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For Bob Dylan’s 85th birthday, an 85-minute playlist
Nobel Prize-winning song-poet Bob Dylan turns 85 on Sunday, May 24. In order to celebrate the august occasion, we have put together an 85-minute playlist featuring one minute of music for every year Dylan has been alive. This playlist isn’t meant to summarize or stand in for Dylan’s overall body of work, which numbers well over 600 songs, nor is it intended to suggest that these are his best songs. Rather, this is a journey through Dylan’s vast songbook, purposely avoiding the tried-and-true in favor of highlighting almost two dozen lesser-known but wholly worthy gems.
Happy 85th birthday, Bob Dylan!
Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues (1962)
One of the first original songs Bob Dylan wrote and performed in his early coffeehouse days, “Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues” gives the lie to the notion that Dylan consciously tried to hide his Jewish background by changing his name (from Zimmerman to Dylan) and making up stories about his past (e.g., that he traveled with the circus). If there was any truth to that, then why did he kick off his career with a riff on that most recognizably Jewish of songs?
Mixed-Up Confusion (1962)
Recorded in the fall of 1962, this rockabilly single recontextualizes (or gives the lie to) the common but false narrative (perpetuated in the film A Complete Unknown) that Bob Dylan “went electric” on his 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, and in subsequent concerts the following summer and fall. In fact, Dylan was a rock ‘n’ roller dating back to high school, where the quote appearing beneath his photo in his class yearbook read, “To join Little Richard.” On “Mixed-Up Confusion,” he was already stretching his rock ‘n’ roll muscles several years before the notorious 1965 Newport Folk Festival where he performed with an electric band, much to the horror of the moldy figs of folk music.
4th Time Around (1966)
As early as 1964, the Beatles’ John Lennon began to show signs of having been influenced by Bob Dylan’s songwriting on numbers such as “I’m a Loser” (1964) and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (1965), in which Lennon goes so far as to imitate Dylan’s nasal rasp. Bob Dylan was hip to this trend, and after the Beatles released the Dylanesque “Norwegian Wood,” Dylan responded in song with “4th Time Around,” whose melody strongly echoes that of “Norwegian Wood.” Dylan scholar Sean Wilentz wrote in Bob Dylan in America that “4th Time Around” sounds “like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan.”
Blind Willie McTell (1983)
Unaccountably left off the 1983 album Infidels for which it was originally intended, “Blind Willie McTell” is one of Bob Dylan’s American epics, as it invokes New Orleans, East Texas, bootleg whiskey, plantations, “the ghost of slavery ships,” an unnamed war, and “power and greed and corruptible seed.” Be sure to play it on the 4th of July.
I Want You (1966)
Only Bob Dylan could write such a surrealistic narrative — replete with a guilty undertaker who sighs, a lonesome organ grinder who cries, a drunken politician who weeps, and a child in a Chinese suit — in the form of a bouncy, three-minute pop song that indeed made it into the Top 20 in 1966, when it was released on his greatest (double) album, Blonde on Blonde.
We Better Talk This Over (1978)
“We Better Talk This Over” is one of several numbers on Bob Dylan’s 1978 album Street-Legal that seem to want to bring closure to what Dylan began revealing about his crumbling marriage on 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. Whereas Dylan portrayed himself in pain and bereft on Blood, on this oft-overlooked propulsive number he is ready to put the past behind him and move forward. “The vows that we kept are now broken and swept / ’Neath the bed where we slept,” he sings, somewhat resignedly. Dylan also seemingly reveals an internal spiritual struggle when he sings, “I’m exiled, you can’t convert me,” just a little over a year before he announces to the world his so-called born-again experience on 1979’s Slow Train Coming.
Most of the Time (1989)
An acute, heart-piercing, devastating post-breakup song, featuring an unreliable narrator denying he still hurts but betrayed by his over-the-top insistence that he has gotten over her, in a song featuring a slow emotional and sonic build.
Day of the Locusts (1970)
Poor Bob Dylan. It turns out that the day in 1970 on which he received an honorary degree from Princeton University turned out to be one of the worst days of his life, judging from this song. Nature, a Biblical plague, and David Crosby (in an unnamed cameo, playing the man standing next to Dylan whose “head was exploding”) all conspired against the college dropout to make him fear he might not have gotten “out of there alive.” He could have just transferred to Wesleyan and everything would have been fine.
