A cohort of Matan Institute participants following a group study session on strategies for engaging a wide range of learners on Jan. 12, 2026. Photo: Courtesy of Matan

The Matan nonprofit for disability awareness is inviting Jewish institutions across the US to participate in a new initiative to enhance accessibility for the disabled, citing lingering areas where improvement is needed to ensure that the door to community, faith, and learning is open to all comers.

The reform effort, titled the “Matan Alliance for Disability Inclusion,” comes amid a new report by its researchers containing copious evidence of what it describes as “major accessibility gaps across Jewish life” that is dividing some segments of the community to a degree that is harmful but preventable. Some troubling data points featured in the report include survey results which found that 20 percent of Jews report having “been turned away from activities” because of inaccessibility and only 15 percent of disabled Jews said they “can name a disabled leader in their faith institutions.”

Matan says that Jewish institutions need a designated office for disability oversight, noting that over 80 percent do not have one and 70 percent lack “formal policies” for inculcating disability awareness and accessibility as an inveterate cultural force. Having received an implicit signal of being unwelcome, many families and individuals “leave Jewish institutions because their needs cannot be met,” says Matan, which is based in New York City.

The group stresses that it is not drawing attention to this issue to condemn Jewish institutions but to partner with them for work which draws on Jewish values. Remedying the issue now would extend into the private sphere progress on disability accessibility that began almost 36 years ago, when US President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990 in response to his own personal convictions and a wave of popular and bipartisan support for addressing a blind spot in anti-discrimination law.

“Historically, Jewish institutions are not bound by law in the same way that secular organizations are, and the result is that not only Jewish institutions but many faith-based organizations are behind when it comes to disability inclusion,” Meredith Polsky, co-founder and executive of Matan, director told The Algemeiner during an exclusive interview. “Matan focuses specifically on the Jewish community and really helping the Jewish community understand this, not really as a legal mandate, but as a moral imperative.”

Matan event for Lieberman Fellowship for Jewish Organizations Serving Young Adults at The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and Bender JCC of Greater Washington in Rockville, MD in November 2024. Photo: Avi Gerver

To that end, the Alliance for Disability Inclusion invites organizations to enroll as “affiliates” and participate in a tiered program which sees them progress from being a “Matan Ally” to a “Matan Leader.” At “Level 1,” institution officials attend Matan’s “virtual onboard training” and receive an evaluation of existing practices, the result of which is help with enacting necessary policies. Matan provides coaches, learning modules, and other methods of development throughout the process. The final level sees the emergence of fully certified “Matan Leaders,” who Matan says will “serve as “field-wide models of inclusive excellence and accountability.”

More information about the program will be shared on April 19, when Matan holds the “Pathways to Inclusion” event in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Rebecca Alexander, author and disability rights advocate, will headline as the keynote speaker.

With assaults on Jewish life coming from across the ideological spectrum, demolishing barriers to inclusion to promote universal membership in Jewish institutions is paramount, Polsky said.

“You know, in the Jewish community we have a lot of goodwill about this, but we’re not doing as much as we could concretely, so we’re hoping that this is a way to move the needle to an extent that hasn’t been achieved before,” Polsky continued. “Progress feels slow, and one of our goals is to look at the work that we have been doing over time, seeing what the needs are, and figuring out how we can help catalyze these efforts a bit more.

She added, “For so long disability has been overlooked. People fear saying or doing the wrong time or the effort required seems so expansive. It’s hard to know where to start and organizations don’t necessarily start anywhere.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

A woman keeps a candle next to flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone

More Jews were killed in antisemitic attacks around the world in 2025 than in any other year in the previous three decades, according to an annual study released by Tel Aviv University on Monday.

The 20 deaths comprised 15 Jews murdered on Dec. 14 at Bondi Beach in Australia, two killed on Oct. 2 during an attack on a Manchester synagogue in the United Kingdom, the two Israeli embassy employees shot on May 21 in Washington, DC, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor who succumbed to her injuries after a Molotov cocktail attack on a rally in Colorado on June 1.

No year has been deadlier for Jews in the diaspora since 1994, when the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina killed 85 people and wounded more than 300. Argentine investigators have blamed Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah for the attack.

Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights, and Justice said their data was based on dozens of police departments, specialized agencies, organizations that monitor and combat antisemitism, Jewish community organizations, activists, media reports, and field observations.

