memoir weaves Khalil’s beliefs and frustrations through stories from his life, from where he was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and fled to Lebanon at age 18, to the protests at Columbia, his detention and finally his release. He uses the book as an opportunity to say his detention was unjust, and to critique the government’s case against him.

He notes a memo from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that states his detention was a result of “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States,” adding those activities were “otherwise lawful.”

“Otherwise lawful,” writes Khalil. “They had written it themselves. My beliefs were lawful, and they wanted to deport me for them.”

Khalil argued that the administration was disingenuous in deporting him for alleged antisemitism, pointing to Trump’s personal visit with the openly antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes. He also accused the administration of platforming “white supremacist rhetoric and symbolism.”

Further, Khalil claimed pro-Palestinian protesters were peaceful, while “it was the pro-­Israel students and Zionist groups that had provoked confrontations, harassed Palestinian students, and in some cases physically attacked them.”

Despite his status as a lawful permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen, the federal government apprehended him on March 8, 2025. Khalil spent 104 days in ICE detention, famously missing the birth of his first child.

His imprisonment sparked a fierce debate over free speech, along with a debate over what his beliefs were to begin with. Khalil clarified his stances in an April interview with the Forward saying he acknowledged “a Jewish connection” to Israel, but that “rejecting the self-determination of the Jewish people on the Palestinian land in itself is not antisemitism.”

He reiterates in the book that he does not “endorse” Hamas, though he told the Forward he was unsure if Hamas targeted civilians on Oct. 7, something that has been widely documented and substantiated.

While he expressed disdain for the way the university handled the protests and its messaging after Oct. 7, Khalil said the university was failing its Palestinian students long before 2023. He pointed to the school’s Tel Aviv Global Center, which opened this past summer despite protest.

“Columbia wanted to open an institutional outpost, funded in part by our tuition, in a place that had a policy of refusing entry to people like me, and call it a center for global learning,” he wrote.

He also took aim at Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University.

“The dual-­degree stream was largely built around Jewish Israeli students who had served in the Israeli army,” writes Khalil. “I couldn’t stop thinking that if I were in Palestine, some of these students would be stopping me at checkpoints, raiding my university, piloting the drones surveilling my community, killing my neighbors.”

Returning home to New York from the ICE detention center in Louisiana, he wrote that he was met with praise — and harassment.

When people approached him asking if he was the Khalil they’d seen in the news, he was unsure: “Whether they wanted to shake my hand or spit in my face, say ‘Thank you for what you’re doing’ or follow me through Midtown yelling ‘Am Yisrael Chai.’”

He saw all of those reactions and more, he wrote.

The 208-page book is dedicated to Khalil’s wife, to the Columbia students who participated in the protests, to ICE detainees and “Palestine, until you are free.” He will launch a book tour on Tuesday at a shop just two blocks from Columbia’s campus.

The post Mahmoud Khalil’s book reiterates his anti-Zionist stance appeared first on The Forward.

Jewish internet spaces are alight this week with reports that actress, model and political lightning rod Sydney Sweeney was spotted in the pews on Rosh Hashanah.

According to GreenwichTime and The Free Press, Sweeney — who is not Jewish — attended services at Temple Sholom in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her boyfriend, music mogul Scooter Braun (who grew up there). Gossip rag DeuxMoi has since claimed that Sweeney, who has been linked with Braun since at least June 2025, is also contemplating conversion.

One can speculate on whether the most in-demand actress on the planet might be leaning a bit too hard into her Marilyn Monroe character arc. At the Forward, though, we’re wondering whether Sweeney’s Jewish beau picked the right holiday to bring her to shul.

After all, there’s a wide range of experiences when it comes to prayer services, and you want to make a positive first impression. You’d want their day in shul to be accessible, fun and not too long. That’s a Sydney Sweeney movie, though, not Rosh Hashanah services. So without further ado, here’s the official undisputed rankings of Jewish calendar days on which to bring your non-Jewish partner to shul.

Going from least to most desirable:

Erev Tisha B’av

I would have to respect the audacity of someone bringing their partner to synagogue for the first time on Tisha B’av, the day Jewish people grieve the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. It’s an intentionally unpleasant time to be in shul — you’re sitting on the floor, reading Lamentations. Also, you’re not supposed to greet people at all, which would almost certainly be awkward for a first-timer, considering how uncomfortable it is for regulars. On the flip side, if you’re Sydney Sweeney, that rule means no one can bother you for a selfie, either.