Everything Is Broken (1989)
In the aggressive, blues-rocking “Everything Is Broken” Bob Dylan recounts the Kabbalistic creation story about the klippot, the broken vessels of divine energy that were left behind everywhere and which point to our ultimate task as humans — to repair the brokenness permeating creation through acts of inherent goodness, otherwise known as mitzvot, in an oft-misunderstood process called tikkun olam. All this in a three-minute song blending New Orleans swamp-rock and classic Chicago blues.
You’re a Big Girl Now (1975)
Another of Bob Dylan’s post-breakup songs of desperation, this from Blood on the Tracks, a recording often referred to as Dylan’s “divorce album.” In “You’re a Big Girl Now,” Dylan drops all anger and defenses in favor of raw emotion: “I’m going out of my mind / With a pain that stops and starts / Like a corkscrew to my heart / Ever since we’ve been apart.”
Positively 4th Street (1965)
Featuring one of the greatest opening lines of all time: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.” It’s all downhill from there, my friend.
The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar (1981)
“The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” is a blistering, urgent missive, with reports of phones out of order and the killing of nuns and soldiers (evocative of American military involvement in Latin America at the time the song was written). Nevertheless, each verse ends with the title refrain, “The groom’s still waiting at the altar,” which I hear as a statement retracting his declaration of conversion.
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? (1965)
In September 1965, Dylan nearly hit the top of the pop charts when “Like a Rolling Stone” went to #2; it was kept from the top spot by the Beatles’ “Help!” But Dylan didn’t give up in his quest for the chart-topping hit that had so far evaded him. Songs he recorded and released in coming months that bore musical similarities to “Like a Rolling Stone” included “Positively Fourth Street,” “One of Must Know (Sooner or Later),” and “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” the only studio track recorded with the Hawks — later to become the Band. The single presents the backup group at its fiercest. And Dylan quotes himself when he sings “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend,” a line from “Positively 4th Street.”
Going, Going, Gone (1974)
From 1974’s Planet Waves, the only studio album Bob Dylan recorded with the Band, “Going, Going, Gone” stands out on the album for its moody, unsettled nature (surrounded as it is by songs of domestic bliss and naked nostalgia). Robbie Robertson’s evocative electric guitar leads pepper the ballad, saying as much with their clipped notes and anguished tone as Dylan does with lyrics like “I’m closin’ the book / On the pages and the text / And I don’t really care / What happens next.”
Series of Dreams (1989)
An outtake from 1989’s Oh Mercy, this is one of Dylan’s big statement songs that unaccountably got left on the cutting room floor, until demand grew so strong from those who had heard it via bootleg recordings that Dylan’s record company assented to the inclusion of the track on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. Dylan could be alluding to the Shoah when he describes his dreams:
In one, numbers were burning
In another, I witnessed a crime
In one, I was running, and in another
All I seemed to be doing was climb.
One More Cup of Coffee (1976)
This hypnotic if unassuming number off the early-1976 album Desire, featuring Dylan’s only authentic cantorial singing and aided and abetted by Scarlet Rivera’s klezmer-via-Gypsy violin, a relentless minor key, and Emmylou Harris’ harmonies is an overlooked gem. As the song says, its “heart is like an ocean, mysterious and dark.”
Dignity (1989)
Like “Series of Dreams,” the song “Dignity” was an outtake from the Oh Mercy sessions that was first released on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3 in 1994. And like “Series of Dreams,” this song also seems to refer to the Shoah, when the narrator — bereft at the astounding loss of dignity — refers to “a crowded room full of covered-up mirrors,” as in a Jewish house of mourning, and “steps goin’ down into tattoo land.”
Dark Eyes (1985)
To many, the 1985 album Empire Burlesque introduced one of the low points in Bob Dylan’s recording career, including the two follow-up albums Knocked Out Loaded (1986) and Down in the Groove (1988). Empire Burlesque was a desperate attempt by producer Arthur Baker to update Dylan’s sound to blend in more with the mid-1980s dance music aesthetic. But Baker knew that the album needed a dynamite closer, and he suggested that Dylan write an old-style, solo acoustic ballad. In a fit of inspiration, Dylan stayed up all night and came up with this stunner: sharp, intimate, personal, where the singer looks around himself at a chaotic world from which he is totally alienated — “I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized / All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.”
