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Hadar Institute to open California outpost, bringing its egalitarian Jewish learning to the West Coast
(JTA) — The Hadar Institute, an egalitarian Jewish educational institution, has announced that it will open a branch in California, the latest stage in the New York City-based organization’s international expansion.
The organization has tapped the former associate rabbi of Ikar, a nondenominational synagogue and community in Los Angeles, to lead the venture, which will be based jointly in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Hadar was founded in 2006 and, since 2021, has launched branches in Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and opened a permanent space in Jerusalem. Its rapid growth comes at a time of flourishing informal Jewish education initiatives while formal centers of Jewish study, rabbinical schools, are shrinking.
Los Angeles is home to two denominational rabbinical schools: the Reform Hebrew Union College, which recently went from three campuses to two, and the Conservative Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. Ziegler recently sold its 35-acre campus, shortened its program and slashed tuition in an attempt to attract more students.
Hadar West Coast, as the California initiative is called, will have a different focus: partnering with Jewish community educators and leaders in both cities to provide programming for locals. That could mean a day of learning in conjunction with a synagogue or Jewish community center, or a specific event that Hadar organizes itself at the behest of community members.
“I see, all the time, people who are hungry for more learning, for some kind of guide or path or direction for exploring their own Jewish tradition, and really not knowing where to go next,” said Rabbi David Kasher, who will be leading Hadar West Coast. “We have some great rabbinical schools in Los Angeles. There are some great Jewish schools and institutions, that kind of higher learning. But there isn’t necessarily an obvious place to go to just begin that journey if you’re an adult and a spark is lit in you.”
Educating both lay leaders and people who work in Jewish settings has historically been the mission of Hadar, which sees more than 29,000 people annually participate in its in-person and online events and learning opportunities. Those range from a months-long intensive fellowship to seminars and individual classes. Its first class of rabbis will graduate in June — the culmination of an ordination program begun in 2019.
Kasher feels that his background and experience suit him to his new role, in which he will travel regularly from his home in Los Angeles to Hadar’s programs in the Bay Area, where he grew up. Kasher’s father came from a Hasidic family and he describes his mother as a “California hippie.”
“I feel the power of both of those worlds and they were both a part of me,” Kasher told JTA over the phone from a cabin his grandfather built in a forest in Northern California’s Mendocino County. “I’m hoping to play with both of those spirits and to try and find some kind of fusion between them.”
Kasher was ordained at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a liberal Orthodox rabbinical school, and now said he no longer identifies in denominational terms but is an observant Jew. He has taught courses at a range of yeshivas and institutions of Jewish learning, including many that don’t affiliate with a major denomination — such as Pardes, Svara, the Hartman Institute and the Academy for Jewish Religion. He has also taught at HUC. He was an associate rabbi at Ikar from 2018 until last month and will continue to teach there occasionally through Hadar, according to a message sent to members.
“The West Coast has, historically, sort of a frontier mentality,” Kasher said. “It’s a little bit more experimental and creative and kind of willing to play with boundaries and I think that it’s really important for Jewish life out here to be infused with those values.”
What that will mean in practice is as yet unclear. Both Kasher and Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, Hadar’s CEO, hope to let the communities Hadar is serving take the lead in determining the direction of programs and classes.
“This opportunity will allow him to focus all of his energies on educating and really building the meaningful, practicing egalitarian Jewish life that Hadar represents,” Kaunfer said. “The idea is to have David understand the needs of the local community and serve them through the teaching that he will do.”
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The post Hadar Institute to open California outpost, bringing its egalitarian Jewish learning to the West Coast appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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France to Help Palestinians Draft Constitution for Future State, Macron Says
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Nov. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
France will help the Palestinian Authority draft a constitution for a future state, President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday after talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris.
A number of major Western nations including France formally recognized a Palestinian state in September, a move driven by frustration with Israel over its war against Hamas in Gaza and a wish to promote a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
A US-brokered, Israel-Hamas ceasefire took hold in October. Israel has rejected the prospect of Palestinian statehood at this time, arguing it would “reward” Hamas for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that touched off the Gaza war. US President Donald Trump expressed similar sentiments after France, Britain, Canada, and Australia formally recognized a Palestinian state earlier this year.
Macron said France and the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, would set up a joint committee to work on drawing up a new Palestinian constitution.
“This committee will be responsible for working on all legal aspects: constitutional, institutional, and organizational,” he told reporters.
“It will contribute to the work of developing a new constitution, a draft of which President Abbas has presented to me, and will aim to finalize all the conditions for such a State of Palestine,” Macron said.
He added France would contribute 100 million euros ($116.62 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza for 2025.
Abbas said: “We are committed to a culture of dialogue and peace, and we want a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law, transparency, justice, pluralism and the rotation of power.”
He said he valued efforts by US President Donald Trump and global partners to end the fighting in Gaza and bring about the next stage towards a durable peace with a disarming of terrorist groups including Hamas.
The US and Israel have castigated the Palestinian Authority, which has long been riddled with corruption, for maintaining a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under this policy, official payments are made to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and Palestinians injured in terrorist attacks.
Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
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A single arrest has thrown the battle for Israel’s soul into sharp relief
In Israel, an unfolding military scandal has become a mirror held up to a society that seems determined to look away from its reflection.
The protagonist is Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, until recently the chief legal officer of the Israel Defense Forces. At the end of October, Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote in a public resignation letter that she had authorized the leak of a video showing a Palestinian detainee being abused by Israeli soldiers in 2024. A few days later, at the start of last week, she was arrested.
