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How a Kentucky lawmaker’s friendship with a Jewish woman helped inspire her viral speech decrying anti-trans legislation
(JTA) — Pamela Stevenson, a Democratic state representative in Kentucky, was chatting recently with her friend Zahava Kurland about one of Kurland’s duties at her Orthodox synagogue: preparing the dead for burial.
“She was trying to explain to me certain things that had to be done,” Stevenson, who is also a Black Baptist minister, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. The seemingly esoteric topic was one of many the two women have discussed over more than a decade of weekly Friday-morning conversations — which cover anything from politics and friendship to faith and being one’s true self.
Stevenson said her conversations with Kurland have made her attuned to Jewish sensibilities. “She’s always listening for and giving me information” about Judaism and Jewish experiences, said Stevenson, who was first elected to the Kentucky legislature in 2020.
So Kurland was not surprised when, in a viral speech on Wednesday decrying her fellow lawmakers for signing off on a law that bans gender-affirming care for trans youth, Stevenson also centered antisemitism.
“First, you hated Black people,” Stevenson said, addressing the Republican lawmakers who voted for the legislation. “Then, you hated Jews. Now, you’re hating everybody. So the question is, when the only people left are you, will you hate yourself?”
Kurland said her friend is a listener and naturally empathetic, so she would be sensitive to how hatreds intersect.
“She’s truly well balanced,” said Kurland. “She truly cares about people.”
Stevenson says she looks forward to her Friday morning talks with Kurland. She said the conversations have helped give her a more expansive perspective on life, which drives her to fight bigotry.
“I really believe that I will never know as much as she knows,” Stevenson said. “But I can develop an appreciation for what it’s like and not use my view of the world as the only view of the world.”
What prompted Stevenson’s floor speech was the overwhelmingly Republican legislature’s override of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a law that bans a range of medical treatments and practices for trans youth. It outlaws doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment to youth; requires them to cease care if it has already begun; bans conversations in schools about gender identity or sexual orientation; bans school districts from allowing transgender students to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity; and allows teachers to refuse to use a child’s preferred pronouns.
The bill was introduced weeks after state Sen. Karen Berg’s trans son, Henry Berg-Brousseau, died by suicide. Berg, who is Jewish, said that referring to the anti-trans bill as a parents’ rights bill is an “absolutely despicable affront to me personally,” according to The Washington Post. Stevenson, who has appeared alongside Berg at rallies, called her “phenomenal” and said, “This is infinitely more personal for her.”
Stevenson said that she mentioned anti-Jewish hatred in her speech because she believes hatreds are mutually reinforcing, and she connects the anti-trans sentiment she sees with rising racism and antisemitism.
“If you have a model where you have to hate somebody to win, then you always have to have somebody to hate,” she said. “People say it was out of nowhere, but it’s really out of somewhere. We’ve gone through the cycles of the Native Americans, the Black folks have been hated for a long time, the disabled. Everybody is always on the bottom of that model. And in just recent years, it was the Muslims, then it was the immigrants, and then it was back around the Blacks again. And so because of this overflow of hate, there’s been an uptick in antisemitic actions.”
Stevenson said her mission is to make people cognizant of the roots of hatred. “People want to say that all the attacks against the Jewish temples and the Jewish people in recent times came out of nowhere,” she said, referring to reports of a spike in antisemitic attacks. “No, it did not. We just have chosen not to pay attention to what’s been said.”
Kurland, who is a member of Congregation Beth Jacob in Atlanta, and Stevenson, a retired Air Force Colonel and an attorney who is running to be Kentucky’s attorney general, met in 2006 when Stevenson was serving in the Air Force and Kurland was working as an accountant in Atlanta. They attended a three-day course with Landmark, the personal development program that presses participants to face uncomfortable truths about themselves.
“When we were closer-in logistically she came over very often for Shabbos meals,” Kurland said. “I often invite people for Shabbos meals and the holidays and I love explaining, you know, how Judaism gave more to the world than anything, anybody, any person. Torah, Judaism has given the world its whole structure for society.”
The Air Force started moving Stevenson around. “That’s when we started talking on the phone all the time, because we couldn’t get together,” Kurland said.
Stevenson is “a committed listener, someone who’s going to hear you and call you out on your stuff,” Kurland said. “It’s not a friendship where you massage each other’s egos. It’s a friendship where you hold each other to account for who you say you are.”
They each speak with outrage at the lawmakers who, they feel, would breach the relationship between a parent and a child.
“As a mother, how dare you interfere with one of the most intimate relationships?” Stevenson said two weeks ago during debate on the bill, addressing Rep. Jennifer Decker, a Republican who was its lead sponsor. “We have no right to interfere in the parental rights.”