Heart of Mine (1981)
“Heart of Mine” stands out on the 1981 Shot of Love album as a raucous, joyful bit of R&B music (which flavors most of the album). But it’s a Bob Dylan song, so it has that subversive touch. The narrator addresses the song to his own heart — “Don’t let her see / Don’t let her see that you need her / Don’t put yourself over the line / Heart of mine” — and warns it that only trouble lies ahead if this is the path he (his heart) decides to pursue. The recording’s impressive instrumental lineup — all of whom are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — includes Ringo Starr on drums, Ronnie Wood on guitar, and Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass, meaning Dylan was backed on this track by a Beatle, a Rolling Stone, and a member of the Stax house band, also known as the M.G.’s, as in Booker T. and the M.G.’s. Not too shabby.
Congratulations (1988)
This is a bit of a cheat stuck into this list to demonstrate that as much as he has always been a solo artist and an iconoclast, Bob Dylan has also always longed for the companionship — musical and otherwise — of a steady band. He came close to achieving this with the Hawks (later the Band) from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, and allegedly asked Jerry Garcia in the late-1980s if he could join the Grateful Dead (which was essentially a Dylan tribute band). But it wasn’t until George Harrison persuaded his friend and sometime songwriting partner to join him — along with Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne — in an “anonymous supergroup” called the Traveling Wilburys in 1988, that Dylan took the plunge and subsumed himself into a collective. In most cases, as with “Congratulations,” you could easily tell one lead singer from the other, and in general that person wrote the song. We’re turning this one — an over-the-top expression of post-breakup bitterness (the first line is “Congratulations for breaking my heart”) — back on Dylan on the occasion of his birthday.
My Back Pages (1964)
Along with “It’s All Over Now (Baby Blue),” the song “My Back Pages” is often heard as a transitional statement: out with the old Dylan, in with the new, if you will. Included on the 1964 album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, which eschewed topical protest for more personal and poetic concerns, “My Back Pages” found the 23-year-old singer-songwriter looking back just a few years at his more serious self and judging him thusly: “Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.” A 1967 version of the song by the Byrds made it into the Top 30 and inspired the all-star version of the song rendered at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in 1992, which featured George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Neil Young, and Roger McGuinn trading verses alongside Dylan.
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Haley Stevens shocks Democrats by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers. Her move could sway Jewish voters in Michigan.
Rep. Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat who lost a heated Senate primary to progressive Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on Sunday in a stunning break with her party just two days before Election Day. The move could shake up one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races.
The endorsement came after a weekend of growing tension between Stevens and El-Sayed, whose fierce criticism of Israel and association with online personalities accused of antisemitism alienated some Jewish Democrats. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate.
Stevens, a staunch supporter of Israel who received significant backing from AIPAC during the primary, had been snubbed by El-Sayed amid efforts to unite Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s election. Just last week, she told CNN she would vote for El-Sayed and was scheduled to join him at a unity rally Sunday.
But a feud escalated over the weekend after El-Sayed refused to condemn the content of an ad from a PAC supporting his campaign that blamed U.S. aid to Israel for rising grocery prices. El-Sayed, in return, accused Stevens of “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago” and again mentioned the support she received from AIPAC.
“Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said in a video posted on X after attending church services in Detroit with Rogers.
Speaking to the media alongside Rogers, Steven also referenced Hasan Piker, a popular left-wing pundit who has been accused of antisemitism and has campaigned alongside El-Sayed. “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” she said. “I do not stand with Hasan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses.”
The surprise endorsement could influence Jewish Democrats who have struggled with whether to support El-Sayed despite their concerns about his rhetoric on Israel and antisemitism. After the March attack on Michigan’s Temple Israel, El-Sayed said, “Hurt people hurt people,” referring to the attacker having lost family in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. He later apologized for the comment.
Some Jewish Democrats had considered leaving the Senate race on the ballot blank, similar to what the pro-Palestinian “uncommitted” movement did in the 2024 presidential election to protest the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in the state. However, in a race so close, they could make the difference. The latest YouGov poll of likely voters in Michigan has El-Sayed up by 4 points.
