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Invoking Torah, Minnesota Jews mobilize against ICE operations
(JTA) — The Hebrews’ flight from Egypt is on a lot of Jewish minds right now, as the annual cycle of Torah readings has reached the Book of Exodus.
But for many Jewish leaders in Minnesota, the ancient story has particular resonance.
With Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descending on the Twin Cities in search of undocumented immigrants and stirring chaos and pushback, the story of Exodus — about a king who tries to thwart the growing number of “foreigners” in his midst, and the leader who seeks to protect them — is inspiring widespread anti-ICE actions.
“As we’re currently reading in the Torah, Moses confronts Pharoah knowing it won’t be easy, and feeling his own doubts about such an act,” Rabbi Aaron Weininger, who leads the Conservative Adath Jeshurun Congregation in the suburb of Minnetonka, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And in doing so, the Israelites enslaved in Egypt are able to get unstuck. They’re able to taste freedom.”
Inspired by such teachings, and frequently invoked Jewish injunctions like “welcoming the stranger,” Jewish groups are signing on to open letters, and synagogues are actively involved in pro‑immigrant actions and advocacy. The Jewish presence at an interfaith anti-ICE rally this week is expected to be substantial.
“Our community members and staff live and work in every corner of society. There are too many stories of lives upended by what the government itself refers to as the ICE surge,” reads an open letter, issued Monday, spearheaded by the Jewish federation and signed by around two dozen Jewish groups.
Jewish groups “are deeply concerned by the current volatile situation throughout the Twin Cities and Minnesota,” according to the letter. Its signatories as of press time include 13 area congregations, ranging from Reform to Modern Orthodox; two Jewish day schools; Minnesota Hillel; the Minnesota JCC; the progressive group Jewish Community Action, and Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minnesota.
ICE’s presence — which includes masked, heavily armed officers conducting aggressive traffic stops, neighborhood raids and street patrols — has led to a lack of caregivers tending to local Jewish seniors, according to the letter.
It follows an earlier open letter from 49 Minnesota Jewish clergy, distributed on Friday, that describes “grief” and “horror” over ICE “wreaking havoc across our state.”
Quoting Deuteronomy — “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” — the rabbis and cantors spotlight the “tragic death” of driver Renee Good at the hands of an ICE officer Jan. 7 and include a prayer to “spread a canopy of peace and protection over all those wrongfully targeted by ICE at this moment.”
Both of those letters precipitated what is turning into a larger institutional Jewish pushback to ICE. On Wednesday, leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements issued a joint statement to “condemn, in the strongest terms, the violence with which the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing American immigration law — above all, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as in cities and towns across the nation.”
“Our sages taught that the Book of Deuteronomy’s directive, ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue’ (16:20), implies that the law must be enforced through a fair process, and that one should pursue justice whether it would be to one’s advantage or to one’s loss,” the statement reads, with the Jewish leaders further calling on the Justice Department to investigate Good’s death.
Rabbi Jill Avrin, campus lead at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, said it was “unprecedented” for such a wide variety of local Jewish groups to sign onto such messages.
“We have a really diverse Jewish community here, and we felt that this is a moment that is impacting all of us,” Avrin, who helped draft the letters, told JTA.
The multiple open letters are trying to appeal to shared spiritual values as the standoffs between protesters and ICE agents become increasingly fraught. A number of prominent figures — most recently Bruce Springsteen — have compared ICE’s tactics to the Gestapo; at the same time, an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service over the weekend has prompted concern and controversy across the interfaith community and led at least one Republican to compare the protesters to Hamas.
Local Jewish leaders say they are not dissuaded from what they view as a Jewish imperative to respond.
“Judaism isn’t about skipping the hard parts,” Weininger said. “It’s about noticing the struggles for centuries that have led us to this point: slavery, persecution, destruction, exile, coming home.”
Rabbis have been active in local mobilizing against ICE. They attended a community vigil for Good; Weininger discussed the issue during his Shabbat sermon. He also helped draft the rabbinical open letter, and this week is one of around 80 to 90 rabbis — many others from out of town — planning to attend an interfaith march in Minneapolis with more than 600 clergy present. Around 50 of the rabbis expected to attend are part of T’ruah, a Jewish social justice network, which mobilized after local clergy put out the request.
