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How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’
(New York Jewish Week) — Some of the greatest talents in Jewish music have strolled Midwood’s lettered avenues, including the klezmer musician Pete Sokolow and the Hasidic composer Ben Zion Shenker. Both have left us — Sokolow in 2022, Shenker in 2016 — but the Modzitzer synagogue on Avenue L, where Shenker once lead prayers, is a spiritual home for klezmer virtuoso and Midwood denizen Andy Statman, 73. He’s davened (prayed) there for more than 30 years.
Now, a younger group of klezmer musicians joins Statman in making the quiet, south-central Brooklyn neighborhood their home, due to the (relatively) affordable rents, low density and greenery, as well as its proximity to Jewish communal life spread across the borough.
“We needed more room than Park Slope could provide on our budget,” Pete Rushefsky, who has played a hammered dulcimer known as the tsimbl in the city’s klezmer scene for more than 30 years, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s been a great neighborhood to raise a family.” That’s especially true for a culturally active family: Rushefsky’s wife, Madeline Solomon, sings, plays accordion and runs the Brooklyn Workers Circle School in Park Slope; their 12-year-old daughter, Mathilda, plays in a children’s fiddle band in the neighborhood.
Midwood looms so large over the present-day Jewish music scene that there’s even a klezmer rock band named for it: Midwood, the band, was founded in 2015 by the fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment. The 39-year-old veteran klezmer violinist lives in the same apartment building on Ocean Avenue as Jeremiah Lockwood, a blues performer and a scholar of cantorial music.
“I call it the ‘Klezmer Shtetl,’” said Midwood’s vocalist, Eleonore Weill, who is also a multi-instrumentalist. (Weill used to reside in Midwood but now lives in next-door Ditmas Park, which is also home to Sarah Gordon, lead singer of the rock band Yiddish Princess. Nearby Kensington counts among its klezmer-making residents D. Zisl Slepovitch and the klezmer couple Ilya Shneyveys and Sarah Myerson.)
Another Midwood musician is Michael Winograd, 40, who many consider to be the best klezmer clarinetist of his generation. As a teenager, he went to Statman’s home for lessons; last summer he moved to the neighborhood.
Midwood musicians Jeremiah Lockwood, left, and Pete Rushefsky. (Courtesy)
Elsewhere in Midwood resides guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, founder of Pitom, which the Tzadik record label called “a shredding Jewish instrumental band.” Fruchter has performed with Jon Madof’s Zion80, which plays Shlomo Carlebach tunes in an Afrobeat style, and Mazal Tov Cocktail Party, the latest klezmer/dance music project led by David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg.
“I didn’t choose Midwood, particularly,” Shulman-Ment told New York Jewish Week. “It sort of fell into my life.” The fiddler decided to rent his Midwood one-bedroom in the summer of 2021 while he was on tour in the Pacific Northwest. After seeing the place online and sending a couple of friends to check it out in person, Shulman-Ment signed a lease while he was still on the road.
As it happens, Lockwood — who lives with his two sons, ages 14 and 16, on the floor below Shulman-Ment — also rented his apartment sight unseen that same summer.
The two neighbors credit Ivona Hertz, co-owner of Ocean Empire Management, with helping them find a home. Her company manages a pair of buildings across from Prospect Park that are home to so many jazz musicians, they came to be known as “the jazz dorms.”
“When the tenants are happy they always recommend their friends,” Hertz said, describing how she came to rent Midwood apartments to so many musicians. “That’s how the ‘jazz dorms’ were created and that’s how the Midwood buildings are now getting more musicians. The apartments are larger, up to three bedrooms, including the square footage, and more affordable in Midwood.”
According to the available rentals on the real estate website StreetEasy, the median rent in Midwood is $2,566. (Hertz, the property manager known for helping musicians, says she typically charges between $1,500 and $1,750 a month for one-bedroom rentals.) The median sale price in the nabe for the first quarter of this year was $644,000, according to the real estate website PropertyShark — that’s substantially less than the Brooklyn borough-wide median of $755,000.
In addition to relatively low housing costs, Midwood is also known for being home to a very large — and mostly Orthodox — Jewish community. Traditionally Ashkenazi, the southern reaches of the neighborhood have also seen steady growth of its longtime Sephardic Jewish community. “Sephardic Jews dominate from [an area known as the] Avenue H cut to Avenue Z,” Sarina Roffe, CEO of the The Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative and president of the Sephardic Heritage Project, told the New York Jewish Week. “The Sephardic community in Brooklyn has been growing for more than 100 years.”
