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For the Republican Jews whose Vegas confab kicked off the 2024 primary, Trump was always present
LAS VEGAS (JTA) — For Republican Jews looking for an alternative to Donald Trump in 2024’s presidential race, Ted Cruz presented a tantalizing choice on Saturday — at least for a few minutes.
“When I arrived in the Senate 10 years ago, I set a goal to be the leading defender of Israel in the United States,” the Texas senator said during his chance to address the Republican Jewish Coalition conference last weekend.
The crowd packed into a ballroom deep in the gold lame reaches of the Venetian casino complex lapped it up in what some of them refer to as the “kosher cattle call,” auditions for some of the GOP’s biggest campaign donors.
Cruz applied his folksy bellow to phrases already rendered stale by the speakers who preceded him, making them seem fresh. “Nancy Pelosi is out of a job,” he said of the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, eliciting more cheers from a crowd relishing a fragile majority in the House, one of few GOP wins during midterm elections earlier this month.
But the onetime constitutional lawyer lost the crowd when he asked everyone to take out their cell phones and text a number associated with his podcast, “Verdict.” As the murmurs graduated into grumbles it became clear: About a third of the 800 or so people in the room were Shabbat-observant Jews, taking texting off the table for them.
Cruz never really recovered his rapport with the audience, which included deep-pocketed donors looking to pick a candidate and rally support for him or her. That made his speech an extreme example of the trajectory of just about every address by prospective presidential hopefuls at the RJC conference — excitement tempered by two nagging questions: Does this candidate have what it takes to beat Trump, whose obsession with litigating the 2020 election helped fuel this year’s electoral losses? And is Trump inevitable whoever challenges him?
The former president was at the center of every presentation and of conversations in the corridors during breaks. On the stage, some folks named him, some did not, but — except for Trump himself during a video address from his Florida home — few did so enthusiastically.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who was the first of Trump’s primary opponents in 2016 to drop out and endorse him, and then among the first to repudiate him during his presidency, repeated the admonition he made a year ago to move beyond Trump.
Say his name, Christie urged the crowd. “It is time to stop whispering,” he said. “It is time to stop doing the knowing nod, the ‘we can’t talk.’ It’s time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on, this country on.” He got big cheers.
Trump was the first candidate to announce for 2024, last week, and so far the only one. But others among the half dozen or so likelys in Las Vegas were clearly signaling a run. Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations who is a star among right-wing pro-Israel groups for her successes at the United Nations in marginalizing the Palestinians, all but told the group she was ready.
“A lot of people have asked if I’m going to run for president,” Haley said. “Now that the midterms are over I’ll look at it in a serious way and I’ll have more to say soon.”
The biggest cheers were reserved for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who was a bright spot for Republicans on Nov. 8, winning reelection in a landslide. DeSantis listed his pro-Israel bona fides (boycotting Israel boycotters) and his culture wars (taking on Disney after the company protested his “Parents Rights in Education” bill, known among its critics as “Don’t Say Gay”).
The crowd loved it. “The state of Florida is where woke goes to die!” he said to ecstatic cheers.
DeSantis did not once mention Trump; the former president has already targeted him saying whatever success he has he owes to Trump’s endorsement of his 2018 gubernatorial bid and dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.’
Getting the nickname was a clear sign that DeSantis was a formidable opponent, said Fred Zeidman, an RJC board member who has yet to endorse a candidate. “It’s a badge of honor, in that Trump has identified you as a legitimate contender for the presidency,” he said in an interview.
Yet even DeSantis was not a clear Trump successor. The RJC usually heads into campaign-year conferences with a clear idea of which of its board members back which candidates, and then relays the word to Jewish Republicans whom to contact to join a prospective campaign.
That didn’t happen this year, and Trump was the reason. Jewish Republicans are still “shopping” for candidates, Ari Fleischer, the former George W. Bush administration spokesman who is an RJC board member and who also has not endorsed a candidate, said in a gaggle with reporters.
Trump was the elephant in the RJC room, Fleischer said, using the Hebrew word for the animal.
