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For this unconventional Jewish organization, tradition takes a back seat to community
Despite a temporary boost after Oct. 7 — the so-called ‘solidarity spike’ — traditional Jewish community in the United States has been in decline for at least a generation.
Synagogue attendance, regular Shabbat practice, paying congregational dues — never have these seemed less appealing to more Jews.
This isn’t all that surprising. American Jewry is evolving — interfaith households are up, support for Israel is down — and the onus, to a degree, is on the Hillels and Jewish Community Centers and large metropolitan synagogues to respond to these changes.
Yet the growth of a group like Judaism Unbound, a digitally-savvy Jewish organization founded in part as an alternative to the mainstays of American-Jewish life, would seem to suggest that, in certain quarters, the usual offerings just aren’t cutting it.
What the organization’s members share above all, said Lex Rofeberg, its senior Jewish educator, is a failure to connect meaningfully with “classic Jewish institutions.”
Unbounders — Rofeberg’s somewhat hokey name for the group’s members — are on the fringes of Jewish community for several reasons: among them, political beliefs; accessibility; interfaith dynamics; or a perceived knowledge deficit. There are, for example, a disproportionately high number of converts and Jews from interfaith backgrounds in the organization.
Lisa Heineman, a professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, and a longtime Unbounder, told me over email that despite her repeated efforts to get involved with Jewish institutions, she “simply felt like an outsider — I didn’t know the rituals, couldn’t play Jewish geography, didn’t fit into the ethnic Yiddishkeit.”
For many Unbounders, distance from mainstream Jewish community is not just figurative, but literal. “There’s a ton of creativity off the beaten path,” Heineman wrote. “And Judaism Unbound has been alert to what we have to gain by listening to Jews in places like Iowa, Oklahoma or Mississippi — and by really integrating them into their conception of American Jewish life.”
An unconventional approach
Judaism Unbound — or the ‘Institute for the Next Jewish Future,’ the group’s lesser-used official name — has embraced what Rofeberg calls “digital-first” Judaism, the better to reach those Jews in far-flung locations. With occasional exceptions, most events take place online. “Digitally, you are able to reach everywhere,” Rofeberg said. “People who are ostracized, people who are marginalized in whatever ways, find us. We had a lot of success very quickly online in ways that could not have happened offline.”
The events themselves — in keeping with the group’s anti-institutional bent — are sold as a departure from tradition.
“To be a Judaism Unbounder,” Rofeberg said, “is not to presume that the status quo is eternal.” One recent program, for instance, explored books from the Apocrypha, the liturgical texts that, though hugely influential, were never accepted into the biblical canon. The ‘Apocrafest,’ as the event was known, was typical of an Unbound program: zany and experimental, deeply if unconventionally Jewish, and, in truth, a little intellectually demanding.
Another of Unbound’s principal offerings is the ‘UnYeshiva’, a virtual beit knesset of sorts that offers online classes on an increasingly sprawling suite of topics, such as ‘Genesis: People and Solidarity in Bereshit’; ‘Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness’; and ‘Jews and Revolution: Socialists, Anarchists, and Radicals in the Modern World.’
The ‘UnYeshiva’ debuted in 2021 and was so well-received that Rofeberg and co. added a longer certificate program for the especially dedicated. These can take up to three years to complete, and consist of four separate classes, followed by a so-called capstone project, which the organization’s website describes as “a unique expression of each student’s holy work in the world.”
Heineman’s capstone project was a day-long, genre-spanning workshop — art, text study, meditation — that invited participants to reflect on a “path to a meaningful Jewish future.” That Heineman had had a previous capstone proposal shot down, on the grounds that her idea was too conventional, captures Judaism Unbound’s animating spirit, its insistence that participants innovate and experiment.
This programming is, suffice it to say, atypical, not least when set against the broader American-Jewish landscape. “Our premise from the get-go,” Rofeberg told me, “is that it’s very hard for existing legacy organizations to drastically change what they do in ways that will reach a new constituency, when they also have their own constituency.”