“What’s scary is that lawful actions are being targeted,” Weininger said about the situation on the ground. “We’re talking about protest and prayer and taking action in community, and even those modes of engagement are under attack.”
Recalling how Minneapolis Jews similarly mobilized in 2020 to protest George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, the rabbi described “a real sense of civil society here, and I think that is true of the Jewish clergy community in how people care for one another.”
Rabbis also spoke out at a Tuesday interfaith press conference denouncing ICE and outlining plans for this week’s march. “As people of faith, as leaders of faith communities, we are called to say, ‘Enough. Not on our watch,’” Rabbi Tamar Magill-Grimm, who leads the Conservative Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, said while standing next to a local imam.
Some Jewish groups across the country have raised concern about ICE’s activities for months, with some synagogues posting signs identifying themselves as houses of worship that agents do not have authority to enter. Rabbis affiliated with T’ruah have participated in “ICE watch” actions in other cities.
But Minnesota’s Jews have now witnessed firsthand the effects of a sustained, targeted ICE presence on their community. Local synagogues have hosted “upstander” training seminars for congregants to learn how to react in the face of an ICE encounter. For many congregants, the experience has pushed them to action — but it’s also invoked an eerie sensation, bringing echoes of a dangerous past.
“As a Jewish parent in Minneapolis, history feels too close right now,” one Twin Cities resident told Daci Platt, a fellow Minnesotan who works at Kveller, a JTA sister publication. “The sense of safety we usually rely on feels shakier than it ever has.”
Jewish community organizations are particularly concerned about the threat the ICE raids, which have focused primarily on non-white Twin Cities residents, pose to a caregiving workforce largely composed of immigrants.
“Jewish seniors are not having their basic needs met because their caregivers are too afraid to come to work,” says the letter spearheaded by the federation.
Amy Weiss, CEO of Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minnesota, told JTA that ICE has also affected her organization’s ability to serve its nonsectarian clients more generally. Much of their own staff are from immigrant communities, and Weiss worries about drawing attention to them by sending them out into the field to help clients.
“People are afraid to go to work. They’re afraid to leave their homes,” Weiss said. “I don’t see this as political. When you look at our mission, to support people in need, then this is very basic. These are the very basic needs of the community.”
The open letter also notes that there are Jews “who are immigrants themselves, have family members who are immigrants, or could be reasonably perceived to be immigrants. Many of these people are scared to leave their homes out of fear of being arrested and deported.”
The federation-backed letter is careful not to deride all law enforcement. It states, “We affirm our commitment to the rule of law, the lawful implementation of statutes, and the thousands of law enforcement officers charged with keeping us safe, whose efforts we deeply appreciate.”
Avrin, too, praised local law enforcement, whom she called “amazing” and “not the same thing as the ICE agents who are here on the ground.” She also noted that not all of the Jewish communal leaders shared the specific goals of this week’s march, which other Jewish leaders helped plan. The march’s demands include “ICE must leave Minnesota immediately” and “ICE should be investigated for human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.”
“This moment is a moment that calls for coalition,” she said. “We are acknowledging and naming that we might be showing up with people whom we don’t actually agree with their broader platform.”
That discomfort has also arisen in some of the language of the opposition. As ICE protests in Minnesota attract growing national attention, comparisons to Nazis and the Gestapo have also grown. Avrin said the JCRC discourages such rhetoric
During a concert in New Jersey last weekend, Springsteen decried “heavily armed, masked federal troops invading an American city and using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens.” He then repeated a catchphrase popularized by Jacob Frey, Minneapolis’s Jewish mayor: “ICE should get the f–k out of Minneapolis.” (On Tuesday, Frey, along with other state officials, was subpoenaed by the Justice Department for alleged obstruction of immigration agents. Some of his critics have called attention to his Jewish identity.)
The faith-based protests suffered a distraction when anti-ICE protesters disrupted a St. Paul church service. The protesters, including Black Lives Matter Minnesota, claimed that one of its pastors also works as a local ICE field office leader. The Trump administration has announced an investigation into the protest, which officials said could amount to a violation of a federal law permitting free access to any worship site.
Following the protest, Cities Church in Minnesota issued a statement saying the protesters “accosted members of our congregation, frightened children, and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat. Such conduct is shameful, unlawful, and will not be tolerated.”
The statement added, “Invading a church service to disrupt the worship of Jesus — or any other act of worship — is protected by neither the Christian Scriptures nor the laws of this nation.” A founding pastor of the church has ties to Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary.
