Uncategorized
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.
—
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.
Uncategorized
Despite what (Ashkenazi) tradition says, not everyone eats dairy on Shavuot
This week, synagogues and community centers around the country will abound with opportunities for a festive scoop of ice cream. To heck with the lactose intolerant among us; it’s Shavuot, a festival that for many is as synonymous with all things dairy as Passover is with all things matzot. In my childhood Ashkenazi home, Shavuot meant my bubbe’s cheese blintzes freshly pan fried and golden brown on the kitchen table, ready for me to drench in syrup. Each year, the holiday, with its invitation to indulge in specially prepared creamy desserts, won me back to my Jewish culinary birthright after I spent Passover explaining my unleavened lunches to narrow-minded classmates. This year, however, I’ve been the one getting the education.
“Not all Jewish communities explicitly connect Shavuot with dairy foods,” Leah Koenig, whose cookbooks include the encyclopedic The Jewish Cookbook and the forthcoming The Dessert Table: 100 Joyful Jewish Sweets, told me. “It is a reminder that Jewish cuisine is anything but a monolith.”
Indeed, at Shavuot tables across the diaspora, you’ll find a parade of sweet, milky delicacies, and sometimes none at all, revealing a diversity ripe for this season when we recite the story of Ruth.
Born in Europe, Shavuot foods grew up around the world
Torah scholars and rabbis tend to agree that eating dairy on Shavuot first emerged as a tradition (minhag) during the High Middle Ages, at first among Ashkenazi Jews in France and Germany. Agreement ends there. A 2009 study offered nearly 150 reasons for the tradition. Lesser known theories posit that dairy pays homage to our nomadic ancestors. Teachings that endure today evoke the Torah and Israel’s symbolic associations with milk and honey.
Since its first appearance in Western Europe, dairy at Shavuot tables has gone global. “Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Mizrahim celebrate Shavuot eating dairy foods,” said Hélène Jawhara Piñer, author of Food, Jews, and Spain, which studies medieval Spanish Jews through their cuisine. During the Middle Ages, she noted, a culinary dialogue ran between Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities. “Rabbis, merchants, physicians, refugees and manuscripts circulated between Iberia, Provence, Italy, North Africa, France, and the German lands,” she said. In her latest cookbook, Matzah and Flour, she offers a Shavuot recipe for a sweet version of barkoukch, a Moroccan milk-and-semolina soup she calls one of the oldest Sephardi Shavuot foods still eaten today. It shares a heritage with other Sephardi and Mizrahi desserts like arroz con leche, a cinnamon-scented rice pudding, and its rose-flavored cousin, shir berenj.
For the modern-day Bene Israel, a small community of Indian Jews whose roots in the coastal region south of Mumbai date back to 175 BCE, it took 1,500 years and the arrival of Sephardic Jews before they associated eating dairy treats with Shavuot, according to Zilka Joseph, an Ann Arbor-based poet and editor who explores her Bene Israel heritage through her writing. Isolated from the diaspora, the Bene Israel sustained a handful of rituals (Shabbat, reciting the Shema). When Sephardic families arrived in present-day Kerala after their expulsion from Spain, these practices helped them identify the Bene Israel as Jewish. They went on to introduce the Bene Israel to a host of other traditions, which could have included dairy on Shavuot, Joseph told me.
Today, most of the Bene Israel live in Israel, but even the roughly 5,000 who remain in India celebrate Shavuot with dairy specialties, according to Nissim Pingle, program director at the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in India. These include custards and mousses — like basundi, a creamy slowly simmered milk dessert bursting with cardamom seasoning and chopped nuts, and shrikhand, a tangy strained yogurt often infused with fresh fruit like in-season mango — that are also common at birthdays and other special family occasions.
“When people ask about Bene Israel food, and they say, ‘So, is it really Maharashtrian food?’” said Joseph, referring to the Indian state where the Bene Israel’s ancestral home is located today. “It is,” she said, “but we adapted it to our kosher laws.”
The Bene Israel are not alone. Jews around the world ate the foods influenced by the places they settled and adapted them to dietary law.
“Food culture was shaped at least as much by geography, commerce and shared local taste as by rabbinic prescription,” said Jawhara Piñer.
“The cheesecake Ashkenazi Jews eat on Shavuot is a descendant of the curd cheese-based cakes that Jews and their neighbors ate in Germany,” Koenig told me.