“The data raise concern that a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalized reality,” said Prof. Uriya Shavit, the editor-in-chief of the 152-page report. “The peak in the number of incidents was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, after which we began to see a downward trend – but unfortunately, that trend did not continue in 2025. The steep increase in the number of cases of severe violence is not surprising. The rule that applies to all types of crime applies here as well: when law-enforcement authorities are indifferent to small crimes, the result is big crimes.”

Many countries around the world have recorded historic and ongoing surges in antisemitic incidents, including violent attacks, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

“While in several countries the total number of incidents moderately decreased in 2025 in comparison to 2024, in several other countries, including Britain, Australia, Italy, and Belgium, it moderately increased,” the report stated. “In several countries that saw a decrease in the total number of incidents in comparison to 2024, including France, the number of incidents that involved physical assaults increased. Across the globe, the number of antisemitic incidents remained dozens of percent higher than in the period before the war.”

The researchers provided a thorough breakdown of incidents by country including locations with tiny Jewish populations, such as Norway (1,300 Jews, 40 incidents,) Luxembourg (700 Jews, 115 incidents), Bulgaria (2,000 Jews, 55 incidents), the Czech Republic (3,500 Jews, 31 criminal incidents), and New Zealand (7,500 Jews, 143 incidents).

One part of the report focused on antisemitism in medical settings and cited a study of Jewish health-care providers in which 39.2 percent of respondents said they had experienced antisemitism on the job while 26.4 percent said they felt threatened. Another analysis found that the likelihood of a Jewish doctor or nurse experiencing antisemitism went up 381 percent if working in an academic medical center or 241 percent for those choosing private practice.

Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism contributed an analysis of the events which led up to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, describing a loss of faith in the government’s ability to counter the threat.

“In January 2025, a childcare center near a synagogue in suburban Sydney was firebombed. Graffiti, vandalism, and threats became the norm. Many in the wider community, as well as in the Jewish community, felt that all levels of government had lost control of the situation,” wrote Jillian Segal, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. “A joint federal and state terrorism police taskforce was established by the federal and state governments and the states engaged in law reform, but it was a case of too little, too late.”

Following the report’s first section which provided an overview of incidents around the world, the second included an essay titled “The Fading Voice of Buckley” by analyst Carl Yonker in which he described the role of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. in combating conspiracism and antisemitism on the American political right during the 20th century.

“As editor of the National Review and intending to shape the future of the conservative movement, Buckley treated antisemitism less as an embarrassing eccentricity than as a kind of poison destroying the movement’s claims to seriousness, and – worse – its ability to agree on what was real,” Yonker wrote before describing Buckley’s efforts against the promotion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the 1950s and Holocaust deniers in the 1980s.

“What makes the Tucker Carlson moment so haunting is that it looks like a movement returning to the same moral problem under conditions that make the old remedy – editorial discipline – harder to apply,” Yonker explained.

In an interview with Shavit included in the report, renowned Holocaust historian Christopher Browning warned that “ultimately, Jews are one of the minorities. I mean, if you can trash Haitians and trash Somalis, eventually you’ll get to attacking Jews as well.” He argued that US President Donald Trump creates a “permission structure” that “allows people to freely express their prejudices with absolutely no criticism, no restraint, no inhibition.”

In a separate report published to coincide with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began Monday evening and will end on Tuesday evening, the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism released a 14-page report showing the highest number of antisemitic acts last year, by its tally, occurred in the United States (301), the United Kingdom (140), and France (58).

Worldwide, each month saw an average of 74 incidents with peaks in April (118) and August (110), including a wave of vandalism and arson attacks fueling the summer surge. Violence against Jews (27.2 percent of recorded incidents) averaged 11.5 occurrences monthly with August also serving as a flashpoint.

According to the report’s authors, the August uptick “may be associated with heightened discourse surrounding allegations of a deliberate famine in Gaza, alongside official Israeli statements concerning the potential for a full occupation of the territory.”

The report called vandalism and property damage (38.4 percent of incidents) the “most frequent mode of attack” before identifying synagogues, cemeteries, and storefronts as the top targets.

The report also documented a seasonal trend in incidents, with a month-after-month rise from April through August before a sharp drop in September and through autumn. One potential explanation offered for this pattern could be that “the summer vacation period, during which increased international travel by Israelis may lead to greater interaction — and potential friction — with local populations.”