One Republican, Rep. Will Self of Texas, said the protesters — who had livestreamed themselves from inside the church — reminded him of Hamas livestreaming on Oct. 7.
“When you livestream something, you want it to cause terror in the population,” Self told the far-right TV network Newsmax. “So when they livestreamed it, I compare them to Hamas, who livestreamed the attack in Israel that killed thousands of people.”
American Jewish leaders, for whom the freedom of worship in America has long been a key policy plank, say they disagree such a protest in a house of worship. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who heads T’ruah, told JTA her organization “would not organize a protest of a church.”
The local JCRC also criticized the church protest, which comes in the aftermath of recent pro-Hamas synagogue protests in New York that were widely condemned by Jewish and progressive leaders alike.
“That is something we are absolutely opposed to. We would never encourage people to disrupt a worship service. That is not aligned with our values in any way,” Avrin said. “In my opinion it doesn’t reflect the broader efforts that are happening on the ground. That’s going to happen any time you have a large movement.”
Jews in that movement are focusing on injunctions drawn from the Bible. Speaking at New Birth, a historically Black Baptist church in Georgia with links to the family of Martin Luther King Jr., Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, gave a biblically inflected anti-ICE message.
“How can it be that masked federal agents set up checkpoints in American cities, demand papers, rip Americans from their cars, and throw them to the ground? Kill? Kill? With apparent license from the very top,” Ossoff told the congregation. “There’s a wickedness to the program. I don’t know, Pastor, where it is in scripture that it says ‘deny care to the sick, take from those with the least to give to those with the most, violate the house of worship to hunt down the refugee.’ Where in the scripture are those lessons taught?”
Ossoff, who is defending his seat in a tight reelection campaign, added that he and the church’s pastor had been “texting” about the Exodus journey of Moses, and how he used his staff to rally the Israelites.
In the face of the groundswell in Minnesota, President Donald Trump again forcefully rebuked the protesters and defended ICE.
“They’re apprehending murderers and drug dealers and a lot of bad people,” the president said of the agents during a press conference to mark one year of his second term.
Holding up images he said were of immigrant criminals apprehended by ICE, including one who he claimed was connected to Hezbollah, Trump asked the White House press pool, “Why don’t you talk about that more?… Do you want to live with these people?”
The president also referenced the church protest. “I have such respect for that pastor. He was so calm. He was so nice. He was just accosted,” Trump said of the clergyman whose sermon was interrupted. (He was not the pastor the protesters were targeting.) “What they did in that church was horrible.”
Trump, too, has been a mobilizing force for Jews in Minnesota. Following the president’s derogatory comments last month about the Somali population in the state — which Trump said justified the ICE raids — many local Jewish leaders had held coalition meetings with interfaith partners.
For some in the room at the time, Avrin recalled, it was the first time they had come face-to-face with these partners since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, which frayed many Jewish-liberal coalitions when other communal groups denounced Israel and “Zionists.”
Such partners had “stopped speaking to us, basically,” she said.
But for the Jewish leaders in the room, the Talmudic imperative to love the stranger overcame lingering uncertainty about reconfiguring these coalitions: “We can’t walk away from that just because we’ve been hurt,” she said.
The post Invoking Torah, Minnesota Jews mobilize against ICE operations appeared first on The Forward.
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They want Jewish life without Zionism. Now they’re building the institutions to match.
(JTA) — One year after Jewish Currents editor-at-large Arielle Angel called for “new Jewish institutions” that have no attachment to Israel or Zionism, more than 100 Jews crammed into a Victorian house-turned-event space in central Brooklyn in hopes of creating them.
The event was billed as a bootcamp for people hoping to get fledgling Jewish groups off the ground. Sessions focused on topics like staffing and funding, as well as discussions about who, exactly, is welcome in a space that is “anti-Zionist,” “non-Zionist,” “diasporist” and the like.
Many of the groups represented on Monday were minyans, which host prayer services in locations like people’s apartments or community spaces. They sought practical guidance for building their institutions, but also for defining who to welcome as their ranks expand.
“If we’re doing things right,” Angel said, “many of these small minyans will be synagogues in a few years.”
Esti, 27, who declined to share her last name to maintain privacy, is involved in leading an anti-Zionist minyan in Brooklyn. She said she has heard from “so many” attendees that they were relieved to attend services in a space without an Israeli flag.
