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In Denver, a Jewish day school happily copes with a surge in new students
(JTA) — This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. Author Drew Kaplan is a student at Denver Jewish Day School.
Denver Jewish Day School’s principal never thought he would spend so much time looking at school furniture catalogs.
Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi needed to turn a former workspace into a classroom for a middle school math class and occasional Hebrew classes. Between this and needing to increase the capacity in a few other rooms, he was in the market for new desks, chairs, and tables to serve the 37 new students who have joined DJDS over the past two years.
Enrollment in DJDS’ upper division, which is middle and high school, is 19% higher than it was two years ago.
“Space has suddenly become a real constraint,” said Golubcow-Teglasi, who leads the upper school. “When you put 70 more people in a building that normally houses 120, you have to get creative about space.” Currently, the upper division has 189 students, an all-time high.
He and others describe the growth as a reflection of the rise in antisemitism and increase in Jewish identity following the war in Israel, causing many families to seek a larger Jewish community for their children. As a result, enrollment in Jewish schools like DJDS has increased since Oct. 7, following a similar nationwide trend. Now Jewish schools across the country are having to suddenly adapt to surges in enrollment, causing schools like DJDS—where this reporter has been a student for the past 12 years—to hire more teachers, buy more furniture, and adapt their class offerings.
Across the country, more than half of surveyed U.S. schools have seen an increase in students or families considering enrollment since Oct. 7, according to Prizmah, a network of Jewish day schools and yeshivas.
Additionally, 60% of the 72 schools it surveyed last school year, “identified new students who enrolled in Jewish day schools this school year as a result of the change in climate post Oct. 7,” according to a “Trends Update” released in February.
Donna Klein High School in Palm Beach County, Florida, saw an increase of 177 students the year following Oct. 7. Of those students, 35 families said they made the switch due to antisemitism or anti-Zionism.
Similar to Donna Klein, 80% of families joined DJDS since the 2023-24 school year, citing Jewish Identity & Environment as influencing their decision to transfer. Additionally 67% cited school-wide community as a reason, 61% cited Physical Safety, and 53% cited social-emotional safety. These same reasons, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, also contributed to the higher retention rates seen at DJDS.
Few families cited antisemitism explicitly as a factor for transferring to DJDS, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, who said it was sometimes mentioned as a factor, but he was never entirely sold that Oct. 7 alone is driving DJDS’s enrollment growth. “But I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis.”
Enrollment has increased in two distinct “surges,” Golubcow-Teglasi said. The first was after the Covid-19 pandemic, and the subsequent school year, when families were drawn to a small, largely in-person school. But that accelerated pattern of enrollment flattened out until the second “surge” hit following the Oct. 7 attacks.
The school year after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, 21 new students joined the Upper Division. Annabelle Dennis and Hailey Lutz were among the new transfers.
Dennis, a junior, transferred from a private Catholic school. “I really wanted a smaller school and community,” she said, “the kids were questionable — really just antisemitic.”
Dennis struggled as many students came up to her and made hateful comments. “People have asked me why I don’t have horns, and people have told me I killed their Lord and Savior, and they can never forgive me,” she said.
The school’s administration “could have done a better job,” Dennis said. She said that regarding most cases of antisemitism, the administration looked the other way, “sometimes it was handled, but most of the time, they did not handle anything.”
Lutz, a senior at DJDS, transferred the school year after Oct. 7 because she was tired of her schoolmates constantly bringing up the situation in Israel and Gaza. As one of the only Jews at her school, she looked to transfer to a school where she could be herself.
Students at her school “had a lot of questions on what was going on, especially with all the misinformation being spread on social media,” she said. “People weren’t necessarily antisemitic or anti-Jewish, but they were asking questions. She said she felt as if classmates were trying to get her to say that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza or agree with other assertions that Lutz described as “propaganda or misinformation.”
Holden Demain spent his first semester of 11th grade away from DJDS, the school he’s attended since Kindergarten, attending school in Washington, D.C. as part of the U.S. Senate Page Program.
After returning to DJDS in the middle of the 2024-2025 school year, Demain noticed the changes at the school.
“The hallways are damn crowded, which is great,” Demain said. “There is so much more opportunity to create different kinds of clubs.”
Demain leads one such club, Zemirot, where students sing traditional Jewish songs. This year at DJDS, there is also a new baking club, a Hacky Sack club, and a financial literacy club.
Similar to Golubcow-Teglasi, Demain does not fully attribute the surge in enrollment to Oct. 7; he also credits the population growth in Denver and students switching from other Jewish schools in the area.
“I think it’s been really good. There are a bunch of new opportunities, like you can make new friends that you never would have met before,” said Kaitlin Schatz, a junior entering her fifth year at DJDS. Schatz explains how it has been fun to see new students with different backgrounds.
But at the same time, more students being in the building means that there are space constraints. “We do not have enough gym space,” Golubcow-Teglasi said, to allow both high schoolers and middle schoolers to use the gym during lunch. There has been so much demand for the Advanced Placement United States History class this year that it is being offered in two different periods, whereas before it ran every other year. Last year, AP European History was also offered in two different periods for the first time.
Jerry Rotenberg, an upper-division Judaics teacher and student council advisor, said that teacher workload has definitely increased. “There’s more work to do — more tests and assignments to grade, and preparations take longer,” Rotenberg noted that it isn’t necessarily an added stress, just more on his plate.
Meanwhile, during particularly busy periods, some classes meet in the hallways.
“It’s probably the worst place to have a class,” said Hannah Gruenwald, a senior who is taking her yearbook editor class in the DJDS lobby. It makes sense that the two-student class would be put in this situation, Gruenwald says, “but it isn’t conducive to learning. Having a table would be nice.”
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
