US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS

Public defender and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organizer Dalourny Nemorin has launched a primary challenge against US Rep. Ritchie Torres in New York’s 15th Congressional District, setting up a competitive intra-party contest in one of the nation’s poorest districts.

Nemorin announced her campaign on Wednesday at the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx, where she emphasized housing affordability, public housing conditions, immigrant services, and economic hardship as central issues facing the district. She said many residents feel underserved and argued that the district requires “a new type of leadership.” The area has a median household income of about $44,000, with more than 30 percent of residents living below the poverty line.

Torres, first elected in 2020, is a high-profile Democrat known for his work on housing oversight and for being the first openly LGBTQ Afro-Latino member of Congress. He currently serves on the House Committee on Financial Services and has been a vocal supporter of Israel, a position that has drawn national attention and, in some cases, criticism from the Democratic Party’s left wing.

Nemorin, a member of the far-left DSA, is directly targeting Torres on campaign financing and foreign-policy stances, criticizing his acceptance of contributions from real-estate developers and from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She argued these ties reflect a misalignment between the congressman’s priorities and the needs of the district. Torres’s campaign has previously defended its donor base as consistent with his longstanding policy positions and record.

“I think the country is talking about a new type of representation, a new type of Democrat, a new type of leadership, which is what Zohran’s race represents,” she said, referring to Zohran Mamdani, who was elected mayor of New York City last week.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist and anti-Israel activist, is also a member of the DSA, which appears to see his victory as a sign of momentum. The organization has reportedly created a list of far-left demands for Mamdani when he assumes office. Most of the demands concern boycotts targeting Israeli-linked entities.

Nemorin’s challenge highlights ongoing divisions between establishment Democrats and progressive organizers in New York City. Her campaign launch drew a largely young audience, signaling an effort to mobilize voters who have historically had low turnout in the district. Her campaign has said it will focus on door-to-door organizing and outreach in public-housing complexes.

Since entering Congress, Torres has positioned himself as an outspoken ally of Israel. As the Democratic Party has continued to grow increasingly critical of Israel over the past two years, amid the Gaza war, Torres has staunchly defended the Jewish state’s right to defend itself from existential threats such as the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups. He has also spoken against rising antisemitism in New York City, even calling on local universities to adopt more vigorous policies protecting Jewish students. However, his strident support for Israel has sparked ire among the left flank of his own party.

Torres enters his reelection bid with significant advantages, including incumbency, name recognition, fundraising capacity, and a political network built over multiple election cycles. Primary defeats of sitting members of Congress remain rare, but progressive groups have succeeded in previous New York races when able to drive high turnout among younger voters and renters. Torres is expected to receive huge levels of support from the Jewish community within his district.

Moreover, Torres represents the poorest district for young people in the country, which is majority black and Latino, demographics with which far-left candidates have historically struggled. Observers have also pointed out that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won Torres’s district during this year’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York City over the more progressive Mamdani, suggesting that the district possesses a deep reservoir of moderate voters.

The Democratic primary is scheduled for June 2026. Both campaigns are expected to center their messaging on housing, affordability, and constituent services. However, Torres’s opponents, including former New York assemblyman Michael Blake, have taken repeated swipes against his record on Israel, indicating that they will attempt to center the war in Gaza as a main point of attack during the primary. In his launch video, Blake attacked Torres for supposedly supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.

“I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a genocide,” Blake said in an announcement video.

A few weekends ago I went upstate for a wedding, and briefly lived like a Victorian gentleman with a problematic taste in interior design.

Staying in a historic mansion (h/t Airbnb) in Newburgh, New York, I felt transported into a game of Clue, minus the murder. Was it me in the study with a sandwich? The parlor had a marble bust redolent of antiquity. From my top floor room there were panoramic views of the Hudson hills bursting with fall foliage. And then there was, at the corner of the landing … well, as I told my girlfriend, it’s more of a visual.

“Please do not be alarmed, but there are sauvastikas (more commonly known as swastikas) inlaid in the corners of the floors dating back to 1866, before Hitler was born,” the extensive house instructions said.

I wasn’t alarmed, more amused. (For context, the guests were almost entirely Asian with a couple of Ashkenazi Jews — and a miniature poodle.)

Of course I knew the Eastern origins of the motif. And I noted, as did our hosts, that these swastikas faced the opposite direction of the hooked cross favored by the Third Reich. The owners were right to say in their literature that the symbol “was stolen.”

Nazis really do ruin everything.

The architect, Frederick Withers, could only really be faulted for orientalism, which at the time wasn’t a dirty word. In any case, this was a landmark building registered with the historical society, and as such the swastikas couldn’t be altered. (“On a positive note,” our hosts added, “the original Tiffany stained glass window is well preserved up in the dining room.”)

At the wedding, I made the possible faux pas of mentioning the floors to friends of ours, one of whom grew up in India. It had just been Diwali, and he said kids draw swastikas everywhere during the festival.

“You’re taking it back,” I joked.

On the contrary, he said, they never really let it get taken away. Indians still use the swastika to signify peace and prosperity — its original meaning.

Maybe there’s a lesson there. Not really about ancient Indian symbols, but about what we feel comfortable letting Nazis get away with.