Shemini Atzeret

We pray for rain, which is an ancient word that means sustenance, but at this point everyone’s running on fumes for the High Holiday season, so you probably won’t get your senior rabbi delivering the sermon. Some years (including this one), your synagogue might be reading Ecclesiastes, which is both melancholy and long. Hard sell.

Passover

Passover isn’t known for its prayer services — the main event is, of course, the seder. If you’re taking a non-Jewish partner to services for the first time on Passover, it usually means one of two things: 1) You don’t want anyone to meet this person, because nobody goes to shul on Passover or 2) You didn’t have enough fun at the seder, because if you did, you’d be sleeping in with the rest of us.

One Passover plus: On the Shabbat that falls during the holiday, services also include the reading of the Song of Songs, the most risqué text in the Jewish canon.

Shavuot

In the height of summer, we read the story of Ruth — Judaism’s great conversion story. (Hint hint.) We also celebrate the receiving of the Ten Commandments, which your partner may already be familiar with from the movies, if not public school.

Shavuot morning is also a good service to go to because — at least in synagogues that observe two days of the holiday — the first day’s early services are led at a breakneck pace so that people who stayed up all night studying Torah the night before can go straight to sleep. No sermon! You’ll be out of there faster than you can say Na’aseh V’nishmah.

Simchat Torah

Like Sukkot, but swap out the lulav and etrog for Torah scrolls, which don’t smell as good or shake as well. Many synagogues (over-)serve alcohol on this holiday, which is a double-edged sword for a day you’d prefer everyone to be on their best behavior.

Yom Kippur

I’m gonna call this one underrated. There are surprisingly some things going for the Jewish day of repentance. The themes of atonement and forgiveness have universal appeal, and Jewish people do them well. You’ll probably get one of the rabbi’s strongest sermons of the calendar cycle. There’s a strange ecstasy that comes from being trapped in a room with hundreds of fasting people; the story of Jonah and the whale is one of our highlights. (This is also the only holiday I can attest to: My parents had their first date — ever! — on Yom Kippur services, and they’re still together.)

At the same time, Yom Kippur tends to have the longest prayer services of the year. It’s a fast day, so there’s no free food at the end of afternoon services (though you might get bagels at the break-fast). You usually have to pay to get in, plus there’s often a fundraising appeal woven into the service. And due to the prohibition on wearing leather shoes, you’d also be surrounding your partner with people wearing Crocs with dress clothes, which may scare them away from Judaism even if you try to explain it.

Sukkot

People like to call this our most pagan holiday, but marching around in circles with a giant asparagus and lemon is objectively fun, and the Four Species can represent basically anything you want. Let’s just hope your partner isn’t a willow.

Rosh Hashanah

Scooter Braun isn’t the first person to drag their partner to shul on Rosh Hashanah, and for good reason. Everyone wears their finest clothing, the shul will be beautifully decorated and the prayers are musically extravagant. The rabbi’s sermon will emphasize renewal and the commitment to doing better. There’s a decent chance apples dipped in honey will be served in the lobby. And above all else, the shofar blowing — done right — is arguably the highlight of the year in shul.

Plus, everyone’s there, so you can introduce your partner to everyone they need to know in one fell swoop. The only downside is you usually have to buy a ticket. (And on behalf of synagogue offices everywhere, if you’re the Jewish partner in the relationship, don’t try to arrange this over email 24 hours before the holiday.)

Purim

This is one thing Nobody Wants This got right: Purim is the ideal holiday for introducing a non-Jewish partner to the community. What better way to show up than in costume? You learn a foundational story of Jewish survival, a tradition that transforms our vulnerability into comedy.  It’s also a family-oriented holiday — kids in face-paint, everyone with their graggers — which makes it a perfect picture-this set piece.

But the best thing about Purim? Thanks to the tradition of drinking ‘til you drop — if the relationship doesn’t work out, no one will remember a year later.

The post Sydney Sweeney went to shul. But did she choose the right occasion? appeared first on The Forward.