Trump carried the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes. In the Senate race that same year, Democrat Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes. Even before Sunday’s development, the Republican Jewish Coalition had spent $2 million to target approximately 50,000 Jewish voters, primarily in Oakland County, who backed Stevens in the primary.
The divisions have also become personal for Stevens, who is considering converting to Judaism. Her Jewish fiancé, Jason Turkish, attended a RJC forum last week and said he would vote for Rogers.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, sent direct mailers to 130,000 identified Jewish voters in the swing state. It also sponsored get-out-the-vote phone calls.
Democrats try to limit the damage
The development marks one of the biggest public splits among Democrats over Israel this election cycle, as the party is fighting to win control of the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official, called Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers “a despicable betrayal.”
Schumer stood by his endorsement of El-Sayed. In a statement Sunday, he accused Republicans of “racist, Islamophobic, and over-the-top false attacks” against the Democratic nominee. He did not directly address the Stevens endorsement. Stevens, who said she is “still a very proud Democrat,” said she wants to see Schumer become Senate Majority Leader.
The endorsement also sparked a firestorm within Stevens’ own office, with her chief of staff and other aides resigning in protest. Stevens did not seek reelection to the House after running for Senate, and her term ends in December.
Republicans seized on the divide.
“Wow, this is BIG!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Her following is huge, and the level of respect from the People of Michigan, especially our African American and Jewish populations, is virtually unparalleled. Haley said what few people are willing to say.”
Some Jewish Democrats also heavily criticized Stevens on Sunday, saying she was hurting the party and the country. “Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” Slotkin, who is Jewish and who has hit the campaign trail with El-Sayed, wrote on X.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America, an organizing body for Jewish interests in the Democratic Party, had pointedly not endorsed El-Sayed during the campaign. Yet following Stevens’ announcement, its CEO Halie Soifer wrote, “A vote for any Republican in 2026 is a vote for Donald Trump.”
Nonnegotiable Michigan, a coalition of Michigan rabbis and Jewish Democrats, scheduled an online forum for Sunday afternoon to discuss their choices — whether to support the Republicans or leave the ballot blank — after El-Sayed ignored its repeated requests to engage. “Now, with voting underway and Election Day approaching, the question is no longer only what El-Sayed will do — but what Jewish voters will do,” the group said in a statement released before the Stevens endorsement.
Piker, on social media, called Stevens “a self interested striver who’s weirdly obsessed with Israel and has been paid handsomely for this strange obsession.” El-Sayed has distanced himself multiple times from Piker since they campaigned together in the primary, including this week after Piker compared a heavily Jewish Michigan suburb to “a KKK neighborhood.”
A shift in the Jewish vote on Tuesday could help decide the Senate race. It could also offer an early test of whether divisions over Israel will cost Democrats Jewish support beyond this election and heading into the 2028 presidential race.
JTA contributed to this report.
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Looking for a Yiddish-related event?
The Forverts website now includes a new feature. Each week, you’ll find a listing of upcoming events related to the Yiddish language or culture, both online and in person.
The list will include lectures in English or Yiddish; concerts; plays; day trips; conversation groups and reading circles.
If you know of a Yiddish-related event coming up, let us know by emailing schaechter@forward.com.
Sunday, Nov. 1, 2 p.m. ET. In this Zoom event, L.A. Yiddish culture activist Miri Koral will discuss a unique translation project of 160 works written by diverse masters of Yiddish poetry who perished in the Holocaust. Poet and Holocaust survivor Binem Heller compiled the anthology in 1951 to ensure that the works of these wonderful poets aren’t forgotten, and Koral is determined to get them all translated into English, opening them up to a much wider audience. The program will be in Yiddish. Register.
Sunday, Nov. 1, 2 p.m. ET. Some of the most passionate Yiddish love poetry and prose was written about Crotona Park in the Bronx, an area that fell off the beaten track in the last century. In this on-site tour in Yiddish, scholar Eve Jochnowitz will guide us as we explore the neighborhood and the literature it inspired. The event is free but a donation of $18 is suggested. The group will meet at the corner of Charlotte Street and Crotona Park East. Register.