It’s long been a pet peeve of mine that so much of Jewish culture is boiled down to a period of about 12 years in a history that stretches back millennia. That public figures caught saying something antisemitic are immediately dispatched to the nearest Holocaust museum, rather than a Shabbat dinner or a museum of Jewish art.

When people online get defensive about their views on the Jews, they often mention how moved they were by Anne Frank’s diary, as if that was the answer key for understanding our peoplehood, and not just assigned reading. (In most schools in the U.S., the only time students hear anything about Jews is in a unit on the Holocaust.)

Members of the tribe are far from immune to this phenomenon. To be an educated, secular Jew, for many, is to have endured a screening of Schindler’s List — or, if you’re more ambitious, the more than 9 hours of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. You don’t see the Talmud in every Jewish home (granted, it takes up a lot of shelf space), but you can probably find a copy of William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Jewish identity has been shaped by our persecution — and remembrance is an important Jewish imperative — but as I’m far from the first to point out, when we take history and memory culture to extremes, we end up ceding our own narrative to those who wanted to erase us.

As scholar Miriam Udel put it in her recent book, “The Holocaust is, in a profound sense, not a Jewish story.” This stopped me when I first read it, but the more I considered it, the more I saw her point. The way the Shoah is typically related, it’s not a story where Jews have a great deal of agency. Jews weren’t passive. Tales of resistance abound — and should be emphasized — but it’s still primarily a story in which something was done to the Jews, and for reasons the Jews had no real control over.

Indians don’t let Nazis have a monopoly on the swastika — why should Jews allow them to define Jewishness?

I am not advocating for the return of parquet-inlaid swastikas in Western homes, whatever their direction. I’m not even for a revival of the Hitler mustache that Michael Jordan once attempted to resuscitate in a Hanes undershirt commercial. But I do think there’s a wisdom in not permitting our enemies to distort our much older tradition.

In Yiddish, we say “mir veln zey iberlebn,” we will outlive them — them being Nazis, antisemites and the various Hamans that rise up in every generation. While today that seems aspirational, we must remember we were here first, and there’s far more to Jewish life than death.

The post So, there was a swastika at my Airbnb appeared first on The Forward.

Wes Streeting, the British secretary of state for health and social care, is seen in Westminster as he appears on Sunday politics shows, London, England, United Kingdom, Oct. 26, 2025. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the country’s National Health Service (NHS), as reports of antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system continue to rise.

In an interview with the local LBC radio show on Friday, Streeting was asked about the recent case of Dr. Martin Whyte, a pediatrician and former executive member of the British Medical Association (BMA), who received only a formal warning but was allowed to continue working despite several of his antisemitic posts going viral.

“My immediate gut reaction was unrepeatable on the radio at this time of the morning,” the British official said. 

“This has been such a big story because we’ve seen undeniable, outrageous examples of vile antisemitism by people who clearly identify as NHS doctors,” Streeting continued. 

“Those people have forgotten not only basic humanity, but also their professional responsibility to patients. No one entering the NHS should feel afraid or question whether they will be treated fairly because of their race or religion,” he said during the radio show. 

On Monday, the UK’s top medical regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC), cleared Whyte to continue working as a pediatrician despite spreading hateful and antisemitic messages online, including references to “Jew banker goblins” and “gas the Jews.”

In the course of its investigation, the medical regulator concluded that Whyte did not hold bigoted beliefs and that his actions “fall just short of that which would be considered serious enough to pose a risk to public protection.”

This latest incident has sparked outrage among the local Jewish community and public officials, fueling broader concerns across the UK as rising antisemitism in health-care settings in recent months has left Jewish communities feeling unsafe and marginalized.

During the interview, Streeting recognized that many Jewish people hold a negative perception of the NHS.

“In my own constituency, which is very diverse and includes a significant Jewish community, people are afraid,” he said. 

“People in the Jewish community fear they’re going to be treated unfairly or discriminated against because they are Jewish in our National Health Service. I think that’s chilling,” Streeting continued. 

Amid a rising climate of hostility, Jewish expectant mothers are hiring doulas — a non-medical professional who supports women during childbirth — to shield themselves and their babies from bias, antisemitic attitudes, and the looming threat of inadequate medical care.

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, London-based doula Shoshana Maurer said that nearly every pregnant Jewish woman who has hired her since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel feared encountering antisemitism from medical staff.

“There is no question that nearly every Jewish client I’ve had since Oct. 7 has had the same anxiety about antisemitism in hospitals: are they going to be treated the same way as everyone else, will they be treated badly?” Maurer said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

According to media reports, many South African Jewish emigrants in the UK have also encountered — or fear encountering — antisemitism within the NHS.

In one instance, a South African-born radiographer working in a diagnostic breast-cancer unit outside London told the South African Jewish Report that the period after Oct. 7 left her “scared and unsafe” at work, ultimately prompting her to resign after management failed to take steps to make her feel protected.

Last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the NHS.

One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who local police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred.

Aladwan was arrested after the GMC allowed her to continue treating patients, despite several of her antisemitic social media posts going viral, including claims that the Royal Free Hospital in London is “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”

In a separate incident two months ago, a North London hospital suspended a physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.