“Donald Trump is the pil in the room. There’s no question about it,” Fleischer said right after Trump spoke. “And he is a former president. He has tremendous strength and you could hear it and feel it with this group, particularly on policy, particularly on the substantive issues that he was able to accomplish in the Middle East. It resonates with many people.”
Trump had earned cheers during his speech as he reviewed the hard-right turn his administration took on Israel policy, moving the embassy to Jerusalem and quitting the Iran nuclear deal, among other measures.
“There are other people, they’re going to look at his style and look at things he’s said, and question if he is too hot to handle,” Fleischer continued.
Trump in his talk at first stuck to a forward-looking script but toward the end of it could not resist repeating his lies about winning the 2020 election. Asked by RJC chairman Norm Coleman how he would expand the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements he brokered between Israel and four Arab countries, should he be reelected, Trump instead bemoaned the election.
“Well, we had a very disgraceful election,” he said. “We got many millions of votes more than we had in 2016, as you all know, and the result was a disgrace in my opinion, absolute sham and a disgrace.”
It was one of many only-in-Vegas moments at an event that brings together disparate groups, including young secular Jews from university campuses gawking at the glitter, Orthodox Jews lurking at elevators waiting for someone else to push the button so they can get to their rooms, and Christian politicos and their staffers encountering an intensely Jewish environment for the first time.
“Shabbat starts on Friday night and ends on Saturday night,” one young staffer explained to another as they contemplated a “Shabbat Toilet” sign taped to a urinal. “But doesn’t it flush automatically anyway?” asked the other.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, another presumed 2020 hopeful, was the only speaker to decry violent attacks on Jews.
“When I think about my brothers and sisters in the Jewish community, in New York City being attacked on the streets of New York, it is time to rise up on behalf of those citizens,” he said. “Rise up against those folks spreading antisemitism, hate and racism.” He was also the only speaker to praise a Democrat, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, with whom he has launched an African-American Jewish coalition in the Senate.
A couple of contenders who have separated themselves from Trump said his name out loud — but with disdain.
“Trump was saying that we’d be winning so much we’d get tired of winning,” said Larry Hogan, who is ending a second term as the governor of a Democratic state, Maryland, with high ratings. “Well, I’m sick and tired of our party losing. This election last week, I’m even more sick and tired than I was before. This is the third election in a row that we lost and should have won. I say three strikes and you’re out.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence peppered his speech with fond references to Trump and his refusal to heed experienced personnel who counseled an even-handed Middle East policy, a move that Pence and the RJC both believe paid off.
Yet Pence also appeared to condemn Trump’s boldest rejection of norms, his effort to overturn his 2020 loss, which spurred an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in which Pence’s life was threatened. “The American people must know that our party keeps our oath to the Constitution even when political expediency may suggest that we do otherwise,” Pence said.
One contradiction for those in attendance was the longing for Trump’s combativeness while wanting to shuck themselves of Trump’s baggage.
Typical was Alan Kruglak, a Maryland security systems contractor who said he appreciated the pro-business measures Hogan had introduced in his state but was more interested in a fighter like DeSantis.
“Trump did great things, but I think Trump’s past his time, we need younger blood that is less controversial,” said Kruglak, 68. “Trump needs to hand the baton to somebody younger, and who doesn’t have any baggage associated with them but has the same message of being independent.”
The problem is that insiders said Trump still commands the loyalty of about 30% of the party, and that could be insurmountable in a crowded primary.
Trump, Fleischer said, was inevitable as a finalist but he didn’t have to be inevitable as the nominee.
“If there’s five, six, seven real conservative outsider candidates, Donald Trump will win with a plurality because nobody else will come close,” he said. “If there’s only one or two, it’s a fair fight.”
Who would those one or two be? Fleischer would not say. Among the Republican Jews gathered in Las Vegas, no one would.
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Remains of final hostage Ran Gvili on way back to Israel after being located in Gaza
(JTA) — The remains of the final Israeli hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili, have been retrieved and are on their way back to Israel for burial.