Most of these newer, klezmer residents identify as secular Jews, and not Orthodox. But many of them said they enjoy living among their Orthodox brethren. Clarinetist Winograd lives in part of Midwood that’s “very Jewish,” as he described it. “I kind of like being a secular Jew who gets to experience the benefit of a quiet Shabbes. I enjoy being a culturally-engaged Jew living in a Jewish neighborhood even if I’m not partaking in the more religious activities.”
Shulman-Ment — who identifies as a secular Jew who is committed to Jewish culture — spent a year living in Crown Heights, so he was familiar with the feeling of living in an Orthodox neighborhood and feeling like a bit of an outsider. He said he’s noticed, though, that if he’s in his “gig costume” — a suit and fedora — some of his Orthodox co-religionists offer a friendly greeting.
Lockwood described his (and Shulman-Ment’s) section of Midwood, along Ocean Avenue, as “rough-hewn and unlovely. It is a hard-working and threadbare place.” And yet, “I like it here fine,” he told the New York Jewish Week, adding: “I just don’t want to encourage out-of-towners to move in.”
Fruchter — who moved to Midwood last December with his wife, Jewish cookbook author Leah Koenig, and their two kids, aged 4 and 9 — said his area of Midwood has a lot of Pakistani residents, but on Saturday his family can often hear zemiros, hymns sung at the Sabbath table, coming from the homes of Orthodox neighbors down the block. “I really like how you see people from so many different places, cultures, religions and backgrounds all sharing the same sidewalks,” Fruchter told the New York Jewish Week via email. “I love walking by businesses with signs in different languages and restaurants where I have no idea what to order… I love that it’s a ‘quiet’ neighborhood but with a lot of bustle in it.”
Klezmer virtuoso Andy Statman, left, has lived in the neighborhood more than 30 years, while guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, right, is a more recent resident. (Courtesy)
The family is involved in the Flatbush Jewish Center, a Conservative egalitarian synagogue in the neighboring Kensington section of Brooklyn where Fruchter has served as cantor on the High Holy Days and organized a concert series.
Fruchter is also a member of Shulman-Ment’s band Midwood — whose recording of their live performance at the “Klezmer On Ice” festival in Minneapolis last winter will be released in the coming months. Midwood the band’s next gig is at the National Yiddish Book Center’s annual Yidstock festival in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 16.
Shulman-Ment will also be performing with the actor and musician Daniel Kahn on June 15 at the East Village world music venue Drom. The performance is timed to the release of the duo’s first album, “The Building & Other Songs,” which features Yiddish versions of songs by Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie.
The other Midwood klezmer musicians with gigs to look forward to are Rushefsky — who is also the executive director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance — and Statman, who will both be playing with the violinist Itzhak Perlman in the coming months.
In addition, Statman plays in two trios: The Andy Statman Trio, which has performed at the Greenwich Village Synagogue in Manhattan regularly for 20 years, and another with the Eddy Brothers, two young West Virginia bluegrass musicians. More recently, Statman started playing with a traditional bluegrass quartet that’s comprised of players he’s known since he was a teenager. That band is now known as Andy’s Ramble, not to be confused with the 1994 Statman album of the same name.
Statman grew up in Queens and was in his mid-20s when he first moved to Brooklyn in 1976. After a series of apartments, he and his wife Basha moved to Avenue L in Midwood in 1987, where they raised their four children. “Our kids needed to be here. We needed to be here,” Statman said. “There is sky and trees and grass here. There are birds chirping all over. The neighborhood was incredibly vibrant.”
When he first arrived, Statman took a break from his music career for a year to study Jewish holy texts full time. In the 35 years since, he’s seen real estate values soar to a level he calls “ridiculous.” Statman said that since the early 2000s, he’s watched kids who grew up on his block move to Lakewood, New Jersey or Monsey in Rockland County — both home to sizable Orthodox Jewish communities — because they couldn’t afford to buy homes in Midwood. Now their parents are leaving, he added, because they want to be near their grandchildren.