“People are like, ‘I never thought I could be in a Jewish space like this, I never thought I’d see queer people leading, I never thought I could be in a Jewish space where they’re saying Free Palestine,’” she said. The minyan averages about 50 attendees at Shabbat services, she said.
Some of the speakers at the workshop detailed how they have refused to compromise their organizations’ politics. One panel led by Rabbi Brant Rosen, who helped found the anti-Zionist synagogue Tzedek Chicago, and Rebecca Vilkomerson, the former director of the anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace, focused on the process of setting an organization’s “political boundaries.”
Rosen spoke from his own experience, saying that Tzedek Chicago was presented as “consciously not an inclusive community.”
“In other words, this is what we stand for, it might not be for you, it might not be for everyone, and that’s OK. There are many places out there that you can choose,” he said. Rosen added that potential members were not forced to agree in order to join, but rather that they were faced with the question: “Given that these are our values, is this a community you want to belong to?”
Esti spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the sideline of the Urbane Arts Club event, which JTA attended on the condition that attendees’ in-session remarks throughout the day were kept off the record, though panelists’ remarks were all on the record.
Americans’ support for Israel has dropped writ large amid its military campaign in Gaza and the war with Iran. A survey by the Jewish Federations of North America found that 37% of Jewish respondents said they identified as Zionist, while 7% labeled themselves anti-Zionist and another 8% said they were non-Zionist. Another 18% said they weren’t sure, while 30% said none of the labels described them.
According to an AP-NORC poll from earlier this year, support for Israel is a less significant component of younger Jews’ religious identity versus Jews older than 45.
“These groups are starting up because of demand,” Rabbi Alissa Wise told JTA.
Wise is a co-founder of the Jewish Diaspora Movement, the group behind Monday’s bootcamp, which is itself in its beginning stages. She has previously worked for JVPe and in October 2023 founded Rabbis for Ceasefire, which has protested for a Gaza ceasefire and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
While JVP “played a pivotal role in building Jewish life outside of Zionism,” Wise said there was still a major gap in religious and cultural Jewish institutions that reject Zionism.
In addition to the represented minyans, which facilitate prayer services, and the havurahs, which offer events such as Shabbat dinners and other holiday celebrations, Angel said some attendees were looking to start projects including summer camps, educational offerings and cultural projects such as theater collectives.
Jen Kaminsky, an attendee who is part of the Buffalo Jewish Collective’s leadership team, told JTA that her organization welcomes “a range of Jews, many of whom have not felt comfortable in legacy Jewish institutions.”
“We say that we welcome anti-Zionists and non-Zionists, and people who are questioning Zionism and people who have a range of relationships to Zionism,” Kaminsky said. “If you are comfortable with the values that we put out, or you’re comfortable being in a room where those values are the dominant values, we welcome you.”
Vilkomerson told the group that there should be an attempt to grow membership by engaging people closer to the center in “left-liberal coalitions,” but without making concessions on left-wing values. She put the concept into New York City political terms, pointing to the political alliance between the anti-Zionist Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the liberal Zionist Brad Lander.
“Brad, as a liberal Zionist, was able to partner with Zohran Mamdani — but Zohran set the terms of the campaign, not Brad,” she said.
Also on Monday, Lissy Romanow — a co-founder of the group IfNotNow, which describes itself as “anti-occupation” — gave a nuts-and-bolts session on the first steps of creating an organization, including how to concisely conceive of a group’s DNA and how to avoid burnout among volunteers.
As groups look to grow and achieve loftier goals like setting up permanent locations and hiring paid staff, one clear obstacle stands in the way: funding.
“There’s only so much money on the Jewish left,” Angel told JTA.
Any anti-Zionist group is highly unlikely to receive funds from one of the country’s many Jewish federations, which often maintain deep ties to Israel.
Three left-wing Jewish donors — Liana Krupp, Deborah Sagner and Kathleen Peratis — spoke on Monday about the limited landscape of funding for Jewish anti-Zionist organizations.
“If we don’t flip liberal Zionists we’re not going to grow, because that’s where the money is,” Peratis said.
Participants on Monday, whose groups are mostly volunteer-run, did not have any illusions about that landscape.