Matt Perry, another UnYeshiva graduate, agrees. “If there’s one idea that I’ve noticed many participants perhaps share,” he wrote, “it might be the belief that a revolution is unlikely to emerge from within existing Jewish structures.”
UnBound, through the airwaves
For all the UnYeshiva’s successes, the organization’s most popular venture remains its first: its eponymous podcast, hosted by Rofeberg and, until very recently, Dan Liebenson, Judaism Unbound’s founder. (Liebenson has stepped back from the organization’s day-to-day affairs to focus on a new Jewish venture.)
Both Perry and Heineman came to Judaism Unbound through the podcast, which launched in March 2016, and has since been downloaded over 3 million times. Heineman compared its array of guests and topics to “entering Narnia.”
In an era of ideological insularity, guests have run pretty much the full gamut of serious opinion. To name a few: Sarah Hurwitz, Peter Beinart, Shai Held, Danya Ruttenberg, Hey Alma founder Molly Tolsky. “Week after week,” Heineman told me, “I’d discover a new book, a new musician, a new activist organization, a new online educator — all working on this incredibly exciting project of re-thinking and re-invigorating Judaism.”
Rofeberg, for his part, wasn’t always so satisfied with the podcast. For a while, he felt it was creating a kind of epistemic distance between hosts and listeners. “Other than listening to us and emailing us,” he said, “they weren’t able to really actively participate.”
In 2023, the organization hired Miriam Terlinchamp, an Ohio-based rabbi, as executive director. Rofeberg credits her with introducing a less top-down pedagogical vision, and today the group has “more spaces where our people can come up with their own experiments,” he said. It hosts monthly Shabbat gatherings — online, naturally — during which participants explore one prayer in depth. There’s also an annual Shavuot event, Shavuot Live, a 24-hour-long Zoom gathering that draws hundreds of Unbounders and generates lengthy discussions in the event’s chatroom.
“In every respect, we’re trying to broaden who Judaism Unbound is,” Rofeberg said. “We’re not dictatorial, right?”
A post-Oct. 7 boost
The organization has grown sharply, especially of late, precisely because it hasn’t changed all that much. It’s always been a little counter-cultural and vaguely transgressive; it’s long suggested that Jewish life has passed over vital constituencies; and it’s consistently held that “the oldest Jewish tradition,” in Rofeberg’s phrase, “is upending Jewish tradition.”
The salient difference recently — read: since Oct. 7 — is that more Jews have come around to that interpretation. “We’ve had a lot of people find our work in the last few years, because more people than before feel alienated from other organizations,” Rofeberg said.
Concern over Israel’s actions in Gaza certainly helps explain this shift. As Rofeberg conceded, Judaism Unbound welcomes anti- and non-Zionists “in a Jewish world that largely doesn’t.”
The organization doesn’t have an official stance vis-a-vis Zionism. (“We’re a space that does not define itself with any ‘ism,” Rofeberg said.) One of its more impressive accomplishments, in fact, is gathering together under a single banner, albeit a virtual one, Jews who would otherwise scarcely interact.
In short, Judaism Unbound is that often-invoked-but-harder-to-realize idea of a big tent, where different beliefs mingle freely but are held together by a set of unifying values. For many, therefore, it has been a refuge from the division that has lately defined much of organized Jewish life.
Yet, for Perry, it’s more than that. “Over time, and combined with other semi-aligned efforts,” he wrote, “it has the potential to transform the Jewish world.”
The post For this unconventional Jewish organization, tradition takes a back seat to community appeared first on The Forward.
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Holocaust Remembrance Day Marked in Poland, Germany Amid Nazi Displays, Rising Antisemitism
Participants with Israeli flags look at the landmark Birkenau extermination camp gate in Auschwitz Museum – former Nazi German Concentration Camp during the International March of the Living (MOTL) in Oswiencim, Poland on April 14, 2026. Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Eighty-one years after the Holocaust, antisemitism remains rampant in the heart of the former Third Reich, with incidents in both Poland and Germany underscoring a disturbing resurgence of Nazi-linked provocation and hatred across Europe — even as Jews and Israelis around the world marked Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.