It’s a fate the clarinetist is personally familiar with: None of his four children, now grown, live in the area. With two daughters and their grandchildren living near Lakewood, the Statmans are considering relocating there themselves.
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The post How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘I made a mistake’: Abdul El-Sayed apologizes to Michigan Jews for past comments about synagogue attack
(JTA) — LANSING — Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized for his past comments regarding the March attack on Temple Israel in suburban Detroit during a meeting with the state Democratic party’s Jewish caucus at the party convention on Saturday.
The Democratic nominee told the room that his remarks following the attempted targeting of the West Bloomfield synagogue preschool, in which he had said, in part, “Hurt people hurt people,” were intended to provide “context.”
Reflecting on them, he said on Saturday, “I made a mistake.”
“If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry. It was not what I intended to do,” El-Sayed continued. Referencing the first of two statements he had made about the attack, he added, “We issued a statement, of course, condemning it, and that just should have been it, full stop.”
El-Sayed’s initial Temple Israel comments, which many Jews interpreted as justifying the attack, have alienated Jewish voters in the state. After an initial statement condemning the attack, El-Sayed then followed up with one referencing Israel’s war in Lebanon, where the attacker had lost family in an Israel airstrike.
On Saturday, El-Sayed, a former county health director, insisted that his push for “context” to the attack was broadly appropriate, but not at that moment, explaining that such “conversations” could happen “in the fullness of time.”
“Sometimes you can’t really see context in the moment of acuity or pain,” he said. “The intention for me was not to trample that pain. It was not to discount it. It was not at all to justify any sort of domestic terrorism. That’s wrong, full stop.”
El-Sayed’s apology, which was in response to a question posed to him by a Jewish Democrat in attendance, came amid a new round of outreach efforts he has been making with Jewish voters since he won Michigan’s Democratic senate primary earlier this month. He also plans to attend a Sunday Jewish caucus gathering honoring state Attorney General Dana Nessel with congressional nominee Jeremy Moss in attendance, both of whom the candidate has publicly been at ideological odds with over Jewish issues.
In recent days El-Sayed has also minimized some of his harsh critiques of Israel in his stump speeches and issued a statement distancing himself from onetime campaign ally Hasan Piker, the left-wing anti-Israel streamer.
His nomination acceptance speech later that day made only one, oblique, reference to American support for Israel: “It shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money’s going to be spent on you, and your kids, and your schools, instead of being dropped in the form of a bomb on somebody else, and their kids, and their school.”
But skepticism was still palpable among the 30 or so Jewish Democrats in the room, a crowd that included one delegate who said his daughter and grandson had been inside Temple Israel when it was attacked.
“Our safety as Jews in America relies on, I think, what’s said by public figures, and how they present themselves in public, and how they advocate for Jews in public,” he said just prior to El-Sayed’s apology.
Not all of El-Sayed’s answers pleased the room. Fielding another question about whether he would support the longstanding Democratic platform of a two-state solution in the Middle East if elected senator, the candidate pivoted.
“It’s incoherent to start with a solution and say, ‘Figure out how to work here,’” El-Sayed said. “To me, it’s about starting with a process and saying, ‘How do we dignify equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinian people and Jewish Israelis alike?’”
He added, as he has in other interviews, that he was open to the possibility of a two-state solution “if that’s what a free Palestinian and free Jewish Israeli people decide.” But, he qualified, “Our country, under the guise of a two-state solution, has been aiding, arming, and abetting a government that wants to foreclose on the possibility of a second state.”
That didn’t sit well with some in attendance, even as El-Sayed’s apology for his other comments was broadly appreciated.
“I really liked him apologizing for misspeaking. We’ve all made comments that we regret later on,” Rebecca Kasen, a Lansing-area Michigan Jewish Democrat in attendance, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I was less comfortable with what he said about not supporting a two-state solution.”
Overall, Kasen said, her opinion of El-Sayed had improved after the Jewish caucus meeting as a result of his apology.
“I was probably a more reluctant voter for him” beforehand, she said. That had changed: “Instead of just going to vote now, I am going to be enthusiastically voting for him.”
As the senate race is shaping up to be the potential tipping point to decide control of the chamber in a crucial midterm year seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump, the views of the state’s Jewish Democrats regarding their party have been placed under a microscope for more reasons than just El-Sayed. That has led some longtime Jewish Democratic voters to defect to the Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, and also led to some awkward moments at the convention.