Sunday, Nov. 1, 2 p.m. ET. Come shmooze in Yiddish with people all over the world at the shmueskrayz hosted by the Parizer yidish-tsenter. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed. Feel free to sip coffee or a glass of wine. No registration necessary. Zoom link here
Thursday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m. ET. In this Zoom event, we’ll hear an English translation of detailed Yiddish letters written by Shlomo Vorobeichic, a Jewish man in Vilna before the war, to his siblings who had settled in the U.S. Although Shlomo, his wife and two children perished in the Holocaust, two children survived and kept the letters. One of them, Moi Ver, became a well-regarded photographer. In the 1990s, Moi Ver’s daughter Lilian Falk translated her grandfather’s letters into English, giving us a vivid view of Vilna in the early 20th century. Register.
Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6-7. Stockholm khevre: Attend a Yiddish film festival that includes contemporary Yiddish works like the 2026 film Moishe Badkhn (Moishe the Wedding Entertainer); Welcome to Yiddishland (2024), and the Yiddish-Ukrainian film SHTTL (2023). All films are subtitled in English. Tickets.
Sunday, Nov. 8, 3 p.m. ET. Folks in the DC/Maryland/Northern Virginia area: Join the DMV Jewish Labor Bund for a bimonthly Yiddish song circle at Maryland Meadworks. All levels of Yiddish and singing ability are welcome.
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 3 p.m. ET. Toronto folks: Yiddish studies scholar Sonia Gollance will discuss and read excerpts of Tea Arciszewska’s Yiddish play Miryeml, which Gollance translated as part of her project to uncover Yiddish plays by women. The play is often described as a powerful memorial to the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust. The in-person lecture will take place at the University of Toronto and will be in Yiddish. More info.
Wednesday, Nov. 11, 7 p.m. ET. Attend an in-person staged reading of Sh. An-ski’s legendary folk drama, The Dybbuk, directed by Mikhl Yashinsky. The play, originally written in Russian between 1913 and 1916, was translated into Yiddish by An-ski himself and inspired countless film, opera, and ballet adaptations. Register.
Thursday, Nov. 19, 7 p.m. ET. Learn what makes Quebec an essential place on the world map of Yiddish culture historically and today in this Zoom talk between the Yiddish Book Center’s director of special projects, Sebastian Schulman, and Brian Calvert from Jewish Heritage Travel. The discussion will feature a sneak peek at the Center’s upcoming group tour to Montreal and Quebec City. The trip is a unique chance to experience Yiddish-Quebecois culture—its history, art, music, cuisine—as well as Montreal and Quebec City as historic and contemporary centers of Jewish life and creativity. Register.
The post Looking for a Yiddish-related event? appeared first on The Forward.
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These rivals in a close House race agree on Israel. They’re fighting over who Jewish voters can trust.
Israel and antisemitism have emerged as central issues in several closely watched midterm races. But in New York’s 17th Congressional District, where Jewish voters could help decide one of the country’s most competitive House contests, the two candidates have more in common on those issues than their campaigns suggest.
Cait Conley, the Democratic challenger to incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, is not a progressive Democrat who Republicans have been warning Jewish voters about in recent campaigns. An Army combat veteran and former national security official, she strongly supports Israel, opposes additional conditions on U.S. military aid and rejects accusations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. She has also criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his statement marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and has vowed to confront antisemitism within her own party. But that may not be enough to win Jewish votes from Lawler, who is popular with Jewish voters.
The district includes Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess. It has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, with Jews making up an estimated 19% of its population, according to a 2024 study. It is one of the key House races where Jewish voters could make the difference in a closely contested election that will determine which party controls Congress.
Kamala Harris carried the district by a narrow 50-49 margin in 2024, and it voted for Joe Biden by a 59-39 margin before that. The late Jewish congresswoman Nita Lowey, a Democrat, represented the district for three decades until her retirement in 2020. Her successor, former Rep. Mondaire Jones, chose not to run in the redrawn district in 2022 and instead lost a bid for a House seat representing parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. During his unsuccessful 2024 campaign against Lawler, Jones had to delete a social media post that some deemed insulting to Orthodox Jews after he remarked that the former Republican House Speaker’s meeting with Rabbi David Twersky, the 86-year-old spiritual leader known as the Skverer Rebbe in Rockland County, “was a waste of everyone’s time.”