Polish far-right lawmaker Konrad Berkowicz sparked outrage in Warsaw after displaying a modified Israeli flag during a parliamentary debate, replacing the Star of David with a Nazi swastika.
Berkowicz’s act was widely condemned as a deeply troubling distortion of Holocaust memory and a provocative example of “Holocaust inversion,” weaponizing Nazi imagery to target Israel in a manner that promotes hateful rhetoric.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the incident, calling on government officials to take swift and decisive action to address the matter, deter similar acts, and uphold public accountability.
“This act constitutes a clear example of Holocaust inversion, distorting the memory of the Shoah, and trivializing its victims,” EJC wrote in a post on X, using the Hebrew word for referring to the Holocaust.
“The use of Nazi symbols in this context is not only offensive, but represents a serious form of antisemitic provocation, particularly on a day dedicated to remembrance,” the statement read. “Preserving the integrity of Holocaust remembrance and ensuring that antisemitism is not tolerated in public institutions is essential.”
Polish MP Konrad Berkowicz displayed an Israeli flag bearing a swastika during a parliamentary debate in Warsaw on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This act constitutes a clear example of Holocaust inversion, distorting the memory of the Shoah and trivialising its victims.
The use of… pic.twitter.com/zeyRN5yG6T
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) April 14, 2026
The latest antisemitic incident came as Holocaust survivors from around the world joined thousands of participants in the 38th March of the Living, held at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in remembrance of the 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II. The annual march goes from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were killed.
During a ceremony, Revital Yakin Krakovsky, deputy chief executive of the International March of the Living organization, warned that antisemitism continues to endure today despite the lessons of the Holocaust, stressing that its warning signs are once again becoming impossible to ignore.
“Since Oct. 7, antisemitism has surged and is spreading everywhere,” Krakovsky said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “The scale and normalization of this hatred echoes the dark times we have seen before and, today of all days, we know how it ended.”
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Poland has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Germany has also experienced a marked surge in antisemitism, with Jewish communities and Israelis facing an increasingly hostile climate and a growing number of disturbing public provocations.
On Tuesday, workers at the Eggenfelden tax office in Bavaria, southern Germany, discovered a structure over a meter high on the premises, allegedly designed to resemble a crematorium and adorned with a swastika and SS runes. The structure also had the inscription “Zyklon B,” the pesticide used by the Nazis to carry out the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz.
This latest incident coame just three weeks after a replica of the Auschwitz concentration camp gate, also covered in swastikas, was placed in front of the same tax office.
Eggenfelden’s mayor, Martin Biber, strongly condemned the incident, calling it a deeply disturbing provocation that has shocked the community.
“This shocks me. It’s also a huge disappointment that someone here is so cowardly. Quite apart from the fact that an object that is presumably meant to resemble a crematorium represents a horrific act,” Biber told the German newspaper BILD.
Local law enforcement has launched an investigation into the incident, treating it as a serious suspected extremist provocation.
The incident coincided with a commemoration held by the Israeli Embassy in Germany for the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis at the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, in eastern Germany.
During the ceremony, Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor called for the resolute protection of Jewish life, warning that “antisemitism is not a relic of the past but remains visible and on the rise.”
He also emphasized that confronting the spread of terror by Iran is not solely Israel’s responsibility, warning of its expanding global reach and ideological influence.
“The mullahs are already part of the war in Europe. Their drones are falling in Ukraine. Their networks operate across continents – and their deadly ideology is spreading faster than any missile,” the Israeli diplomat said.
“Once again, Israel is on the front line. But the free world, especially Germany and Europe, has not only the responsibility, but the duty to confront this deadly ideology that threatens Europe from within,” he continued.
Andreas Büttner, the Brandenburg commissioner against Antisemitism, was also in attendance at the ceremony, where he reaffirmed the urgent need to confront and counter rising antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is not a shadow of the past. It is an open fire burning among us. And this fire is being stoked from various sides – by the extreme right, by the extreme left, and by those who disguise their hatred of Israel as moral concern,” the German official said.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
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Mossad Chief Says Iran Campaign ‘Will Only Be Complete When This Extremist Regime Is Replaced’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Mossad chief David Barnea in July 2025. Photo: Israeli Government Press Office (GPO)
The head of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad declared on Tuesday that the Israeli military campaign against Iran will end only with the collapse of the Islamist regime in Tehran.