Trading dairy for ancient harvest customs in the Horn of Africa
For communities from the Horn of Africa, near historical Judea, it’s no wonder that their Shavuot menu — which does not always contain dairy — hews closer to the foodways of our biblical ancestors, for whom the holiday was in part an agricultural festival.
To escape persecution in Ethiopia in the early 1980s, Beejhy Barhany, Ethiopian-born founder and executive chef of the Harlem cultural hub and event-space Tsion Café, immigrated to a kibbutz in Israel, where she immersed herself in the tradition of bikkurim, or festival of the first fruits.
“It was lovely to learn about other traditions and customs,” Barhany said, “but we always have to make sure that we know our traditions and teach others that there are different forms to celebrate the holidays.”
Since Ethiopian first fruits often meant wheat, barley or millet, Barhany told me that Ethiopian Jews like her (also known as Beta Israel) would make baked bread for Shavuot, such as a barley, honey-infused version of the celebratory dabo. But in Ethiopia barley wouldn’t stop there: brewing beer can help celebrate the harvest, as can roasting and consuming coffee, a ceremony called buna, an appropriate conclusion for Ethiopian spiritual occasions. (On Shavuot, coffee might be extra important, given its suspected role in popularizing the holiday’s tradition of all-night Torah study.)
Likewise, Yemenite Jews take pride in never having lost touch with their ancient traditions. They still recite prayers in Hebrew and Aramaic, as instructed by the Mishnah. Since the Mishnah doesn’t dictate eating milky foods for Shavuot, they stick to savory, classical regional holiday fare. This can include traditional Shabbat breads (thin jachnun, flaky malawach, and yeasty, pull-apart kubaneh), according to Dr. Ephraim Isaac, a Harvard scholar and former president of the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America. The Brooklyn-based Association of Jewish Yemenites told me that Shavuot celebrations would include zalabyeh, a fried pita.
Eating diversely while embracing the meaning of Ruth
No matter which foods they’re eating for Shavuot this year, everyone I spoke to said they would be reading the Book of Ruth, the story traditionally recited for the holiday. Ruth is from the Moab people, considered bitter enemies of the Israelites. Nevertheless, she stays loyal to her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi after her husband’s death. She follows Naomi to Bethlehem and gleans the fields at harvest to feed them. Rabbis note this as an instructive story to tell on Shavuot as a complement to our focus on receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. Ruth, who wasn’t born a Jew, helps Naomi out of pure lovingkindness (hesed), not legal obligation, and Boaz marries and has a child with her that starts the lineage of Kings David and Solomon. Lovingkindness, not law alone, is what made us a people; and why we should keep widening our table. So, this Shavuot, go ahead and eat a blintz, barkoukch, loaf of dabo or cool, creamy basundi. Or grab a beer. It’s all in the family.
Nay Kedam Dabo / Meswait, or Pot-Baked Shabbat Bread*
*Holiday Festival Variant
From Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond by Beejhy Barhany
Makes 1 large loaf (serves 10 to 12)
INGREDIENTS
2 pounds (907 grams) spelt flour*
*For the holiday, Barhany encourages substituting some barley flour in place of spelt (around 450 grams barley flour, with 457 grams spelt)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar or brown sugar*
*For the holiday, Barhany encourages substituting honey
2¼ teaspoons (1 envelope) instant yeast
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
½ teaspoon ground fenugreek
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
2½ cups (600 grams) warm water, plus more if necessary
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for drizzling
INSTRUCTIONS
In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, yeast, salt, fenugreek, coriander, and cardamom. Add the warm water, ½ cup at a time, working the water into the flour until a dough forms. Knead the oil into the dough until it is wet and elastic. If it seems too dry, add more water, a tablespoon at a time.
Cover with a damp towel and place in a warm place until doubled in size and light and bubbly on top, 1 to 2 hours.
Line a medium cast-iron pot or Dutch oven with two layers of parchment paper and drizzle the paper with oil. Transfer the dough to the pot and use wet hands to spread it into an even layer and smooth out the surface. Cover with the lid and let rise for about 15 minutes. With the pot still covered, set it over low heat and cook for 25 minutes.
Use the top layer of parchment paper to lift the bread out of the pot. Place on a plate. Drizzle the uncooked top with oil, then return the bread oiled-side down to the pot on top of the second layer of parchment paper, and drizzle the other (cooked) side with oil.
Cook until the bread is golden brown and puffed and the center reaches about 190°F on an instant-read thermometer, about 25 minutes.