Conley, 31, faces a difficult challenge in her bid to unseat Lawler, who has deep relationships with Orthodox and Hasidic voters since he first won his seat in the 2022 midterms by a narrow margin of about 2,000 votes, thanks in part to strong support from the large Hasidic communities in Monsey, New Square and New Hempstead in Rockland County.
That makes the race a test of whether a moderate, pro-Israel Democrat can win back Jewish voters who have grown concerned about the growing influence of progressives within the Democratic Party.
In separate interviews with the Forward, Conley and Lawler both stressed their support for Israel and commitment to fighting rising antisemitism. To draw a contrast, Lawler, 40, questioned whether Conley would stick to her positions if elected, while Conley accused him of using his ties to Jewish voters to distract from his support for President Donald Trump’s agenda.
A Democrat who rejects conditions on Israel aid
Conley, a West Point graduate and 16-year Army combat veteran who later served as counterterrorism director on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council and oversaw election security efforts at the Department of Homeland Security, occupies a different position on Israel than many progressive Democrats.
She supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, backs continued U.S. military assistance and opposes imposing conditions on that aid, including on offensive weapons.
“I do not believe that what is going on in Gaza is a genocide, and I do not believe in further conditioning assistance to Israel, so it continues to have the means to defend itself against the very real threats that are posed,” Conley said in an interview. “I will be an effective and strong advocate for the Jewish community and assistance to Israel in the Democratic Party.”
Conley said her experience serving in the Middle East shaped her understanding of the threats Israel faces, particularly from Iran and terrorist organizations.
At the same time, she supports a two-state solution and believes American politicians should be able to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other Israeli leaders without questioning Israel’s legitimacy. She expressed concern, though, that criticism of Israeli government policies can sometimes become an excuse for targeting Jews. Conley also supports expanding federal security grants for synagogues and other religious institutions.
Conley said she supported the targeted American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025, but opposes Trump’s war with Iran because she believes it has made the United States less secure and increased energy prices.
Lawler isn’t buying Conley’s pro-Israel pitch
Lawler dismissed the suggestion that he and Conley hold essentially the same positions on Israel and antisemitism.
“That’s laughable on its face,” he said in an interview.
His central argument is that Conley may sound like a moderate on the campaign trail but would ultimately follow Democratic leaders in Congress, as support for Israel becomes increasingly divisive within the party.
“She’ll be a rubber stamp on whatever the majority of the Democrats want to do,” Lawler said, citing the July vote to eliminate the $3.3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel. A record 103 of 212 Democrats supported the measure. Another 10 Democrats abstained. Conley “is not going to stand up and be a lone voice on these issues,” he said.
“At the end of the day,” Lawler added, “I have a very clear record of delivering on these issues, and there’s staunch differences in approach.”
A Republican who speaks the community’s language
Lawler’s relationship with Orthodox and Hasidic voters goes beyond his positions on Israel. A practicing Catholic, Lawler has made those relationships part of his political brand, going back to his election to the State Assembly in 2020. He has taken credit for lowering the temperature in Rockland County after local GOP officials in 2019 posted a video widely criticized as antisemitic. He regularly attends community celebrations and has helped arrange meetings between local rabbis and religious leaders, President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.
Earlier this year, William Paul, the son of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, confronted him in a Washington bar, believing the New York congressman was Jewish. Paul later apologized and said he has a drinking problem for which he is seeking treatment.
His presence in the community has become so familiar that his campaign even has Yiddish materials and songs promoting his reelection. The songs are shared in popular WhatsApp groups, played at weddings and blasted from trucks driving through Hasidic neighborhoods to encourage people to vote.
Lawler’s campaign is aiming to surpass the 22,000 votes he received in Hasidic neighborhoods in 2022 and 26,000 votes in 2024, as polls show the race is a dead heat. In an interview with Punchbowl News, he predicted 30,000 Orthodox votes, arguing that the community’s participation is difficult for pollsters to capture.
In his interview with the Forward, Lawler said his popularity comes from a simple strategy: showing up.