In one example, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, the party’s progressive Jewish nominee for state attorney general, addressed the Jewish caucus by declaring, “We’re going to win and keep the attorney general’s office in the hands of a Michigan Jewish Democrat.” Conspicuously absent from the day’s events was Nessel, the Jewish Democrat currently holding the seat.
Prior to the Saturday convention, Nessel, the state’s highest ranking Jewish official, had announced she would not be attending for fear she would be targeted by antisemitic harassment. Earlier this week, in a podcast interview with The Atlantic, Nessel had reiterated her issues with El-Sayed’s comments about Temple Israel and expressed hope he would walk them back soon.
Nessel’s son Zach Nessel, secretary of the state Jewish Democratic caucus, told the caucus that his mother’s absence stemmed from “agitators” who had targeted her at the party endorsement convention in the spring. Attendance at Saturday’s event was less than one-third of what the Jewish caucus had drawn at the spring convention, organizers said.
Zach Nessel criticized the state Democratic Party for failing to take prompt action to remove the agitators from the earlier convention. He told JTA that Jews in the party “have a right to be concerned.”
“I think the Democratic Party needs to put more work into addressing their concerns,” Zach Nessel said. “But I think that can’t happen without showing up.”
Moss, the Michigan state senator who has recently been at the center of another El-Sayed-related controversy, was spotted at the convention on Saturday but did not attend the Jewish caucus events.
One ally of El-Sayed’s who also addressed the caucus is University of Michigan Board of Regents nominee Amir Makled. He is an attorney for members of the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement who had pushed out a Jewish pro-Israel incumbent at the previous convention. During his own address to Jewish delegates, Makled did not mention his history of social media posts including retweeting far-right antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and sharing praise for Hezbollah leaders.
Makled’s speech later that day at the nominating convention alluded to his work with the encampments as he declared that Michigan “will never have a university where students are punished simply because their speech makes the powerful uncomfortable.”
In-between candidate meet-and-greets, Jewish caucus members shared their anxieties about their closely scrutinized role in the midterm elections. They were gravely concerned about protecting democracy and election security from Republican threats, and felt that flipping the Senate was crucial.
Yet it was hard, they said, to get much of the Jewish community onboard this time, given the positions of El-Sayed and some other members of the Democratic slate. Michigan is home to an estimated 100,000 Jews, and the senate race is currently polling in a dead heat, making their votes potentially pivotal.
“How do we unify our community to put the country first?” one attendee asked the group. “I have a hard time doing that.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘I made a mistake’: Abdul El-Sayed apologizes to Michigan Jews for past comments about synagogue attack appeared first on The Forward.
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The woodcutter and the water carrier in the Torah portion, Nitzavim
לעילוי נשמת מײַן באָבע מנוחה וויטקא ע״ה לזרוב, לכבֿוד איר יאָרצײַט, ט״ו אלול
איינער פֿון די שטאַרקסטע קעגנער מיט וועמען אַ מענטש דאַרף זיך אויסקעמפֿן איז…זיך אַליין.
די סיבה איז פּשוט: די געדאַנקען און געפֿילן וואָס אַ מענטש קען צום בעסטן, זענען זײַנע אייגענע. און ווײַל דאָס זענען זײַנע פּערזענלעכע געדאַנקען און נײגונגען, איז מען נאַטירלעך גענייגט זיי צו געבן אַ גרויסע חשיבות. אויב איך פֿאַרשטיי אַזוי, אָדער איך פֿיל אַזוי, איז דאָס שוין לכאורה אַ גענוג גוטע סיבה צו טאָן אַלץ וואָס איך קען כּדי אויסצופֿירן מײַנע געדאַנקען און באַפֿרידיקן מײַן ווילן.
אָבער זייער אָפֿט טרעפֿט דווקא דאָס פאַרקערטע. דער מענטש וואָס שטעלט אויס זײַן לעבן בלויז לויט דעם וואָס אים דאַכט זיך ריכטיק אָדער באַקוועם, קען צום סוף שאַפֿן געלעגנהייטן וואָס גייען ווײַט העכער פֿון זײַנע באַגרענעצטע און פֿאַרבײַגייענדיקע פּערזענלעכע געפֿילן.