The post Despite what (Ashkenazi) tradition says, not everyone eats dairy on Shavuot appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto
The two young men who killed three people at a San Diego mosque on Monday published a conspiracy theory-filled manifesto whose primary focus was on Jews, calling them the “universal enemy.”
The manifesto’s contents also suggest they may have had additional plans to target Jewish institutions.
Authorities have identified Cain Lee Clark, 17, and Caleb Liam Vazquez, 18, as the shooters who killed a security guard and two members of the Islamic Center of San Diego. The two livestreamed the attack before both were found dead in a car by apparent suicide, blocks away from the mosque.
The three killed at the mosque were Amin Abdullah, 51, Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Nadir Awad, 57.
Jewish leaders across the country and in San Diego widely condemned the attack.
The 74-page manifesto, which contains a section written by each shooter, reveals a wide-ranging hatred rooted in white Christian nationalist ideas, including Great Replacement Theory, and fueled by the two teenagers’ own social alienation. Among the other groups attacked in the document are Muslims, women, Black people, gay and transgender people, and immigrants.
But the shooters’ deepest resentment seemed reserved for Jewish people.
‘The universal enemy’
The manifesto listed previous antisemitic shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue and Chabad of Poway among the teens’ many sources of inspiration, calling the assailant in the latter incident a “saint.” It called the Jews “the children of Satan.” It denied the Holocaust as a “complete fabrication.” Vazquez called Adolf Hitler his hero; in his section, Clark wrote out the Fourteen Words, a neo-Nazi declaration.
“Everyone has their own idea of who is to blame for all the wrong in the world,” Vazquez wrote in a section titled “The Universal Enemy.”
He printed his answer to the question four times in a row in all capital letters: “It’s the Jews.”
Authorities have said the shooters met online before realizing they both lived in the San Diego area, without specifying the platform where they met.
But the document’s cover pages also provided a clue to their radicalization, bearing the insignia of Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group that emerged during the first Trump administration.
Atomwaffen members are part of a network of mostly online extremist groups that subscribe to “accelerationism,” the idea that forcing societal collapse through an all-out race war is the only way to restore white supremacy and save civilization. The idea is propounded by a white nationalist named James Mason, author of a book called Siege that both shooters cited.
“Though officially I was not a part of any groups or organizations there are many I support, I would even go so far as to say I did it for Atomwaffen Division, Terrorgram, The Base, and North Korea,” Vazquez wrote.
Atomwaffen members have been convicted in previous antisemitic murders. In 2019, one named Samuel Woodward lured a gay and Jewish college student named Blaze Bernstein to an Orange County park before stabbing him to death. Woodward, who was 20 at the time, is now serving a life sentence, and Atomwaffen fractured into other groups in the years after his arrest.
Secondary targets
Whereas the shooters were unsparing toward Jews in the manifesto, with Vazquez calling them the “most evil creature in the world,” they espoused mixed feelings about Muslims in the document before they killed three. “I don’t hate Muslims, at least not really,” Vazquez wrote. “What I hate is the religion of Islam itself and them invading my country.”
He added that Islam “is completely contradictory to both Western morals and values and Christianity.”
But he wrote only three paragraphs about Islam and Muslims — about one page — before the section ends with the word “unfinished” in brackets.
Clark appeared more committed to the eradication of Islam in his writing. Muslims and Jews, he said, “must be isolated and exterminated.” Yet he, like Vazquez, wrote several pages denigrating Jewish people.
The shooters did not state why they ultimately targeted a mosque. Vazquez wrote their plan was to “cause as much death and destruction” as fast as possible with a “diverse” selection of targets. The document provides lines for listing three separate locations, but none of them are filled out.
“All locations were surveyed and mapped out to the best of our ability,” he wrote.
The post ‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism
Rep. Dan Goldman of New York and his primary challenger Brad Lander are wading into the contentious debate over a proposed boycott of Israeli products at a Brooklyn cooperative grocery store ahead of an expected vote next week.
In a statement shared exclusively with the Forward on Wednesday, Goldman urged members of the popular Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn to attend a May 26 vote and cast ballots against the boycott resolution — and condemned the measure as antisemitic.
“Everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government — which I do not hesitate to do — but joining a movement that was founded on the principle of the elimination of Israel will have no impact on the Israeli government or the Israeli economy,” Goldman said in his statement. “Instead, it only succeeds at shifting the responsibility for the Israeli government’s actions to American Jews — which is quintessential antisemitism.”