“I am really the first elected official that has shown up, you know, consistently and publicly in this community, and not just to see the leadership of the community, but to meet the people,” he said. Lawler has even picked up some Yiddish vocabulary along the way. Asked what word he had learned, Lawler quipped, “I love the word shanda to describe Chuck Schumer,” using a Yiddish term for disgrace about the Senate Democratic leader, who is Jewish.
Lawler believes his efforts have helped build support beyond the Orthodox and Hasidic communities, including among Reform and secular Jews who might otherwise vote Democratic but are concerned about their party’s direction on Israel. “Democrats have effectively abandoned Jewish Americans,” he said.
Conley acknowledged Lawler’s visibility in the community but questioned whether it is matched with policies that benefit Jewish families. “Mike Lawler shows up for the photo op, but when it comes to acting, he turns his back on the community every time,” she said. Conley pointed particularly to his support for Republican-led legislation cutting Medicaid spending and other federal benefits.
A fight over antisemitism in politics
Conley said her own outreach has focused on convincing Jewish voters that she understands their security concerns and shares their commitment to Israel, even as she disagrees with Lawler on domestic policy.
She also spoke of a personal connection to the Jewish community as a member of the LGBTQ community, recalling how Jewish Americans stood up for LGBTQ rights. “That’s why I proudly stand beside them and let them know that there are people who deeply care and will proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with them and fight back against antisemitism,” she said.
As Lawler highlights his ties to Jewish voters and questions whether Conley would stand up to anti-Israel voices in the Democratic Party, Conley accuses him of associating with Republicans who have faced accusations of antisemitic rhetoric and ties to white nationalists.
She said Lawler had a double standard: condemning antisemitism among Democrats while supporting Republicans who have faced accusations of antisemitic rhetoric or associations with white nationalists. “He is the biggest hypocrite,” she said of Lawler. “He is a political operative who will do whatever is politically convenient for his political ambition.”
Conley cited, for example, Peter Oberacker, a Republican state legislator running against Democratic Rep. Josh Riley in the neighboring 19th District, who came under fire after a Facebook post from Veterans Day 2015 resurfaced in which he paid tribute to his grandfather who served in the Nazi-German military during World War II. Lawler attended Oberacker’s campaign launch last year and praised him. Lawler also contributed $5,000 to his campaign.
Conley described Oberacker as an “overt Nazi sympathizer” and said Lawler’s support for him undermined his claim to be a defender of Jewish Americans. Conley also pointed to Lawler’s past connections with members of the New York State Young Republicans, whose group was disbanded following a Politico investigation exposing racist and antisemitic messages. Lawler condemned it and called for those involved to resign from leadership positions.
Asked directly about the criticism, Lawler defended Oberacker. “He’s not an antisemite,” Lawler said, adding that Oberacker represents Jewish constituents in the state Senate. He dismissed Conley’s accusations as an attempt to distract from her own political alliances. “I think Cait is grasping at straws,” he said.
Lawler pointed to Conley’s decision to run on the Working Families Party ballot line, a progressive party that endorsed Mamdani in last year’s mayoral primary and has accused Israel of genocide. He also noted her remarks in a September interview, when she said that she “respects” what Mamdani represents to many New Yorkers. “I don’t respect antisemites,” Lawler said.
Lawler was the lead sponsor of the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act that would require the Department of Education to use the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism — which classifies most anti-Zionism as antisemitic — when investigating allegations of discrimination. It passed in the House in 2024 by an overwhelming majority of 320-91, but was stalled in the Senate due to resistance over constitutionally protected free speech. It was reintroduced in the House last year.
More recently, Lawler partnered with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish moderate Democrat from New Jersey, on a bipartisan House resolution condemning antisemitic rhetoric from online personalities including Hasan Piker and Candace Owens.
Conley said she recognizes the rise of “extremism and antisemitism in both parties” and has heard from Jewish voters who feel abandoned by some of the same political allies they once supported. By speaking out on these issues and committing to confront them within her own party, Conley is aiming to convince these voters that they do not have to support a Republican to feel protected.
“The Jewish community knows they have a home in the Democratic Party. Period,” she said.
The post These rivals in a close House race agree on Israel. They’re fighting over who Jewish voters can trust. appeared first on The Forward.