David Barnea’s comments during a speech at a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony came as a fragile ceasefire teetered on the brink of collapse and prospects for renewed negotiations remained uncertain.
Israel secured “significant achievements” after 40 days of intense fighting against “those who have made the destruction of the Jewish state their guiding principle,” said Barnea, who noted that the campaign had reshaped the regional security landscape.
“The Iranian threat grew stronger before our eyes, before the eyes of the world, almost without interruption,” he continued. “We repeatedly warned of the nuclear danger as an existential threat, and time and again we warned about the quantities of ballistic missiles that threaten Israeli citizens across the country, as well as the danger posed to us by the Iranian regime.”
Barnea said that Israel and its close ally the US took matters into their own hands for the good of the entire world and warned that, at least for Jerusalem, the mission isn’t done until the Iranian regime collapses.
“Finally, we took our fate into our own hands and entered two wars out of necessity. Alongside us, in firm alliance and historic cooperation with the world’s most powerful nation, we fought together for the values of justice and freedom,” the Israeli official continued. “Our commitment will only be complete when this extremist regime is replaced.”
Since Feb. 28, when the US and Israel launched joint strikes, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that, in addition to degrading Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, they aim to “create the conditions” for the regime in Iran to collapse, weakening the government to the point that the Iranian people can revolt.
US officials have not publicly adopted regime change as a declared war goal. However, President Donald Trump has at times suggested that Iranians should rise up once the airstrike campaign ends.
During Tuesday’s ceremony, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also delivered a speech, saying that the US and Israel had “defined the removal of enriched material from Iran as a threshold condition for ending the campaign.”
“Iran’s regional proxies — from the collapsed Syrian regime to Hezbollah and Hamas — have been dealt heavy blows and have lost their capacity to pose a strategic threat to Israel,” Katz said. “There remains the task of confronting the rest of their power, and we are doing so — and will continue to do so — with full commitment and full force.”
On Monday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir approved plans to escalate the military campaign against Iran and advance expanded operational planning across multiple arenas in the region if the ceasefire ends, signaling continued pressure on Tehran’s military and strategic infrastructure.
“We are facing a multi-theater campaign unprecedented in the history of our people and of nations — against both immediate enemies on our borders and distant adversaries seeking our destruction,” Zamir said. “We are striking Iran and its proxies, inflicting heavy blows and significantly degrading their military capabilities.”
With the ceasefire deadline approaching in a week and regional tensions escalating, Trump said the White House has received a request from “the appropriate parties” to resume talks, adding that the Iranian regime is seeking to renew negotiations and reach an agreement.
“Iran will not have nuclear weapons. We agreed on a lot of things, but they did not agree to that. And I think they will agree to that. I am sure of it. If they do not agree – there will be no agreement,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
According to The New York Times, US officials have proposed a 20-year halt to Iranian uranium enrichment, which Iranian negotiators countered with a five-year suspension that Washington rejected, while also reportedly insisting that Iran dismantle major enrichment sites and surrender more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has offered to host another round of US–Iran negotiations in Islamabad in the coming days before the ceasefire expires, as diplomatic efforts intensify to prevent a renewed escalation.
The Trump administration has also stepped up pressure on Tehran to accept its demands by imposing a naval blockade on vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping chokepoint for energy supplies.
Since the start of the war, Iran has used control over the Strait of Hormuz as a major source of leverage, militarizing the waterway and sharply restricting maritime traffic through one of the world’s most critical shipping corridors.
Iranian officials warned they would retaliate against any US naval blockade targeting their ports, calling the move illegal and warning that Gulf shipping routes would no longer remain secure if Iranian access were restricted.