“For now, the goal is to keep doing Shabbat in a sustainable way on a regular basis,” Esti said. But she also shared her long-term vision.
“I think it would be amazing to have a brick-and-mortar shul, a place we could call our definitive home,” she said. “But that’s way, way far down the line.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After bronze win, judo athlete Raz Hershko tells JTA, ‘I stand for something far bigger than myself.’
(JTA) — Israeli judoka Raz Hershko, one of the country’s top athletes, missed a major opportunity in 2025 when the 12-day war between Israel and Iran closed Israeli airspace, preventing her from traveling to Budapest. Earlier this year, she withdrew from the Tashkent Grand Slam after the Shin Bet ordered the Israeli team to leave Uzbekistan.
But nothing could keep Hershko off the podium this weekend, when she won a bronze medal at the World Judo Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Hershko, 28, burst into tears after winning the bout that secured her medal.
“Representing Israel has always been something that moves me, but at this moment, it carries so much more meaning,” Hershko told JTA. “At the end of the day, I step onto the mat alone, but I feel like I have an entire country behind me.”
Hershko dedicated her victory to the memory of Yonatan Gutin, an Israeli soldier killed on Oct. 7, 2023, as well as his family and the people of Israel.
According to his official memorial page, Gutin, a 20-year-old Israel Defense Forces officer, was killed fighting to rescue civilians during the battle for Kibbutz Be’eri. Judo was a central part of his life. He had trained in the sport for about 14 years and was a member of Israel’s cadet national team. Even during his military service, he occasionally returned to his judo club to coach.
Despite the achievement, Hershko made clear that bronze was not the result she had hoped for.
“I’m pretty disappointed that the day ended with a bronze medal, because I was aiming for gold,” she said. “But now it’s time to look ahead to the next goals.”
Hershko has established herself in recent years as one of the world’s leading judokas and one of Israel’s most prominent athletes. She won an individual silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and a gold medal at the 2024 European Championships. She competes in the women’s heavyweight division.
Her latest achievement came just days after Israel marked the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, a date that has continued to shape the country’s public life and weigh heavily on its athletes competing abroad.
“Knowing that I was able to give people back home even a few moments of happiness, a smile, a sense of pride — that means so much to me. Especially during the times we’re going through, these are the moments that remind me why I do what I do,” she added.
The judoka said that “everything has felt different since Oct. 7” and that she can’t “disconnect” herself from the Israeli reality.
“Before that, I would go into competitions feeling immense pride in representing my country,” she said. “Today, that pride is even stronger. I’m much more aware of what the flag I wear represents, and of the fact that I stand for something far bigger than myself.”
Hershko, however, has little time to dwell on the medal. She told Channel 13 that she would take two days off before returning to training ahead of another competition next week. Asked by JTA how she has managed to stay hungry and focused after achieving so much, the Israeli athlete said she simply enjoys the journey.
“I really love what I do. I love judo, I love competing, I love the challenges, and I think that’s what keeps me hungry,” she said. “Of course, I’m proud of everything I’ve achieved, but I never feel like I’m done or that there’s nothing left to strive for. At the end of the day, the medals are incredible moments, but the journey is what builds me as an athlete, and I’m still enjoying that journey.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish school educators cancel trip to Italy after Italian education program required participants to denounce ‘genocide’ in Gaza
(JTA) — Educators from Jewish schools across the U.S. canceled a study trip to Reggio Emilia, Italy, over whether the hosts would require participants to formally distance themselves from Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
The controversy has drawn accusations of antisemitism from Jewish educators and from Italian Jewish community leaders. It has also sparked a political dispute in Italy.
In an email sent to participants on Oct. 9, the American organizers, the Paradigm Project, said they canceled the trip because of “antisemitic pressure being placed on the group.” In a Zoom call with the participants, the organizers also cited safety concerns amid the scrutiny of the Jewish school educators’ personal profiles by pro-Palestinian activists who were agitating for the declaration, a participant said.
In a leaked audio recording broadcast Monday evening by Italy’s Tg3 TV news program, the president of the host organization Reggio Children, Maddalena Tedeschi, discussed asking participants to sign declarations distancing themselves from the “occupation of territories and genocide.” The recording is of an Oct. 6 meeting of the city’s early childhood education council.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Reggio Children spokesperson Francesca Severini said the request — intended to appease local pro-Palestinian activists — had never become an official participation requirement, but acknowledged that the additional wording had been discussed.