Kurland agrees. “These are all decisions to be made between a child and his parents or her parents and their doctor,” she said. “It has no place for the government to have anything to do with anything.”
And both Kurland and Stevenson say religion is a key part of their identities.
“Judaism is the center part of my life,” said Kurland. “It’s what I am, it’s who I am, it’s what I’m about. And as a Jew, you cannot sit by and let another one of God’s human beings [be excluded]. I mean, when we honor other people, we are doing God’s work. We are honoring God. When we cut people out, then we’re not “
Stevenson likewise calls herself “a woman of faith.”
“I believe what is required, in almost every faith that I know of, is to love one another and take care of the people around us,” she said.
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The post How a Kentucky lawmaker’s friendship with a Jewish woman helped inspire her viral speech decrying anti-trans legislation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Another Graham Platner potential replacement now says Israel committed genocide in Gaza
(JTA) — Graham Platner concluded his Senate bid on a pro-Palestinian note on Friday, in the last lines of a letter to Maine’s secretary of state formally withdrawing his candidacy.
“F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts,” Platner wrote before signing off with the valediction, “Solidarity forever.”
The secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, is among the candidates seeking to replace Platner on the ballot, and she soon adopted his stance on Israel. Before becoming secretary of state, Bellows was the executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine.
Asked about Platner’s letter on CNN’s “The Source” on Friday, Bellows said she agreed with Platner’s claim that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. “Yes. Israel — the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza right now,” Bellows said. “And we should not be sending any taxpayer funds to be conducting that harm.”
Bellows did not immediately respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment on Monday.
Platner, a Democrat, posted the letter nearly two days after announcing that he would leave the race, following sexual assault allegations that caused even his most devoted allies to drop their support. It was a remarkable fall for an oyster fisherman and populist who emerged out of political obscurity to command such a lead that Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, suspended her own campaign in April.
In both the speech his announcing his withdrawal and the letter, Platner has painted his exit as the result of a conspiracy against him and the progressive movement, rather than a consequence of accruing controversies that undercut his ability to win in November.
“All we were asking for was healthcare, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas,” Platner said in a Facebook address announcing his exit, two days before sending the formal letter.
Platner’s successor will be selected during a nominating convention on July 25. Since his exit, candidates vying to replace him have staked out their own stances on Israel, with others besides Bellows saying publicly for the first time that they believe Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel and its supporters reject the claim, which a recent poll found that half of Democrats believe.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Another Graham Platner potential replacement now says Israel committed genocide in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Rep. Ro Khanna says armed settlers detained him in the West Bank; IDF disputes account
(JTA) — California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who is eyeing a 2028 presidential bid, says he was detained last week by armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week — and that Israeli soldiers who arrived “took the settlers’ side.”
The IDF disputed that characterization. The military said in a statement that it received a report of Israeli civilians unlawfully blocking the vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media near the Palestinian West Bank hamlet of Khirbet Zanuta, and that troops dispatched to the scene “quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians” and reopened the road. Its soldiers, the IDF said, did not take part in blocking the road. The military also said Khanna did not coordinate his visit with the IDF.
The incident took place Wednesday during Khanna’s to the West Bank and broke into public view over the weekend, as Khanna made a number of allegations against the Israeli military while sharing his account.
Khanna’s description of the length of his delay has varied, from about 20 minutes to 90 minutes. Khanna has also claimed the Israeli government and the U.S. Embassy were notified of his trip.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, disputed that on Sunday, saying Khanna’s office had asked only about visas and declined the embassy’s request to coordinate the trip. Leiter also said Khanna’s office had not responded to an offer of meetings with survivors of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack.
The incident is the latest flashpoint in mounting criticism of Israel within the Democratic Party, where Khanna is a leader of the pro-Palestinian left flank.
Khanna has repeatedly pointed out that the settlers carried American-made M4 rifles, which he described as “machine guns.” Khanna has called for a ban on all U.S. weapons sales to Israel, including defensive Iron Dome munitions.
In the wake of Oct. 7, Khanna has evolved from a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat into one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress. He went from taking money from the liberal J Street and voting to fund Israel’s Iron Dome in 2021 to securing the backing of Track AIPAC, a group that monitors donations from pro-Israel organizations and issues endorsements and “anti-endorsements” of candidates.
Appearing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “a country of laws” that prosecutes lawbreakers, and attributed settler violence in the West Bank to roughly 150 “juvenile delinquents” he described as unrepresentative of a mostly law-abiding settler community. He said he does not want “vigilantes of any kind.”