מיט אַנדערע ווערטער, באַקוועמלעכקייט און צוגעוווינטקייט קענען זײַן די גרעסטע שׂונאים פֿונעם מענטשן, אַנשטאָט זײַנע מיטהעלפֿער.
אין דער סדרה פֿון דער וואָך, נצבים־וילך, ווענדט זיך משה רבינו צום ייִדישן פֿאָלק אַזוי:
„אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם… מֵחֹטֵב עֵצֶיךָ עַד שֹׁאֵב מֵימֶיךָ“ — איר שטייט הײַנט אַלע פֿאַר דעם אייבערשטן, אײַער ג־ט… פֿון דײַנע האָלצהעקערס ביז דײַנע וואַסער־שעפּערס (וואַסער־טרעגערס).
דער גרינדער פֿון חב״ד, רבי שניאור זלמן, באַקאַנט ווי דער אַלטער רבי, דערקלערט אַז דאָס האָלצהאַקן און וואַסער־שעפּן האָבן, אויסער זייער פּשוטן באַטײַט, אויך אַן אינערלעכן טײַטש אין דער פּערזענלעכער עבֿודה פֿונעם מענטש.
דער אויסדרוק „עֵצֶיךָ“, דײַן האָלץ, קען מען אויך פֿאַרשטיין ווי „עצותיך“, דײַנע אייגענע עצות, געדאַנקען און חשבונות.
דאָס „וואַסער“ איז מרמז אויף דעם יסוד המים פֿונעם נפֿש הבהמית — דער מקור און טרײַבקראַפֿט פֿון קערפּערלעכע תּענוגים.
די לערנונג, זאָגט רבי שניאור זלמן, איז אַז אַ מענטש דאַרף „אויסהאַקן“ די אייגענע חשבונות און „אויסשעפּן“ די תּאוות וואָס צילן בעיקר אויף פּערזענלעכע קערפּערלעכע הנאות.
ערשט ווען אַ מענטש קען נייטראַליזירן אָט די צוויי כּוחות און זיך נישט לאָזן פֿירן פֿון זיי, קען ער צום בעסטן מקיים זײַן זײַן שליחות אין לעבן — אָן דעם שוחד פֿון פּערזענלעכער באַקוועמלעכקייט. שוחד פֿאַרבלענדט דאָך די אויגן און לאָזט ניט זען קלאָר און אָביעקטיוו. דאָס זעלבע טרעפֿט מיט באַקוועמלעכקייט. עס לאָזט ניט טראַכן אָביעקטיוו.
מען וואָלט אָבער געקענט מיינען אַז אַזאַ דיסציפּלין איז שייך בלויז צום תּורה־לערנען, צו מענטשן וואָס פֿירן אַ רוחניותדיק לעבן, אָדער בלויז ווען אַ מענטש וויל מצליח זײַן אין זײַן אייגענער גײַסטיקער זוכעניש.
וואָס איז אָבער מיט מסחר, פּרנסה אָדער אַ פּראָפֿעסיע — מיט די לכאורה „נישט־רעליגיעזע“ געביטן פֿון לעבן? דאָרט מעג מען דען נישט טאָן וואָס מען אַליין האַלט פֿאַר ריכטיק און וואָס גיט פּערזענלעכע צופֿרידנקייט?
דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי — זכותו יגן עלינו — ווײַזט אָן אַז דער ענטפֿער אויף דער פֿראַגע ליגט שוין אינעם פּירוש רש״י אויפֿן פסוק.
ווער זענען געווען די דאָזיקע האָלצהעקערס און וואַסער־שעפּערס?
רש״י דערקלערט אַז זיי זענען געווען כּנענים וואָס זענען געקומען צו משה רבינו ע״ה מיט דער כּוונה זיך מגייר צו זײַן, און משה האָט זיי באַשטימט צו דינען ווי האָלצהעקערס און וואַסער־שעפּערס.
דער רבי ווײַזט אן אַז דאָס וואָרט „כּנעני“ מיינט אויך אַ סוחר.
דער רמז איז, אַז נישט בלויז ווען עס רעדט זיך וועגן הימלישע און רוחניותדיקע ענינים — „רעליגיעזע“ באַשעפֿטיקונגען — דאַרף מען זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון פּערזענלעכע אינטערעסן, צי שׂכלדיקע צי פֿילעוודיקע.