The Paradigm Project, a professional development network for Jewish early childhood educators, organized the trip for 68 Jewish educators. A separate delegation of 22 educators from Israel arrived in Reggio and was participating in the program this week.
“Now, more than ever, we must bring back the light and keep the bridge between us strong,” the Israeli educators said in opening remarks Monday.
Reggio Children, an educational organization partly owned by the municipality, promotes the city’s internationally influential approach to early childhood education and provides training for educators. Reggio Emilia Mayor Marco Massari and the city’s education official Marwa Mahmoud did not respond to requests for comment.
The cancellation, which came in a phone call from Paradigm to Reggio Children on Oct. 7, follows months of tensions in the city, where pro-Palestinian activists had protested the participating schools’ ties to Israel. During the weeks preceding the trip, activist Cosimo Pederzoli had publicly accused some of the schools of supporting the Israeli military.
At the Oct. 6 meeting, Reggio Children presented a charter, titled “For a Democratic and Participatory Education,” asking visiting groups and partners to uphold human rights, oppose discrimination, reject war, and condemn genocide. The charter, which was approved and is now on the organization’s website, also opposes violations of human rights in occupied territories worldwide, without naming Israel or Gaza.
Severini, the spokesperson, said that activists, teachers and parents had pressured Reggio Children and the municipality to take the charter one step further and requiring participants to agree to the statement: “I … hereby declare that I distance myself from the occupation of Gaza and the violation of children’s and human beings’ rights in occupied territories as well as every place in the world.”
Severini said that the wording was included as “material for discussion” in a private WhatsApp group. The American organizers were not in the chat, she said, and subsequently received the wording without the context that it would not, in the end, be official language.
Her account contradicts Reggio Children’s earlier public statements. On Oct. 7, the organization acknowledged that the educators had been asked to explicitly distance themselves from the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in response to concerns raised in the city. Mayor Marco Massari also acknowledged the additional commitment in a public statement, which says, “This Charter will be signed by all delegations visiting Reggio Emilia in the coming months and years.”
In an email to parents, leaders of Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s early childhood centers in Los Angeles said seven of their educators had been scheduled to join the trip and expressed support for Paradigm’s decision to cancel.
“Paradigm, on behalf of our educators and dozens of others, rightfully refused and canceled participation in the study tour and conference, due to the refusal to sign and other security considerations,” read the email. “All participants were notified on October 7, 2026.”
Pesha Kletenik, head of Manhattan Day School, had planned to join the trip. “This was one of the most painful experiences I’ve had,” Kletenik told JTA. “I never felt so targeted as a Jew before in my life. I’m an American citizen. I have one passport. I’ve lived here my entire life.”
Kletenik said she had hoped to adapt the Reggio approach to Jewish teaching and practice, including their model Passover seder, because “it aligns so beautifully with Jewish values.”
Steve Freedman, head of Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, New Jersey, said his school withdrew an educator from a separate trip planned for November. In a letter to families, he criticized the demand for a political declaration while affirming the school’s commitment to the Reggio approach.
The council of the Jewish Community of Modena and Reggio Emilia, a single institution based in nearby Modena that serves both cities, condemned efforts to boycott educational and cultural initiatives involving Jews. It described the conflation of diaspora Jews with Israel’s government as antisemitic.
The Reggio Emilia approach, developed after World War II by educator Loris Malaguzzi and local families, places children’s exploration, expression, and participation at the center of early childhood learning. It gained wider international recognition after Newsweek named one of the city’s preschools among the world’s 10 best schools in 1991.
Severini said Reggio Children’s relationships with American Jewish and Israeli educators stretch back roughly three decades. The Israeli liaison first visited in 1996, she said, and educators from Reggio have also traveled to the United States and Israel.
The organization has hosted educators from all over the world, Severini said, including China, Russia, and Iran. She said she knew of no comparable controversy involving other visiting groups, including previous delegations from Jewish schools.
Reggio Children, she said, hoped to continue its dialogue with the American educators. For Manhattan Day School’s Kletenik, the cancellation stood in stark contrast with the educational values that had drawn her to the approach.
“How are we to navigate rejection by the very experts we collectively idealized—the gatekeepers of the sensitive worldviews and teachings we trusted to nurture our most tender children?” she wrote in a message to her school’s board.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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