Responding to Iranian threats in a post on Truth Social, Trump said, “If one of these boats approaches the blockade, it will be eliminated immediately, using the same elimination method that we use against drug smugglers at sea. It will be fast and brutal.”
Iran has also signaled it intends to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz even after the war ends, potentially imposing transit fees framed as compensation for wartime damage.
Following the latest escalation at sea, Israel had instructed its forces to maintain a high level of alert and prepare for the possibility of an immediate collapse of the ceasefire agreement, remaining on heightened readiness in case the truce breaks down and talks do not resume.
Israeli officials have said they do not rule out that Iran may be using the ceasefire to rebuild damaged air defense systems and restore military capabilities, while also attempting to bring weapons and sensitive technologies back into the country through overland smuggling routes.
Meanwhile, Iran appears to still be targeting Gulf states despite the ceasefire, with Bahrain intercepting seven Iranian drones in the past 24 hours in what officials described as a clear breach of the agreement.
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Smith College Trustees to Vote on Anti-Israel Divestment Measure
The campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Instagram/Screenshot
Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts is the site of the latest clash between anti-Zionists and administrators over institutional ties to Israel, as its trustees will vote on Thursday on a divestment measure proposed by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization.
Brimming with falsehoods, the proposal distinguishes itself from similar ones put forth at other colleges by accusing Israel of the crime of “femi-genocide,” which SJP describes as “sexual and reproductive violence” and mass murder perpetrated against Palestinian women and girls. The measure continues a pattern of depicting Israel, the most progressive country in the Middle East, as a foe of left-wing causes and an enemy of liberalism.
“The deliberate and disproportionate targeting of women represents an egregious practice of radicalized gender violence intended, in large part, to prevent the reproduction of a population marked for extermination,” SJP charged in the document, submitted in November. “This is a tactic common to settler colonialist projects and a grave injustice affecting women globally.”
Calling on Smith to withdraw investments in armaments manufacturers, SJP went on to describe divestment from Israel as a prelude to divesting from fossil fuels, a subtle but common tactic in which far-left groups place Jews and Zionists at the center of an array of alleged conflicts and social maladies.
“Militarism and the use of explosive weaponry has a devastating impact on our climate: military carbon emissions from the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians exceeds that of several countries combined,” the proposal continued. “We face interconnected human rights crises at home and abroad that jeopardize our immigrant and international students, faculty, staff, and community members. Broader patterns of forced displacement are inseparable from climate change, and are fueled by a longer history of neoliberalization, securitization, and colonization.”
The divestment proposal draws on the principles of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Formally launched in 2005, the BDS campaign opposes Zionism — a movement supporting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination — and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation-state. It seeks to isolate the country comprehensively with economic, political, and cultural boycotts as the first step towards its eventual elimination.
Smith College has not responded to The Algemeiner’s request for comment about the upcoming vote.
SJP has historically escalated its pressure tactics in the event that procedure fails to translate its demands into policy. Following Smith College’s rejection of divestment from Israel in spring 2024, dozens of SJP affiliated students occupied the College Hall administrative building for two weeks. The incident led to a face-to-face confrontation with Smith president Sarah Willie-LeBreton in which the students shouted over Willie-LeBreton as she attempted to negotiate with them, prompting her to say, “Screaming at me every time I talk does not show me respect; it does not begin to show me the respect I am showing you.”
Adopting divestment proposals dictated by anti-Zionist groups is a recipe for squandering tens of billions of dollars in endowment returns, according to a report published in September 2024 by the JLens investment network, an arm of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report said BDS would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion in growth, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
Citing fiduciary concerns, virtually all colleges asked to adopt BDS have turned it down.
In March 2025, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine did so when its Board of Trustees voted to accept the counsel of a committee that recommended maintaining investment practices which safeguard the institution’s financial health and educational mission. In a report authored by the college’s Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility, it said, “Interventions in the management of the endowment that are rooted in moral or political considerations should be exceedingly rare and restricted to those cases where there is near-universal consensus among Bowdoin’s community of stakeholders.”
Boston University rejected divestment the previous month, with its president, Melissa Gilliam, saying, “The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.