אויך אין מסחר, אין אַלע ענינים וואָס האָבן צו טאָן מיט גשמיות און מאַטעריע, דאַרפֿן די „האָלצהעקערס“ און „וואַסער־שעפּערס“ גיין צו דער אַרבעט.
מען דאַרף זיך העכערן איבער די אייגענע חשבונות און תּאוות, און זיך אָפּגעבן מיט די גשמיותדיקע טעטיקייטן מיט דער כּוונה, אַז דורך זיי זאָל מען אַרײַנברענגען הייליקייט און ג-טליכקייט אין דער וועלט — דורך דעם ליכט פֿון דער תּורה און דער נפֿש האלוקית.
עס זענען דא מענטשן וואָס קענען דאָס באַטראַכטן ווי אַ באַגרענעצונג: „מען לאָזט מיר נישט טאָן וואָס איך וויל.“
מען קען דאָס אָבער באַטראַכטן גאָר אַנדערש — ווי אַן אויסערגעוויינטלעכע געלעגנהייט:
„שטענדיק — אַפֿילו אין די מערסטע וועלטלעכע און לכאורה נישטיקע טעטיקייטן — האָב איך די מעגלעכקייט צו דערגרייכן עפּעס וואָס האָט אַן אומענדלעכע און אייביקע ווערט.“
דעריבער איז די געצײַג פֿון דער וואָך:
אויב דו פֿילסט זיך שלעכט ווײַל עס דאַכט זיך דיר אַז אַ גרויסער טייל פֿון דײַן לעבן האָט נישט קיין באַזונדערן זין אָדער ווערט, געדענק אַז עס ליגט אין דײַנע הענט צו באַשליסן אין וועלכער ריכטונג דו וועסט גיין.
דו קענסט צייכענען דײַן וועג לויט דײַנע פּערזענלעכע געדאַנקען און געפֿילן, וואָס קומען און גייען און לאָזן נישט קיין אייביקע שפּור.
אָדער דו קענסט זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון זייער הערשאַפֿט און זיך אָפּגעבן מיט עפּעס וואָס איז אַ טייל פֿון אַ ציל וואָס איז אומענדלעך גרעסער — און אומענדלעך מער ווערטפֿול.
The post The woodcutter and the water carrier in the Torah portion, Nitzavim appeared first on The Forward.
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Vance, who’s drawn ire of Jewish conservatives, will speak at Republican Jewish confab
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance, who has drawn the ire of a number of Jewish conservatives, will speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Monday, the RJC confirmed.
“The Republican Jewish Coalition is proud to welcome Vice President JD Vance to our National Leadership Summit in Las Vegas,” said an RJC spokesperson. “JD Vance is a friend, who is coming back after first joining us in 2022 as a candidate for the US Senate.”
Vance’s appearance comes as a number of Jewish Republicans and major GOP donors have indicated that they would rather support Marco Rubio for the presidential nomination in 2028 than Vance, who is seen as Donald Trump’s likeliest successor. Some of those donors will be in the room on Monday at the Venetian Resort, which is owned by the billionaire Adelson family — a major backer of Trump and various Jewish and Israeli causes.
The vice president has lost the confidence of the pro-Israel crowd with his reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on Tucker Carlson, the prominent pundit who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. Multiple donors told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during last year’s confab that they would not support Vance in 2028.
Carlson, meanwhile, was a major focus of the discussion at the RJC’s 2025 summit, where signs reading “Tucker is not MAGA” were handed out to attendees. His son, Buckley Carlson, is a former Vance staffer.
An agenda sent by the RJC lists Vance as a speaker during a Monday evening session that will be closed to press. A spokesperson confirmed that Vance will be speaking in a “fireside chat.”
A number of high-profile Republican candidates are also expected to speak at the RJC confab, which is being held on Sunday and Monday, a few months ahead of the midterm elections. Speakers include U.S. Senate candidates Mike Collins, the Georgia congressman who is challenging Jewish Democrat Jon Ossoff, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Collins has faced accusations of antisemitism and having ties to the far right. He has said that some of his statements were misunderstood, and has defended himself by citing his support for Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Vance, who’s drawn ire of Jewish conservatives, will speak at Republican Jewish confab appeared first on The Forward.