Appearing after him on the same broadcast, Khanna rejected the Israeli account. “The IDF is lying,” he said, calling for an investigation of the four soldiers.
“He said Israel is a country of law and order,” Khanna said about Netanyahu. “Well, let me be very specific. The prime minister needs to open an investigation on these violent settlers who are connected to Yinon Levi, who has destroyed Zanuta’s village and is a known person who has killed Palestinians.”
Levi was indicted last year following the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian activist, Awadh Hathaleen, in a village neighboring Kirbeit Zanuta.
Khanna is not the first American to have been detained in the West Bank. In March, CNN’s Jeremy Diamond and his crew were detained for about two hours by Israeli reservists while reporting in the northern West Bank. In that case, in which the crew recorded a soldier assaulting a detainee and making inflammatory comments about Jewish control of the disputed region, the Israeli military suspended the battalion involved and apologized to CNN, with its chief of staff calling the episode a “grave ethical incident.”
In Khanna’s case, no arrests have been made — though the IDF said in its statement that the identity of at least one armed individual is under review.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Rep. Ro Khanna says armed settlers detained him in the West Bank; IDF disputes account appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s elections are set for Oct. 27, triggering mad dash for scarce plane tickets for Israelis abroad
(JTA) — After several months in which it seemed possible that elections would be called earlier, Israel now has a date for its voters to head to the polls to pick a new government.
The Knesset House Committee on Sunday affirmed an election date of Oct. 27, the latest allowed under law, following months of political maneuvering to force an early collapse of the government by both the opposition and the governing coalition.
The determination puts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on track to be the first to complete a full term in more than half a century, with the Knesset set to disperse on July 17.
The timeline means that the intense final weeks of campaigning will overlap with the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that is looming large over the race, particularly for Netanyahu, who was in charge at the time.
It also means that Israelis living abroad — who number more than ever before — now know when they must be in Israel if they wish to vote. Unusually, Israeli law does not allow for absentee voting except in a narrow number of situations, meaning that almost anyone with an Israeli passport who lives outside of Israel must travel back to cast a ballot.
In past elections, Israelis abroad have faced tough decisions about whether to fly home to vote — most recently in 2022, when Israel had a fifth round of elections in four years.
This time around, there are even greater pressures. A record number of Israelis have moved abroad in recent years, with 70,000 leaving in 2025 alone and causing Israel to experience an unusual net migration loss. Flights, meanwhile, are historically expensive, owing to cancellations by foreign carriers amid war-induced uncertainty. At the same time, the stakes of the election are high, with analysts and politicians of all ideologies warning that Israel’s democracy is at an inflection point.
Netanyahu and his supporters say reelecting him is the only way to keep Israelis and Jews around the world safe, while a wide range of opposition parties say only they can safeguard the country’s future, For now polls suggest that the opposition has a majority of voters’ support — though it’s not clear which bloc will have the necessary votes to form a government and, within the opposition bloc, which parties will command
Recent polls have shown a new party formed by Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief whose son was killed during the Gaza war, leading among the opposition and rivaling Netanyahu’s own Likud party in its share of voters. A joint party led by the former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid also has support from significant numbers of voters, as does a left-wing party led by the retired army general Yair Golan. Parties will hold primary elections in the coming weeks.
Some initiatives are already underway to help Israelis abroad get home for the election. The AID Coalition is collecting information from interested Israelis with the goal of potentially chartering flights to boost the number of people who can make the trip — though each voter will bear his or her full costs.
“Don’t let distance silence your voice,” the group tweeted on Sunday, after the election date was announced.
Meanwhile, Israeli academics have set a slew of conferences for the days before the election, across dozens of fields. Israeli Science and Academia Week says it “seeks to leverage the arrival of thousands of Israeli researchers from abroad to Israel during the Knesset election period to create professional meetings, encourage research collaborations, reveal new academic opportunities, and strengthen the international status of Israeli academia.” It may also have the effect of enabling Israeli academics working abroad to get their institutions to subsidize their travel and permit them leave during the school year.
Israelis posting to social media are already noting a spike in ticket prices just ahead of Oct. 27. But many are also sharing screenshots of their ticket receipts that show the number of days until their trips — and the election.
“My entire feed is full of screenshots of flight tickets to Israel for election day. People spending money, taking time off, and coming specifically just to vote,” tweeted Avi Edelson, an anti-government activist. (His LinkedIn account identifies him as working at El Al, Israel’s main airline.) “It reminds me how much people care about the future of this country.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel’s elections are set for Oct. 27, triggering mad dash for scarce plane tickets for Israelis abroad appeared first on The Forward.