The fact that Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested should have been an opportunity for national soul-searching. But almost no one asked the most fundamental questions: Why did her transgression happen? Why was she the person to bring the abuse to light?
The answers, I think, tell a grim story about the state of Israel’s national conscience.
The official story, repeated endlessly in the Israeli press, is that Tomer-Yerushalmi violated secrecy laws, obstructed justice, and lied about her role when questioned by the authorities and the Supreme Court. All of those claims may be true. She herself has admitted to authorizing the leak and later trying to hide it.
Television studios hosted panels on whether Tomer-Yerushalmi had disgraced the army. The prime minister’s spokesman, before her detention, issued a statement calling for her arrest. But the widespread outrage has focused overwhelmingly not on what the video revealed, but on the fact that it was leaked.
Why?
Restraint and legality are supposed to distinguish Israel from its foes. The video does not demonstrate those qualities. In it, soldiers at a military detention facility called Sde Teiman, in southern Israeli, escort a blindfolded Palestinian detainee into a tent, largely shielding themselves from the camera’s view. At points, the detainee they surround can be seen pinned against a wall and lying on the floor.
Five reservists were eventually indicted for “severe abuse” of a detainee in relation to the video, with military prosecutors alleging that the victim sustained broken ribs, a punctured lung, and internal injuries consistent with a stabbing by a sharp object.
Wars are ugly, and the enemies Israel faces are real. No one doubts that Hamas and other militant groups have committed barbaric acts. But for Israel to sanction or ignore such abuse against captives would be for it to betray its own moral foundation.
Highly vocal yet minority factions of Israeli society demanded that the reservists be freed and minimized the issue. There was a protest by far-right Knesset members at the base where they served; on social media, some dismissed the gravity of the charges, suggesting that with Israel engaged in so dire a war against so rabid an enemy, the finer points of the law are absurd.
That’s not the only reason that the outrage over Tomer-Yerushalmi’s actions seems shockingly disproportionate. Also important is that across many different administrations, the prime minister’s office has been known to leak as a matter of routine — to almost no protest whatsoever.
I can report from experience that the PM’s office routinely leaks information about classified meetings of the Security Cabinet under absurd conditions. Successive governments have used controlled leaks to shape narratives, deflect blame and undermine rivals. Journalists in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv live off an endless stream of “sources familiar with the matter” or “officials close to the prime minister,” many of them senior officials.
The sanctity of secrecy, apparently, only becomes a principle when someone leaks for moral reasons, rather than political ones. Tell me if that calculus seems reasonable to you.
In a healthy society, I think, people would be much more alarmed by the reasons Tomer-Yerushalmi chose to leak the video, rather than the leak itself. She seems to have believed that the army would bury the incident, or that investigators would be pressured to look away.
Was she wrong? The record suggests not. Look to the West Bank, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in recent years amid almost daily violence. Soldiers who allegedly bore responsibility for the deaths — the details of which can be absolutely brutal — have rarely faced serious punishment. The military and state have convicted exactly zero soldiers for abuses during the war.
When the army’s own legal chief suspects a cover-up, she’s raising an alarm about the system she served. The fact that Israel is apparently refusing to listen is telling, and terrifying.
What this episode truly exposes is the extent to which Israel’s moral instincts have been replaced by bureaucratic ones: Maintain the facade, contain the damage and punish the breach. A society that talks more about the propriety of a leak than the content of the leak is a society in denial.
This distortion did not emerge overnight. It is the product of the almost 60 years of occupation that have habituated Israelis to controlling another people; the two-year trauma since Oct. 7 that has consumed our empathy; and the political culture, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that has trained us to prize survival over principle. The result is a public sphere where accountability feels like betrayal, and secrecy masquerades as patriotism.
No one expects a country under constant threat to be saintly. But the essence of a liberal democracy is its willingness to look unflinchingly at its own sins. Israel’s founders built institutions precisely for that purpose: a free press, an independent judiciary, a military legal corps charged with enforcing law in the fog of war. Israel’s current leadership — and to a degree, its media as well — is betraying that legacy.
The post A single arrest has thrown the battle for Israel’s soul into sharp relief appeared first on The Forward.
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Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer Resigns
Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer attends a special session of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to approve and swear in a new right-wing government, in Jerusalem, Dec. 29, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/Pool
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who played a leading role in negotiations during the Gaza war and was a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, resigned on Tuesday.
His departure follows weeks of speculation in Israeli media and marks the end of a tenure that began in late 2022, when he was tapped for the post after years as Israel’s ambassador to Washington.
“I am writing to inform you of my decision to end my position as minister for strategic affairs,” Dermer wrote in a two-page letter to Netanyahu released to the media.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the prime minister‘s office.
The US-born Dermer wrote that when he became minister of strategic affairs in December 2022, he promised his family he would serve for no more than two years and twice he extended it with their blessing.
He wrote the first time was to work with Netanyahu to remove the existential threat of Iran’s military nuclear capability in June and the second was to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza in October and the return of Israel’s hostages held in Gaza.
“What I am to expect in the future I don’t know but one thing I know for sure: In all that I will do, I will continue to do my part to secure the future of the Jewish people,” he wrote.
Dermer was one of Netanyahu’s most trusted advisers, negotiating the October ceasefire with both the Trump administration and Arab countries.
Dermer was ambassador to Washington from 2013-2021. His service there overlapped with Republican President Donald Trump’s first term from 2017-2021.