The announcement by the Israeli military marks a significant milestone for the Israeli public, which transformed into a communal vigil for the hostages taken when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, 2023. It also removes an obstacle to the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer, was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim on Oct. 7. His remains were recovered from a cemetery in Gaza City during a major military operation, the IDF said. Hundreds of bodies were reportedly exhumed during the search and are being reburied.
“The return of Ran z”l for burial is a painful moment of closing the circle—with the return of the last hostage from the Gaza Strip territory to the soil of Israel,” said Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz in a post on X. “This is a moment that underscores the State of Israel’s commitment to its fighters and citizens: to bring every single one home—as we promised the families and the public in Israel. This is mutual responsibility.”
Four of the hostages released under the ceasefire deal had been held since before Oct. 7, meaning that Gvili’s return marks the first time since 2014 that there will be no Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire had commenced despite opposition from Gvili’s family who said his body should be returned first.
Since then, the Trump administration has announced the formation of an international “Board of Peace” to oversee the ceasefire and presented plans for the reconstruction of Gaza. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that it would reopen the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt after the search for Gvili’s remains was completed.
Gvili’s mother, Talik, said the news of his return is “a relief, after these two and a half years, even though we hoped for a different ending,” according to the Times of Israel.
The discovery of Gvili’s remains was also celebrated by Israeli soldiers at the cemetery where he was found. Video of the soldiers posted on X showed many embracing and singing “Ani Ma’amin,” a Hebrew song meaning “I Believe.”
Some Jews and Jewish institutions removed their hostage necklaces and dismantled their displays in support of the hostages after all of the remaining living hostages were released in October. Others posted social media videos of themselves doing so on Monday following the news of Gvili’s return.
Speaking to the media in the Knesset on Monday, Netanyahu said, “We promised, and I promised, to bring everyone back, and we brought everyone back,” adding, “Rani is a hero of Israel. He went in first, he came out last. He came back.”
The post Remains of final hostage Ran Gvili on way back to Israel after being located in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Columbia selects Jennifer Mnookin, Jewish U of Wisconsin chancellor, as its next leader
(JTA) — Three different women have taken turns as Columbia University’s president amid ongoing turmoil surrounding the handling of pro-Palestinian protests on the New York City campus. Now, Columbia has invited a fourth — and the first to be Jewish — to try her hand at running the Ivy League school.
Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of University of Wisconsin, has been chosen as Columbia’s next president, the co-chairs of the school’s board of trustees announced on Sunday. She will be the school’s first Jewish leader since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, triggering a war in Gaza and a student protest movement in the United States of which Columbia was an epicenter.
Mnookin, a legal scholar, served as dean of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law before moving to Wisconsin in 2022. At least two other candidates reportedly declined the Columbia position prior to her selection.
She takes the helm at a delicate time for Columbia as it continues to reel from the fallout of the student protests, which has included included penalties from the Trump administration, rapid leadership changes and ongoing fear and anxiety among many Jewish students.
“I am honored and thrilled to join Columbia University at this important moment,” Mnookin said in a statement released by the university. “Columbia is defined by rigorous scholarship, a deep commitment to open inquiry, world-class patient care, and an inseparable and enduring connection to New York City, the greatest city in the world.”
She follows three other women who struggled amid the turmoil. The president in charge on Oct. 7, Nemat Minouche Shafik, cited the “period of turmoil” that followed when she resigned in 2024; she had faced criticism from members of Congress as well as the Columbia community over her handling of the student encampment that formed this year.
Her temporary replacement, Katrina Armstrong, stepped down in March 2025 as the school faced pressure from the Trump administration over antisemitism allegations. Armstong’s successor, the current interim president, Claire Shipman, struck a $221 million deal with Trump to settle the claims; she also apologized soon after taking office for having suggested the removal of a Jewish member of the school’s board of trustees.
Now, Mnookin will be responsible for managing Columbia’s relationship with federal authorities, weighing and implementing the recommendations of its antisemitism task force and healing a divided campus, which has been closed to outsiders now for years.
“The last few years have been undeniably difficult for the Jewish and Israeli communities on campus. While challenges remain, there is a vibrant, joyful, proud Jewish community at Columbia,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, said in a statement. “I am hopeful that President-elect Mnookin will bring the reputation, experience, and understanding that we need to build on that strong foundation.”