“What begins as incitement online continues directly into attacks against Jewish communities,” said Amichai Chikli, the minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism.

Avi Cohen-Scali, the ministry’s director general, concurred: “Governments must uproot antisemitism, adopt policies to combat it, and invest in enforcement, legislation, and education.” He vowed that “Israel will act with all available tools to protect Jews everywhere in the world.”

The Tel Aviv University report chided the Israeli ministry for combating antisemitism, arguing it “has not contributed in any meaningful way to the cause.”

Suggesting more funds to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the report argued that “only diplomatic missions have the capacity to engage in the kind of in-person contacts with Jewish communities, public officials, and civil society activists that are necessary for impacting and adjusting counter-antisemitism policies.”

(JTA) — A growing number of leading progressives, including the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby, have come out against continued American funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.

J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami on Sunday joined Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna, along with Jewish Democratic congressional challenger Brad Lander, in opposing future budget earmarks for Israeli defense systems.

Such funding was relatively uncontroversial in the past, as the Iron Dome rocket interceptor has drawn near-unanimous praise — including from some of the figures now opposing its U.S. support — for its role in protecting Israeli civilians. As recently as September, a bill to approve Iron Dome supplemental funding passed in the House with only nine dissenting votes.

Now, that consensus has shifted in the wake of the war in Gaza and the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, both of which are deeply unpopular, particularly among Democrats — even as the Iron Dome recently prevailed in a high-stakes test as Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israeli targets. Some of the progressives now opposing Iron Dome funding are arguing that Israel does not need the assistance.

“With a per capita GDP higher than countries like the United Kingdom, France and Japan, Israel is more than capable of paying for its own defense – just as America’s other wealthy allies already do,” Ben-Ami wrote on J Street’s blog Sunday. “Why should American taxpayers continue to subsidize the defense budget of a prosperous ally, particularly at a time when the U.S. faces its own significant fiscal pressures?”

Ben-Ami said the U.S. should continue to sell the Iron Dome and other defense systems to Israel. He also made the case that ending U.S. support for the defense systems was a boon for Israel.

“Supporters of Israel — many raised on the vision that the Jewish people just want Israel to be treated like all other countries — should welcome the development,” Ben-Ami said. “The benefits of disproportionately large financial assistance today are outweighed by the damage to Israel when that financial support becomes a divisive wedge in American politics.”

J Street’s online policy positions were updated this month to indicate that the group is now “calling for American financial subsidies to Israel’s military to be phased out” by 2028. The group says it still supports the Iron Dome: “Ending those financial subsidies does not mean the United States should cease selling Iron Dome to Israel, but Israel should pay for these systems.”

Ocasio-Cortez, earlier this month, similarly argued that Israel could fund its own defense system.

“Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law,” she wrote on social media. The New York representative, a “Squad” leader and potential 2028 presidential candidate, made her announcement at a local forum of the Democratic Socialists of America.

In their arguments, Ben-Ami and Ocasio-Cortez are carving out a distinct lane from a different rallying cry popular with anti-Zionists: that Israel should not have an Iron Dome because Palestinians lack an equivalent, or because the Iron Dome indirectly aids Israel’s bombing campaigns.

Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among those who have argued in this vein, as has Jewish Voice for Peace and the DSA, which last year stated, “Along with other U.S.-funded interceptor systems, the Iron Dome has emboldened Israel to invade or bomb no less than five different countries in the past two years.”

Some close observers of the U.S.-Israel relationship said turning the Iron Dome into a political bargaining chip was revealing of deeper prejudices along similar lines.

“Iron Dome is a purely defensive system. It simply cannot be used to threaten, or harm, or retaliate. Its only use is to save lives,” Ron Hassner, the chair of Israel studies at the University of California-Berkeley, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“When people ask me whether antisemitism is anti-Zionism I often use anti-Zionist attacks on Iron Dome as an example to show that anti-Zionism is worse than antisemitism,” he added. “Antisemites seek to harm Jews. Anti-Zionists seek to stop Jews from defending themselves from harm.”

Ilan Saltzman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, told JTA he saw J Street’s position as “a bit more nuanced” and not as extreme as some lawmakers have gone.

“They are not calling for the ending of all U.S. military aid to Israel,” Saltzman said, of the group, pointing to another policy position in which J Street supports selling “short-range air and ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities to Israel.”