Goldman said that he is aligning himself with Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim, a progressive leader, as the debate has spilled into local politics and Jewish communal life in the progressive neighborhood.
The resolution says the boycott would persist “Until Israel complies with international law, including by ceasing unlawful discriminatory practices, in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Timoner addressed the proposal in her weekly Shabbat sermon earlier this month.
“Many simply want to see the Palestinian people be free and safe and equal, and I do too, but this is not the way,” Timoner said. “This way is wrong.
Calling it a “proxy war” to what has been dividing Americans in recent years over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one “that is laced with antisemitism, Timoner said that many members of her congregation — she and herself — would be forced to resign from their co-op membership if the resolution passes.
The rabbi’s sermon reflected the careful line she has tried to walk since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza — openly criticizing Israeli government policies while rejecting the singling out of Israel. In March 2024, Timoner attended for the first time what was then a weekly protest to call for a bilateral ceasefire and hostage deal, one that Lander attended regularly. In her remarks she said that she had held back until then from calling for a ceasefire in Gaza “because it was being used by people who celebrated Oct. 7, people who do not hold Hamas responsible, and people who want to eliminate the state of Israel — and I did not want to be associated with that.”
Timoner is a co-founder and board member of the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive advocacy group formed in 2020 to be a voice for liberal Jews in New York. Lander is a member of NYJA’s leaders network. A Goldman campaign official noted that the congressman and Timoner have met several times privately to discuss issues affecting the district and that Goldman has attended services at Beth Elohim in the past.
Goldman, the two-term incumbent, challenged his Democratic primary rival to publicly oppose the measure as well, “to stand with our neighbors, and make it clear that this dangerous bigotry has no place in our city.”
Lander, a close ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told the Forward he isn’t a member of the Coop but would vote against the resolution if he were, pointing to Timoner’s sermon. “Principled people can disagree here,” Lander said in a statement that did not take a position on the resolution. “Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are legitimate tools of advocacy campaigns. Unlike my opponent, I don’t believe all opposition to Israel is antisemitic.”
A long-running boycott fight
The proposal to boycott Israeli products has riven the Brooklyn institution’s roughly 16,000 members. It was introduced in 2024 by a local advocacy group called Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine. The resolution would require the Coop to boycott Israeli-made products “until Israel complies with international law in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Coop4Unity, opposing the resolution, is urging shoppers to “bring back cooperation” and “stop polarization.”
The measure is largely symbolic, given that the Coop only carries a handful of items imported from Israel, like EcoLove shampoo and conditioner. At least one, Al Arz tahini, is made by an Israeli Arab in Nazareth. The coop first considered a boycott resolution in 2012.
The debate has grown increasingly heated in recent months, erupting most recently publicly during a general meeting when a member made said “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country,” a remark that many attendees and Jewish organizations condemned.
The comment — which received applause at the meeting — came during a second resolution that would lower the voting threshold for boycott measures from 75% to 51%.
Goldman strongly condemned the remarks in his statement on Wednesday. “That is not a critique of Israeli policy or advocacy for Palestinian rights,” he said. “It is an old and ugly antisemitic conspiracy theory that fueled the Nazis and then was used by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.”
A heated primary over support for Israel
The boycott fight is the latest issue in an already heated primary challenge to Goldman being largely battled over Israel and antisemitism.
Last month, Lander, who has described himself as a liberal Zionist, joined some progressive House members in calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Lander — who described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” — said he would apply that as well to Israel’s defensive Iron Dome system, high-tech missile interception that protects lives, property and infrastructure against assaults from Iran and allied groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Lander said that Israel has the ability to purchase its defense with its own funds.
The 10th Congressional District, which includes Borough Park and Park Slope in Brooklyn as well as parts of lower Manhattan, voted heavily for Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. Mamdani is backing Lander in the primary.
Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and former Trump impeachment prosecutor who was elected in 2022, is aligned with the mainstream positions of national Democrats on Israel: supportive of Israel’s security while finding a pathway for a two-state solution, sharply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and opposed to settlement expansion and settler violence.
Recent polling has shown Goldman trailing Lander in the June 23 primary.
Goldman framed the Coop dispute as about something larger than electoral politics. “It’s time we unite together on this issue,” he said, “and fight for the safe, loving, inclusive community we all deserve.”
Additional reporting by Mira Fox.
The post Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.