It will be Mnookin’s first time working at a private university. At Wisconsin, first sent law enforcement to shut down a student encampment, then negotiated with protesters after they established a second one. The deal required Students for Justice in Palestine to comply with university rules related to protest in exchange for the right to present their divestment demands to “decision makers,” who did not accede to them.
She also denounced neo-Nazi protesters who marched on the Wisconsin campus in November 2023, calling them “utterly repugnant.” Through it all, she gained a reputation for promoting open inquiry and academic freedom — even as Wisconsin, like dozens of other universities, faced a federal investigation over antisemitism allegations.
“I think universities should be spaces where ideas, and different ideas, embodied by people from different backgrounds, come together, and where it won’t always be comfortable, but where we will learn and do better from that engagement,” she said in a roundtable of college presidents published in The New York Times in November. (The other presidents were also Jewish: Sian Bellock of Dartmouth College and Michael Roth of Wesleyan University, who has emerged as a rare leader in higher education who is willing to spar with the Trump administration.)
Mnookin was raised in a Reform Jewish family in the Bay Area that escalated its Jewish engagement when she asked to celebrate her bat mitzvah, according to her father Robert. A scholar of conflict negotiation, he described the evolution in his 2015 book “The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World,” which he said he wrote in part to explore his own late-onset attachment to Judaism.
The post Columbia selects Jennifer Mnookin, Jewish U of Wisconsin chancellor, as its next leader appeared first on The Forward.
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Tim Walz invokes Anne Frank in pressing Trump to end ICE operations in Minnesota
(JTA) — Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, invoked Anne Frank in exhorting President Donald Trump to call off the ICE operations in the Twin Cities in which a second protester was killed over the weekend.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Walz — whose master’s degree focused on Holocaust education — suggested that the conditions facing children in his state during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement raids were of a kind with those facing Frank during the Holocaust.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank,” he said. “Somebody is going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
The prominent mention of Frank, who died of disease in a Nazi concentration camp after her family’s hiding place was betrayed, adds to a growing discourse about whether ICE’s operations targeting immigrants in Minnesota can be compared to the Nazis’ tactics in rooting out Jews during the Holocaust. Figures such as Stephen King and Bruce Springsteen have likened ICE to the Gestapo.
Until recently, Nazi comparisons were long considered inappropriate by many in the Jewish world who argued that such analogies cheapen the memory of the particular genocide against the Jews. In the last decade, that norm has to some degree fallen away, with voices on both the right and left likening their opponents to Nazis.
On Sunday, some of Walz’s critics denounced his comments and said an immigration crackdown cannot be compared to the deliberate murder of Jews. Retweeting an account called Stop Wokeness, the activist Shabbos Kestenbaum tweeted, “One million Jewish children were killed during the Holocaust. Illegal immigrants are offered thousands of dollars to take a free flight home. Tim Walz is an evil retard.”
In a post on X responding to Walz’s analogy, Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump, wrote, “The purpose of the rhetoric is to incite attacks on ICE.”
But others said the comparison was apt, with a quotation from Frank’s diary circulating widely online as it did in 2019 in response to ICE raids then. The quotation, those sharing it suggested, offered a close parallel to what has been playing out in Minnesota.
“Terrible things are happening outside,” the passage says. “Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. … Everyone is scared.”
Jewish voices, too, have invoked the Holocaust in arguing for intervention in Minnesota, where federal agents on Saturday shot and killed a man, Alex Pretti, who had been protesting their presence.
“What did we learn from the Holocaust? We have to act and we have to resist,” one rabbi who flew into Minnesota to protest told the Religion News Service last week.
Walz, a Democrat who was the vice presidential candidate in 2024, wrote a master’s thesis on Holocaust education, arguing that the Holocaust should be taught “in the greater context of human rights abuses,” rather than as a unique historical anomaly or as part of a larger unit on World War II.
“Schools are teaching about the Jewish Holocaust, but the way it is traditionally being taught is not leading to increased knowledge of the causes of genocide in all parts of the world,” he wrote in his 2001 thesis, completed while he was a high school teacher.
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