Instead, he believes J Street is seeking “to increase the oversight over Israel’s actions in general and the use of U.S.-supported military capabilities in particular.”

“They are saying that you can be American Jewish while maintaining a very critical view of the Israeli government, especially the current one, and that the connection between the U.S. and Israel is important but cannot be beyond compliance with American values and law when it comes to the use of military force,” he said about J Street.

Ocasio-Cortez’s shift on the Iron Dome was notable, as she has drawn criticism from the left in the past for not opposing Iron Dome funding. In addition to voting for the funding in September, she has voted against a measure, introduced by Republican former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to cut funding, while voting “present” on a 2021 bill to fund the Iron Dome and other Israeli military capabilities.

Her announcement touched off a new round of progressive candidates backing away from the Iron Dome. Khanna, a California congressman also considering a 2028 presidential run, is now also opposing funding for the defensive system, echoing the argument that Israel should be able to pay for it themselves.

“We should not be subsidizing them, especially given their egregious violations of human rights law,” he said.

Congressional candidates in closely watched primaries are also saying they will oppose Iron Dome funding, notably including Lander, the Jewish former New York City Comptroller running against Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman. (J Street’s PAC has endorsed Goldman in the race.) Lander was a vocal supporter of Zohran Mamdani’s successful run for mayor of New York City; Mamdani has also backed Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition to Iron Dome funding.

“American foreign policy to Israel has to change, and it has to condition support based on human rights and international law,” Lander, who identifies as a liberal Zionist, told the New York Times editorial board last week. Like some of his allies, Lander also cited the Leahy laws, which mandate that U.S. military support go only to countries that adhere to international human rights law.

Michael Blake, a left-wing challenger to pro-Israel New York Rep. Richie Torres, has also come out in opposition of Iron Dome funding in a recent debate. Torres, meanwhile, has doubled down on his own support of Iron Dome funding, issuing an impassioned statement backing it on Sunday.

“There is a rapidly growing chorus of candidates calling for the defunding of missile defense systems like Iron Dome—at a time when millions of Israeli civilians are facing a constant barrage of rockets, drones, and ballistic missiles,” Torres said. “I will never join that bandwagon—no matter how politically expedient it may become.”

Saying that “even the world’s most committed pacifist should have no objection to Iron Dome,” Torres emphasized that the system’s only purpose is to prevent civilians from being killed. He concluded, “Defunding Iron Dome would not bring peace. It would not de-escalate conflict or end war or save lives. It would serve only one purpose: more dead civilians.”

Eylon Levy, a former spokesperson for the Israeli government, argued that the Iron Dome had delayed conflict with Hamas in Gaza. “If we didn’t have Iron Dome, we wouldn’t have tolerated 20 years of rocket fire from Gaza and waited for October 7 to eliminate the Hamas threat,” he wrote on X last week. “If Hamas’ rockets were hitting their targets, we would have been forced into an all-out war ages ago. Careful what you wish for.”

Meanwhile, progressive Jewish California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress and has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, said in a recent debate that he would continue to back Iron Dome funding. The debate was held after Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement that she was no longer supporting funding the Iron Dome.

“I support the Iron Dome. I think there is, to me, a clear distinction,” Wiener said in contrast to one of his opponents, Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who claimed, “Defensive money can be used for offensive weapons.”

Another key argument being made by progressives is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself promoted the idea of winding down Israel’s financial dependence on the United States within the next decade. Sen. Lindsay Graham, a key GOP ally of Netanyahu, has backed the call and said it could be accomplished sooner.

“Netanyahu’s allies in the Knesset just approved a $45 billion defense budget, and the Prime Minister himself also asserted his interest in withdrawing from the MOU with the United States in January,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in her post, referring to the memorandum of understanding outlining U.S. aid to Israel.

Saltzman, for his part, views Netanyahu’s comments in a different light, noting that they came in response to President Trump’s broader tariff plans.

“Netanyahu wanted to show Trump that he understands the general trajectory of the new administration and is attuned to the new attitudes in the White House and is more than willing to plan accordingly,” he said. “It was political pragmatism.”

But on the left, and elsewhere, the new political pragmatism around the Iron Dome may be to view its funding through the prism of “normalizing” relations with Israel — or treating it as the United States treats other countries, by giving relatively little aid.

“Across the political spectrum, a growing view is emerging: the US-Israel relationship should be ‘normalized,’” Ben-Ami wrote.

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